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It’s been a bit of a crazy week timewise, so I was ecstatic to that find the book I chose last week was a short one! (I know it’s only Monday, but that’s my Friday 😁🎉)
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Continue reading “What I’m Reading 13th June“Happy Monday!
It’s time for another new book, and again, it’s a work read.
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Continue reading “What I’m Reading 6th June“The moment I finished writing Running the Asset, I’d promised myself that I’d get back into reading fiction. Not only because I love getting sucked into spy romances, but it’s also a handy way to up my writing skills. But, now that I’m into the editing phase, there is one work-related book that I must read before I get any deeper into the edits. (Don’t worry; it’s a fun one.)
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Continue reading “What I’m Reading 30th May“It’s been almost a month since I posted what I’ve been reading. Sixty plus hours a week down the word mines made it challenging to find time to read. But now that I’m heading for a holiday in T minus two hours, I thought I’d line up my next read.
Continue reading “What I’m Reading 9th May“Woohoo! I managed to carve out some time to read last week–a nice change to previous weeks where I’d had little to no time set aside.
This week, I’ve decided to go with just one book as I’ve upped my writing output, and it’s turning my brain to sausage.
Continue reading “What I’m Reading 15th April“It’s been another week of little reading time, but I did manage to squeeze some time in! I finished reading A Spy’s Guide to Taking Risks by John Braddock, and it was a fascinating read.
Spread over the chapters is the tale of Braddock’s first time travelling to a meet in alias. At first, it seems pretty benign but quickly plunges into a “worst day ever” scenario. We follow him as he does risk analysis on the fly, ditching border guards and a possible tail.
In each chapter, Braddock steps away from the story to explain a spy’s decision making in risky situations. The thought process, the AND-OR components that go into their decision making, the factoring in of every possible eventuality–and assigning probability percentages.
As I read, I saw ways of utilising what I’d learnt in my everyday decision making. But, mostly, I couldn’t stop seeing how I could use it in fiction.
And now, onto this week’s reads.
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Continue reading “What I’m Reading 8th April“I can’t believe it’s been three weeks since I shared my latest reads. But, to be honest, all of my reading plans went out the window. Well, not out the window; they just went so slow that I had to re-read chapters to remember what happened in the days since I’d last read.
I go through the odd month of barely getting any reading done, but I’d thought that wouldn’t be an issue given that I was reading two of my favourite authors. But, I know why I’ve struggled to get much reading done.
Okay, that last statement sounds like I did some deep thinking about the issue and came up with some startling revelation… nope. As I was reading my Fun read–a book I know I love because I’ve read it multiple times–I suddenly remembered that I don’t read fiction when I’m writing fiction.
It probably sounds insane. Wouldn’t reading fiction, especially a well-written novel in my genre, be helpful? For me, no.
While I was writing my scenes, I noticed a different tone slipping in. It was present in the narrative, the dialogue, and the characters. It wasn’t a crappy tone. It was just a bit darker than mine and with less humour. Basically, it wasn’t suitable for my story. (H. R. D’Costa calls it tone tampering.)
So, with my lesson learnt, I’ve decided to give fiction a by while I’m in writing mode.
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Welcome to another round of Susan loves her work read, and slightly dodgy things in her romance reads.
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I have a dreaded Did Not Finish (DNF) on one of the books I was reading over the last fortnight. I’ve been trying to avoid doing this with the books in this post series, but it was unavoidable this time.
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