New Year New Challenge

In 2016 I resolved to set myself a reading challenge through Goodreads. This first challenge saw me attempting to read 100 books in a year. I achieved this with only the tiniest bit of cheating. I’ve been assured it was allowable cheating, so thankfully my penance simply consists of having to read more books.

My second challenge saw me delving into the #Discworld. What a Fantasy-tastic challenge that was. To read about it please check out my 15 December post from last year. For my reviews of all the books I read please go to Goodreads.

This year I’m going for the big 100 again but with a little twist. My aim is to read as many graphic novels and Indie books as possible. To save costs I’ll be getting the graphic novels from the library and the majority of the independent books I’ll probably read on my kindle. So I’m going to be spending a fair amount of time accessing books through Instafreebie for that portion of the challenge.

For those of you not familiar with Instafreebie, let me enlighten you. It was created in 2014 with the main aim of accelerating “great stories and big ideas.” How it works is that you sign up to an Instafreebie e-book giveaway (YES, THAT’S A FREE E-BOOK) and in exchange you give your email address to the author of the book. The author can then add you to his/her mailing list so you can hopefully become one of his/her loyal followers. You’re not stuck in this loop though. If you’re not really into the author’s work, you can opt out of the mailing list later down the line. It’s that simple.

The great thing for an Indie author like me is that it helps me build my mailing list and hopefully get a loyal readership along the way. Reading books from the Instafreebie catalogue also gives me the opportunity to find other Indie authors out there and support them by writing a blurb/review of their book. Trust me, us Indie authors love Love LOVE a review. Yes, that is a hint.

The superb thing for a reader on a limited budget is that you get books for FREE. As an avid reader always watching the pennies, I’m in seventh heaven about this arrangement.

I’ve already got my eye on a selection of authors I’m planning on reading through Instafreebie. I'll be publishing reviews of these independent authors on this blog in posts which will be entitled #Indie Intro. The first of these will be A Touch of Magic by Lisa M White.

Where I’d like your help though is with suggestions for graphic novels I should consider. Please post suggested titles in the comment box and I promise I’ll read them if they’re available through my local library.

The following titles have already been suggested:

Watchmen

Persepolis

Maus

Anything by Daniel Clowes

Rivers of London

Happy reading everyone and thanks in advance for reading suggestions to come.

Guest Post: Creative Recharge

Lindsay Bamfield started writing fiction about 10 years ago. She has written a number of short stories and flash fiction pieces and has been published in Greenacre Writers Anthology , Voices from the Web 2012, The Best of Café Lit 2012, Mslexia, Writers’ News and Writing Magazine. She has won prizes in Writers’ News , Writing Magazine and Words with Jam competitions and has been shortlisted in others. She is currently re-working her first novel with advice from an editor and has a second novel on the back-burner. How do I recharge my writing batteries? I’m not sure I’m the right person to answer this as my batteries are still somewhat depleted after illness and debilitating treatment, but my writing activity, although still less than ideal has bounced back to some extent. It was only after being ill that I understood just how much energy writing requires. Exhaustion does not engender creativity. After a frustrating dry-spell when I wanted to writ...

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So, it’s six months into this crazy Goodreads 100 book challenge I set myself and I’m happy to report that I'm now two books ahead. This is largely due to the fact I’ve also been reading children’s books at breakfast. Without this saving grace I believe I’d be whimpering in shame at this point. “But is this reading of children’s books thing allowed?” I hear you all asking. The simple answer to that is: YES As I work with children, primarily instructing them on how to improve their creative writing, it is only fitting that I check out the books deemed to be totally read WORTHY by the kids and also by those who reckon they’re in the know. It will come as no great shock to you that I have disagreed with the Know-It-Alls from time to time but NEVER with the kids. However, this post is not about that. What I would like to do now is give you a run down of the 5 books I’ve found most enjoyable thus far. You would assume there’d be at ...

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