December 2020 Wrap Up

 Wrap up and send off! 2020 has been a pretty crazy year. Hopefully next year will be a little better.

Let's start off with some short book reviews.

Title: These Ghosts are Family

Author: Maisy Card

Narrator: Karl O'Brian Williams

 

Synopsis: Stanford Solomon is getting on in years and he decides to share his secret with his family that will affect all of their lives--he is actually Abel Paisley who was pronounced dead decades ago. His daughter from Jamaica turns up to be his home health aide and is under the impression that her father is dead. The stories of several different people meet and entwine together.

 

Thoughts: This was a book club selection. It was strange because it was hard to define a plot line, but it was very good and it was interesting. We discussed it and the consensus was that those of us who read it (we have two selections every month and most of us only read one) liked it. The ending was interesting to discuss. And the narration was very good!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Title: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Author: V. E. Schwab

 

Synopsis: Addie is desperate to change her fate, so she makes a deal with one of the world's darker entities for total freedom. But he twists her wish (as they do) so that she will always be forgotten. She perseveres through 300 years and ultimately arrives in New York in the present day. It is here that she meets someone who remembers.

Thoughts: I have been hearing raves about this book all year so I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I generally love her books, so I expected to like this one. And I did! It was strange and interesting and went much faster than I expected. It was a very interesting book and I liked Addie's creativity in finding ways to leave her mark.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Title: Mr. Dickens and His Carol

Author: Samantha Silva

Narrator: Euan Morton

 

Synopsis: A fictional story about Charles Dickens. He is coming off of a book which was a flop and ends up more hard-off for money than he is used to. In order to bring in some money, his publishers convince him to write a Christmas story.

 

Thoughts: I had mixed feelings about this one. I didn't enjoy Charles' character very much and had a hard time getting through to the end. But I really enjoyed the last few chapters of the story.

 

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Title: Booked for Christmas

Author: Lily Menon

 

Synopsis: Sophie is a romance writer and preparing to throw her annual Christmas party in her remote cabin. One unexpected guest shows up, the critic Evan Wolfe. Evan has written several reviews of her books that have been less than complimentary. But a huge blizzard traps them together in the cabin for the weekend. What starts out with harsh exchanges turns into something else.

Thoughts: So, I enjoyed most of her young adult books. I thought I would give this a try. It was really not for me. I don't love romance stories and books, this one was no exception. It felt contrived mostly, but it was a short story so I stuck it out.

Rating: Generously 2 out of 5 stars (Sorry, I will stick to her YA in the future.)

Title: A Christmas Carol

Author: Charles Dickens

Narrator: Tim Curry

 

Synopsis: I don't think I need to describe this classic!

 

Thoughts: One of my annual re-reads. I still love it and I still imagine the characters as Disney mice and ducks.

 

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

 

Title: Landline

Author: Rainbow Rowell

Narrator: Rebecca Lowman

Synopsis: Georgie loves her husband, Neal. And she know he loves her. She's pretty sure, anyway. At the last minute, her job requires her to stay in LA to work and Neal takes their daughters to Nebraska for Christmas. Georgie all but moves back in with her mother, who thinks Neal left Georgie, though Georgie argues that this is not true. Desperate to connect with her husband, she keeps calling but can never get through. Until she tries her old yellow rotary phone in her childhood bedroom to call Neal's landline. And she gets through! To Neal in the past, during the Christmas week he had broken up with her and gone to Nebraska alone. Georgie hadn't talked to him the whole week, but he showed up to propose on Christmas morning. But now she is talking to past Neal. Is she supposed to change something? Fix something?

Thoughts: I LOVE this book. It is one of my very favorites. I cry all the way through the last few chapters (they are short chapters, its OK). I just love it so very much. After I finished reading it, I turned around a listened to the audiobook. So technically, I read it twice this year.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

 

Title: Royal Holiday

Author: Jasmine Guillory

Narrator: Janina Edwards

 

Synopsis: Vivian is convinced to travel to England with her daughter who has been hired to do holiday design work for some of the English royalty. While she is here, she meets handsome Malcolm, who has been working for the queen for years. An unexpected romance blooms between them.

Thoughts: This was a book bail for me. As I said, I don't really enjoy romance, but I wanted to try it because it was the holidays and it seemed nice and appropriate. But I just couldn't do it. It was contrived and convenient, which I don't much care for. I have heard good things about it though. If you like romance stories, you might enjoy this one.

Rating: None

Least favorite book read this month: Not counting Royal Holiday? Booked for Christmas

Favorite book read this month: Landline (of course)

It is also the end of the year. I read 87 of 80 books this year, which was great. I didn't quite complete the alphabet challenge, but that is alright, it was a bit of fun.

In 2021 I hope to read 75 books. My main reading goal next year is to finish some series that I never got around to reading the last book. 

And in January, I hope to participate in this Instagram challenge (or parts of it) hosted by a person I follow and a couple of her acquaintances. Check it out here and feel free to participate and/or follow!

I wish I could say I had other New Year's Resolutions, but I don't really. I want to say I will work out or I will eat better, but with my job the way it has been, I know I can't keep those. So I guess I will say that I will try to do better.

2020 was a strange year. In some ways, my life didn't change too much since I had recently moved here and didn't know anyone or any places to go. So I didn't go anywhere. And then the pandemic happened and I still didn't go anywhere! My work life blew up to insane levels though. On one hand, I suppose it is good job security, but on the other hand it is exhausting. Luckily it is mostly work that I enjoy doing.

 

Because of the pandemic, several of my friends started meeting virtually and we have been meeting every week since March. While I would love to see them in person or be able to grab dinner or a drink, it has been really nice to feel so connected to them. We haven't been so involved in each others' lives for quite some time I think. That is something positive that came out of all of this and I am very grateful.

On Christmas Eve Kevin proposed to me and I said yes (obviously). He is the best person I have ever met and just the type of person I want to spend my life with. I feel very lucky. And it was a nicer way to help ring in (unintentional pun) 2021.

I hope 2021 brings good things (better things anyway) to everyone. We survived 2020. Happy New Year!

December Reading List and Challenge

I am participating in a couple of things this December. First of all is an initiative I have been following on Tumblr called #ReadWomen in which we are reading books by women during the month of December.

There has been a generally positive response from the people I follow, but there have been some negative comments from some. Apparently people interpret it as "man hating." I want to clear up now that this is not the case. But there are a ton of books out there by white men who are usually cis and privileged. While women are not the least privileged group out there these days, they do not get as much notoriety as they should. Plus, reading books by someone different is good for you. You may just learn something and expand your world view. Not everyone sees the world the same way as a white male. So reading books by women, women of color, trans women, et cetera, will give you a different look at things. And how is that bad?

One person wrote up a good response to one of the people against the challenge (movement, initiative, whatever you want to call it). Here is their response to someone calling the movement sexist:

I didn’t want to get in this discussion, and after seeing other posts by you I can see you’re not even open to the possibility that you are wrong. No one is calling for the boycott of male or white writers, or talking about a conspiracy, if you don’t know there is an imbalance then you are severely [misinformed].
“We looked at fall 2010 catalogs from 13 publishing houses, big and small. Discarding the books that were unlikely to get reviewed—self-help, cooking, art—we tallied up how many were by men and how many were by women. Only one of the houses we investigated—the boutique Penguin imprint Riverhead—came close to parity, with 55 percent of its books by men and 45 percent by women. Random House came in second, with 37 percent by women. It was downhill from there, with three publishers scoring around 30 percent—Norton, Little Brown, and Harper—and the rest 25 percent and below, including the elite literary houses Knopf (23 percent) and FSG (21 percent). Harvard University Press, the sole academic press we considered, came in at just 15 percent.” A Literary Glass Ceiling? I recommend you read that article is analyzing a study that shows that the overwhelming amount of books that get review are by men review by men.
Of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people, according to a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin. Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books? only 57 by Latinos, 69 Asian Pacifics/Asian Pacific Americans X
I’m done with this discussion, I have nothing to say to a person that thinks that a black person reading only books by POCs is racist. X."

And who knows? Maybe in another month or two, we can read books written only by people of color or by people with disabilities. The point is to draw attention to the imbalance.

In this vein, I have complied my reading list for this month accordingly:

Books:
Soundless by Richelle Mead
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet Evanovich

Audiobooks:
Landline by Rainbow Rowell
And depending on time/how I feel either Cinder by Marissa Meyer or Hunter by Mercedes Lackey or a re-listen of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern because it is winter-y.

I have also complied some recommendations for books to read:
Tamora Pierce: anything she has written is great, strong women and POC
Diana Wynne Jones
Kate Forsyth
Anne McCaffrey
Janet Evanovich
Sue Harrison: several of her books are historical fiction about native people from Alaska and the islands in the Bering Sea
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
And there are so many more out there.

Lastly, I am going to attempt to participate in the December Reading Challenge by Books and Cupcakes:

So that is that! If anyone out there wants to participate in either of these challenges (or both!) I highly encourage it!

Day Thirty-One: Read This Month

I managed to meet and surpass my goals! The photo is of the physical books that I finished: Gone With the Wind and Reaper Man. I also started reading Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman.

For audiobooks, I finished Night Circus, listened to A Wizard of Earthsea, Fablehaven, and started the second Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star.

Not too shabby! Thanks for reading and watching for my photos on this photo challenge!

Day Thirty: Freebie/Old Friend

I read this series via audiobook and absolutely fell in love. There is something really amazing and special about these books (to me). I first listened to them during my grad program, but then I kept listening to them over and over to keep me company because I was so often alone. So the characters became my friends and they were all near and dear to me. This narrator is one of the best I have encountered, too.

So here is The Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede (read by Amanda Ronconi):

And sorry it is a little late! Saturday was a crazy day for me!

Day Twenty-Nine: Trees

I don't think I have any books about trees, but here are a couple of books with trees on the cover!

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards (yes, THE Julie Andrews) and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Day Twenty-Eight: Book Soulmate

Wow, my book soul mate? That seems like a loaded question! And it was difficult for me to figure out.

First of all, I don't think I have any one book that is my soul mate because different books speak to me on different levels. I ended up selecting three of my very favorites, but it is certainly not a complete list of my favorites. I excluded books that I had already used in the course of this photo challenge, for one, and I did use many favorites on different days (like The Graveyard Book and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is actually an awesome choice for my book soul mate. Oh well).

So here they are:

How about book soul mates?

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, which I inexplicably love always. Tuesday's With Morrie by Mitch Albom, which I read at a point in my life that I really needed to hear his messages. Shatterglass by Tamora Pierce as another that had always been a favorite. I had to include the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder because I grew up reading them and they have meant so much to me. I also wanted to include Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, but my copy seems to have gone missing...

Day Twenty-Seven: Award Winning

I discovered that most of the books I own that have won awards are books for children... So here are some Newberry winners!

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.

Day Twenty-Six: Plot Twist

The most recent book I read (or listened to, rather) that had several plot twists was this one, Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde:

Not to be confused with (the horrible, never touch with a ten foot pole) Fifty Shades of Grey. Totally different book here.

Jasper Fforde creates very interesting worlds and I definitely got lost in this one. I loved this book and all of its twists and turns. I can't wait for the next installment!

Day Twenty-Five: Mug

I don't think I have any books with a mug on the cover so here is my current book with my (Disney princess!) mug of coffee.

Good way to start the day!

Day Twenty-Four: Tearjerker

As a general rule, I don't go out of my way to read sad books, but I have read that make me cry for various reasons. Usually bitter sweet endings or touching moments. Here are a few:

In the Stone Circle by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Day Twenty-Three: Audiobook

I listen to a lot of audiobooks these days, since that is what I have the most time for. Here is a photo of my current audiobook!

Fablehaven by Brandon Muil, read by E.B. Stevens

Day Twenty-Two: Classic(s)

This is a little unconventional for this challenge, but I sort of inherited this lovely book set that includes nearly all of the most well-known classics:

And I love it. It really has just about everything you could want. Philosophies, sciences, plays, myths, and more. I think it is called The Great Ideas collection or something. I use it to for reference more than anything. It's totally awesome.

Day Twenty-One: POC Character

At first, I panicked and thought: I don't have any books about POC. Which is a total lie. I actually have tons, I just never thought about it much.

Hazel and Leo from the Heroes of Olympus sprang to mind, as did Daja and Frostpine from the Circle books by Tamora Pierce. The Graveyard Book came to mind because I always imagined Scarlett to be black, even though Neil Gaiman doesn't specify, to my knowledge.

I settled on a collection of books (I actually have more than can reasonably be put in a picture!), most of which I read during my Race and Ethnicity in American Literature class:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is one I read for a book club, but I think I chose it. The rest were from my class (a couple others we read I did not include like Maus I and II and Hunger of Memory). I enjoyed all of them except Native Son and I struggled with several parts of Jasmine. No-No Boy may have been my favorite of these, though I also liked Their Eyes Were Watching God. And Reservation Blues was very interesting. All of these are very interesting books from a cultural clash perspective. Good reads.

Day Twenty: Glasses

Glasses and books? Good thing I wear glasses!

Day Nineteen: Magazine

I don't really read magazines. The only ones I do read are Scientific American and this:

Nice and educational, right?

Day Eighteen: Indie Book

Wow. An Indie book? I wasn't entirely sure what that would entail. Not well known? Small publisher? Both?

Anyway, I did a little research (is that sad?) and discovered that it seemed to be a bit of both. Small publisher or self-published books that often stumble into a certain niche.

Apparently my book collection is a little too run-of-the-mill.

The book I used for my name is one, but I already used that and it's not fair to use it twice.

I have a few that are from small publishers, but most of them are ones that I used as references or have not read at all yet. Relics from my parents' "library" after we moved. (My parents collected TONS of books, like you would not believe, and they were stashed, crammed, and otherwise piled onto book cases in our basement. I took just about anything that sounded interesting).

As I was searching my shelves, I stumbled across one of my favorites:

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by Josephine Leslie (aka R.A.Dick)

I had to look, and the publisher was not one I recognized. Of course, it was also published in 1945. I looked up the publisher and it is a small one and I know many people haven't read this book, so I decided it was good enough for the prompt!

Day Seventeen: Library/Book Store

I had already decided to do a bookstore. Part of this reason was that it is Sunday and libraries weren't open. And since I work nights, it was difficult to get a chance to go to a bookstore (I didn't manage it and wasn't sure what I would take a picture of if I had).

In my area there aren't tons of bookstores. The closest to me is Barnes and Noble, which I do frequent. There are a couple of Tattered Cover shops, which are great shops, but definitely out of my way.

My very favorite bookstore was the famous Powell's in Portland, Oregon, which I visited a few years back. It is amazingly huge! A book lover's dream! There was also a nice large book shop in Eugene, Oregon that I visited last year and loved, but I can't remember what it is called.

Since I live in Colorado and can't simply go over for a visit, I wasn't sure what to do. Then I remembered that I had merchandise from Powell's! So here is my Powell's tote bag!

A good friend of mine also got me a pint glass from Powell's. I couldn't find a good way to get a picture of it with the bag, so I went with the bag by itself. If anyone goes to Portland, I highly recommend visiting this shop!

Day Sixteen: Favorite Book Couple

I have been re-listening to the Heroes of Olympus series lately, so I really wanted to do Leo and Calypso. Since I don't own the books, I couldn't think of a way to do this. Nico and Will were also strong in my mind because I think that's the cutest (almost) couple ever right now!

So I went back to a very old favorite: Daine and Numair from The Immortals series by Tamora Pierce.

I was always in love with Numair myself, so it stands to reason that this would be an all time favorite!

Day Fifteen: Frustrating Read

I try hard to avoid books that frustrate me, but I have had my share. There are different levels of frustration so it took a while for me to narrow it down. I finall settled on this:

The Wizard of London by Mercedes Lackey

I have read many of her books and I usually enjoy them. I read the Five Hundred Kingdoms series because they are silly and entertaining. More light-hearted and mixed up takes on fairy tales, which I like.

This book is part of the Elemental Masters series, which is a different and more serious take on fairy tales. I have enjoyed all that I have read so far (with one that stands out as being not as good) except this one. First, it was drastically different from its predecessors, but not in any way that I found redeeming. Secondly, much of it seemed too contrived and the characters weren't well developed nor very likable.

I had tried to read it once many years ago and couldn't get into it at all. I left it and read the next book in the series, which I liked. Just last year I went back, determined to read it. And I did. I usually enjoy her books and she has the ability to be a good writer, so I was frustrated that she did not adequately demonstrate her skills here.

Day Fourteen: Your Name in a Book

Yeah. My name is Samara. So far, I have yet to encounter it in the books I have read. However, my mom found this particular book and bought it solely because my name is in the title. I'm not even sure she read it! I found it on our bookshelves several years ago and made off with it. I think I perused the first few pages and was not overly drawn in, but maybe one day!

So here is Samara, the Wholehearted by Nancy Bauer!

Aww, you didn't need to name a book after me *wink*