Today is going to be a bit of a grab bag on the blog. I had considered not posting until tomorrow as I have a busy day ahead of me, but then I thought, “Nah!”.  Riveting insight into the mind behind Renaissance Dork…

I’ll throw up short blurbs about things as they occur to me throughout the day.  So you can always check back multiple times, or simply wait until tomorrow for the whole thing.  Your call.

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My 50 in 52 book-reading campaign is going better than anticipated.  I’m up to seven-ish books now, which is a little behind the curve, numbers wise.  But if the trend continues I anticipate my personal concerns about Bookpocalypse (wherein I have to read thirty books in December to make my quota) may not come to nothing.

And so far my mantra of JUST READ IT has not led me to anything horrible.  To be fair, I did sort of pad the beginning with some of my favourite authors, but that was just good sense.  If I started with an unknown entity and it sucked, there’d be a book-shaped hole in the wall and my book-list would just be 52 entries of “Books Suxxor!”.  Okay, probably not, but it would have made this whole thing harder to get into.

Astute readers will note I did away with my “out of five” scoring system.  I’m not sure why I ever started it, given I always find those sorts of arbitrary scores pointless.  But it’s gone, so you’ll just have to trust that I’ll tell you if a book is bad.

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Onto a tougher subject.  I started following Victoria Dahl largely because of her work as co-host on Sword & Laser.  Much to my delight, she also writes passionate and engaging posts on feminist topics, so I lucked into a “two birds, one stone” situation.  Yesterday she wrote a post entitled, “What Should We Teach About Rape?“, which I thought a very necessary thing given CNN’s reaction to the verdict handed down in the Steubenville gang rape.  Her article articulated many thoughts that I’ve had about rape culture and victim shaming, and I think it is a necessary read.

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One for the Very Cool file; Adam over at The Unknown Studio cited one of my posts in his weekly Edmonton Blog Watch.  Thanks, Adam!

If you don’t know it, The Unknown Studio is a fantastic podcast from right here in Edmonton, now in its fourth season.  The website is great as well, and both Scott and Adam do a lot to boost Edmonton’s profile.  Check it out!

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I don’t know what took me so long, considering my 50 in 52 Challenge, but I am now on Goodreads.  If you want you can track me down under my name on the site, and we can swap stories.  As soon as I can figure out which of their widgets don’t clash with WordPress, I’ll use their challenge tracker here on the site.

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Okay, I’ll be back to add more nuggets later as they occur to me.  In the meantime feel free to leave comments below, they are always welcome.