Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

 Well, it's that time of month again where I look through my spreadsheet and talk about my best ten books I've read so far this year, as well as the worst five. Top ten first--all five star reads. 10. The Dark Half by Stephen King 9. Charming Young Man by Eliot Schrefer  8. Black Iris by Leah Raeder 7. Under the Dome by Stephen King 6. Briardark by SA Harian 5. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee 4. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson  3. The Book of Lost Things by John Connelly 2. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead 1. Needful Things by Stephen King And the bottom five: 5. 27 Hours by Tristina Wright (1.5 stars) 4. The Red Labyrinth by Meredith Tate (1 star)  3. The Nameless by Ramsey Campbell (1 star) 2. Art is the Lie by Courtney Cook Hopp (1 star) 1. Call of the Cherokee by F. Gardner (1 star)

 Something terrible happened a few days ago: I ran out of pre-filmed, pre-edited videos to post. This doesn't happen often. I just have a mass of unedited videos on my computer (and even more on my phone, which still need to be transferred to my computer), and generally, I can keep up. But a few days ago, I realized, I was out. That was it. End of the line.  So there won't be any videos in a while. My plan is to edit up all the ones I have, and then transfer all of the videos currently taking up space on my phone (not that it's that big of a deal, I have like 512GB total storage) to my computer, and then we can start posting again and hopefully not fall behind again. I will also not be filming anything at this time. I know. I put away all my books I read in the past week without filming a wrap-up. Which is fine, because it's not like those wrap-ups were in any way timely.  But! That's that. Won't be any videos until I get all my current computer ones edited.

 I read my first few Chuck Palahniuk novels back in late high school, early college, and I really liked them. I thought they were fun, kinda edgy--a good time. Then I took a break. In that break, I read Bret Easton Ellis. And okay, these last two years, my top book of the year has been by BEE. Like, the man is a genius, and when I went back into Palahniuk, I was hit with the disturbing thought: "ah shit, he's Ellis-lite." This feeling stuck with me for Lullaby .  And now I'm reading Pygmy , which is. A trip and a half. My god you cannot wander at all with this book. What the actual hell. Do I still like Ellis better? Abso-fucking-lutely. Is this anything like Ellis? Abso-fucking-lutely not. Interested to see where this goes. Glad that Lullaby was just a fluke. 

 I mean, it's been going well. I've put out two books so far, and the only reason Class B isn't out is because I just haven't gotten around to uploading the final draft to Amazon and everything. It's done. I'm about 14k into the next Aughts Boys book, which I am a little lukewarm about (it's Kevin, and he's like, kind of meh, for me, honestly), and about 10k into the last Serial Killers with Cookies book. Next month I start a rewrite of a Tinon novella, and the month after I start a rewrite of another standalone. It's going well. I think I'll publish all the books I meant to publish this year--the only one I'm iffy on is Kaz at the Approach . Everything else should be finished with plenty of time to spare, which is not like, generally my experience. Usually I have crossover between years.  It's been a good year so far.

 

 

 Ah, god damn it, it's not a book month. However! One thing does escape the rules of buying books, and that is eBooks. And as Nora Sakavic is a part of the same school of thought as I am in terms of pricing eBooks (99c forever, baby), I 100% bought an eBook of The Sunshine Court last night. I'm a chapter in. I'm taking my time with this one. I'm doing a chapter a night. I'm trying to avoid all mentions of it on Twitter because I'm SAVORING because Jean is my favorite character and he's always been my favorite and of course I was so glad that March was a book month because I did purchase the hardcovers of AFTG that RainbowCrate put out, so those'll be coming, and of course the paperback is going to be on my Amazon wishlist of The Sunshine Court, and-- It's good so far. Chapter one was good. This book is going to fucking WRECK me.

  Class B , if you're unaware, is a companion/sort-of sequel to the Pentalogy of Hell series. It takes place after the conclusion of Son of Perdition , and it's mostly a companion because, like everything else that is extra content for these books, it's about Casey. You may ask, why the fuck do we care about Casey so much? I mean, he's practically a bit character in the first book, so why did he become so important? The answer is that he's the character I created first. Like, in my whole life. Like, I created the earliest vestiges of the character when I was about nine years old. He was always kind of a misfit ( and he was named after Casey the Cat from JumpStart ), but I was not like, imagining horrifying abuse when I was a third grader.  He grew. And he kind of evolved. And now he's what he is now, and he has his own book. I guess his second own book, if you count Beyr as a Casey book? 'Which it really is, I guess. I did make an effort to make Class B coi...

 

 

 I'm in the next stage of the book wall shrinkage, which is two months without buying any books. The ONLY caveat is my own books. When I put out one of my books, I will get myself a copy. That is the ONLY exception. EVEN if I get a pass, I will not buy any more books. The first couple of days in a no-book month are always the easiest, because I still have books coming in that I ordered the previous months. So I'm still going strong, you know, four days in. I think having an end date in mind is helping. June 1st, I can buy books again. Until July. Unfortunately, my rotation didn't take into account that July is the month that my birthday's in... but I'll just have to deal, man. I can't get books on my birthday this year, and I will just have to deal with it. I've got two months of no book-buying. The hope is that I can wean myself off. Eventually, if I stick with this (and I say if because when I have I ever stuck to a book buying ban), I'll be going... ...

 

 I don't remember where I heard of this-- Happy for Now 's YouTube, maybe? Either way, it's a challenge for the month of April where you read a volume of manga every day. I have a whole goddam fuckton of manga in the book wall, so I figured I'd have enough. Spoiler alert: I 100% did. I didn't even have to dig that far. So, my 30 in 30 plans this year (there will be a vlog up at some point, probably several months in the future): Mob Psycho 100 , 1&2 Deadman Wonderland , 1, 4 My Love Mix-Up , 3 My Dress-up Darling , 1-3 Given , 1 His Favorite, 10 Devils and Realist , 11 InuYasha Ani-manga , 17&18 Haikyu , 1, 3 Othello , 1 Jujutsu Kaisen , 10 Is It Wrong to Try and Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon, 3 Library Wars , 4 The 100 Girlfriends Who Really..., 1 Noragami, 1 We Never Learn, 1-3 The Good Lie Foo d Wars, 2 Galaxy Angel Deluxe, 1 So, that's the plan! I'm down one, and if nothing else, this will help me kill that book wall--and it's not even a book mo...