Author: Cora Lee

Cora Lee is a National Bestselling author of Regency romance. She went on a twelve year expedition through the blackboard jungle as a high school math teacher before publishing Save the Last Dance for Me, the first book in the Maitland Maidens series. She then followed it up with six other novels and novellas ranging from sweet and traditional to spicy and suspenseful. When she’s not walking Rotten Row at the fashionable hour or attending the entertainments of the Season, you might find her participating in Regency Fiction Writers events, wading through her towering TBR pile, or eagerly awaiting the next Marvel movie release. If you’d like to find out more about Cora or her books you can sign up for her newsletter, or connect with her on Facebook, BlueSky, Bookbub, or Goodreads.
Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: The Streets of Fictional London

Cora Lee

Our Favorite this week is a clever concoction–a cross between a map and a library. Produced by an art establishment called Dorothy, the map assigns book titles to streets and places in turn of the century London.

From Dorothy’s website:

“A street map made up from the titles of over 600 books from the history of English Literature (and a few favourites from further afield). The Map includes classics such as Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Bleak House, Vanity Fair and Wuthering Heights as well as 20th and 21st Century works such as The Waste Land, To the Lighthouse, Animal Farm, Slaughterhouse 5, The Catcher in the Rye, The Wasp Factory, Norwegian Wood and The Road.”
.
.
And yes, they ship internationally 😉
TBR Challenge

Cora’s TBR Challenge 2016

Cora Lee

Giuseppe_Maria_Crespi_-_Bookshelves_-_WGA05755

As Bing Crosby once sang, let’s start the new year right! It’s time once again to set the stage for our TBR Challenge.

This is the third year now for the Challenge, and I’ve discovered that it really has made me more aware of the books I purchased ages ago and have yet to read. It hasn’t stopped me from adding books to the fray, though! One of these days I’ll figure out how to address that 🙂

Here are my conditions for this year:

1. How many books from your TBR pile will you read? I’m going with 18 again this year, since I didn’t quite make it last year. That’s 1.5 books per month, which I should be able to manage even after allowing for writing and editing time, and other reading challenges I’ll be participating in.

2. How long have your books been waiting? For the purposes of this challenge, the books I read must have been acquired by me or placed on my library TBR list (which is still out of hand) before August 1, 2015. This means I can’t buy new books in January and count them toward my TBR Challenge come September–which I found myself doing at least once during the first year, and kind of defeats the purpose of the challenge.

3. How will you hold yourself accountable? Like years past, I’ll post here once a month to share my progress and see how you all are doing. I found that creating a Goodreads shelf and the dedicated page on this blog to be enormously helpful, too, so I’ll do both again. I’m a very visual person and being able to see the collection of books that I’ve read gives me a nice sense of accomplishment, which makes me want to read more TBR books.

So who’s in this year? I know I’m not the only one with a TBR mountain…range 😉 Leave a comment with your goal and conditions–how many books will you tame this year?

TBR Challenge

Cora’s TBR Challenge Check-In

Cora Lee

Job_Lot_Cheap_by_William_Michael_Harnett,_1878_(cropped)

Happy New Year’s Eve, readers! It’s the last day of 2015–did you meet your goal?

I did not. I’m three titles short of the eighteen I set out to read from my TBR pile. Three–I was so close! I did more writing this year and picked up quite a few new editing clients, which is good in a lot of different ways. But that left me with much less reading-for-fun time than I anticipated, and I didn’t complete any of the reading challenges I participated in this year.

I learned a few things this year, though. I learned that I always write more slowly than I think I’m going to, so I’ll need to plan more realistically for that. I learned that I have a pretty solid reputation as an editor and that I love helping people spiff up their books. When given the option, I have always taken the editing job over days off in which I could be reading, which is something to keep in mind when I set my 2016 reading goals. I also learned that my new day job has more down time than I’m used to but I don’t write well in that environment, so it might be possible to get some reading time in at the office next year.

Tomorrow, I’ll take all that information–coupled with the number of books I’ve purchased over the past year–and decide what my goals will be for my various reading challenges. Tonight, however, I’m going to curl up with a book and not worry about which challenge it fits into 🙂