H.S. Stone's Blog, page 6

1,000 books and counting

 

I didn't notice this until today, but I've logged over 1,000 books on Goodreads! 

Depending on whether I'm looking at the list of All books or Read books, I've included either 1,003 or 1,005 books since I started using Goodreads in 2011. (I'm perplexed by the difference between the two lists, and I don't know where the discrepancy comes from.)

If I've added 1,003 books, then my 1,000th book was Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams, which I read at the beginning of this year. If 1,005 is the correct num...

Favorite reads of 2021

Happy New Year, everyone! It's time to share my top ten favorite reads of 2021. 

As I've mentioned in previous posts, last year, I participated in the Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge. It was also a year of Brandon Sanderson books for me since I read five of his books in 2021, including the first two in the Stormlight Archive series. Both themes are reflected in my top ten list, as four books from the Goodreads Choice Awards challenge and three books by Brandon Sanderson made it onto the...

What I read in 2021

 

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal for myself to read at least 100 books in 2021. I'm happy to say that I surpassed the goal, ending the year with 103 books read.

 The average rating for the books I read was 4.03 stars, broken down as follows:

5 stars - 33 books
4 stars - 40 books
3 stars -  30 books

The 4.03 stars average was higher than the 3.96 stars in 2020.

Undoubtedly, my Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge contributed to the higher ratings this year since the 28 books I read as p...

Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge recap

For my reading challenge this year, I chose to read at least twenty books from the list of 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards finalists. I ended the year reading twenty-eight of them.

The books I read were (in alphabetical order by title):

Anxious People - Fredrik BackmanBeach Read - Emily Henry  Confessions on the 7:45 - Lisa Unger
A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik Devolution - Max BrooksA Good Girl's Guide to Murder - Holly Jackson
The Hollow Places - T. Kingfisher  Home Before Dark - Riley Sager
The H...

NaNoWriMo 2021 recap

Another NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is behind us. I started this year's NaNoWriMo with the same modest goals as last year: to write 20,000 words in the month of November. The good news is that I accomplished the goal, ending the month just over the target with 20,040 words.

November started out well for me. After the first week, I had already written nearly 7,000 words. And then work kicked my butt. During week 2, there were days when I barely had fifteen minutes to write, and my ave...

NaNoWriMo 2021

It's that time of year again when writers around the world try to kick their monthly word count goals into high gear for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). As someone who has reached 50,000 words in the month of November three times before, my goals have been more modest in recent years. Now I approach NaNoWriMo like someone who joins a gym in January: to reach short-term goals if I can, but also to develop better habits that will hopefully last beyond the month. 

Last year, I used NaNoWri...

Hopeless is on sale for Halloween

The title pretty much explains it all. From now until Halloween, my YA zombie novel, Hopeless, will be on sale for 99 cents! Buy it here, or if you're a member of the Kindle Unlimited program, you can read it for free!

Description:

The zombie apocalypse happened faster than anyone could’ve imagined. 

On what she believes is a normal Friday night, seventeen-year-old Sara goes to bed believing that she’ll see her parents and her brother the next morning. Instead, she wakes up to a new world where zom...

A 2021 writing update

 

First of all, thank you to everyone who supported my latest release, Hopeless! I hope you enjoyed reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I'm currently working on the first draft of the sequel to Hopeless, which is still untitled. (I have a few options in mind, but I haven't decided which one I like best and may not until after the first draft is completed.) Last year, I started writing Hopeless in June and completed the first draft in December. January through May of 2021 consisted of...

Walking: Good for your body and good for your writing

Thanks to the pandemic, I couldn't go to the gym from March to November last year, so I had to find other ways to exercise. I bought some dumbbells and elastic bands to work out at home, but I also discovered an easy exercise that helped my body and my writing: walking. 

Before the pandemic, I walked mainly to get from point A to point B, e.g., from my house to the train station, from the train station to my work office. Since we started sheltering in place, the only places I needed to go was fro...

How I read 100 books in a year

I call myself an avid reader and writer, but truthfully, I spend a lot more time reading than writing. Last year, I read over 100 books, and I'm on pace to read over 100 books again this year. When I tell people how many books I read, they are often amazed. That may be because the average American adult reads 12 books a year. They ask me how I'm able to read so many books, and I tell them it's because I just love reading. While that's a simplistic answer, there are some things I do that help imp...