I kind of fell off reading my challenge books for a while; there are just too many good books out there! However, I'm back on track with this update, and should have one more to finish the batch before doing my final overview for the year!
Completed
-A book with a month or day of the week in the title. I picked A June of Ordinary Murders for this after seeing it as a Book of the Month pick a while back, even though I eventually bought it from Amazon. While I think its setting and premise had promise, it ultimately left me a little glaze-eyed. There was just too much info-dumping and a side plot that didn't tie into the main one well. It was Conor Brady's first book, so he probably should get a bit of leeway there, but it didn't leave me wanting more.
-A book set around a holiday other than Christmas. It is surprisingly hard to find a book for this category. I started reading a Thanksgiving suspense romance but it was absolutely terrible, so I ditched it and, after some list-perusing, settled on V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, since it revolves around Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night, aka the 5th of November. This is the graphic novel that the movie was based off of. Overall, I wasn't actually a huge fan of this book. While I appreciate a good dystopia, I don't like V as a character because his background and motivations don't make sense, and found the art to be a bit bland as well; the colors are very washed out, which might have been a stylistic choice, but didn't really make anything eye-grabbing, and I found some of the characters hard to tell apart. Also, copious use of a phonetic accent. Meh.
-A book with an unreliable narrator. I swapped out The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer in favor of Good Morning, Midnight for this category, and I'm so glad I did. Mara Dyer made the list primarily because nothing was striking me, but Good Morning, Midnight had an unexpectedly unreliable narrator, and whole book was just so beautiful and lovely and wonderful! I highly recommend it, especially if you liked Station Eleven.
-A book that takes place over a character's life span. While I had The Kitchen God's Wife picked out for this (it looked like it would fit) one of my Book of the Month selections ended up suiting it perfectly: The Heart's Invisible Furies. While I liked the year-skip setup and some of the excellent characters that were included, the book fell into the category of works that seem to revel in the "tragedy" of a character being gay and just being slapped down by the world again and again. This is a classic example of the "Bury Your Gays" trope and I expected more from this author than that.
-A book by an author from a country you've never visited. After much finangling with the library system, I did get Mornings in Jenin for this one, which by Susan Abulhawa. Abulhawa herself was born in Jordan, but her family is Palestinian, refugees from the 1967 war in Israel. As a book, I felt like this had heart and a good story, but was very heavy-handed with the author's message that Israel and Israelis are evil, evil, evil. It's important to not buy into false equivalencies, but this book left a bad taste in my mouth because it often read more like a piece of propaganda than a piece of literature. It definitely has an important place in its category, but I often felt like I was being whalloped over the head with Abulhawa's point, which was not a pleasant reading experience.
-A book by a person of color. I waited all year for The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin to come out to fit this category; while there are clearly tons of amazing books to fit here and I've read some of them this year anyway, I really wanted to use Jemisin's book for this. The conclusion of a trilogy, it was stronger than the second book in the series and featured some good, raw characterization, but seemed to fall prey to final volume info-dumping and I found some of the story and structure familiar to Jemisin's first novel, which meant this one didn't come off as fresh as it otherwise might have.
-A book involving a mythical creature. I stuck to my plan and read Nice Dragons Finish Last for this, and was pleasantly surprised! I'm not sure why, but I wasn't expecting to like it much. However, Aaron's worldbuilding, particularly the Detroit Free Zone, sucked me in (though I'm still skeptical about the "magical drought ended by magical comet" thing) and the Heartstriker family was awesome, even its sometimes less-than-savory members. Remember, Mother might be in the mountain, but Chelsie's right behind you...
Still to Come
-A book of letters. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
-A book that's becoming a movie in 2017. Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie
-A book set in the wilderness. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
-A book with multiple authors. Mutiny on the Bounty, Charles Nordhoff and James Hall
-A bestseller from a genre you don't normally read. Carrie, Steven King
-A book recommended by an author you love. The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry (rec'd by Tamora Pierce)
-A book based on mythology. Olympos, Dan Simmons
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