September 2017 Books

I made up for the lack of books in August and finished September with a grand total of nine books. I finished off the 5th Wave series, a couple of chunky books, and got back into listening to audiobooks in the car.

My favorite this month was surprisingly Little Women.  I started this book years ago and barely read a chapter because I just wasn't feeling it but this time around I could not stop reading it every spare chance I had. 

August 2017 Books

We went to Disney World in August and the older I get the harder it is for me to read in the car so my completed number really isn't all that great.  They were almost all kids books, too.  Oh well.  At least I read!

My favorite books this month were Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips and The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy.  The Yancy was a reread and I loved it even more the second time around.  The rest of the series isn't that great but this first one I just love. 

July 2017 Books

I only finished six books in the month of July which was one of my smaller months, BUT I did finally finish the monstrosity that is War and Peace.  FINALLY.  

I'd been working on this since the first of the year and it was a chore, not going to lie.  I finally just forced myself to read at least ten pages a day.  I figured ten pages isn't much but every little bit counts and I normally managed to do around 15 pages instead of 10.  Once I started that the book finally started to seem manageable.  It was a big day when I finished.

Those MinaLima classic editions of Peter Pan and The Beauty and the Beast are beautiful and they're interactive.  I love them. The books themselves are a little boring but everything is more fun with a pull-out or pop-up!

June 2017 Books

There was a grand total of ten books I finished in June and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I managed to do.  My kitchen redo project was in full swing so I was listening to audiobooks almost every day this month and that helped out my count a lot.

My favorite book this month was Beartown.  Honestly the only reason I picked this one up was because the cover was so pretty and I went into it not really knowing anything about the plot.  It turned out to be so good that I read almost half of it in one morning. 

This wasn't the most exciting reading month but I'm glad I was able to knock out a lot of random books and that I was able to stick with the audiobooks for so long.  Usually I lose interest and stop downloading them after a couple of weeks.

May 2017 Books

May was a GREAT reading month for me.  Even though I didn't read very many books I managed to finish off several large books this month.  I go through spurts of "Eh, why read when I can watch TV?" and "WHO CARES ABOUT TELEVISION LET'S GO TO THE LIBRARY!" and this was a definite library month.  Six of these books were from there and I just appreciate the heck out of our library for taking such good care of us.

I enjoyed so many of these books!  My favorite was The Host by Stephanie Meyer.  It's my second time reading this book and I loved it even more than the first.  Say what you will about Meyer's Twilight series, this one is nothing at all like it. 

I FINALLY finished Anna Karenina after I downloaded the audiobook and listened to it while I worked on painting my kitchen.  I didn't love it but I did enjoy it a lot more than I had expected.

Stephen King has a new short story out and Gwendy's Button Box was a quick but enjoyable read.  He should stick with short stories because for the most part they are better than his doorstop novels.  Not as much rambling and just enough to creep you out and then leave you.

Outlander was a spur of the moment book decision for me and I'm glad I made it.  I've had it for a couple years now but never picked it up.  It definitely could have used an editor to shorten it by a couple hundred pages but the action started to pick up about halfway through and was a little easier to take.  It almost read like a Scottish fanfic.  I started the second book in the series but I think I'm one and done with the Outlander universe. 

I hope the rest of the summer is as good of a reading month as this one!

April 2017 Books

For some reason I didn't do a lot of reading in April.  School was starting to wind down but stress at my second job kept me too jittery to do much besides worry and get angry at everything near me.  I did do myself a favor and decide enough was enough with the Titan books though.  After 17 volumes I just couldn't deal with it anymore and I gave up.  I know this series is a lot of people's favorites but to me it was just a rehash of the same scenes over and over and I could read one book in about 30 minutes because there was so little dialogue. 

Bug and I finished a grand total of THREE books together this month!  She of course loved her Beverly Cleary (always a favorite in our home) and I discovered the 13-Story Treehouse books at our local library and picked the first one up for her.  She thought it was the greatest thing ever and begged me to get the next one as soon as we had finished it.  I think they're a little cheesy but they're not aimed at my age group so my opinion doesn't matter as much as hers.  Bug just thought they were hilarious. 

March 2017 Books

March was my month of Titan books.  I read nine of them and not much else.

This series is not one I would honestly recommend to anyone wishing to start in this genre.  Death Note was so much better and easier to follow.  Attack on Titan is heavy on the pictures but not on the plot and it really started to drag for me by the end of this month.

Bug and I read the second book in the Secret Hero Society series and she absolutely loved it.  She's a huge DC universe fan and she was so excited when she recognized random characters that you don't see very often.

A woman at work loaned me a book about the Shawnee National Forest and I will say that be default it was my favorite this month.  I loved seeing old views of some of the places I enjoy going to and how they've changed over the years.  It was an interesting read.

February 2017 Books

My reading slump was OVER this month and I am incredibly thankful.  I read quite a few great books and it was so nice because I was really worried I was going to repeat 2016 and just go through the motions with reading bleh books.  I read SIXTEEN books in February and ended with a total of almost 4,000 pages of books!

I listened to several audiobooks in February and read a few smaller books which is why my count is so high.  My number one pick this month was Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok.  I love books centered around Asian characters and this one was so moving and sad that I could not put it down.
There were a few meh picks this month.  I really didn't care about the children's books I picked up.  Attack on Titan was a new manga series I started during this month which was another not very good choice for me.

January 2017 Books

I started War and Peace at the beginning of January and was doing great with it, zooming along past my weekly goal and then BOOM. Reading slump. I didn't pick up another book for over a week and War and Peace has sat on my table this whole time being lonely.

Once I finally started reading again I plowed through a grand total of TEN books which blew my mind since I took so much time off.  I finished four books in less than 24 hours one weekend (I told you, I like to have something to do while I clean).

I didn't really have a stand-out favorite this month but The Nix by Nathan Hill was the book that brought me out of my reading slump so I'm going to give the honors to it.  It's a huge book but I was enjoying it so much that I finished it in just a few days. 

The best part about this month was that I discovered I enjoy audiobooks again after growing sick of them last year.  I finished two during January just by listening to them on my drive to and from work and when I cleaned.  Listening to them on fast speed  also helped.

My Favorite Books of 2016

I finished strong this year with 114 books and even though it wasn't my highest book count year it is still a good amount considering I started working 8 hour days in September.

Even though I think I read more clunkers than keepers this year there were still a good amount of books I loved and want to reread sometime down the road.

Joe Hill was my breakout star author of the year and I loved both of the books by him that I read.  NOS4A2 and The Fireman blew me away and I recommend them to everyone.  I enjoyed The Fireman slightly more than NOS4A2 but only because I liked that it wasn't as horror-like as I would have expected from Stephen King's son.

Speaking of Stephen King, if you haven't read 11/22/63 then you are doing yourself a disservice.  King is so hit or miss with me.  I either love him or am so over him, but this book was fantastic.  Again, I think maybe because it wasn't a standard King horror novel.  I read 90% of my books through the library and I loved this one so much I went out and bought it.

I made my way through almost all of the Little House on the Prairie books this year and even though a few were boring, overall I think it's such a sweet, wholesome series.  Yeah, Ma is a racist and Pa is a loser, but if you try to overlook the strides we have taken and just read it as a testament of its time then it's a great series for young children to enjoy.  I love Almanzo the most and always enjoyed his scenes in the books.

And if you are looking for another wholesome set of books to read to your kids then please go out and buy all of Beverly Cleary's books.  Bug and I read them like crazy this year and we only have a few left, a fact she is so sad about.  She has loved every single one of them and always begged for "one more chapter" each night.

I can't wait to see what 2017 has in store for me book-wise!

My Least Favorite Books of 2016

I read A LOT of books I disliked this year.  I don't know if the older I get the more cantankerous I become but books take a lot to get more than three stars from me nowadays. 

The first book I disliked this year was Watership Down.  I'm sorry, I know that's a lot of people's favorite.  It was a long, hard read for me and one I was happy to unhaul when I finished it.

A series that Bug and I read together this year was the entirety of The Chronicles of Narnia series and we both hated every page of it.  She slightly enjoyed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but only because she loves the movie so she was able to understand what was happening pretty easy.  It was so preachy and cringe-worthy and I ended up finished the last couple of chapters of the last book by myself because she was just so over it.

The Prince by Machiavelli was one of the shortest books I read this year and also one of the most boring.  I honestly didn't understand any of it.  Not one sentence. 

Bug was really looking forward to The BFG movie and I wanted to read the book before I saw it so I checked it out of our library and man, am I glad I didn't pay for that book.  Bug normally likes Roald Dahl books and even she hated this one.  It almost felt like it talked down to us, like we were too stupid to understand it was a nonsensical book.  Big letdown.

Let's talk about my number one most hated book of 2016.  I'm sure it will come as a surprise to a lot of big book lovers because most people raved about this book this year.  A Little Life by Hanye Yanagihara.  I.  Hated.  This.  Book.  I literally threw it down when I finished and ranted to my husband for about thirty minutes about how revolting it was.  If ever there was a Mary Sue character to have existed it is Jude.  God, I could wax poetically all the ways this book pissed me off for at least an hour.

Just goes to show that just because a book wins awards doesn't mean it's any good.

My December Book Pile

Even though I had a week and a half off for Christmas break this month I wasn't able to get much reading done.  I'm not sure what happened but I just wasn't feeling books for the first few weeks of December.  I still managed to finish six and it pushed me to a grand total of 115 books for 2016!  Nothing to sniff about!

This month I did four books on my own and two readalouds with Bug.  Matilda took us foreverrr to get through and I don't know why because she actually really liked it.  We just had tough like finding reading time together to do it.  After we finished she immediately started the movie and has already watched it twice.  The Great Gilly Hopkins on the other hand took us just a few days to read.  She made me read 50 pages of it in one sitting because she loved it so much.

I really wanted to have all of my in-progress books finished by the new year so I took the last few days of the month to buckle down and finish everything up.  Wuthering Heights and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were my final books of the year and they weren't anything special which is upsetting.  I was hoping to end on a high note.  On the bright side, that's two big classics I can cross off my list of books I wanted to read.

My favorite book this month I guess is the Little House book by default.  Just because nothing else really blew me away. :/

My November Book Pile

This was a GREAT reading month for me.  I don't know what it was but I just felt like reading every spare second I had.  I even did one big readathon weekend and got through a few books off my pile.

I cleaned out my bookcase and donated several bags of unwanted books and I found a couple of teeny tiny books that I thought I could knock out really quickly so that helped my total, too.

My favorite this month was Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo.  I wasn't a huge fan of Six of Crows but I absolutely LOVED Crooked Kingdom.  I could not put it down.

There were several least favorites this month but by far the worst was Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell.  I listened to an audiobook of this one and finally had to end it a few chapters from the end because the author narrated it and her voice was about to make me go insane.

December is already proving to be a busy busy month for us so I doubt I will have this good of a pile going.  Oh well, here's to 2017!

My Weekend Readathon

I had a three day weekend and decided to spend it doing as much reading as I possibly could.  It was my own little three day readathon.

I went the library and got myself a giant stack of books to pick through.

By the end of my three day break I had finished four books (three of mine and one chapter book with Bug) and started the two on the right.

Yes, yes Twilight is trash.  I still love it.  Sue me.

I love weekends where you have absolutely nothing planned and all you need are a good book and a hot cup of coffee to be happy.

My October Book Pile

I once again worked eight hour days all week so I was only able to read during my breakfast time or at night if I forced myself to stay up late.  Work hours stink for my reading but are great for our grocery budget!

I read six books on my own this month and three chaptered books with my Bug.  We normally average one and a half books per month but she just LOVES Beverly Cleary and wanted me to read more and more each day.  I ended up reading one book to her for an entire hour at the kitchen table one night.  She's going to be so disappointed when we finish all of the Cleary collection (and we are getting pretty close to it!)


My favorite this month was This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper. I watched the movie a while back and liked it so much that I immediately put the book on my TBR list so I could read and rewatch it again. 

My least favorite was probably The Vegetarian by Han King because the translation was so jumpy and I hated every single character in it.  I am so glad it was a short book.

I reread Six of Crows because the last time I read it I was just eh about it and wanted to give it another chance before reading Crooked Kingdom.  Happily, it went a lot quicker the second time around.

My September Book Pile

My work schedule went from three hours a day to eight hours a day in the beginning of September so I was very lucky to have been almost finished with several books.  That helped boost up my book count a bit this month.

My favorite this month was probably After Dark by Haruki Murakami and A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. They were both spur of the moment picks that I had zero desire to read until I saw them but I'm really glad I did.
I actually had a pretty good reading month quality-wise.  I loved The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman and the Little House book.
My version of The Jungle Book was the beautiful MinaLima version with tons of amazing pull-outs and fun things to explore.  Bug and I loved it.

My August Book Pile

I started the month of August strong with my reading and started shooting through books like crazy.  About halfway through the month the girls started back at school and my sporadic work hours turned back into daily shifts.  My writing just kind of dropped off and I had to scramble at the end of the month to finish up a few things I was forcing myself to get through.

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill was my favorite this month.  I've mentioned before that I LOVE Joe Hill.  So far my top three books this year include two by him and one by his dad.  NOS4A2 wasn't as fun as The Fireman but I still raced through this behemoth because his world-building is just so top-notch.  Christmasland was written about in such amazing detail that I could picture it perfectly.  Fun fact:  If you Google this book when you're done reading there is a lot of great fanart that bring the story to life even more.

Ollie's Odyssey by William Joyce was a close second for me which was a surprise.  Honestly I only ordered this from my library because I thought the cover was cute and that it would be a fun picture book for Bug.  Color me shocked when I get handed a giant chapter book.  I was going to just take it back but Goose picked it up one day and told me she liked it a lot so I read it after her.  The story was beautiful, about a little boy who loses his favorite stuffed toy and searches for him.  The illustrations are what put this book over the top for me.  They were gorgeous.

 How could I not love this?

I was pretty proud of myself for reading another nonfiction book again this month.   It was around 300 pages of nothing but the history of the Post Office and while I had a lot of problems with some things I still kind of enjoyed it.  History is my jam.

I am most proud of finishing off the Narnia series and finally completing Crime and Punishment which has honest to god taken me 8 months to get through.  It was a chore. 

The Chronicles of Narnia Wrap-Up

My Bug and I started reading the Narnia series this year and we powered through all seven books but believe me, it took a lot of willpower.

Neither of us liked this series to be honest.  Bug says she liked The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but that's just because she's seen the movie several times and was able to follow along easier with the book even when the writing confused her.

I think that was my biggest problem with this series.  It seems like a Middle Grade type book but the speeches from some of the characters felt like eighteenth century classic literature.  It was really hard for Bug to tell me what the plot was sometimes.  She normally asks questions as we read and sits patiently waiting for the exciting parts but when I read these books she pretty much ignored me the whole time.  I finished the final three pages of the last book by myself because after almost seven books of this world she was just done with it all.

This is a popular classic kid series that I'm glad I was able to cross off my TBR list but I'm disappointed Bug isn't going to look back on it as a well-beloved read aloud with her mommy.

Oh well.  There's always Beverly Cleary.  Her stuff is like sugar to my kid.

My July Book Pile

I went a little overboard in July...
Like-
A little too much overboard.

 

There wasn't really anything I wanted to watch on TV since Game of Thrones ended so I decided to spend all of my free time just reading.  And I accomplished that with a bang.

Most of these are library books that were due back at different times so I wasn't able to get a pic of the whole pile but I imagine it would have been glorious.  As in, won't even fit into the frame properly kind of glorious.

Two of these books are more than 700 pages which is almost like reading two books in one so I'm especially proud of myself for how much I accomplished.  I absolutely hated A Little Life and it was pure torture to finish it, but the other doorstop I read (Alexander Hamilton) was actually pretty good and even though it was dense it was really interesting.

My favorite was Paper and Fire by Rachel Caine which is the second book in The Great Library series.  I still wish there was a little more character building but the universe is so in-depth that I am okay with more of it and less character buildup. 

I disliked quite a bit of this month's books, unfortunately.  As I said above, I hated A Little Life and had to force myself to finish it.  I couldn't even finish Rome but since I read 230 pages of it before giving up I'm still counting it as a full book on my list.   Most of the books I read this month received 2-3 stars and I hate that.  I miss loving everything I'm reading.

My June Book Pile

I read a lot of books in June and it was so nice to see my book pile growing and growing as the month went on.  There was one day I read pretty much every free second I had and I ended up finished three books.

I marked a few books off my TBR pile that I'd been eying for awhile so that made me pretty happy.  The Game of Thrones series is a huge pile of books that I am now completely done with.  There's a few other books that are set in the world or talk about the universe that I want to get to eventually but I'm not planning on it anytime in the next few months.

Bug has been really loving The Spiderwick Chronicles series and we powered through three books this month together.  She watched the movie too but didn't seem to like it near as much as the books.

Goose recommended Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library and El Deafo to me.  She's read El Deafo twice now so I wanted to see what it was all about.

The best book I read this month was by far The Fireman by Joe Hill.  It was amazing and I read over 500 pages of it in one day because I could. not. put. it. down.  For those of you who don't know, Joe Hill is Stephen King's son.  My other favorite book this year was 11/22/63 by King so let me just say, them King boys know how to craft a good story.

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman was a really happy surprise that I checked out from the library solely based on the title and pretty cover.  Any book that has the word 'library' somewhere in the title or description automatically has my attention.

The only book that I wasn't really a fan of this month was The Devil's Advocate by Jane Yolan.  I enjoy reading books set during WW2 so I was looking forward to this one but I thought it was a little too wordy and not enough showy for me.

Hoping I have a good book month for July but I start back to work this month so I probably won't do as much as June.  June took a lot out of me!