1) A book made into a movie you've already seen: The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (library)- This book really is terrible. I expected it to be because of Sparks' reputation, but I didn't expect it to be quite as bad as it was. The movie is so much better.
2) True crime: Ghettoside by Jill Leovy (library)
3) The next book in a series you started: Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch (library)
4) A book involving a heist: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (library)
5) Nordic noir: The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen (library)
6) A novel based on a real person: The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy (library) - Dark. Real dark. I'm not much of a fan of noir and this was a bit too gritty for my tastes.
7) A book set in a country that fascinates you: The Likeness by Tana French (library)- I like French's style, despite the fact that I still think her first few pages are always overblown and pompous. I'm going to continue reading these books, even if I am a little late to the Dublin Murder Squad bandwagon. I didn't love In the Woods, but I did come to love this one.
8) A book with a time of day in the title: Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan (library)
9) A book about a villain or antihero: Snape: A Definitive Reading by Lorrie Kim (Kindle purchase)
10) A book about death or grief: Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died by Jim Bernhard (library)
11) A book with your favorite color in the title: Garden of the Purple Dragon by Carole Wilkinson (library)
12) A book with alliteration in the title: The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (free on Kindle) - Slow to start, but how was it that I didn't get spoiled on this ending somewhere in popular culture? The ending was so smart! This is a must read classic.
13) A book about time travel: Time Salvager by Wesley Chu (library)
14) A book with a weather element in the title: Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg (library)
15) A book set at sea: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick (library)
16) A book with an animal in the title: The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery (library)
17) A book set on a different planet: Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (library)
18) A book with song lyrics in the title: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg (library) - A tough read about someone living with mental illness. It was well done, but super hard to read. It sort of made me sick to my stomach the whole time I was reading it. Mental illness is not for the faint of heart.
19) A book about or set on Halloween: The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury (library) - I really liked the idea of this one, looking at Halloween from different eras and different cultures, but it was a bit enigmatic for me.
20) A book with characters who are twins: Dead Letters by Caite Dolan - Leach (library)
21) A book with a female author who uses a male pseudonym: The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (book I own on my bookshelf)
22) A book with and LGBTQ_ protagonist: Stray City by Chelsey Johnson (library)
23) A book that is also a stage musical or play: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (library) - I think it might be sacrilegious to admit this, but I thought this graphic novel based on Bechdel's childhood and her relationship with her father to be simultaneously too honest and forthright and too chilly. I think it's brave of her to put out the good and the bad, but I also found it hard to care. Eh. It's a book for another reader.
24) A book by an author of a different ethnicity than you: The Changeling by Victor LaValle (library)
25) A book about feminism: The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (library)
26) A book about mental health: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (library) - In the same way that Catcher in the Rye is not the book for me, this is not a book for me. It's a very superficial look at mental illness and suicide, coming out, rape, molestation, and bullying. The way the author dropped in trauma after trauma without dealing in any way with any of them was discouraging. I thought I Never Promised You a Rose Garden did something similar in a much better way.
27) A book you borrowed or that was given to you as a gift: Dynamic Lecturing by Christine Harrington and Todd Zakrajzek (book I own! given to me by my workplace!) - I did a book club at work in which we met every other week for a semester discussing this book and its strategies. It was a bit repetitive, but had lots of good suggestions for fast, effective active learning techniques. I thought it was helpful and enjoyed meeting with other people who are thoughtful about teaching.
28) A book by two authors: Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey (library) - The second book in The Expanse series and I love it just as much as I love the first one. I found the plots of the books to be quite similar, but the humor in the second book is delightful. Big thumbs up.
29) A book about or involving a sport: Pigskin Nation by Jesse Berrett (library)
30) A book by a local author: Murder in Wauwatosa: The Mysterious Death of Buddy Schumacher by Paul Hoffman (library) - This is a true crime book about a murdered child in 1920s Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. It's well-researched, but terribly written. There were a lot of sentence level mistakes in this supposedly edited volume. Also, the crime was not particularly interesting, although the details about what it was like in Tosa in the 1920s were sometimes illuminating. Props to Hoffman for being a local history buff, but this wasn't something I'd recommend to anyone.
31) A book mentioned in another book: All the Rage by Courtney Summers (library) - This book came up as a recommendation in Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World. I think Just Listen by Sarah Dessen deals with the topic of date rape, toxic friendship, and PTSD much better. Read the Dessen book and skip the Summers book.
32) A book from a celebrity book club: We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates (library)
33) A childhood classic you've never read: The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (library)
34) A book that's published in 2018: Leverage in Death by JD Robb (Kindle purchase) - Before this book was released in September, I pre-ordered it on my Kindle like I do for all the Robb books. I find myself more and more dissatisfied with the books as they become more and more formulaic and nothing new happens in the personal lives of our characters. Plus, I still really think Roarke is abusive. Still I will continue to read each and every book in this series because that's how I am.
35) A past Goodreads Choice Awards winner: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (library) - This book was fun to read, but seemed quite derivative when you take into account The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Selection. Eh. It was a fine rainy Saturday afternoon on the couch.
36) A book set in the decade you were born: The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah (library)
37) A book you meant to read in 2017 but didn't get to: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (library)
38) A book with an ugly cover: Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover (library) - Generic love triangle story with the added complication that a profoundly deaf person plays guitar professionally, a plot point that stretched the limits of my credulity.
39) A book that involves a bookstore or library: The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (library)
40) Your favorite prompt from the 2015, 2016, or 2017 Pop Sugar Reading Challenges: Ha ha. I actually just did the previous prompt again because I accidentally ordered two books for that prompt from the library. So another book that involves a bookstore or a library: The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (library)
Advanced list!!
41) A bestseller from the year you graduated high school: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (library)
42) A cyberpunk book: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (library) - I know I'm going to be in the minority on this one, but why is Dick's writing so bad? zzzz
43) A book that was being read by a stranger in a public place: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver (library)
44) A book tied to your ancestry: Faithful Place by Tana French (library)
45) A book with a fruit or vegetable in the title: The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues by Ellen Raskin (library)
46) An allegory: Watership Down by Richard Adams (library) - This book is about rabbits at war. But only male rabbits. I found it incredibly snooze inducing.
47) A book by an author with the same first or last name than you: Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster by Dominique LaPierre and Javier Moro (library) - This is an important book that tells an important story. Union Carbide, an American corporation, builds a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India and eventually there's a chemical leak and the results are tens of thousands of deaths and countless injured or disabled. LaPierre does a lot of continuing work in Bhopal, running a clinic and donating proceeds from this book to causes supporting victims of this disaster. But it's terribly written. Many sentences are confusing because they have misplaced modifiers and pronouns with unclear antecedents. It's worth a read, but don't be too disappointed by its distinctly pedestrian writing.
48) A microhistory: Coal by Barabara Freese (library)
49) A book about a problem facing society today: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (library)
50) A book recommended by someone else doing the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge: I recommended to myself that I reread the entire Gansett Island series by Marie Force over the week between Christmas and New Year's because I was struggling to find the holiday spirit and these lighthearted romances were just breezy enough to break me out of a post-holiday funk. (Kindle purchases)
Books I loved: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, In the Heart of the Sea, Leviathan Wakes, The Mists of Avalon, Caliban's War, We Were the Mulvaneys, Alias Grace, Just Mercy
Books I liked: The Likeness, Snape: A Definitive Reading, Final Chapters, The War of the Worlds, Smilla's Sense of Snow, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, The Cuckoo's Calling, Dynamic Lecturing, Station Eleven, Faithful Place, The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues, Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, Coal, Gansett Island series
Books I thought were fine: Ghettoside, The Black Dahlia, Garden of the Purple Dragon, Stray City, Fun Home, Pigskin Nation, All the Rage, Red Queen, The Great Alone, Unsheltered
Books I thought were terrible: The Notebook, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, The Soul of an Octopus, The Changeling, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Murder in Wauwatosa, The Railway Children, Leverage in Death, The Diary of a Bookseller, Watership Down
Books I forgot ten minutes after I finished them: The Keeper of Lost Causes (I wrote a pretty glowing review in May, but now in December I don't remember it), Time Salvager, The Halloween Tree, Dead Letters, Maybe Someday, The Invisible Library
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