Annual Reading Goal Challenge for 2016 - Come and join us!

[hulagirl87]

I finished Consent and it was pretty good. The ending seemed really fast, like the author was trying to tie things up quickly. I feel like the story built up very well, but the ending? Meh. I started The Martian and that's really good so far. But I got a book I've been wanting to read for a while at the library today (It's Girl Waits with Gun) and since it's a new release I only have it for 7 days. Seems like I have a lot of reading ahead of me. If only there were unlimited time to read!

 

[Colleen27]

I get so immersed in the story and characters of a book that I can't imagine reading more than one at a time.

The only way I can do it is if only one is fiction. I can bounce back and forth between fiction and non-fiction based on my mood and ability to concentrate, but I can only have one fiction read in progress at any given time.

Fair warning about this series:

It starts off AMAZING and is super great for over half the series, but Charlaine's writing tends to come unravelled if she goes beyond a six book series, it seems. And by the end, I was sorely disappointed with what she did to characters and plotlines. But I started off obsessively buying the books and keeping them for future reading. But I didn't even buy the last three, just took them out from the library, and eventually got rid of the entire series from my bookshelf.

It's certainly better than the show, though.

I'm a vampire Eric fan, both for the books and the show.

You're not the first to tell me that. I've heard bad things about the last book in the series in particular. But so far, so good.

And I'm a vampire Eric fan too.

Another book finished! "The Hundred Foot Journey" by Richard C. Morais.

Finished #3 At the Water's Edge by Sarah Gruen

Finished! "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch.

Adding these to my list, which at this rate is going to be longer at the end of the year than it was at the start!

 

[StitchesGr8Fan]

#1/15 - Isle of the Lost
#2/15 - No Excuses (Brian Tracy)

 

[Colleen27]

#7 - Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.”

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

It is rare that anything leaves me speechless. This book did. It was very powerful, particularly (I think) for readers who are parents themselves and can relate to the emotions Coates expresses even if our own formative and child-rearing experiences could not be more different. It was very insightful without being abrasive or narrowly tailored to an audience that shares the author's experience, unflinchingly direct without being bleak or bitter, and put a very real, understandable, and empathetic face on a timely issue that those of us who haven't lived it might not understand completely.

#8 - The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren

More than two decades ago, the women's movement flung open the doors of the workplace. Although this social revolution created a firestorm of controversy, no one questioned the idea that women's involvement in the workforce was certain to improve families' financial lot. Until now.In this brilliantly argued book, Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren and business consultant Amelia Tyagi show that today's middle-class parents are suffering from an unprecedented and totally unexpected economic meltdown. Astonishingly, sending mothers to work has made families more vulnerable than ever before. Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but actually has less discretionary income once their fixed monthly bills are paid.How did this happen? Warren and Tyagi provide convincing evidence that the culprit is not "overconsumption," as many critics have charged. Instead, they point to the ferocious bidding war for housing and education that has quietly engulfed America's suburbs. Stay-at-home mothers once provided a financial safety net if disaster struck; their move into the workforce has left today's families chillingly at risk. The authors show why the usual remedies--child-support enforcement, subsidized daycare, and higher salaries for women--won't solve the problem, and propose a set of innovative solutions, from rate caps on credit cards to open-access public schools, to restore security to the middle class.

This was surprisingly readable for a book dealing with economics and financial data, but I found it very depressing. Written in 2003, before the Great Recession, the housing meltdown, and Citizens United, Warren's common sense prescriptions for addressing the crumbling foundation under the American middle class seem so far-fetched as to be fairy tales. Using a blend of statistical data from a bankruptcy research project she worked on during her time at Harvard and personal stories from study subjects, the narrative was readable and meaningful and something I think most middle class folks trying to raise children in the current economic climate could relate to. The depressing part was the realization that we're moving ever further from even trying to solve those problems with no real hope for a change of course, a fact that was emphasized with an uncanny bit of foresight in the form of an anecdote about Hillary Clinton's changing positions on financial policies from her years as FLOTUS to her years courting donations from the financial industry while in the Senate.

 

[tinkerbellandeeyor]

5/12 blast off by Nate ball

Not my cup of tea mostly sci Fi but it was cut how the kids had to work together to get the alien back home

 

[sillymoose]

I highly recommend Red Rising to anybody that is a fan of fantasy/sci-fi. It's in the somewhat cliche dystopian genre, but it's geared towards adults with lots of character development and mature themes. The world building of the author (Pierce Brown) is incredible, and it really feels like you're there with the characters

 

[miksilver]

3/35 -- Sugar by Deirdre Riordan Hall -- (from the Amazon Kindle website) Sugar Legowski-Gracia wasn’t always fat, but fat is what she is now at age seventeen. Sugar’s life is dictated by taking care of Mama in their run-down home—cooking, shopping, and, well, eating. A lot of eating, which Sugar hates as much as she loves. When Sugar meets Even (not Evan—his nearly illiterate father misspelled his name on the birth certificate), she has the new experience of someone seeing her and not her body. As their unlikely friendship builds, Sugar allows herself to think about the future for the first time, a future not weighed down by her body or her mother.

I was hooked on this book, not from the beginning, but somewhere in the middle I just couldn’t put it down. It’s been a while since I’ve had a late-night-into-the-morning read and this was one of them. I don’t read a lot of YA Contemporary fiction, I’m more into the Sci-fy/Fantasy side of things, but this book flowed and made you think. It’s a book where I finished it and I can’t stop thinking about -- in a good way, not I wish the author didn’t leave so much unfinished or stop in the middle of the story for a series. It’s an easy and provocative read and a much needed break from the YA Fantasy kick that I’d been on.

 

[threeboysmom]

OK, I need help. I just started reading We Need to Talk About Kevin and I'm pretty sure I added this book to my list based on DIS'ers reviews. Granted I'm only about 15 pages in or so, but already I'm thinking about ditching it. I RARELY give up on a book, but I just have way too many books on my "to read" list (over 100), and I don't want to waste time reading a book that's just not that good.

The 2 things that hit me as I read:

1) the author's choice of big words in every single sentence. Very first page and I was instantly irritated. Not sure why, but it bugs the heck out of me. I don't normally notice things like this, but I find it's WAY over the top!

2) I'm on the 2nd letter written by the wife to her estranged husband - please tell me that this is not the entire format of the book? Does it really consist of just letters?

If someone were to tell me to keep on - it's THAT good - well, I'll keep plugging away. But if it's a "so-so" book, then I really don't want to waste a week or two on this one when I could be reading something else - although I don't really have anything lined up at the moment so I guess I'm stuck with Kevin by default, lol.

 

[NHdisneylover]

OK, I need help. I just started reading We Need to Talk About Kevin and I'm pretty sure I added this book to my list based on DIS'ers reviews. Granted I'm only about 15 pages in or so, but already I'm thinking about ditching it. I RARELY give up on a book, but I just have way too many books on my "to read" list (over 100), and I don't want to waste time reading a book that's just not that good.

The 2 things that hit me as I read:

1) the author's choice of big words in every single sentence. Very first page and I was instantly irritated. Not sure why, but it bugs the heck out of me. I don't normally notice things like this, but I find it's WAY over the top!

2) I'm on the 2nd letter written by the wife to her estranged husband - please tell me that this is not the entire format of the book? Does it really consist of just letters?

If someone were to tell me to keep on - it's THAT good - well, I'll keep plugging away. But if it's a "so-so" book, then I really don't want to waste a week or two on this one when I could be reading something else - although I don't really have anything lined up at the moment so I guess I'm stuck with Kevin by default, lol.

The entire format of the books is letters.

Personally, I enjoyed the format and do not recall any issue with vocabulary but HATED the book. It is too bleak and too depressing and doesn't really have anything else about ti to make it worthwhile dealing with the bleakness, IMO.

More to the point, what you are not liking is going to be there consistently throughout the novel.

 

[willowsnn3]

I'm not liking the sound of that, is it really that difficult a read?

Re: Bad Company, it was just so slow moving to me. Couldn't grasp what the plot was other than he was a private detective working a case. Also it was kinda hard to tell who was talking sometimes as this book didn't use quotation marks. I had to let it go.

 

[willowsnn3]

5/72

Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

Traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.
These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and above all else, a spirit of coming home.

A short book I picked up while waiting for my holds to come in. I really liked it.

 

[keenercam]

I'd like to join in, too, though I was terrible about posting updates for 2015. I read 185 books in 2015 and will set 175 as my goal for 2016. So far, I've read 9.

There are certain authors whose books I will always read, pushed to the top of my "to read next" pile, including Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, Marie Force, Colleen Hoover, and Amy Harmon. I re-read the entire "In Death" series by J.D. Robb in 2015 and loved the near-perfect continuity. In addition, I discovered some new authors based on recommendations of those who participated in the 2015 challenge. So, thank you to everyone who posts their reviews!

My favorite books in 2015 written by authors other than my favorites were:
Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde - I'd read another book by this author ("The Day I Found You") and really liked her style. This one was really heart-warming, too.
The Life Intended by Kristen Harmel - This one was a genre I would not have normally chosen, but the reviews were excellent. I absolutely loved it.


Looking forward to ideas of new books to read from all of you.

 

[K and K's Mommy]

#5 - We Were Liars by E. Lockhart This was fine but not one of my favorites. It's young adult, and I don't think I am a big fan of YA. I read it for our book club, which meets tonight, so I will be interested to see what others thought since we've never read YA before. Cady and her family always spend the summer on the family's private island. She has no memory of the summer she is 15, so now at 17, she is trying to figure it out.

 

[xlsm]

FINALLY finished book 4 of 47, Shadow Spell by Nora Roberts, book 2 of the Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy.

Oh. My. Gosh. Reading that was like walking through the swamp in flip flops. Slow.

I read the first book in this series right when it came out, and it took me two years to get around to reading the second. It was on the cheapie rack at B&N, so I thought, "why not?"
Normally I enjoy her books, but I just can't get myself to like this series. I might read the third just so I can say I finished it, but maybe not.

The general plot, the three O'Dwyers and their closest friends/significant others are trying once again to finish off the evil Cabhan, a warlock who has been after their family for centuries. The book starts from the point of view of the original three, siblings and children of a powerful white witch, before moving to present day and focusing on Connor O'Dwyer and his budding relationship with his longtime friend Meara, and how it effects their "war" with Cabhan.

I enjoy stories with a supernatural bent, but I can't get into all the mystical witch stuff. I prefer my witches more on the historical side, I think, like non-fiction about the Salem witch trials, or in a more lighthearted kooky kind of way.

1/50: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I loved learning about the story behind HeLa cells, and was appalled at how hard her family had to fight to even fully know the whole story. I think I was more shocked to learn just how easy something like this could happen.

I have had this on my Nook forever, and I know I'll get around to it eventually...it's definitely on my "to finally read" list this year!!

 

[Colleen27]

#9 - God Save the Queen by Kate Locke

Queen Victoria rules with an immortal fist.

The undead matriarch of a Britain where the Aristocracy is made up of werewolves and vampires, where goblins live underground and mothers know better than to let their children out after dark. A world where being nobility means being infected with the Plague (side-effects include undeath), Hysteria is the popular affliction of the day, and leeches are considered a delicacy. And a world where technology lives side by side with magic. The year is 2012 and Pax Britannia still reigns.

Xandra Vardan is a member of the elite Royal Guard, and it is her duty to protect the Aristocracy. But when her sister goes missing, Xandra will set out on a path that undermines everything she believed in and uncover a conspiracy that threatens to topple the empire. And she is the key-the prize in a very dangerous struggle.

This book was nothing short of fabulous. Set in an alternative, steampunk-y London that blends modern-day with Victorian tradition, the whole work is so beautifully rendered and immediately engaging that it is one of those books you just can't put down. Each of the supernatural races is well developed with its own physical traits, vulnerabilities, and political clout, and the story hits a perfect balance between political intrigue, action, and romance. I've already downloaded the second book in the trilogy to my tablet but I'm forcing myself not to start it until my homework is done for the night because I know if I do I won't want to get back to work!

 

[Swimnoid]

3. The Maze Runner by John Dashner
From Goodreads: If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human.
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.
Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.
Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive.
Everything is going to change.
Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.
Remember. Survive. Run.

This has been on my list for years. I wanted to read it before the movie came out but that just didn't happen. It is your typical YA dystopian society novel. I really liked it although it leads into the the next book of the series without giving you much satisfaction of finishing this one.

 

[mayonegg]

6/52 The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr
From Goodreads: The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take readers from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties-metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts-and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of his characters contend with tremendous hardship; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the mysteries of the universe outside themselves.

There are two reasons I picked this book up. First, because I LOVED All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It was one of my favorite books that I read last year. The other reason is I'm going to see Doerr do a reading on Monday and thought it would be nice if I'd read something other than just All the Light We Cannot See beforehand. I enjoyed this collection of stories, but not nearly as much as AtLWCS. It was very hit or miss for me. Doerr's prose is beautiful and every story is well written, but I just didn't connect with every story.

 

[CallieMar]

FINALLY finished book 4 of 47, Shadow Spell by Nora Roberts, book 2 of the Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy.

Oh. My. Gosh. Reading that was like walking through the swamp in flip flops. Slow.

I read the first book in this series right when it came out, and it took me two years to get around to reading the second. It was on the cheapie rack at B&N, so I thought, "why not?"
Normally I enjoy her books, but I just can't get myself to like this series. I might read the third just so I can say I finished it, but maybe not.

The general plot, the three O'Dwyers and their closest friends/significant others are trying once again to finish off the evil Cabhan, a warlock who has been after their family for centuries. The book starts from the point of view of the original three, siblings and children of a powerful white witch, before moving to present day and focusing on Connor O'Dwyer and his budding relationship with his longtime friend Meara, and how it effects their "war" with Cabhan.

I enjoy stories with a supernatural bent, but I can't get into all the mystical witch stuff. I prefer my witches more on the historical side, I think, like non-fiction about the Salem witch trials, or in a more lighthearted kooky kind of way.

Nora is always must read for me, but I didn't really like this trilogy either, which surprised me because I loved all her other books set in Ireland. However, I LOVED Stars of Fortune, the first book in her newest trilogy, which also has a supernatural bent (set in Greece so far), and am looking forward to the rest of the books coming out.

 

[wilma-bride]

Finished book #2 yesterday, Mr. Kiss and Tell which is book 2 in the Veronica Mars series. I like reading those books because I already know what the characters look and sound like so it's easy to picture in my head!

Book #3 is Lyfers by Rebekah Bryan, which was sent to me for free through Goodreads. It's about a boy band cruise. I'm an NKOTB fan so it's right up my alley but we'll see how good it is!

I was a huge fan of NKOTB when I was a teen

Goal/undetermined number of books

#4 - Queen of Hearts - A Royal Spyness Mystery by Rhys Bowen

Next up: Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King. This series was recommended to me by portia9, and as she pointed out, we seemed to have spent the last year reading the same books, so I'm looking forward to starting this one.

Queen Colleen

It's great when you have somebody with similar reading tastes as you so you can almost guarantee you'll enjoy a book they recommended.

I finished Consent and it was pretty good. The ending seemed really fast, like the author was trying to tie things up quickly. I feel like the story built up very well, but the ending? Meh. I started The Martian and that's really good so far. But I got a book I've been wanting to read for a while at the library today (It's Girl Waits with Gun) and since it's a new release I only have it for 7 days. Seems like I have a lot of reading ahead of me. If only there were unlimited time to read!

I wish I had enough time to read as much as I would like to. And then, when I actually have the time to read (like those awful 9 hour flights across the Atlantic when we visit WDW) I never can seem to concentrate...sigh...

#1/15 - Isle of the Lost
#2/15 - No Excuses (Brian Tracy)

#7 - Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

#8 - The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren

#9 - God Save the Queen by Kate Locke

Wow you are really rattling through these books; some of them sound like heavy going too so weel done

5/12 blast off by Nate ball

Not my cup of tea mostly sci Fi but it was cut how the kids had to work together to get the alien back home

I don't like sci-fi books either

I highly recommend Red Rising to anybody that is a fan of fantasy/sci-fi. It's in the somewhat cliche dystopian genre, but it's geared towards adults with lots of character development and mature themes. The world building of the author (Pierce Brown) is incredible, and it really feels like you're there with the characters

Thanks for the recommendation

3/35 -- Sugar by Deirdre Riordan Hall -- (from the Amazon Kindle website) Sugar Legowski-Gracia wasn’t always fat, but fat is what she is now at age seventeen. Sugar’s life is dictated by taking care of Mama in their run-down home—cooking, shopping, and, well, eating. A lot of eating, which Sugar hates as much as she loves. When Sugar meets Even (not Evan—his nearly illiterate father misspelled his name on the birth certificate), she has the new experience of someone seeing her and not her body. As their unlikely friendship builds, Sugar allows herself to think about the future for the first time, a future not weighed down by her body or her mother.

I was hooked on this book, not from the beginning, but somewhere in the middle I just couldn’t put it down. It’s been a while since I’ve had a late-night-into-the-morning read and this was one of them. I don’t read a lot of YA Contemporary fiction, I’m more into the Sci-fy/Fantasy side of things, but this book flowed and made you think. It’s a book where I finished it and I can’t stop thinking about -- in a good way, not I wish the author didn’t leave so much unfinished or stop in the middle of the story for a series. It’s an easy and provocative read and a much needed break from the YA Fantasy kick that I’d been on.

I'm pretty sure I've read this book under another name as the story sounds familiar but the book title doesn't

OK, I need help. I just started reading We Need to Talk About Kevin and I'm pretty sure I added this book to my list based on DIS'ers reviews. Granted I'm only about 15 pages in or so, but already I'm thinking about ditching it. I RARELY give up on a book, but I just have way too many books on my "to read" list (over 100), and I don't want to waste time reading a book that's just not that good.

The 2 things that hit me as I read:

1) the author's choice of big words in every single sentence. Very first page and I was instantly irritated. Not sure why, but it bugs the heck out of me. I don't normally notice things like this, but I find it's WAY over the top!

2) I'm on the 2nd letter written by the wife to her estranged husband - please tell me that this is not the entire format of the book? Does it really consist of just letters?

If someone were to tell me to keep on - it's THAT good - well, I'll keep plugging away. But if it's a "so-so" book, then I really don't want to waste a week or two on this one when I could be reading something else - although I don't really have anything lined up at the moment so I guess I'm stuck with Kevin by default, lol.

I did NOT like this book for mostly the same reasons as you listed above. Not only that but I didn't like the movie either. If you had something else lined up, I would tell you to ditch it as it isn't going to get any better. But if you're stuck with it, thee are probably worse things you could read.

The entire format of the books is letters.

Personally, I enjoyed the format and do not recall any issue with vocabulary but HATED the book. It is too bleak and too depressing and doesn't really have anything else about ti to make it worthwhile dealing with the bleakness, IMO.

More to the point, what you are not liking is going to be there consistently throughout the novel.

yes, this

Re: Bad Company, it was just so slow moving to me. Couldn't grasp what the plot was other than he was a private detective working a case. Also it was kinda hard to tell who was talking sometimes as this book didn't use quotation marks. I had to let it go.

I think I am going to take this one off my list. Thanks for suffering through it in order to save me

5/72

Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

Traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.
These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and above all else, a spirit of coming home.

A short book I picked up while waiting for my holds to come in. I really liked it.

This sounds interesting, going to look it up now.

I'd like to join in, too, though I was terrible about posting updates for 2015. I read 185 books in 2015 and will set 175 as my goal for 2016. So far, I've read 9.

There are certain authors whose books I will always read, pushed to the top of my "to read next" pile, including Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, Marie Force, Colleen Hoover, and Amy Harmon. I re-read the entire "In Death" series by J.D. Robb in 2015 and loved the near-perfect continuity. In addition, I discovered some new authors based on recommendations of those who participated in the 2015 challenge. So, thank you to everyone who posts their reviews!

My favorite books in 2015 written by authors other than my favorites were:
Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde - I'd read another book by this author ("The Day I Found You") and really liked her style. This one was really heart-warming, too.
The Life Intended by Kristen Harmel - This one was a genre I would not have normally chosen, but the reviews were excellent. I absolutely loved it.


Looking forward to ideas of new books to read from all of you.

Welcome and thanks for joining in

#5 - We Were Liars by E. Lockhart This was fine but not one of my favorites. It's young adult, and I don't think I am a big fan of YA. I read it for our book club, which meets tonight, so I will be interested to see what others thought since we've never read YA before. Cady and her family always spend the summer on the family's private island. She has no memory of the summer she is 15, so now at 17, she is trying to figure it out.

I read this book last year and didn't enjoy it that much either. I kept waiting for some big revelation or twist and was actually quite disappointed in the ending.

FINALLY finished book 4 of 47, Shadow Spell by Nora Roberts, book 2 of the Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy.

Oh. My. Gosh. Reading that was like walking through the swamp in flip flops. Slow.

lol great description of a book that was slow going

3. The Maze Runner by John Dashner
From Goodreads: If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human.
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.
Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.
Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive.
Everything is going to change.
Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.
Remember. Survive. Run.

This has been on my list for years. I wanted to read it before the movie came out but that just didn't happen. It is your typical YA dystopian society novel. I really liked it although it leads into the the next book of the series without giving you much satisfaction of finishing this one.

I enjoyed this too but didn't feel like it made me want to rush off and read the rest of them.

6/52 The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr
From Goodreads: The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take readers from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties-metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts-and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of his characters contend with tremendous hardship; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the mysteries of the universe outside themselves.

There are two reasons I picked this book up. First, because I LOVED All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It was one of my favorite books that I read last year. The other reason is I'm going to see Doerr do a reading on Monday and thought it would be nice if I'd read something other than just All the Light We Cannot See beforehand. I enjoyed this collection of stories, but not nearly as much as AtLWCS. It was very hit or miss for me. Doerr's prose is beautiful and every story is well written, but I just didn't connect with every story.

I have All The Light We Cannot See on my list to read this year. Might try that one next.

 

[wilma-bride]

Book #6 of 50 - All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill (thanks @threeboysmom for the recommendation)

Imprisoned in the heart of a secret military base, Em has nothing except the voice of the boy in the cell next door and the list of instructions she finds taped inside the drain.

Only Em can complete the final instruction. She’s tried everything to prevent the creation of a time machine that will tear the world apart. She holds the proof: a list she has never seen before, written in her own hand. Each failed attempt in the past has led her to the same terrible present—imprisoned and tortured by a sadistic man called the doctor while war rages outside.

Marina has loved her best friend, James, since they were children. A gorgeous, introverted science prodigy from one of America’s most famous families, James finally seems to be seeing Marina in a new way, too. But on one disastrous night, James’s life crumbles, and with it, Marina’s hopes for their future. Marina will protect James, no matter what. Even if it means opening her eyes to a truth so terrible that she may not survive it... at least, not as the girl she once was. Em and Marina are in a race against time that only one of them can win.

All Our Yesterdays is a wrenching, brilliantly plotted story of fierce love, unthinkable sacrifice, and the infinite implications of our every choice.

So, when threeboysmom quoted this as her 'book of the year' 2015, I had to check it out. Amazon billed it as "Hunger Games with a dash of Doctor Who", which didn't exactly endear me. The description above (from Goodreads) didn't have me sold either and, when I started it and realised it was one of those 'bounce backwards and forwards in time' books, I began to wonder if I was actually going to enjoy it. Well, I am not sure I agree with Amazon's billing but this was most definitely 'up there' with Hunger Games in terms of enjoyment. I was sucked in from about the third chapter and, while initially confused by the to-ing and fro-ing, it was actually done very well. A definite winner for me. I am going to struggle now to find something to live up to it.