Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

 Another year is done, and that means it's time for my TOP 19 of 2023. This is, top ten books, top seven movies, top artist a la Spotify, and top game that I finished . No re-reads allowed, and also no re-watches, and I haven't played enough games for that to be an issue.  So, first up, easiest thing out of the way: according to Spotify, what was my top artist?  It was Marianas Trench. I listened to Ever After and Fix Me a whole lot this year. Over and over and over again. It has Aughts Boys reasons, I guess.  Top game? I actually finished four games this year. My favorite was definitely Pesterquest , mostly because when I got to the Dirk one at the end Unite: Synchronization started playing and I started crying, like, a little, and also I didn't let myself look up how to get good ends for any of them except for Dirk, because sue me, I'm a Dirk girl, and I just thought, you know, to myself, as it goes, like, WWDSD? And the answer was definitely look up how to win at tha

 

 

 

 A bitch loves a spreadsheet.  By a bitch, I mean me.  Let's take a walk through of all the spreadsheets I am desperately waiting for January 1st for, because then I can start using them.  First up, all of the ones that will be transferred from my '2023 Spreadsheets' folder to my '2024 Spreadsheets' folder on NYE.  'book series' is just a spreadsheet that gets sporadically updated whenever I pull a book from the book wall to read, but I haven't read/don't own the whole series. 'book wall' is a list of all of the unread books that I own. 'chores' is a list of chores that I add to my to-do list. 'creative income' has a different sheet for each year. I had the wherewithal to start it when I started self-publishing in 2020 and now it even adds everything for me like a good spreadsheet. 'every book i've read ever' is not every book I've read ever, but I did start it this year to attempt to make 'What's your

 

 Well, 2023 has come and (almost) gone, and I did, again, manage to publish 6 books, so good on me for keeping that streak alive. At the end of the year I will publish my sales and which of my books did the best (spoiler alert: it was One More Sad Song ), but let's talk about my writing plans for next year.  First up, I do plan on writing first drafts in April, July, and November. I'm hoping that if I do both Camps and then NaNo, I can not like, write a million first drafts. I haven't yet decided what these first drafts are going to be but like, I'll figure that out. Second, I do want to write between 25,000-50,000 words worth of short fiction, whether that be short stories, essays, blog posts... I do even count fanfiction in on this, because yeah, I do still write fanfic sometimes, and you can pry my AO3 username from my cold, dead hands.  And then the novels.  First up, I will be finishing Guillaume and Class B. They're the two holdovers from this year. Guillaume

 Say what you want about working in a school, but the last few weeks before Christmas break are just awash with illness. I have 19 fifth graders and I had a full class, one day, after Thanksgiving... someone's been sick every other day. This week I've been grimly fighting something off; it's called my lunch is sudafed now.  My kids are, thankfully, pretty chill. They're a decently good class. I have to get after them sometimes but it's not as bad as fourth graders or, GOD FORBID, the third graders. As we've been getting closer to the break time I've had a few of my first finishers of the 40 Book Challenge roll in... congratulations to the two ten/eleven year olds that have read FORTY BOOKS THIS YEAR IT WAS SUPPOSED TO LAST THE WHOLE YEAR.  But no. It's chill. If they read 80 I'll give them another prize. 

 This is different from the video that I'll film and inevitably post in four or five years because we are counting re-reads in this. Without further ado, the best ten and worst five books I've read this year.  10. Light by Michael Grant I did do a full Gone series re-read this year and as a whole the series does remain just about my favorite series ever. I have also just accepted that the last book is my favorite book in the series. Every time I've read the damn thing I've bawled my eyes out.  9. Germinal by Emile Zola I don't know if I'm going to be able to count this on my list of new books that encapsulates my favorites because I have read this before... just in French. I've been getting way into Zola this year. I read three books by him: this one, The Ladies' Paradise , and Therese Raquin. Germinal is the best. But yeah, Zola is so gddam good.  8. Okay for Now by Gary D Schmidt Unsurprising, considering that the first time I read this book, it was on