So, NOW are we all quitting LiveJournal?

Being required to accept a Terms of Service written in a language that most of us can't read is majorly dicey. Although from what little I know, it sounds like the things that seem shady are EULA boilerplate (stuff like the ToS being able to change at any time).

I accepted it for now, mostly because if I want to salvage anything from over there I will need access. (If you choose not to accept it right now, it tries to force you to log out.) Still, it just seems like another step down the path towards a problem, even if this is itself not a problem.

2017 Reading Goals: 1st quarter check-in

Just like with my writing goals, it seems like I ought to check in with my reading goals at least a couple of times through the year, and quarterly is as good a time as any.

As a reminder, here are the goals that I set for myself when I wrote about my favorite media of 2016 over on ladybusiness:

• At least 40 books total, not including novellas/short fiction or graphic novels/comics collections.


• At least 20 books by authors of color; of these, at least 10 by new-to-me authors (i.e. authors whose work I've never read before).


• At least 5 non-fiction books.


• At least one novella and one piece of shorter fiction each month -- not just during Hugo reading season!


• At least 10 books or graphic novels/comics collections off my existing TBR shelf.

About a month ago, I started wondering whether I should be counting novellas after all, and Twitter's response was unanimous: Yes, I should count them, and no, it's not cheating. Which I suppose makes sense, but in that case it also makes sense to up the overall goal. So, I hereby amend the first goal to 50 books including novellas, and my second goal to 25, also including novellas (my intention there was always to try for 50%). This has the advantage of making it easier to use Goodreads to track my reading, because I tend to list novellas there, but not shorter fiction.

Let's do the numbers:

So far in 2017, I have finished a total of 10 books. Of these books, 7 are by women (6 unique authors) and 4 are by people of color (all unique authors). Four were novellas, and none were graphic novels. One (Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire) was taken off my TBR shelf.

This would put me on pace to read 40 books in a year, but is a little bit behind the 50 book pace. I think that's okay, though, because I spent more time reading short fiction than I anticipate doing normally, for Hugo nominations. I'm also a bit behind on writers of color, but catching up there is entirely doable.

Not bad, overall. Let's see how I proceed.