Annual Reading Challenge 2019

[virge]

12/50 Hater by David Moody For unknown reasons, people begin randomly attacking & violently killing other people. Society begins to breakdown. I picked it solely because it was apocalyptic fiction & the ebook was available from my library. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible. It was book 1 of a trilogy and I’ll probably give the 2nd one a try, but not right away.

13/50 Deadly Class Volume 1: Reagan Youth by Rick Remender Collection of the issues in the first story arc of the comic book series. I really enjoyed the first season of the SyFy show. It was interesting to see how many of the show’s visuals came straight from the comics. I look forward to reading the next 6 volumes.

 

[Swimnoid]

18. Texas Ranger by James Patterson
Texas Ranger Rory Yates is out of town when he receives a call from his ex. She is calling for help. When he arrives she has been murdered and he is the main suspect. Good story and moves along well.

19. The Crooked Staircase by Dean Koontz
Jane Hawk series #3. The story continues. You need to read the whole series. I still like it!

20. The Summer's End by Mary Alice Monroe
Low country series #3. The summer is drawing to a close and the sisters must wrap up their adventures. Good light read

21. One Year After by William R Forstchen
#2 of the After series. While the first book dealt with what happens immediately after an electromagnetic pulse, this book picks up 2 years after "The Day". Now people are getting used to their new primitive lives...if they survived. Now the country is starting to pick up pieces of government but what kind of government will it be? Still riveting

22. The Forbidden Door by Dean Koontz.
Jane Hawk #4. Each book has a main story that is focused on while the ongoing story continues. Number 5 should be coming out in May.

23. The Final Day by William R Forstchen
The last After book. America struggles to recover. Good ending to the trilogy

24. End Game by David Baldacci
Will Robie #5. Will and Jessica must find their handler who has disappeared. Good

25. Full Wolf Moon by Lincoln Child
Jeremy Logan #5. Jeremy tries to help find out what kind of monster is killing people every full moon. Good

26. Elevation by Stephen King
Novella set in Castle Rock. Scott is mysteriously losing weight. Very quick read dealing with prejudice and hope. Good story but I didn't like the ending.

 

[Kirby]

10/50 - The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence - Gavin de Becker. Genre - self help

True fear is a gift.
Unwarranted fear is a curse.
Learn how to tell the difference.

A date won't take "no" for an answer. The new nanny gives a mother an uneasy feeling. A stranger in a deserted parking lot offers unsolicited help. The threat of violence surrounds us every day. But we canprotect ourselves, by learning to trust—and act on—our gut instincts.

In this empowering book, Gavin de Becker, the man Oprah Winfrey calls the nation's leading expert on violent behavior, shows you how to spot even subtle signs of danger—before it's too late. Shattering the myth that most violent acts are unpredictable, de Becker, whose clients include top Hollywood stars and government agencies, offers specific ways to protect yourself and those you love, including...how to act when approached by a stranger...when you should fear someone close to you...what to do if you are being stalked...how to uncover the source of anonymous threats or phone calls...the biggest mistake you can make with a threatening person...and more. Learn to spot the danger signals others miss. It might just save your life.

This book was my March Book Club pick. I was really looking forward to reading it. Once I started reading it I found the psychological part very dry and uninteresting. I enjoyed reading about the situations and having him explain what the survival signals were and how the victims saw them but chose to ignore them. I found myself skimming through the book looking for stories and situations and not reading all the other stuff. I had high hopes for purchasing this book for my niece who will be graduating from high school next year but I feel that once she also hit the dry spots she would put the book down and it would gather dust as mine will do. If I had known that this was considered a self help book I would never have purchased it and took a pass on this months chosen book. I read about anything but self help is just not my thing.

 

[willowsnn3]

#19/20 Where Are You Now? by Mary Higgins Clark

It has been ten years since twenty-one-year-old Charles MacKenzie Jr. ("Mack") went missing. A Columbia University senior, about to graduate and already accepted at Duke University Law School, he walked out of his apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side without a word to his college roommates and has never been seen again. However, he does make one ritual phone call to his mother every year: on Mother's Day. Each time, he assures her he is fine, refuses to answer her frantic questions, then hangs up. Even the death of his father, a corporate lawyer, in the tragedy of 9/11 does not bring him home or break the pattern of his calls.
Mack's sister, Carolyn, is now twenty-six, a law school graduate, and has just finished her clerkship for a civil court judge in Manhattan. She has endured two family tragedies, yet she realizes that she will never be able to have closure and get on with her life until she finds her brother. She resolves to discover what happened to Mack and why he has found it necessary to hide from them. So this year when Mack makes his annual Mother's Day call, Carolyn interrupts to announce her intention to track him down, no matter what it takes. The next morning after Mass, her uncle, Monsignor Devon MacKenzie, receives a scrawled message left in the collection basket: "Uncle Devon, tell Carolyn she must not look for me."

Mack's cryptic warning does nothing to deter his sister from taking up the search, despite the angry reaction of her mother, Olivia, and the polite disapproval of Elliott Wallace, Carolyn's honorary uncle, who is clearly in love with Olivia.

Carolyn's pursuit of the truth about Mack's disappearance swiftly plunges her into a world of unexpected danger and unanswered questions. What is the secret that Gus and Lil Kramer, the superintendents of the building in which Mack was living, have to hide? What do Mack's old roommates, the charismatic club owner Nick DeMarco and the cold and wealthy real estate tycoon Bruce Galbraith, know about Mack's disappearance? Is Nick connected to the disappearance of Leesey Andrews, who had last been seen in his trendy club? Can the police possibly believe that Mack is not only alive, but a serial killer, a shadowy predator of young women? Was Mack also guilty of the brutal murder of his drama teacher and the theft of his taped sessions with her?

Carolyn's passionate search for the truth about her brother -- and for her brother himself -- leads her into a deadly confrontation with someone close to her whose secret he cannot allow her to reveal.

 

[bobbiwoz]

22/75 Wrapped in Rain by Charles Martin

This was recommended here, and I agree that it’s a powerful book! I enjoyed the read about overcoming childhood ghosts and trauma.

 

[bobbiwoz]

If you’re willing, try at least the second in the series. Relic is a bit of an outlier in terms of plot and style.

I’ve a hold on the second book, will be picking it up tomorrow.

 

[Disney_Alli]

I've lost count... The Viscount Who Loved Me - Julia Child. This is the second of the Bridgerton Books and while it isn't one of my favorite in the series it's still a great read.

ETA 8/50

 

[rigs32]

I’ve a hold on the second book, will be picking it up tomorrow.

The second book was actually my first in the series. I couldn’t put it down. Though you may not love it, I hope it’s at least worth the reading time.

 

[bobbiwoz]

The second book was actually my first in the series. I couldn’t put it down. Though you may not love it, I hope it’s at least worth the reading time.

I’ve read the synopsis...I will give it a try!

 

[Colleen27]

#35/130 - About a Vampire by Lynsay Sands

This was awful. I have this weird thing where I never give up on a book part-way through, but I almost did with this one. The story line was ridiculous from start to finish - vampires are really descendants of Atlantis made immortal by highly advanced nano technology, and they know their destined mate at first sight because that's the only person's mind they cannot read or control - but it was really the Kindle formatting that made it a slog. While the book had a table of contents and chapter numbers, the text had no breaks to indicate them so shifts in the point of view from one character to another were disorientating. And there were a lot of typos - someone needs a better proofreader!

#36 - Mr. Fake Fiancee by Aubrey Wright

I picked this one up via Kindle Unlimited because it looked like a quick read and I was stuck at the park without a book when my daughter's softball practice ran long. It was okay, a somewhat generic contemporary romance involving a typically absurd plot that, of course, ends with the main characters falling in love. But by the end, I'd developed quite a dislike for the heroine, who starts out trying to reclaim her own life from an overbearing mother and pursue her dreams of a career and ends up accidentally pregnant and giving up those dreams to move straight from her overbearing mother's home into married life. I felt like the whole story was really promising right up until that cliched "pregnancy oops" moment, which often, in romance novels, feels like a cheesy shortcut to drawing the main characters back together and forcing one or both to admit feelings they've been hiding. It would have been a much more satisfying story if they could have gotten to that point through actual character growth.

#37 The Masterpiece by Francine Rivers

A friend recommended this one, and the cover was so pretty that I decided to give it a shot even though Christian fiction is not something I make a habit of reading. I'm nominally Catholic and do attend mass regularly, but I tend to find most Christian fiction preachy, unrealistic and too self-conscious about having a Big Important Message for the reader. But this was a really good book. The characters were very human, and the exploration of how people and families deal with childhood trauma was extremely satisfying in the imperfections and self-doubt the characters experience. Religious themes wove through the book and were front and center to the story, but fit so well with who the characters were and how they developed over the course of the book that it never felt forced or gratuitous, and the ending flowed naturally from the characters' journeys.

 

[Colleen27]

21. One Year After by William R Forstchen
#2 of the After series. While the first book dealt with what happens immediately after an electromagnetic pulse, this book picks up 2 years after "The Day". Now people are getting used to their new primitive lives...if they survived. Now the country is starting to pick up pieces of government but what kind of government will it be? Still riveting

23. The Final Day by William R Forstchen
The last After book. America struggles to recover. Good ending to the trilogy

Did you enjoy the first book in the series? I read it years ago and remember really disliking the characters, but the second and third installments caught my eye and B&N the other day and I was thinking maybe I need to give them another shot. Because I would like to see how the story ends.

 

[virge]

14/50 Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult I read this for book club. I stopped reading Jodi Picoult ~12 years ago, and I was not looking forward to this book. I ended up really enjoying it. It led to a lot of self-reflection.

 

[Tiggerish]

The Irish Cottage by Juliet Gauvin. THis was romantic fiction of the non-christian variety so too much steamy stuff. It is also the first of a series so lots of loose ends.

29 of 104

 

[mini22]

10/30 - I'll Walk Alone by Mary Higgins Clark

 

[dolewhipdreams]

#6/30: The Poisoned Crown by Maurice Druon (4/5). Book three in the Iron King series. Still enjoying the series!

#7/30: Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies From a Life at Disney by Lee Cockerell (5/5). An interesting read from the former Executive VP of Walt Disney World. It describes the leadership principles he learned and practiced during his time first in the hotel business, then with Disney.

#8/30: God is My CEO by Larry Julian (4/5). A book on leadership from a Christian perspective. The goal is to help the reader understand how to build a career/business that honors God. It started out fishy, but actually had some good, practical information.

 

[bobbiwoz]

23/75 Murder on Union Square by Victoria Thompson
This is a Gaslight Mystery and I began reading it on my cruise last week. I had borrowed it from the ship’s library and they did have it at home. It was repetitive in dialogue and I just went on line to see if it was reviewed and it was. It’s about the 10th in the series and most readers of the series were disappointed. It’s about theater in NYC, and does give a glimpse into lives of women in early part of 20th century.

 

[willowsnn3]

#37 The Masterpiece by Francine Rivers

I love Francine Rivers, will have to check that one out. My favorite of hers is Leota's Garden, I don't re read many books but have that one. Also Redeeming Love is very good & Her Mother's Hope & sequel Her Daughter's Dream.

 

[Tiggerish]

Beautiful Boy: a father's journey through his son's meth addiction by David Sheff. I read this after seeing about it in one of Colleen27's posts on this thread. I also have put in a request for the son's book. It was a sometimes difficult read because of the subject matter but also contains a wealth of information.

30 of 104

 

[OKW8297]

4/12 An Echo In the Bone by Diana Gabaldon. Book 7 in the Outlander series. Fast paced, excellent historical perspective on key events. Exciting developments for favorite characters. Eager to start Book 8 but sad that I’m nearing the end of the series.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

5/25 The First Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer
I liked this book. I don't read a ton of historical fiction, and I did enjoy this than most I have read. Though this is much less fictional and more a fictional retelling of a plot to kill Washington. I felt the story was compelling though some more facts might have helped. This was more about the plot and the characters involved then it was about Washington and he played a much less role than the plotters. As I said I did enjoy the drama though there were more than a couple of time the author repeated things to build the drama, and it that technique annoyed me a bit. Aside from that a really enjoyable read. And surprised to read about the amount of espionage at that time.

As always If anyone is interested, I would gladly send a kindle gift version of any of my works “Written for You”, “Three Twigs for the Campfire”, “Cemetery Girl” or “Reigning”. You can see them all reviewed at Goodreads (Click on link to view books). If you are interested in reading any just message me here or at Goodreads.