Happy October! I can’t believe that the year is 75 percent over already… it’s flying by. Since I haven’t done a bookish stats post in a long time (maybe as far back as the end of 2011), so I decided today would be as good a day as any to check in.

So far this year I’ve finished 89 books. As of this time last year, I’d read 80 books, so I’m still reading faster than I was last year, even if September was a little bit slow. Those 80 books add up to 27,979 pages and about 88 hours in audio books. That’s a lot of reading!

Books by Genre

In 2011, I read quite a bit more nonfiction than fiction. So far this year I’m pretty much even between fiction and nonfiction, which is interesting — 39 fiction and 40 nonfiction. I think the nonfiction number will go up by the end of the year, since I have a number of nonfiction review copies I want to finish.

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Today I’m scheduled to put up a post as part of the A More Diverse Universe blog tour, a project hosted by Aarti of BookLust to celebrate speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy, for example) written by people of color.

I originally intended to write a review about The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, but after forcing my way through 200 pages this week I decided I wasn’t enjoying the book enough to continue. The Enchantress of Florence is a historical/magical story about a European man and his visit to the Mughal emperor Akbar’s court. It’s a bit of a tale of two cities, moving between Akbar’s city and Renaissance Florence, switching narrators and story lines frequently. I just couldn’t follow what was happening and ended up feeling frustrated by the narrative.

So instead of spending time reading and writing a book I wasn’t enjoying, I decided to abandon The Enchantress of Florence and look through the other posts for the tour and find some books I might enjoy better. After perusing this weeks posts, I’ve added these books to my TBR pile:

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie (Reading on a Rainy Day and Iris on Books)

Aths’ description of Haroun and the Sea of Stories just made it sound so delightful, I wish I’d picked this book instead. She writes:

Haroun and the Sea of Stories felt like a whiff of lively breeze. Reading this book made me remember the joy of reading magical books like Harry Potter and The Night Circus. While not as long or as atmospheric, Haroun and the Sea of Stories deserves its own place on that shelf of fascinating fantasy books. Although the fantasy in this book does have symbolic meanings and a few “moral of the stories”, one could read this book for pure pleasure and nothing more.

Iris’ review of the book also mentioned some of the political themes and the book’s defense of both storytelling and democracy, which I think sounds awesome:

If you look beyond this defense of storytelling, it isn’t that difficult to read Haroun and the Sea of Stories as a defense of democracy, and a condemning of totalitarianism in any form. The war between the Gup and the Chup is defined in this manner, with the Gup’s talking and long conclaves in which they set all their arguments out, functioning as a stand-in for a society in which everyone has a voice and a means of portraying his opinions; the Chup, on the other hand, in having to keep silent, give up their right of speech and thus their right of opinion, which in the end leaves them divided instead of united.

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi (Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity and Another Step to Take)

Although Trish only gave The Icarus Girl 3.5 out of 5 stars in her review, some of her descriptions of the book were enough to make me intrigued about this one. I’ve been looking for some darker books to read this fall, and this one might fit the bill:

But for me the real star of The Icarus Girl is the atmosphere that Oyeyemi sets for the reader. The mood of the novel is dark and dream-like with haunting imagery and a constant unsettling. Even at when I first started reading the book and was questioning whether this was truly a speculative fiction novel, I could feel the atmosphere settle upon me like a blanket.

Another review that intrigued me was Christy’s — I thought this paragraph about one of the challenges of the book sounded intriguing:

The story gives an interesting glimpse into the life of a multicultural child. Jess thinks the Nigerians put incredible effort into some of their foods, grinding and drying and frying and drying. Her relatives think her father is unskilled at peeling cassava. Discipline is a bit of an issue. At one point Jess’ father says he’s handling a discipline issue and her mother says, “You weren’t though! If that had been my father ‘handling that,’ she would’ve been flat on the floor with a few teeth missing!” The parents, like most parents I suspect, wonder whether they are spoiling her or being too lenient but with the added complication of different backgrounds. “And now, now you’re implying my father’s some kind of savage! It’s just… it’s just DISCIPLINE! Maybe you just don’t understand that! You’re turning this into some kind of… some kind of European versus African thing that’s all in my mind…”

More Octavia Butler

I almost decided to read an Octavia Butler book for this tour, but ended up switching a little bit at the last minute (a move I regretted while I was dragging myself through The Enchantress of Florence). There were a bunch of great Octavia Butler books on the tour:

• Fledgling at Books as portable pieces of thoughts and Medieval Bookworm
• Wild Seed at Worth Reading It?
• Kindred at Care’s Online Book Club
• Parable of the Sower at Capricious Reader

Anyway, I’m sorry for not finishing a book to suggest for the tour, but I hope I’ve highlighted some other excellent options to try!

In an effort to maybe, perhaps, hopefully get caught up on all the books I haven’t reviewed, I’m planning to start doing mini-reviews every couple of weeks for books that I read but didn’t have much to say about. If you have more specific questions about any of this week’s titles, leave them in the comments!

The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin by Justin Berk

Life as a teenager is tough, but the situation that Will “Hamburger” Haplin finds himself in may be tougher than usual. Will is deaf and starting his first year at a public high school. He has to sit in the corner of every class to help him read lips, and his hefty physique and a burgeoning friendship with the second least popular guy in school aren’t helping matters either. When a popular classmate is killed on a field trip, Will and his new friend Devon set themselves on the case.

I grabbed The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin by Justin Berk specifically because of this description of the book by Stephanie at On Page and Screen:

It offered virtually everything I like in YA novels, a smart, quirky protagonist with a distinctive voice, genuine adolescent struggles, humor, and a strong, well-told story. The murder mystery was icing on the cake.

I read the book with high expectations and, unfortunately, I wasn’t quite as enamored by it as I hoped I would be even though I read the book in a single sitting. I didn’t connect with Will’s quirkiness as much as I expected (and his total disregard for his health/weight was hard to read). But I did like the mystery/amateur sleuthing in the story, and I thought Berk did a good job showing what it might be like to try and experience high school as a deaf student.

Codex by Lev Grossman

Technically, Codex by Lev Grossman isn’t a young adult book. The protagonists — young investment banker Edward Wozny and medievalist Margaret Napier — aren’t teenagers, the story isn’t set in high school, it’s not even a coming of age story. But I couldn’t help thinking how YA-like the book feels.

Edward is about to start a vacation when he is summoned to one last assignment with a mysterious client — sorting and organizing the family library while searching for an ancient book that may not even exist. He enlists Margaret’s help to find the book, and spends the rest of the story searching for the codex and discovering parallels between the book an a beta computer game that he’s become obsessed with.

Overall, I wasn’t thrilled with this one. I think the YA-ness of the book comes from the simplicity of the language; the plot is oddly intricate, but the writing is very plain. There were lovely moments, but the two worlds Edward was living in (the codex search and a computer game) felt forced together and the ending was entirely anti-climactic. It was disappointing… but I love Lev Grossman, so I’m not too upset about it!

Disclosure: I checked out The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin from the library and purchased my copy of Codex.

Photo Credit: albertogp123 via Flickr

Three months ago, Sophisticated Dorkiness was hacked… and I didn’t know it.

Someone, somewhere, managed to exploit a loophole in my website security and insert malware that took over the search results to this site, hijacking my traffic and putting my work at risk.

I’m writing this post because what happened to me and my site was likely preventable. Had I paid more attention to some early signs of a problem or taken basic website maintenance and security seriously, I probably wouldn’t be writing this post. I don’t want to scare anyone, but I think it’s important to share this information and remind other bloggers who self-host their sites to be vigilant.

Finding the Hack

First of all, I think it’s also important to mention that I am NOT an expert in website security or the intricacies of being hacked. I’m a hobby blogger that self-hosts this website. If you think your site has been hacked, DO NOT take this an expert advice or expect this post to offer a fix. This is just my personal experience and a few lessons learned.

My first clue that something was wrong with my site should have come several months ago when I noticed a steep drop in my traffic on Google Analytics. This is a look at my traffic, starting in April 2012:

As you can see, I had pretty regular traffic pattern (high traffic during the week, lower on the weekends) until about June. Then, traffic dropped of dramatically. I was a little concerned about this, but given the quirks that can come with analytics I figured it was just an error and ignored it. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure the drop in June is from when my site was hacked and all of traffic from search engines got diverted.

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