SR 2016: Professional Fan-Fiction

It's time for Summer Reading 2016 to officially begin!  For those of you who want to follow along with me, my topic is going to be Professional Fan-Fiction (a wonderful selection suggested by The Brother).  What is professional fan-fiction?  Well, think of it this way.  Fan-fiction consists of stories written by authors about characters they did not create and do not own.  For example, when I was in high school, I started work on a series of books based on The Phantom of the Opera.  What makes these selections "professional," however is that they are officially published, not self-published online.  These are approved books written about a variety of characters and stories.  Think of all the Sherlock Holmes stories not written by Conan Doyle, and you'll get an idea of what I mean.

So, that's our topic this summer.  As I mentioned in my last post, feel free to read along, and suggest some titles of your own.  I'm always on the lookout for good books, as I'm sure you undoubtedly  know.  Also, as I mentioned before, I will not be talking about books that do not pertain to my topic on this blog.  Rather, those can be found by following me on Goodreads.

Looking forward to hearing about all the great stuff you read!  

Summer Reading 2016

It's that time of year again!  Summer Reading!  Now, I've been bad about recording my summer reading in the past, but this year, I'm feeling hopeful.  As always, a theme will be created and lots of books will be read.  Since I read so much, I will only be talking about the books that fit my summer reading goal on this blog.  The rest of my reviews can be found on Goodreads.  If you don't already follow me and would like to, my user name is Emmy205.  Feel free to friend me if you have an account; I never turn away friend requests on this site.

As for my summer reading theme, I'll be honest, I'm a little unsure of what to do.   As a reminder, here are some of the themes I've used in the past...

2010: Gothic Novels
2011: Scary Stories/Mythical Monsters
2012: A Summer in Middle Earth

2013: Summer School

2014: It's a Mystery!

2015: To Read or Not to Read

2016: ???

What will this year be?  I haven't the foggiest.  But, since I'm now officially out of school forever (or I will be once I graduate in August) I've decided to make "summer" officially fall between Memorial Day and Labor Day; at least for my purposes.  So, tomorrow is Memorial Day and that kicks off my summer reading challenge!  I'll have a topic ready to go for you all at that time!  And if you are interested, I highly encourage you to follow along with your own books that fit the (soon to be announced) theme.  Let me know what I should read next and what books you've enjoyed!  This is going to be a lot of fun :)

Graduation and Adulting

My graduation anniversary was a few days ago.  That means I graduated from college THREE YEARS ago.  I've been adulting for three years now, and I'm not sure how I'm doing it.  I sometimes wonder if someone is going to come up to me and whisper "I know you're not really an adult.  You don't work full time, you still watch cartoons, let's face it--the only difference between you now and you as a kid was that now you can afford to buy all that junk that you used to make your parents buy for you--and you have a car.  That's it."

I mean, I'm not worried, per se.  But, my brother is graduating tomorrow, and my own graduation is coming up at the end of the summer.  I'm starting to realize that soon I won't even have school to back me up.  I'll just be an adult (or someone cleverly masquerading as one).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go build a blanket fort with the Snuggie my grandma gave me.

What to Do?

So, I tend to overthink things, and basically everyone who follows this blog knows this.  Anyways, there's this guy who comes to some of my library programs--I have an ongoing event series that he always attends.  Real nice guy.  We sometimes talk, but never for any real length of time.  I try to engage him in longer conversations, but it seems like we're always on different pages--when he wants to talk, I'm busy, and when I want to talk, he seems distracted and has to cut out of the conversation early.

Unfortunately, I can't give 100% attention to him because I have to take care of set-up and clean-up for my programs, and keep things in order.  But, I would like to talk to him more.  The thing is, I don't want him to think that I'm coming on to him, because I can't figure out how I feel about him.  I've creeped on him on Facebook, and I'm happy to see that he's single.  The thought of him finding a girlfriend bothers me, so I suppose there is some emotion there.  But, I just don't think I want a boyfriend right now.  I don't know.  Honestly, I haven't really thought seriously about a guy since Movie Boy (and that was when I graduated in 2013).

My mom pointed out that I should try to engage this library cutie in more conversation.  Which, is easier said than done (see above) since we seem to be on different pages.  I surprised myself with how irritated that comment made me.  I'm trying to engage him in conversation, and I'm trying to be nice and friendly, but I have other stuff I have to do, too, and I can't afford to just hang out and talk all night.  Now, if we went out somewhere, I would be free to talk, but I don't want to make him think it was a date.

The problem is that I don't know how I feel.  Part of me obviously feels something, but the other half of me is pretty guarded, and wants to get to know him better before I dive into anything.  I guess, too, my pride is bruised, since I thought I was doing things right, but clearly, my mom thinks I'm not making enough effort.  What do you guys think?