Quick Thoughts - Bookmas

Greetings all. The "holiday season" is in full swing now and the weather is still teetering here between autumn and winter. No snow on the ground, really, but just generally crappy out most of the time. Which I will take if it means not having to shovel. But the holiday season for me also means betting to participate in Bookmas with my partner. I actually see the hashtag on Twitter occasionally as I'm updating my list, so I'm not actually sure if it's "a thing" or, if it is, if I'm doing it correctly. But Bookmas for us means twenty-four days of books.

It works kind of like this. For the entire year partner and I stockpile books for each other. If we see something we really want but feel guilty because we're not going to be getting to it any time soon, so tend to buy it and put it away into a closet where it waits for Bookmas. After we have roughly twenty-four books in the stack, we have to sort-of cut ourselves off from book buying (though cheating does inevitably occur). Then, every day of December leading to Christmas, we give each other a book. We have this cute little advent calendar with doors and in the doors go little slips of paper with clues that point to a location in the house where a book is hidden. So scavenger hunt + book gifts = all the win!

This year we're also gearing up to do the K. Tempest Bradford Reading Challenge, focusing on not reading any straight, white, cis-men for an entire year. We've also pushed a bit for reading less straight, white, cis-women as well, but a few might slip in (mostly for reviewing purposes). It is incredibly exciting to watch the books pile up. This pile becomes our new TBR pile for the new year, and helps us cut back a bit on buying tons of books because we try to not buy too many more than would go in our Bookmas stacks (plus maybe some for Christmas itself). It works out...all right. The first year we did it I read almost all of the Bookmas books. This last year...well, not so much. But I'm hoping this year I will be able to get to all of them. All of them! We shall see.

Anyway, just a bit of a glimpse into a tradition in our house. Below is the list of books that I've received so far through Bookmas. So excited!!!

Day 01: Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott
Day 02: City of a Thousand Suns by Samuel R. Delany
Day 03: Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
Day 04: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
Day 05: Mothership: Afrofuturism and Beyond eds. Bill Campbell and Edward Austin Hall
Day 06: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Day 07: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Day 08: Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston
Day 09: The Time and The Place and Other Stories by Naguib Mahfouz
Day 10: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
Day 11: Chasing the Moon by A. Lee Martinez

And still not even halfway there! I'll probably do a Thoughts at the beginning of the year with a full list of my TBR challenge books. Obviously that will change as the year progresses (though if you're interested the updating list can be found here on Goodreads, and throughout the year I will be adding updates and reviews, so yeah...), but I'm super excited. A bit ashamed, too, to be honest, because I've never read these books, but there's no time like now to start. Indeed! Thanks for reading!

All the best,

Charles Payseur