Reading Resolutions

2013 is almost done and it’s that time for resolutions for the New Year! I am both going to make separate blog about writing and reading resolutions. This one is going to be about reading. But first, before I begin, it might be interesting to have a small conclusion about 2013 in books:

•  I have read 47 books this year, 20 more than last year
•   The best book I’ve read was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
•    I started 10 new series and finished one of them. Out of those series, there is one I’m not going to continue and another I’m not yet certain about.
• The books with the prettiest cover I bought this year are Green Rider series by Kirsten Britain, The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent and the 10 year anniversary edition of Eragon by Christopher Paolini.

Here you can find all the books I read last year!

The resolutions:

•    Read 55 books
•   Buy less books and keep track of how many books I buy
•   Finish more series
•    Read The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien in English. I have read the series almost ten years ago in Dutch.
•   Read more about mythology, which includes reading The Kalevala.
• Try to keep the to-read list to a minimum. I have 334 books on my Goodreads to-read list which is a bit overwhelming. I’m going to try to bring to remove the books I’m not super eager to read and keep it at around 100 or less.
•   Read more indie/self-published books.  Now that I have a Kindle, it is easier to get my hands on self-published books. I haven’t read any of them so far, though I have a couple on my Kindle that are waiting to be read.

These resolutions shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish. The 55 books will depend a bit of how much time I have besides school and writing. Although I consider reading a part of the writer’s job.

I hope to get the writing resolutions blog up soon as well, but right now I’m studying for exams. It will be up at the latest at the end of January! Happy New Year everyone! May there be a lot of reading and writing waiting for you in 2014.

The Book that Inspired Me to Write

My love of writing grew out of my life for stories. I thought there was nothing more enjoyable than getting lost between the pages of a book until I started writing. Writing is a way to fight my demons and to express myself. There is no other way to get deeper into a story than to create one myself. Books often leave me with questions: what will happen next? If I write my own story, I will know everything, even though not all of it would end up in a book. Because books lay at the origin of writing, I decided to talk about the books that inspired me to become a writer. The video wherein Kate Mosse talks about the book that made her a writer, gave me the idea for this blog.

Source

I could not have picked a better day to post this blog, beside perhaps July 31^st. Today, September 1^st is the day when everyone who got their letter goes (back) to Hogwarts. Yes, I am talking about Harry Potter. These series are the first I loved and read over and over again and they never got boring. I was so impressed by the story and the world in which it was set that I wished I could live in those books, even though it was a very dark place for most of the time. 

Every time I read those books, and I have done so many times, I discovered something new. Perhaps just a tiny little detailed I hadn’t noticed before, but it makes the experience amazing. The story is very complex without being difficult and the writing is absolutely fantastic. J.K Rowling has amazing characters. While they were fictional characters, I had the feeling they could just tumble out of the book and become real. Growing up with Harry and his friends was truly a privileged experience. Sometimes I want to turn back the time and do it all over again. 

While Rowling is a great writer, it is not her writing directly that inspired me to write. What the books have managed to achieve is what inspires me. Harry Potter has brought so many people together and taught a generation to read. That is a very impressive accomplishment. I do not aim that high, especially since I am not writing children’s or young adult books. I don’t want to become the next Rowling (I think that it is impossible) I hope to achieve the same things her books have achieved on a much smaller scale. I want to inspire people with my writing and hope they enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And maybe I can even manage to bring people together and let them talk about my writing… That would make me very, very happy. And in order to do that, my writing has to be good and if possible, even great. 

I am always looking for great, inspiration books to read so there for I want to ask you which book inspired you to write or which book holds a very special place  in your heart and why?

Fan Fiction

Wikipedia defines Fan fiction as a broadly-defined fan labour term for stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator.

Some people, including authors, look down upon fan fiction. Some, like for example Robin Hobb, do not even allow fans to use her story as a basis for fan fiction. The most common argument against fan fiction is that a writer has to learn to create their own worlds, characters and stories. I agree with that, but I am also in favour for fan fiction.

I have read a lot of fan fiction and written a couple of stories myself. Most of them were set in Harry Potter universe. While there is crap among them, some of the stories are brilliantly written. Sometimes I did wonder why such skilled writers would waste their time on fan fiction, but I dreamt of becoming a published writer as well when I wrote fan fiction. I wrote fan fiction because I enjoyed it so much. I loved working with the character I knew so well (or thought I knew so well) and expand the stories we already had. I knew that nothing would be as good as the original, but that didn’t matter to me. Fan fiction gives characters and settings an entire new life. And I do think fan fiction is a great flattery. If people like your work so much that they want to create their own stories with them, you should be happy. I would be thrilled if someone would do this with my work someday. As long as they do not own money from it, or do not claim the original idea to be theirs, I see no problems.

Fan fiction makes writing swift. You do not have to do any world building and often you do not have to flesh out characters. It is a great way to teach yourself to write without having to put months’ worth of work into it. But you will never become a good writer when you stick to fan fiction. You are missing the whole process of world building and character creation, which is as important as the plot and the writing itself. I do think it is important to understand when you write a fan fiction that you limit yourself to certain aspects of writing. Now that I finally found an original story that I cannot stop working in, I have given up fan fiction for now. I’m not saying that I am never going to write any again, but original stories have my priority. 

Cassandra Clare and E.L. James are two well-known authors who stared their careers with writing fan fiction. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey started off as a Twilight fan fiction while Clare wrote Harry Potter fan fiction. There are probably other authors around who did the same, but these two are the ones that came to mind. It is not because you write fan fiction that you will never become a good writer. It is writing only fan fiction that will hold you back from becoming a great writer.

Fanfiction.net is, I think, the largest fan fiction site on the internet.

Review: The Fault in our Stars by John Green

Life is full of experiences that can changes us or our views on something. Sometimes in a positive way, other times it is more negative. But we never forget these experiences. Reading The Fault in our Stars was such an experience for me.

I won't tell a lot about the the contents of the book. The only thing you might want to know is that it is about a girl called Hazel who suffers from cancer. The book offers us a view into a part of her life wherein she explored; and now I will quote the blurb, 'the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and falling in love.' It sounds very cheesy, but the book is all but cheesy. I bought the book after seeing and reading very passionate reviews about it. I actually felt like I was the only person who had not read it yet. I wanted to know what made it so remarkable and why it appeared time and time again in best books lists.

Now I know why. I started to read the book only yesterday. The book is narrated by Hazel through a first person perspective. Normally I am not so keen to read books in that perspective because I have the feeling it creates a distance between the reader and the narrating character, but this was so wonderfully done that I had no problem to relate to Hazel even though what she was experiencing was alien to me.

I absolutely love John Green's writing. I was immediately pulled into the story and could not get wholly out of it until I finished it. I have to admit that I was scared to read it. Scared that it was going to end badly but me not finishing it, was not an option. I enjoyed the whole book. The story is fast paced and reads very fluently. It is filled with interesting thoughts and good humour to lighten up the mood. The book is filled with so many different emotions, which are brilliantly brought to page, that I felt like I was riding the emotional roller-coaster together with the characters. I enjoyed this from the very first sentence until the very last.

While I have heard the name John Green before, I never read any of his books until now. I will, however, read all his other books as well because I want to know if they are just as good. If they are, J.K. Rowling might be knocked of the my-favourite-author-position by Mr. Green.