okrysmastree - Year 7, let's do this!

I'm the worst at keeping my LT challenge posts up to date, but I'm going to do my best in the new year!

Most of you probably don't know me as I'm a lurking lurker, but I've been doing 50-or-75 book challenges since 2009, every year but 2013! I'm Kristin-Leigh, age 27, of Seattle Washington. :)

Here are my stats from 2015:

My victory lap post when I hit 75/75 read - /r/52book

Books read: 91
Pages read: 30,851
Shortest book: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, by EL Konigsburg
Longest book: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
Average length: 339 pages
Number of books reread: 2
Number of books published in 2015 (new releases): 12

Favorites (5 star ratings - this was an incredible reading year for me in terms of so many books just blowing me out of the water, as you can see. And I tend to be stingy with stars!):
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Clock Without Hands - Carson McCullers
Hausfrau - Jill Alexander Essbaum
The Sundial - Shirley Jackson
My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
Ruin & Rising, Siege & Storm - Leigh Bardugo
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Kindred - Octavia Butler
Summer - Edith Wharton
Americanah - Chimamanda Adichie
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

Fiction/Non-fiction breakdown: 77 fiction (86%) | 14 non-fiction (14%) - 9 memoir, 5 history/academic
Gender of author: 19 men (20%) | 72 women (80%);
Race of author: 67 white (74%) | 23 non-white (26%) - 14 black, 7 asian/indian, 2 native american

Rough fiction genre breakdown:
41 literary fiction
13 sci-fi/fantasy
8 young adult
6 classics
6 suspense/mystery
1 humor (I did read a few comedy-memoirs, but those aren't fiction!)

Authors I read 2+ books by:
Octavia Butler - 8 (2 series, 2 standalone works)
Shirley Jackson - 4 (3 novels, 1 memoir)
Leigh Bardugo - 3 (The Grisha trilogy)
NK Jemisin - 3 (The Inheritance Trilogy)
Jeff VanderMeer - 3 (The Southern Reach trilogy)
Carson McCullers
David Mitchell
Helen Oyeyemi
Marisha Pessl
Donna Tartt
Edith Wharton

2016 Reading Goals:

100 books read!

Simple; I'll be happy to make it to 75 of course, but if I go through with my second (tongue-in-cheek) goal I think I should plan to read more individual books since I'll be focusing on the reasonably-sized ones!

No books published AFTER the year 2000 containing more than 350 pages!

I read too many newer releases recently that have been under-edited and overlong, and it's stealing my joy. Specifically going out of my way to check pagecounts before adding new releases to my wishlist is at least going to be something I try to do for a while, with a bias against longer books. Longer is not always better!

75+ out of 100 books must be written by female authors.

I want to continue my 2015 trend of focusing on works by women, especially classic writers I haven't read before or lesser-known works by women famous for one "main" book. 25 books by men is enough leeway I think to not feel restricted from picking up interesting-looking titles or joining a book club on a male author month, but really keep focusing on mainly reading works by women.

Get my to-read shelf under 10 books.

My to-read list is starting the year at 32 currently, but I'm confident I can keep chipping away at it if I'm dedicated and focused! I want to get under 20 before March (my birthday month, when I'll likely receive a few books as gifts and expand my TBR pile yet again).

At least 10 novels published in the 2016 calendar year.

I did this in 2015 and really liked it - sure I read a handful of disappointing, over-hyped new releases that were clearly more fad than quality, but I also got the pleasure of seeing people in the wild talking about books I'd just read, catching relevant reviews on NPR, seeing other people on the bus holding the same book as me, etc. It was a lot of fun and definitely made me feel more connected with the nebulous ~literary community~.

Minimum 2 rereads of old favorites.

I need to give myself more permission to reread books; the pressure to read something new instead is too real! I always enjoy it when I do it, though, and I frequently get so much more or at least something very different out of a book on a second reading. Right now I'm considering The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

+ Return to my habit of writing in book margins, underlining favorite quotes, circling page numbers, etc. I love stumbling across that stuff from years back.

+ Write at least a 2-sentence review of at least half the books I read.

My Current To-Read Shelf:
(as of November)

Book List:
(* = off my January to-read shelf rather than acquired in 2016)

January:
01. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston*
02. The Giant's House - Elizabeth McCracken*
03. The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton*
04. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood*
05. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami*
06. The Collector - John Fowles*
07. The Small Hand & Dolly - Susan Hill*
08. Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation - Dean Jobb*
09. The Color Purple - Alice Walker*
10. Raising Demons - Shirley Jackson*
-- Comic: Archie #5 - Mark Waid, Veronica Fish
11. Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier*

February:
12. Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann*
13. On Such a Full Sea - Chang-Rae Lee*
14. Our Souls at Night - Kent Haruf
15. For the Time Being - Annie Dillard
16. The Book of Aron - Jim Shepard
17. The Story of My Teeth - Valeria Luiselli
18. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak (reread)
19. The Invaders - Karolina Waclawiak
20. A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki*
21. Wreck and Order - Hannah Tennant-Moore
22. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco*
23. Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo

March:
24. The Fifth Season - NK Jemisin
25. And Again: A Novel - Jessica Chiarella
26. Pioneer Girl - Laura Ingalls Wilder*
-- Comic: Archie #6 - Mark Waid, Veronica Fish
27. Rule Britannia - Daphne du Maurier
28. The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters*
29. Saving Fish from Drowning - Amy Tan*
30. Vinegar Girl - Anne Tyler
31. Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller
32. Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
33. The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
34. The Woman Destroyed - Simone de Beauvoir*
35. Star Wars: Allegiance - Timothy Zahn

April:
36. Star Wars: Choices of One - Timothy Zahn
37. Mr Splitfoot - Samantha Hunt
38. The Believers - Zoe Heller
39. The Sellout - Paul Beatty
40. The Keep - Jennifer Egan
41. God Help the Child - Toni Morrison
42. Obasan - Joy Kogawa*
43. Dawn - Octavia Butler
44. The Bees - Laline Paull
45. State of Wonder - Ann Patchett*
46. The Master & Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
47. This Too Shall Pass - Milena Busquets
-- Comic: Archie #7 - Mark Waid, Veronica Fish
48. The Last Man - Mary Shelley*

May:
49. Ghost Story - Peter Straub*
50. Veniss Underground - Jeff VanderMeer
51. Persuasion - Jane Austen
52. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist - Sunil Yapa
53. The Magus - John Fowles*
54. We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
55. The Queen of the Night - Alexander Chee
56. My Year of Meats - Ruth Ozeki
57. Adulthood Rites - Octavia Butler
58. Imago - Octavia Butler
59. The Sunlight Pilgrims - Jenni Fagan

June:
60. The Killing Moon - NK Jemisin
61. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
62. Forty Rooms - Olga Grushin
63. The Shadowed Sun - NK Jemisin
-- Comic: Paper Girls volume 1 - Brian K Vaughan, Cliff Chiang
64. Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers - Karyl McBride
65. Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel
66. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe & Other Stories - Carson McCullers
67. My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
68. Enchanted Islands - Allison Amend
69. The Long Walk - Stephen King (reread)
70. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking - Anya von Bremzen
71. LaRose - Louise Erdrich
72. Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman - Lindy West

July:
-- Short Story: The Arrangements - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for the New York Times
73. The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
74. Imagine Me Gone - Adam Haslett
75. Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite - Suki Kim
76. Who Fears Death - Nnedi Okorafor
77. Uprooted - Naomi Novik
78. The Girls - Emma Cline
79. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging - Louise Rennison (reread)
80. On the Bright Side I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God - Louise Rennison (reread)
81. Not Dark Yet - Berit Ellingsen
82. Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas - Louise Rennison (reread)

August:
83. The Association of Small Bombs - Karan Mahajan
-- Comic: Archie #8 - Mark Waid, Veronica Fish
-- Comic: Archie #9 - Mark Waid, Veronica Fish
-- Comic: Archie #10 - Mark Waid, Veronica Fish
84. Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
85. Daredevils - Shawn Vestal
86. The Obelisk Gate - NK Jemisin

September:
87. The Sport of Kings - CE Morgan

October:
88. The Invention of Everything Else - Samantha Hunt
89. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson (reread)
90. Home - Marilynne Robinson

November:
91. Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living - Jes Baker
92. On Beauty - Zadie Smith*
93. Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo
94. The Wolf Road - Beth Lewis
95. We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement - Andi Zeisler
96. Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evangelicalism - Deborah Jian Lee
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.

I finished what will likely be my last book of 2015, A Visit from the Goon Squad, just a few minutes ago - what a high note to end on!



I realized it's everything I wanted A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara to be when I read it earlier this year - a sprawling, interwoven web of stories about a diverse, flawed, weird group of individuals that takes place over decades; a modern-day, tightly-written epic novel, funny and experimental but also an emotional punch to the gut, with characters that are as raw and real as they are strange (yet familiar). I'm a whole jumble of lists of adjectives about this book - now I see why every time I mention the title at least 3 drive-by commenters pop up yelling about how incredible it is!

Next up for me will be Northanger Abbey, which will doubtless take me past January 1!

Okay, I started reading Northanger Abbey early because I realized there's a readathon on! I received this book over a year ago; I would have read it well before today if I'd realized it's a satirical novel! This poor Catherine wants so badly to be an Austen-ian heroine! Her first, disappointing, over-crowded ball is great:

She was now seen by many young men who had not been near her before. Not one, however, started with rapturous wonder on beholding her, no whisper of eager inquiry ran round the room, nor was she once called a divinity by anybody.

:(

Hi! It looks like we have a good number of titles in common (though not always reactions to those titles... ;)) I'll be following along with interest!

>9 ursula: I love a book that really polarizes people, so I'm not surprised! I see you enjoyed two of my least favorite classic reads of the past 5 years, Rabbit, Run and Anna Karenina...but you're also a lover of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian so clearly you have excellent taste. ;)

>10 KLmesoftly: It took me 2 tries to read Anna Karenina, so I was as surprised as anyone that I ended up liking it. And I can definitely understand why people wouldn't like Rabbit, Run. But it hit the right notes for me. And yes, my first Sherman Alexie will not be my last! You have a lot of interesting books in your near future (well, I don't know how near - there are a lot of books in your To-Read post up there!) that I'll be curious to find out what you think about.

>11 ursula: Unfortunately I only got through Anna Karenina by making fun of it to the rest of my book club - I couldn't get past some of the themes/"morals" enough to just enjoy the writing/setting/story for what it was, which is a problem I have sometimes with classics. Tolstoy just isn't for me, I think!

I'd definitely like to read more Alexie - I picked up his short story collection, War Dances, last month and liked it a lot, though I'm not much of a short story reader (I'm one of those people who has to power through the first couple chapters of a novel before I'm properly engaged, and short stories feel to me like slogging through the first chapters of a novel...only to find out there is no more novel to settle into). I've heard really good things about Flight and Reservation Blues!

My to-read list is way too long right now - I'm aiming to get to Jamaica Inn, Tale for the Time Being, and The Magus especially soon!

Ha! Austen has the same problems with academic historical writing as many scholars do in the present time -

"But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in...I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome."

(Northanger Abbey)

Welcome back!

Well, so much for Northanger Abbey being my first read of the new year - I finished it, and I enjoyed it so much! I'm a little disappointed that after that last twist everything was wrapped up off-page and summarized in a letter (especially knowing that Austen revised this book a couple of times before her death...and yet still thought to end the book this way!), but it doesn't take away from what a delight the book was to read. :D

Up next...I'm going to go with Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, as this one has been sitting on my to-read shelf for over a year now. All I really know about it is that it's written by a Southern African-American woman during the 1930s (Jim Crow era).

That, and the cover color-coordinates really nicely with this copy of Northanger Abbey I was just reading!

>14 drneutron: Thank you!

Hi there! Saw you posting on the readathon thread and decided to drop in. I love your goals for the new year. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a favorite of mine - hope it works for you, too!

>17 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie - I'm really liking Their Eyes Were Watching God so far (only a couple of chapters in), though the dialect is making it slow going as so much of the book is characters in conversation!

I remember it taking a while to "get" the dialect... Once you do, though, the whole narrative just comes together beautifully.

I've been wasting a lot more time on the internet than reading today, unfortunately, but the dialect in Their Eyes Were Watching God really threw me for a loop! I took a lot of breaks between chapters, I wanted to know what would happen but I also just never really got the hang of interpreting those "Ah"s unconsciously. Despite the slow going, I'm really glad I read this - it's a really unique story set during a time in history I don't know as much about as I should, and beautifully written.

Up next I've grabbed The Giant's House off my shelf - it looks to be a fairly cute little historical romance about a librarian? That's all I know about it other than that it was a National Book Award finalist, as I picked this copy up out of a "FREE TAKE THESE" box of books left on the sidewalk near my bus stop. I'm ready for something that's a little less work for a bit!

Finished The Giant's House, with enough time to add it to my total for the readathon!

One-line summary: Librarian becomes romantically fixated on a preteen boy with gigantism and insinuates herself into his life over the next decade, which is meant to be heartwarming.

I'm giving this book 3 stars because it was engrossing and written well, but the subject matter and final 3 chapters are so incredibly strange and discomfiting I'm not sure I would recommend this to anyone!

I'm not sure what my next-up read will be, but this last book has motivated me to review my to-read list and cull any books that don't sound necessarily worth the time after all! I need to get my PaperbackSwap page updated anyway.

Does anyone have comments on the following? Right now these are standing out most to me as dubious/possibly not the right books for me this year:

Cocktail Time - PG Wodehouse
The Woman Destroyed - Simone de Beauvoir
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Moth and Spark - Anne Leonard
Someone Else's Skin - Sarah Hilary
A Small Death in Lisbon - Robert Wilson
Thunderstruck - Erik Larson

Convince me to read them or support my possible choice to send them along to other readers!

Split-second decision based on the non-controversial side of my to-read shelf - I'll be reading The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton next! I know it's written in the style of a 19th century novel so it's probably best that I read this one shortly after Austen, but other than that I don't know much about it.

Still working on The Luminaries, and realizing now that it probably would have been a better idea to read something shorter this week - I'm almost halfway in now and really want to finish before the weekend, as I'm off on a vacation and hate to leave it unfinished (or worse, drag an 848pg doorstop with me in my suitcase just so I can read the last 200 pages on the plane!).

Current progress: 46.4%! I'm going to try to get to at least 60 by the end of the night.

I ended the day yesterday at 68.4% on The Luminaries, am trying to get to at least 75% tonight so I'll have a hope of finishing it before Monday!

A friend gave me a copy of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov that is incredible to look at - here's the cover:

I finished The Luminaries today, by far the longest book on my to-read list at 834 pages! I'm so happy to have gotten through it before my vacation - it would have been annoying to pack a brick that size just to read the last few chapters on the plane.

It was a deceptively long book; the first half was all an uphill exercise in reviewing the testimonies of all these different characters in an attempt to get the story straight, followed by a lightning fast roller coaster resolution and a series of heartbreaking little vignettes to fill in the last gaps. It definitely felt long, but also like the story was essentially over by page 600, with the remaining chapters just filling in emotional color to the initial factual framework. I liked it!

I'm planning to start The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood next, another one that has been sitting on my to-read shelf for over a year now. I've only heard great things about it, so I'm excited to get into it.



Packing for my trip, which will be a week long - I'm thinking I'll also bring along The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and The Collector...and maybe The Year of the Gadfly as well just in case!

>26 KLmesoftly: I also have The Luminaries on my list of Doorstops this year, so I'm glad to read another positive review of it. I loved Catton's debut novel, The Rehearsal. Enjoy The Blind Assassin! It's one of my favourite novels.

>3 KLmesoftly: Following along here. Your "to read" shelf caught my attention. Looking forward to seeing what you think of many of those.

Back from my week-long cruise! There was a slight casualty due to a hot tub incident with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but only the bottom half-inch of the pages got damp and crinkly so I'm calling it a maiming rather than a murder. :P I read way more than I thought I would - I actually brought 5 books with me almost as a joke and then ended up tearing through all of them, then panicking a bit, THEN remembering that crafty past!me had gone and checked out some e-books to my phone before I left home, so I had enough reading material to get me through the return flight.

So books! I'm gonna list them all and then edit this post with thoughts/mini reviews so I have them eventually, but there's no way I'll be able to pound this all out at once -



Monday: The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
I absolutely LOVED this book, and can't believe it's been sitting on my to-read shelf untouched for over a year! I love books that play around with perspective and include mixed-media/meta stuff like fake newspaper articles, journal entries, letters, and of course books nested within books. At first I felt like I was racing through Iris' sections to get to the Blind Assassin excerpts, and then it was suddenly the other way around as her backstory suddenly became twistier.
Despite its 521 pages this was a 4-hour marathon read for me, I couldn't put it down and it really felt like it flew by. I took some notes in my phone when I finished this one; I'll just leave them here: kazuo ishiguros spiritual descendent - very "a pale view of hills." which one of them was the mute girl, the blind assassin?

Tuesday: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
I didn't like this one as much as I wanted to, but Murakami is always very hit or miss for me. I like his books best when the cast of characters is limited, so I enjoyed the earlier sections more than the later ones. I'll have to think about this one longer, I'm still not entirely sure what he was going for thematically and I thought the surreal elements were better integrated in other books of his, like Kafka on the Shore and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, both of which I preferred.
Of course it was well written and interesting to read though, which is always a given with Murakami!

Wednesday: The Year of the Gadfly - Jennifer Miller
(abandoned 50 pages in; not for me)

Wednesday: The Collector - John Fowles
This book gave me the heebie jeebies, in a good way - I've read books written from the perspective of abusers/criminals before, but never one that presented the perspective of the victim too, which really brought the book from a decent middle-of-the-road thriller to a great, complex little novel! I also really liked that Fowles never really needed to rely on sexualized violence; it never felt like "sexy murder porn" even from the psychopath's perspective and was all the more interesting for it.

Thursday: The Small Hand & Dolly - Susan Hill
An awesome pick from my SantaThing Santa this past Christmas! It's always lovely to be surprised by a book that wasn't on my radar but is totally in line with my interests (in this case female novelists and haunted house stories!). This probably won't be one of my enduring favorites, but it was a fun, quick read.

Friday: Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation - Dean Jobb
Serviceable nonfiction pop history about a not-as-famous-as-he-could-have-been early 20th century American con artist - some of the chapters are a little padded out with not-really-pertinent info so things dragged a bit at times, but the story itself was quite interesting and laid out clearly and without too much of an agenda (that I could tell).

And I just realized Susan Hill is one of this month's British Author Challenge novelists!

I gave up on The Year of the Gadfly, too! And you have judged the Atwood farther up my list...

>31 katiekrug: I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't get into The Year of the Gadfly! The pacing seemed weird to me, 30 pages in and the character is feeling ~bound for life~ to a boy and there are secret societies afoot and a bunch of other lightning-fast development. I was hoping for a "Dead Poets Society meets The Secret History" as promised by the marketing blurbs on the front cover!

Fun coincidence though, both Gadfly and The Blind Assassin feature main characters named Iris - not exactly the most common first name. Glad to have promoted TBA up your list a bit, it's my first 5-star read of the year!

>29 KLmesoftly: So glad you loved The Blind Assassin! Oooohh, and The Collector - I thought it was fantastic too. What's next on your list?

>33 Cait86: I think I'll probably try to join in the Pulitzer Prize challenge and read The Color Purple off my to-read list! It's been there as long as The Blind Assassin so I'm due to finally read it - I've heard it's a good one to read close to Their Eyes Were Watching God, too.

>30 KLmesoftly: I think most of us thought you were reading the Susan Hill because of the British author challenge, and now we find it's because of your LT Santa! Glad you enjoyed it either way.

I read The Color Purple cover to cover on Monday waiting for a flight to a work event - including crying a few times in the last 50 pages! What a great novel, it's rare to have a book be so incredible in terms of depth and complexity yet also so incredibly easy to keep reading from page one, almost no ramp-up required before I was totally immersed and invested.

I'm going to be so spoiled this year if I keep up this kind of luck, two incredible 5-star books for me already and January isn't even over!

Now I'm reading Raising Demons, Shirley Jackson's second memoir. It's good so far, especially as memoirs go, but not great - there have been some great sections (the clothespin dolls!) but as a whole Life Among Savages was more interesting to me.

>36 KLmesoftly: I read that one back in the 1970s (I believe) right after the TV special (maybe miniseries).

I finished reading Raising Demons last night, which was okay - I'm disappointed that it's the last new-to-me full-length Shirley Jackson book I'll ever read! This is her second memoir of her life keeping a household together as a woman in the 50s; her writing is hilarious and dry and really does give a good picture of what a middle-class "professor's wife" would have experienced...but I feel like I got that and more out of her first memoir, Life Among Savages, and didn't really need the second.

The section where she reminisces about her brief yet super intense childhood obsession with making clothespin dolls was worth the whole book, though, so I don't regret reading it!

I'm not sure what will be up next - I'll wait out my book club meeting this morning and see if they influence me at all. :P

Adding in some comics/periodicals just for fun!



Archie #5 - Mark Waid, Veronica Fish
I can't believe this took me almost 3 weeks to finally get around to reading!

First off, I miss Fiona, the previous illustrator! The art was so underwhelming this issue - I saw someone say that all the male characters looked the same aside from coloring, and they weren't lying! Everybody had the same wan, angular face shapes. It felt like everyone was almost woodcut or drawn with charcoal, incredibly thick lines and sharp shapes and not much attempt to make anyone lifelike/realistically proportioned. I didn't hate-hate-hate it, but I didn't like it, either.

Plot-wise, I was really loving this episode! The story keeps surprising me - I love that Betty started to change her mind about Veronica as a person/Veronica and Archie's relationship, Waid's characterization so far has been really layered and surprisingly nuanced - especially considering the original source material! I love that 5 issues in I still don't really know what to expect issue to issue, and it keeps surprising me with the way things developed. I also liked that Reggie is being established as a real villain - I'm all about grey-area characters who are likable while still doing selfish/terrible things (Veronica, for example!) but it's so satisfying to hate a character like Reggie, too.

I also like that Archie isn't COMPLETELY oblivious to everything that happens in the universe. He's a dummy, but not such a dummy that he'd miss his 2 former best friends scheming in front of his face. I'm rooting for them to all work it out eventually but not for a few more issues of good, interesting drama!

Bitch Magazine, Winter '16 ("Nerds")
I love the cover this quarter! Princess Leia down in the lower right corner is my favorite right now.

Still working through this one - I'm especially looking forward to the "nerding while black" article and the one subtitled "in between porn and sex work."

I read Jamaica Inn yesterday - well, partially I listened to it as I'm trying to finish up this exceptionally detailed, exceptionally frustrating cross-stitch project for my friends' wedding February 13, but I read the last third of it from the copy I own. It was a fun, suspense-romance adventure story and a worthy take on a particular historical romance novel cliche set, but nothing amazing and nowhere near as subtle as du Maurier can be. books like Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel are far more meaningful and original/surprising than this one, despite the entertainment value here!

I'm also still working on Let the Great World Spin, another off my TBR shelf, but I'm not loving it yet and it's slow going - 100+ pages in and it's still reading more like a collection of (beautifully-written) short stories than a novel, which is frustrating because I don't like short stories. :(

I won a copy of Hannah Tennant-Moore's Wreck and Order from the early review program this month, which is really exciting - hopefully it arrives soon!



I finished Let the Great World Spin this afternoon, finally - this was my first read of 2016 that was really hard for me to get into! The first chapters were so disconnected from each other that it felt more like a book of short stories I was reading than a novel, and I'm not a short story fan at all so it was a real struggle. It wasn't until maybe 200 pages in that I really felt like I was seeing a full picture rather than just a lot of scattered starts and stops.

That said, the last few chapters were so beautiful they made the first 8+ worth it. I'm glad I read this book.

I read On Such a Full Sea, which my old roommate gave me when she moved out, this weekend!

I loved this book for being a dystopia novel fairly different from any other dystopia novel I'd read - the style is very interesting, almost impersonal at first, because the narrator doesn't know the protagonist. Instead she's described second- or third-hand via hearsay and historical documents in a reflective, thinkpiecey tone. It was at first hard to get into, but once everything "clicked" I was very immersed in the universe of the book.

I didn't like the ending. I understand why it "works" for the style of the book, I don't find it satisfying or memorable - the book just kind of stops!

I'm taking a break from already-owns for a bit to try to read as many of the Tournament of Books shortlist entries as possible before March.

>42 KLmesoftly: We have that one at the library. I've asked some of those returning it how they liked it, reviews have been mediocre.

>43 thornton37814: Yeah, I definitely liked the style of it far more than the content - though it did grab me a few times! Overall though it seemed more like a worldbuilding exercise than a story the author needed to tell.

I'm already off my 75%-books-by-women goal and am unbalancing things further - currently my to-read-in-the-immediate-future list is:


Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
Tournament of Books 2016 entry, really short little novel about a pair of elderly widow/widower neighbors who decide to start sharing a bed and spending their evenings together. This is going to be a one-or-two-session read, it moves along very quickly!

The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard
Tournament of Books 2016 entry that I haven't yet started - about a Jewish child growing up in WWII Poland I believe!

The Invaders by Karolina Waclawiak
Tournament of Books 2016 entry that I haven't yet started - I don't know much about this one yet but I love this review: "The Invaders isn't about a family as much as it is about people who are deeply committed to their own destruction."

I'm also rereading Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak with a friend over the next couple of weeks, which I've been wanting to do for a while now!

Finished: Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf



Tournament of Books 2016 entry, really short little novel about a pair of elderly widow/widower neighbors who decide to start sharing a bed and spending their evenings together. This is a premise that could easily come out Lifetime-channel-movie-esque but the sparseness and subtlety of the writing really save it. It feels very rich and fully conceived despite the brevity, a window into a larger world. Really great.

>46 KLmesoftly: Glad to hear it is worthwhile. I hope to read at least one and maybe two by Haruf this year.

>47 thornton37814: This is a great one - based on how much I liked it I won't hesitate to pick up another book of his in the future if I happen to stumble across one!



Updates! I've acquired a book and finished another one -

For the Time Being by Annie Dillard
I listened to this as a library-loan audiobook while rushing to finish a cross-stitched wedding gift for a friend over the past couple of days, despite the fact that I own a paper copy! This is a hard one to classify - it's more meditation than history, but not quite a novel given that it isn't fictional (or a linear narrative). In college I was frequently asked to write "reflection" essays on certain topics, and this reminds me most of that - it's Annie Dillard's reflections on religion, mortality, and the passage of time. I'm glad I read it, though I'm not sure if or even how I would recommend it to a friend.

Aaaand I received a copy of Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor as a random Amazon wishlist gift from a friend! I wishlisted this one when it won the Hugo Award for best novel last year, and am really looking forward to reading it. I've only heard good things!

Current Stats:
15 books read
13 books read off pre-2016 "I physically own this but haven't yet read it" TBR pile
3 books newly-acquired in 2016 (1 read thus far)
9 books by women | 6 books by men
0 books published in 2016 (I picked up and dropped Girl Through Glass)

Reading Right Now:
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (reread, paired read with a friend)
The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard

Up Next:
As many Tournament of Books entrants as possible before March! Likely one of the following:
The Invaders - Karolina Waclawiak
The Story of My Teeth - Valeria Luiselli
Fates and Furies - Lauren Groff

I feel so productive today! I'm still reading The Book of Aron as part of the Valentine's weekend readathon, but I also took a break to FINALLY get my culled books up on Paperback Swap! I've already had requests for The Girl on the Train, Moth and Spark, and Cocktail Time, so that means 3 new books of my choosing to replace them sometime. :D

Oh I thought The Book of Aron was very well done. Congrats on clearing the space for the new ones too!

FINALLY finished this cross stitched wedding gift that has been sucking up my free time since mid-October! Now I can reward myself with an ice pack for my shoulder and some reading time. :D

>51 KLmesoftly: COOL!! I love it!

>51 KLmesoftly: Nice! There's a lot of purple on that one!

Congrats on finishing the cross-stitch. It looks lovely!

>52 scaifea: >53 thornton37814: >54 lkernagh: Thank you all so much, I'm very happy with how it turned out! My friends texted me a photo of it hanging up in their home this morning, so I think they liked it too. :)

Updates for the week - currently reading:



Tournament of Books 2016 pick: The Invaders by Karolina Waclawiak, 240p (barely 5 pages in currently)

Off my TBR pile: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, 422p (124 pages in and LOVING THIS right now)

A few updates/reflections:

The Invaders - Karolina Waclawiak
There's this sub-niche of literary fiction novels that deal exclusively with people who are well-off financially and yet are unhappy beneath their shiny rich person facade. I always wonder who these books are being written to - is it other rich people, who want to feel like their lives are harder than they are? Is it non-rich people who want to feel smug about the problems they don't have due to limitless cash resources or like they have an inside view into this exclusive other world? Anyway yeah, The Invaders - I understand why this is up for the Tournament of Books, as it was very readable and well-crafted/laid out, not quite a "page-turner" but compelling and unpredictable enough that I stayed up a half-hour late to finish it...but it still seemed to lack a purpose. The ending was almost literally "rocks fall, everyone dies" and I'm at a loss trying to find one thing this novel said or did that another "rich person ennui" writer hasn't already comprehensively covered. Do we need more of these books?

A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki
Holy shit this was a great book! Seriously, now I understand why every time I see it mentioned I also see a flock of 3+ people in the replies gushing about how it's the best book ever. It was beautiful, it was surprising, I read half of it with a perpetual near-tears lump in my throat, the meta-narrative was unique and really well handled...even the surrealism near the end really worked. This is the kind of book you finish and then immediately look around for someone to hand it to, it's that good.

Wreck and Order - Hannah Tennant-Moore
Hard pass on this one, it's bad on the level of I finished it and immediately scrawled "free, take me if you want but beware that I am not a good novel :(" on a scrap of paper and left it sitting on the table in a coffee shop (which I actually did). Luckily it was an ARC I got through an early review program and not a book I paid for, but wow - I barely know where to start. It's more "rich person ennui" for one, but without interesting writing or any kind of cliche-avoidance to make it compelling. It has the Eat Pray Love cliches (travelling to exotic foreign countries to "find" oneself), the Girls/shitty millennial stereotype cliches (including the on/off "ambiguously abusive" boyfriend, string of other sexual encounters that are horrible - one of the only true surprises in this book is a pointless rape right near the end)...I kept trying to find a way to interpret the book as a "self-absorbed 30-something white person gratuitously writing a memoir despite having done nothing in their life" parody but it doesn't even work on that level.

Oh! And currently I'm reading The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

>57 KLmesoftly: That's a quite timely read and a fitting tribute to the author.

>58 thornton37814: I wish I'd read it sooner, but it's fitting that this was sitting on my TBR shelf anyway! I'm really enjoying it so far, even as a person who doesn't usually like Sherlock Holmes-esque "ultimate detective" novels - Eco really knew how to paint a word-picture, his descriptions of the monastery are so vivid!

New username, just FYI! I'll be posting as KLmesoftly from now on. :)

When it rains, it pours - what is it with my library holds (that were hundreds of people deep on the waitlist when I made them months ago!) all coming available at once? I already have a list of books to read, and yet suddenly 3 of my months-old holds pop up on my phone!

Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo
The Fifth Season - NK Jemisin
And Again: A Novel - Jessica Chiarella

On the bright side, 2/3 of those are light fantasy adventure novels, just when I was in the mood for a bit of a light read. They'll be a good palate cleanser after the dense (wonderful!) historical fiction writing of The Name of the Rose.

Just finished reading The Name of the Rose, which was excellent! I have one nagging, tiny irrelevant-to-the-plot detail question still weighing on me, though - when did Brother William get his glasses back?? It's mentioned offhandedly that William has his original pair again in the epilogue, but I don't remember him ever recovering them, and it's bothering me to the point that I almost feel like reading back through the last hundred or so pages to try to find out.

I'm taking a break from literary novels this week to read The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. In the past I've criticized her for writing beautifully but rehashing plots I've seen before in other fantasy novels, and I think this book may end up being the answer to that critique - I have no idea where the plot is headed and I'm very intrigued to find out!

My hold on Jessica Chiarella's And Again just came up at my library, too, so I'll be reading that one shortly.

I just finished The Fifth Season - What an excellent fantasy novel! The premise is pretty clean yet intriguing: future-apocalyptic Earth-type planet where the earth is so polluted and unstable there are periods of extreme seismic activity called "fifth seasons" where ash chokes out a population or a similar disaster takes place. Some people are sensitive to and even able to control seismic activity, but they are seen as dangerous and are generally killed/driven out by groups of angry peasants.

I'd say it had everything I look for in a book like this: the characters were distinct and well developed, the universe was interesting and different while still internally consistent, and the plot was unpredictable but well put together. I loved the way all of the story fragments converged as the novel progressed.

...And I hate myself for getting into a series that isn't complete! Now I have to wait for the sequels to be published. It's by far my least favorite thing about genre novels - getting trapped into series!

Yesterday I read a couple of books:

And Again: A Novel - Jessica Chiarella
This was a debut novel that really feels like a debut novel - Chiarella's writing style is interesting but she's playing with ideas that have been explored often enough already to feel predictable and a bit tired.
Premise: 4 terminally ill people participate in a medical trial where their consciousnesses are implanted in healthy clone versions of themselves. Typically, there's an artist who loses her "muse" after transfer and who has a journalist boyfriend who betrays her confidence and reports on the study; there's a philandering republican politician who pulled strings to be included in the trial and who has a conniving villain for a wife; there's a failed actress who uses her sex appeal for money because she was abused as a child...nothing is particularly insightful, it's all cliche theater.

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography - Laura Ingalls Wilder
I LOVED the Little House books as a child, and really enjoyed reading through her short original (non-child-friendly) manuscript. The wealth of footnotes and included photographs and illustrations really made the book, which would have felt insubstantial and a little pointless without them. I wouldn't recommend this as a standalone work - the Little House books are superior - but as an afternoon's entertainment for a fan of the series, it was great.

I should share the instagram collage I put together to summarize the book, made up of Helen Sewell illustrations I loved + pictures of Ingalls/Wilder men I did not truly appreciate as a child:



Now I'm reading Obasan (Joy Kogawa) and Rule Britannia (Daphne du Maurier)!

>64 KLmesoftly: There's a book of Laura Ingalls Wilder's letters that hit the market last month or is coming out this one. Seeing your post reminded me of that.

>65 thornton37814: I was just reading an article about that today! It looks interesting - I'm not enough of a superfan to probably want to pick it up myself, but it's cool to see all this material coming available.

Book 27! Rule Britannia - Daphne du Maurier
The United States invades post-WWII Britain and is fought off by a rebellion organized by an 80-year-old woman. Super uneven - du Maurier is always a bit hit or miss for me (I love Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, The Birds...not so much Jamaica Inn or Don't Look Now). Sometimes it's hard to tell whether she's a great writer who riffs on pulp themes or a pulp writer who sometimes hits on something great, which is true of many authors!

Re: Rule Britannia especially, it felt very uneven, as though it were a combination of several drafts - a satirical comedy version and a serious suspense/romance take on the same premise. At times things would seem quite serious and dramatic, and at others the narrator would seem like a parody character and the most absurd could-never-happen-in-reality things would happen and be taken as normal! I almost stopped reading midway through, but I did want to know what would happen enough to go on.

I wouldn't recommend it as a first or even second du Maurier novel, but if you're already a fan it's a fun oddity (being her last novel published ever) about an 80-year-old British woman leading a rebellion against US invaders.

>67 KLmesoftly: That book sounds so weird I'm tempted to read it. Thanks for the review - I'd never heard of it. Was it hard to get hold of a copy?

>68 charl08: Careful what you wish for, it's definitely weird! Did I mention that all the US soldiers talk like British men?

It wasn't too tough to find - I borrowed the ebook from my library but have seen it at secondhand shops in the past.

This has been an interesting reading week - some big hits and some big misses:



The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
Haunted house suspense/horror novel set in postwar England; definitely a spiritual cousin to The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson in its slowly ramping up suspense and ultimate ambiguity/quiet horror. I read this one cover to cover in a coffee shop last Sunday, and I'm glad I did because I can tell it would have kept me up at night if I'd stretched it out over multiple days. Spooky!

Saving Fish from Drowning - Amy Tan
About a tour group in Burma, narrated by the ghost of the woman who was originally meant to lead the tour. I DNF'd out of this one at just shy of the 300 page mark, my first and hopefully only did-not-complete of the year! This was just...really unsubtle, and seemed to be more about exoticizing Burma and setting up hilarious "ah these clueless tourists" moments than anything worthwhile. The characters were flat and dull, the writing was unsubtle (the pages-long bit where she actually has characters explain the title of the book...yikes). I've heard Amy Tan critiqued for trading on/reinforcing stereotypes in her work before, and now I see why - I definitely won't be picking up another of her books without a glowing recommendation from someone I trust.

Vinegar Girl - Anne Tyler
My first Anne Tyler novel! This one is her take on The Taming of the Shrew, as part of a collection of novelists' takes on Shakespeare plays (I'm really looking forward to Margaret Atwood's take on The Tempest and Gillian Flynn's Hamlet), and she's updating the storyline/dynamics quite a bit (I'd call it feminist, and not in the 10 Things I Hate About You sense of the term) but manages to keep the lighthearted comedic tone of the original. Her talent for creating very real-feeling characters is really remarkable, especially given that she was working with another author's templates! It was a quick 3-hours-on-Saturday-morning read, which was perfect.

Right now I'm reading Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller, which I'll probably finish by the end of the day because it's really sucking me in! I knew this is about a British teacher who is caught having an affair with one of her 15-year-old male students so I was a little cautious picking this up, but I'd read some of Heller's writing recently and really wanted to give her a shot. I'm glad I did, the most interesting thing about this novel is actually the narrator, an extremely prejudiced, scheming, almost Amazing-Amy-from-Gone-Girl-esque older teacher who clearly is in love with the affair-having teacher and is trying to twist events around as much as possible to blame the 15-year-old. It's horrifying but so enthralling and I'm worried the book is going to end in some kind of murder-suicide, this third party is so disturbed and disturbing to me!

I also got a copy of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping to read soon! I've been wanting to read a book of hers for a while (and my old roommate still recommends Gilead to me every time we talk practically) and I love a good coming of age novel.

>70 KLmesoftly: I loved The Little Stranger - it was my introduction to Waters' writing and I've read three more of her books since. Glad to read more positive comments on Vinegar Girl; I'm impatiently waiting for it to be published in Canada!

I think I missed much of Notes on a Scandal - one of those books I should probably reread.

I was an enthusiastic Amy Tan fan for the first books, but don't think her more recent ones have had the power of The Joy Luck Club, so I don't seek them out now. Perhaps she is not as subtle as other writers who have taken up the theme of migration to the west and the impact that has on family relationships, but she was the first person I read who did that.

>71 Cait86: I'll definitely be seeking out more Sarah Waters in the future - this one was actually a SantaThing pick for me, and she hadn't been on my radar at all prior! What else by her do you recommend?

>72 charl08: Now that you're saying "the theme of migration to the west and the impact that has on family relationships" I'm a lot more interested - Saving Fish from Drowning was more about Americans having misadventures abroad, which I didn't find compelling at all. Maybe I should give The Joy Luck Club a shot for that.

I'm 169 pages into The Goblin Emperor right now and am loving it so far - what a page-turner! Very House of Cards meets Game of Thrones.

Have a wonderful Easter.

Thank you, Paul!

This past week, from Sunday, I've read:

Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
The Woman Destroyed - Simone de Beauvoir

All of which were excellent! Now I'm reading Obasan by Joy Kogawa, which has sat on my to-read shelf for too long. I'll be starting The Master & Margarita this week as well, for a group read I'm hosting on another site.

New to-reads: Ordered a copy of The Believers by Zoe Heller and told my parents I wouldn't mind a copy of Mr Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt for my birthday next week!

I binge-read a Star Wars novel yesterday and today have read the first 50 pages of The Master & Margarita! I'm really intrigued by it so far and am glad I intend to stretch it out over the whole month, it's an odd one! A few things are really striking me so far:

- all of the fanciful descriptions of hats! Helmets with feathers, "pancake" hats, grey berets, that freaky crown Pilate's vision featured...

- heads are getting fucked with! Everybody's got a headache or a beheading coming it seems.

- Homeless/Ivan's tendency toward "fanciful and figurative language" has me hyperaware of every time he uses an idiom, I love it - especially the ones that reference the devil/hell!

March in review:

Books read: 12 + 1 comic book
11 fiction, 1 nonfiction
1 male, 11 female authors
Favorite book: Notes on a Scandal
Least favorite book: Saving Fish from Drowning

TBR (owned) books read: 4
TBRs remaining: 7

I feel like my reading pace has been slower so far this month, mainly because I'm trying to read The Master & Margarita slowly over the entire month to keep up with the groupread I'm participating in on reddit! I'm about a third of the way in and am really enjoying it so far, though (maybe even because?) I have no sense at all as to where it's going.

I'm 100ish pages into The Sellout by Paul Beatty on audio - the narration by Prentice Onayemi is excellent and I'm enjoying the book quite a bit! Clearly it's my month for absurd over-the-top fiction between this one and M&M.

I finished reading The Believers this morning, my second novel by Zoe Heller - it's excellent, and now I definitely need to track down Everything You Know, her debut novel. She hasn't published any fiction since 2009 it looks like; I wonder if there might be something else from her coming soon! I love her skill with unlikable characters who are still understandable/real-feeling and far too relatable, and her ability to draw connections between usually-pretty-dissimilar narrative threads.

>73 KLmesoftly: - Besides The Little Stranger, I've read Fingersmith, The Night Watch, and Tipping the Velvet. All three are excellent, but I think Fingersmith is the best. I have her latest book, The Paying Guests, on my TBR shelves.

>81 Cait86: I already have Fingersmith flagged as interesting on my wishlist apparently - I'll take a look at it, thank you!

Currently Reading:



The Master & Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (groupread on reddit)
Reading through the end of Part 1 this week! I'm loving this book and how completely unable to tell where it's heading I am. It's nice to deliberately take a book so slowly, especially one with so much to unpack and speculate over.

Obasan - Joy Kogawa
This book is incredible, but very hard to read. Sitting with helpless anger is clearly important for an understanding of this history but it's not easy!

The Keep - Jennifer Egan (audiobook)
This book isn't at all what I was expecting - the first couple of chapters made me think it would end up being fairly predictable and cliche, but then suddenly the narrator was a character in his own right and I have no idea where it's heading. I love the concept of setting a novel around someone's creative writing project and what his fiction output says about his own backstory and experiences. Really original, a great surprise!

I'm chugging along pretty well this year - already through book #47!

Last Week's Reads (1216 pages altogether):


This Week's Reads (1808 pages + a 30pg comic book):


Definitely ambitious, but I'll be flying to London on Thursday with a lot of airplane reading time!

I read John Fowles' The Collector years ago, and really loved it. I picked up The Magus shortly after, but it's still on my TBR. I look forward to seeing what you think of it.

My to-read shelf has almost entirely flipped since April - I read a TON of books on my trip to London, and also picked up a lot of new ones!

Read:

The Last Man - Mary Shelley (1826, 422 pages)
Do not recommend - Interesting as a concept and as a historical curiosity, less interesting as a novel.

Ghost Story - Peter Straub (1979, 567 pages)
Do not recommend - painfully slow pace, painfully dull characters, no payoff.

Veniss Underground - Jeff VanderMeer (2003, 278 pages)
Almost more of a writer's exercise in worldbuilding than a novel in the classic sense, as there wasn't a lot of plot or depth of character to it, but it was interesting all the same to watch unfold.

Persuasion - Jane Austen (1818, 210 pages)
I LOVED THIS! I shouldn't be surprised, Ausen is a master storyteller.

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist - Sunil Yapa (2016, 320 pages)
Highly recommend - imperfect, but had my heart in its fist from page one. Incredible as a debut novel; I can't wait to see what else Yapa publishes!

The Magus - John Fowles (1965, 656 pages)
This was a puzzle! The ending is a bit of a letdown (maybe even actively hateful) but cover to cover it's such a twisting, perplexing, interesting ride, full of really rich and complex characters, that you can't really complain.

We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014, 49 pages)
Nice little combination of feminism 101 tract/memoir - very readable, does what it sets out to do.

The Queen of the Night - Alexander Chee (2016, 561 pages)
This book is a piece of art - so well-crafted and vivid and deliberately plotted. It's such a wild ride as well, incredibly suspenseful and loaded with an incredible cast of characters and settings. I can't recommend this one highly enough!

Also Acquired:
Lady Chatterley's Lover - DH Lawrence
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
The Sunlight Pilgrims - Jenni Fagan
Telex from Cuba - Rachel Kushner
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe - Carson McCullers

London is always a great place to visit and read, isn't it, Kristen-Leigh?

You certainly managed it anyway.

>87 PaulCranswick: For sure! So many great parks and pubs and cafes to visit.

This past week I finished:

Adulthood Rites and Imago - Octavia Butler
These were the last 2 installments in Lilith's Brood, or the Xenogenesis trilogy, about a Cold War era post-apocalypse group of humans who are rescued from their own nuclear destruction by an alien race who wants to breed with them and set them aside on like...a nature preserve where they can live out their lives instead of killing each other. The first book, Dawn, I found kind of hard to read (in both an uncomfortable sense and a "wow this is a lot to take in" sense) but these final two were real page-turners - super strange, different sci-fi, and very compelling! Butler is so good at making you live with ambiguity and uncertainty. There aren't any good guys or people making the morally correct choices, because it's not ever clear 100% what the "right" choices would be.
These were bittersweet to read, though, as now I have no more Octavia Butler novels to devour! It's always sad to complete the catalogue of a historical author, with no hope of ever seeing anything else from them.

The Sunlight Pilgrims - Jenni Fagan
ARC care of the Early Review program, part "the apocalypse (in the form of an ice age) comes to a small British town" and part trans teenager's coming-of-age story - which is a very interesting mix! It's handled well, but I'm disgruntled about the fact that none of the main plot threads are resolved at the close. I like an ambiguous/open ending, but this is extreme! Still worth 4/5 stars for me due to the great characters and interesting treatment of what could have been a standard "social issue" novel.

I'm reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson now, hoping to finish it before the end of the month to keep my 12-books-read-each-month streak going! This is a book that's begging me to read it slowly, though, so we'll see.

Happy June, fellow readers! I finished my 60th book this week -

The Killing Moon - NK Jemisin
A well-composed fantasy novel, and a solid read overall. I'm interested to read the sequel as soon as the library comes through for me!
(I wasn't quiiite as head over heels in love with it as I was with Jemisin's most recent book, The Fifth Season - though I would recommend it to anyone who was a fan of that one.)

I'm still working on Gilead by Marilynne Robinson; this one is a hard book to read quickly, it just begs to be taken in almost meditatively.

Another one of my mini self-challenges this year has been to attend more author readings, which has been awesome - I saw Lindy West read from Shrill a couple of weeks ago, and today I got to meet Ruth Ozeki (reading from The Face: A Time Code). She signed my copies of A Tale for the Time Being and My Year of Meats! She announced that she's in the middle of writing a new novel! I asked a question about her process during the Q&A and she said "you must be a writer" which is not at all true but very flattering!

I'm down to 4 on my current TBR pile, which is good considering I have a copy of The Lesser Bohemians coming from the May Early Review batch here, and a copy of Enchanted Islands from the Book of the Month Club, which I was unable to resist joining while they had their 50% off sale on. Hopefully I'll be able to resist the temptation to add extra books to my monthly box - it's convenient (read: terrible terrible temptation) that they have the "add another title for $9.99" option right there on the front page...

I just remembered my local library's summer book bingo has started! Here's the list I'm working on, I'm going to try to at least get a row done but hopefully get a blackout with 24 unique books by September:

• recommended by a librarian Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler
• cookbook/food memoir
• you've been meaning to read (On Beauty by Zadie Smith?)
• #we need diverse books The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin
• collection of short stories (The Ballad of the Sad Cafe & Others by Carson McCullers?)
• from your childhood (The Girl from Yamhill by Beverly Cleary?)
• prize-winner Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• set in a place you've always wanted to visit Forty Rooms by Olga Grushin (Russia!)
• recommended by an independent bookstore The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan
• banned (Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence)
• collection of poetry
• young adult book (Paper Girls by Brian Vaughan?)
• translated from another language (Sudden Death by Alvaro Enrique?)
• non-fiction (Will I Ever Be Good Enough? by Karyl McBride?)
• novel The Shadowed Sun by NK Jemisin
• local author Imago by Octavia Butler
• written by a SAL speaker (Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel?)
• reread (The Long Walk by Stephen King? Angus Thongs & Full-Frontal Snogging?)
• you finish reading in a day (Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner?)
• read out loud My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
• out of your comfort zone (LaRose by Louise Erdrich?)
• memoir (Shrill by Lindy West?)
• written more than 100 years ago (Jane Austen novel?)
• recommended by a friend (Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones?)

I'm already well in but the food memoir and collection of poetry have me stumped! Maybe I'll read some Sylvia Plath this summer.

I just finished my 75th book of the year!

Congratulations, and lots of good books in there! I just recently finished The Fifth Season and enjoyed it.

Congrats!

Thank you both!

>95 ronincats: I loved The Fifth Season! I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for the sequel to come out next month.

I haven't updated here in forever!

Currently I'm at 96 books read, 5 from my goal of 101! It's looking like I'll be able to make it by year's end.

Currently reading: Nicotine by Nell Zink

Good for you! Have you read the sequel to The Fifth Season yet? I've got The Obelisk Gate sitting on my nightstand so it will be soon.

Wouldn't it be nice if 2017 was a year of peace and goodwill.
A year where people set aside their religious and racial differences.
A year where intolerance is given short shrift.
A year where hatred is replaced by, at the very least, respect.
A year where those in need are not looked upon as a burden but as a blessing.
A year where the commonality of man and woman rises up against those who would seek to subvert and divide.
A year without bombs, or shootings, or beheadings, or rape, or abuse, or spite.

2017.

Festive Greetings and a few wishes from Malaysia!

This is the Christmas tree at the end of the Pacific Beach Pier here in San Diego, a Christmas tradition.

To all my friends here at Library Thing, I want you to know how much I value you and how much I wish you a very happy holiday, whatever one you celebrate, and the very best of New Years!

Looking forward to your continued company in 2017.
Happy New Year!