Additional Reading Challenge Goals

Hello all!  Given that there were fewer categories in the Popsugar 2016 Reading Challenge than in the 2015 version, I decided to integrate a second challenge into it.  This challenge is from Modern Mrs. Darcy and I found it at The Deliberate Reader.  Some of these categories are repeats, so I'm only going to add in the new ones.

The new categories from below are:

-A book you've been meaning to read.
-A book recommended by your local librarian or bookseller.
-A book you should have read in school.
-A book chosen for you by your spouse, partner, sibling, child, or BFF.
-A book published before you were born.
-A book that was banned at some point.
-A book you previously abandoned.
-A book you own but have never read.
-A book that intimidates you.
-A book that you've already read at least once.

I don't have titles chosen for these yet, but I'm sure I'll get around to them soon enough!

The Chef's Mail-Order Bride - Cindy Caldwell (Wild West Friontier Brides #1)

I love historical romances, but for some reason I tend to gravitate toward the ones set in ton society in England--there's something about the dresses and manners and battles of wits that just appeals to me (and many others) that I find other settings just don't match as well.  But here's the thing: there's no reason other genres shouldn't match that feeling as well.  Witty banter and charged interactions are far from limited to the ballrooms of London, although the balls themselves might might.  But for some reason, the chemistry that comes across in ton books just seems to be missing from books in other historical settings--such as the American West.  The Chef's Mail-Order Bride is an example of that.  One reviewer called it a short story or a novella, but at 234 pages, it's a bit long for that--plenty of time to build up a real relationship and chemistry between the characters.  Unfortunately, that was greatly missing until the last few pages of the book, and it really lowered my enjoyment of the story.

So, the story is about a young woman named Sadie, who has worked in her family's Chicago bakery her entire life and has run it ever since the death of her parents.  Unfortunately, her parents--unbeknownst to her--left the bakery in a great deal of financial trouble, and the bank that holds the mortgage has decided to foreclose.  Unsure of what she's going to do next, Sadie is relieved to get a letter from her sister--except it proposes that Sadie move to the area of Tombstone, Arizona, and get married to an aspiring chef.  Thinking it will be an adventure, and at least she'll get to be near what family she has left again, Sadie agrees, and sets off to Arizona.  In short order, she marries Tripp Morgan, the friend of Sadie's brother-in-law who wants to open a restaurant in town, but needs to be married in order to secure the loan to do so.  Their marriage is supposed to be a business arrangement, with Sadie's help in both getting the loan by marrying Tripp and then helping him out in the restaurant.

And that's exactly what it is.  There's some blushing and a flash of--gasp!--ankles at one point, but there isn't really any chemistry between these two characters.  In fact, Tripp seems downright dismissive of Sadie in most ways, even though he's absolutely sunk without her in more ways than one.  In the last few pages, of course, the two abruptly fall in love after Sadie is proven right, but I found the build-up to their relationship to be lacking.  I get that not all romances have to be steamy, and I wasn't expecting this one to be, but there can be some romantic tension without the characters making out every few pages.  Brushing hands, romantic gazes, wistful sighs...all these things can be built up to a lot more romantic atmosphere than Caldwell utilized in this book.  I didn't find the writing bad, and the supporting characters were enjoyable, but without that really romantic element at the core, I think the book fell a bit flat overall.  This appears to be the first in a series, and I'd be interested in reading the others, but only if I can pick them up on sale or for free, because this one didn't leave me chomping at the bit to get the next one.

2.5 stars out of 5.

The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

I read Gone Girl recently, so The Girl on the Train seemed like the next logical step, given how often people compare them.  Having finished it, I can see why they do--but also feel like the comparison doesn't really do either book justice, as they're not really similar in a larger sense.  Both feature people behaving badly and narrators who could be classified as unreliable--but whereas a narrator in Gone Girl is intentionally unreliable, none of the narrators in The Girl on the Train are intentionally misleading.  The bad behaviors are similar in part--you know, murder, adultery, mental and emotional manipulation, the usual--but are set up in such a different context that they work into the story very differently.  The Girl on the Train also seemed to move faster, to me--maybe because all of the characters become involved so early on, while in Gone Girl things just keep coming up slowly.

Anyway.  The Girl on the Train follows Rachel, who is pretty much a hot mess.  She's an unemployed alcoholic (and yes, the two are related) who has been in a sort of limbo ever since she and her husband divorced two years ago.  Well, really the mess of her life started earlier than that, when they tried to have a kid and couldn't, sending Rachel into a spiral that ended in their divorce.  She has a roommate now, and to hide her unemployment she still takes the train into London every day.  On the way, she looks at the houses by the tracks, particularly one a few doors down from where she used to live so that she can see the couple she has deemed "Jason" and "Jess," who she imagines to be wildly in love with each other--until she sees Jess with another man.  Several days later, news comes out that a woman has gone missing, and by her picture Rachel immediately realizes it's Jess.  She gets swept up in the drama of the entire investigation, hooked by her imaginings of Jason and Jess' life together, even though she knows that those aren't really their names and that their lives were really nothing like she pictured in her head. 

Out of all the characters in this book, Rachel is the only good one.  Yes, she is an alcoholic--but her life is pretty shit, so that's pretty understandable, and as the story goes on she tries to improve herself.  The other characters (well, with the exception of a few supporting folk, like Rachel's roommate and the guy on the train) are all abusive, manipulative, and cheaters, in various combinations of those characteristics.  This made it very easy to root for Rachel, to want her to figure it all out and improve her own life into the bargain, though the logic of how that would, exactly, tie in is somewhat missing.  On the other hand, it's hard to want to root for a character who wants to "get rid of the bitch once and for all" or who spends her time having a string of affairs or any number of other poor behaviors exhibited by the people in this novel.

The mystery is intriguing because there are so many different possibilities for who killed Jess/Megan, and to some degree all of them make sense.  As the layers of the story get pulled back, everything becomes more and more tangled, more and more twisted, until the big reveal and the climax.

I think I liked this more than Gone Girl, overall; it wasn't as long, it moved faster, and I found the characters more intriguing on the whole than those in Gone Girl.  And Rachel was a much more relatable protagonist than Nick, who I never really liked because of the shitty choices he made.  Rachel made shitty choices, too, but not like Nick did.  And come on--Girl on the Train is British, which just makes absolutely everything sound so much more posh and sophisticated, don't you think?  Sure, the logic of "woman solves mystery and therefore improves her own life" isn't entirely there, but that's not really the point of the genre, and so I'm willing to give it a pass on that one.  I loved this, and heartily recommend it.  Also, it can count for the Popsugar 2016 Reading Challenge category of "A book being made into a movie this year."  Yay!

5 stars!

The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro

I did not like this book.  I'd never heard of Ishiguro before reading it, but it was listed on an article about the best sci-fi/fantasy books of the year, and it was up for a Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy in 2015, so hey, it had to be good!  Right?  Well, evidently a lot of people liked it, and Ishiguro is a celebrated author, having won a Booker prize and all, but I have to say that, based on this, I was not a fan.

The premise is that Axl and Beatrice, an elderly couple living in a fantasized England in the era just after King Arthur, set out on a road trip to find their son, who they dimly remember moving away years ago.  They only dimly remember this because a sort of mist has taken over the land, dimming people's memories.  On the trip, they encounter a boatman and a widow, and learn that the boatman takes people to an island--but can only ferry one at a time, and couples who try to go get separated or not based on how they answer the boatman's questions about their relationships.  If they're separated, they never see each other again.  Frightened at the prospect of being separated at some point, Beatrice wants to find a way to dispel the mist.  They also pick up a Saxon warrior named Wistan and a young Saxon who's been run out of his town after being involved with some ogres.  Together, the group sets out to find Axl and Beatrice's son, though they keep getting sidetracked by things like questioning monks and slaying dragons.

I liked the world Ishiguro built here, with its realistic and fantasy elements blended together, but I didn't like the story itself.  It moved at a positively glacial pace, and the writing was so emotionally distanced from the characters that I couldn't really empathize with any of them.  Even when in situations that are life threatening, the characters maintain this distanced calm that doesn't seem to fit the conditions at hand.  And Axl had this really annoying habit of calling Beatrice "princess" in every sentence he spoke.  Dear lord, that was annoying.  A world with ogres, dragons, and other fiends roaming about, where even the birds seem to have turned against people, has such potential, and I really feel like Ishiguro didn't build it up to its full potential.  And so many things aren't answered!  What about the birds?  Why were they evil?  How the hell is the thing in the tunnel dragon spawn?  Are there more of them?  How are creatures like dragon spawn and ogres going to play into the coming conflict?  Ultimately, this whole thing was built up to something that was probably supposed to be death and the ending of a relationship, but it lacked emotion and urgency and left me picking away at it instead of devouring it whole-heartedly.

Ishiguro's book Never Let Me Go has been lauded by many people, but I'm thinking that maybe fantasy isn't really his genre.  Fantasy readers like myself tend to look for certain things, I think, and those things were missing here because it's really meant to be more literary than fantasy...but I don't think it really manages to land itself firmly in either genre, and also doesn't blend the two well enough to really appeal to fans of both.  There are messages here, about memory and love and all that junk, but they're just too out there to be subtle and too preachy to be swept on past and enjoy the story for what it is.  All of the elements that I really would have liked to see were just sketched in at the edges, while the most boring people in the world were left as the central focus.  I wouldn't really recommend this one.

Oh, and despite the title and there being an actual buried giant at one point in the book, the story actually doesn't involve buried giants as anything other than a landmark.

2 stars, and those are entirely for the world and not for the story.

Popsugar Reading Challenge - 2016 Edition!

So, 2016 is upon us, and with it a new Popsugar Reading Challenge.  This challenge clocks in at forty books, more than the required 52 from last year; last year there were 50 categories, but one category was a trilogy, which tacked on an additional two books.  That's a book a week, and my guess is that some of Popsugar's readers found it a little grueling, and so reduced the number of categories for this year.  Some of the categories I'm looking forward to more; a book based on a fairy tale, a YA bestseller, a book becoming a movie this year, and a book guaranteed to bring you joy all sound like great categories.  On the other hand, I'm less than thrilled about the self-improvement book, book of poetry, and political memoir categories, none of which are exactly on my "favorite subjects" list.  But I guess the point of all of this is to broaden my reading horizons, so I'll go through with it.  Below I've listed all of the categories for this challenge, some of which I have planned titles for and some of which I don't.  As always, if you have a suggestion for a category (even if there's already something listed for it!) let me know and I'll look into your suggested title!

-A book based on a fairy tale.  I adore fairy tales, so this category had a whole bunch of possibilities for me!  I settled on Gregory Maguire's Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, which is quite clearly an adaptation of Cinderella from the stepsister's point of view.  I read Wicked in high school and found it good but weird, so I'm interested in seeing how this one plays out.

-A National Book Award winner.  I don't really know much about book awards, as I tend to ignore them in favor of reading whatever interests me at the time.  So I had to pull up the list of National Book Award winners to have something to go off for this one.  Most of them didn't really intrigue me (who decides what makes a book award-worthy, anyway?) but I eventually picked The Shipping News off the list as looking at least mildly interesting.

-A YA bestseller.  Cassandra Clare has made mega-bucks (I'm sure) with her Mortal Instruments series, which was originally Harry Potter fanfiction.  I read the original trilogy and found it okay, but I'm very interested in the prequel series, which starts with Clockwork Angel, because it seems like it has a total steampunk vibe going on!  So intriguing.  I hope it's as good as its sales would suggest.

-A book you haven't read since high school.  This is hard.  I tend to re-read books that I like on a fairly regular basis; hardly a year goes by when I don't re-read most of Tamora Pierce's works in a one-week binge.  That said, I think I was in high school the last (and only) time I read Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, which I quite liked but didn't get around to re-reading because I was so busy devouring other stuff.

-A book set in your home state.

-A book translated to English.  I'm thinking Toilers of the Sea for this one.  Les Miserables, which is probably about on par with The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Victor Hugo's most famous book, is one of my favorites, so this should be a good one while adding in another classic for this list.  However, I also got Becoming Marta for free through the Kindle First program, so I might end up reading that instead.

-A romance set in the future.  I'm going to finish off the Starbound trilogy for this one and read Their Fractured Light.  It's a young adult romance, and I hope it can live up to the first book in the series; the second was somewhat of a letdown.  Fingers crossed for a strong finish! 

-A book set in Europe.  I read Elizabeth Bard's memoir Picnic in Provence this year and was charmed by her writing and intrigued by her recipes, so the first book she wrote, Lunch in Paris, seems like a good candidate for this European category.  And maybe I'll get a good recipe out of it!

-A book that's under 150 pages.  I've picked out Goldenhood by Jessica L. Randall for this one.  It clocks in at 98 pages according to Goodreads, and I really liked her book The Obituary Society, so I'm looking forward to reading something fantasy- and fairytale-based from her.

-A New York Times bestseller.  I haven't read The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling) yet, and this seems like an excellent time to do so, wouldn't you say?

-A book that's becoming a movie this year.  I saw the movie Sisters over winter break, and attached to it was a preview for the movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which stars Tina Fey just like Sisters did.  The trailer intrigued me, so I looked it up, and guess what?!  The movie is based on a book!  The book is The Taliban Shuffle by Kim Barker, a longtime news correspondent posted to Afghanistan and Pakistan who wrote this book as a memoir of her time overseas.  I'm also reading The Girl on the Train which is being adapted into a movie staring Emily Blunt.

-A book recommended by someone you just met.

-A self-improvement book.  I don't really know what a self-improvement book is, other than a self-help book, and I don't really think I need a lot of help from books, so this one was a bit challenging.  So I went to Google and pulled up a list of best self improvement books!  An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth jumped out at me because one of my friends from college read it recently and rated it quite highly, so this one it is!

-A book you can finish in a day.

-A book written by a celebrity.  Okay, so I saw Elixir by Hilary Duff ages ago, probably when it first came out, but I didn't read it because I was skeptical.  I mean, celebrities writing?  Who does that?  And I'm always convinced it's really a ghostwriter doing the real work.  But now it seems like it's a good time to try this one out.  I was going to read Tina Fey's Bossypants for this, but I'm already reading a comedian's book for another category, so I didn't want to double-dip.

-A political memoir.

-A book at least 100 years older than you.  I'm actually going to get around to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for this one, because I want to read one of the steampunk novels that started it all as research for my own writing.

-A book that's more than 600 pages.  I'm going to continue on with the Outlander series and tackle Voyager for this one.  I've been picking away at Dragonfly in Amber ever since I finished Outlander, and I'll finish it in time to take on Voyager for 2016.  I won't have Dragonfly finished by the new year, but it seemed a bit unfair to consider it as counting for the challenge when I started it in 2015.

-A book from Oprah's Book Club.

-A science-fiction novel.

-A book recommended by a family member.

-A graphic novel.  I love Neil Gaiman but am not a huge fan of graphic novels, so I've avoided his Sandman series up until this point, despite buying my boyfriend the entire series for various occasions.  Now seems like a pretty good time to give them a go and start in Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes.

-A book that is published in 2016.

-A book with a protagonist who has your occupation.

-A book that takes place during summer.

-A book and its prequel.

-A murder mystery.  For this, I plan to read R. R. Virdi's Grave Beginnings.  Virdi is a member of the 20,000-person NaNoWriMo group I'm in on Facebook, and this book has gotten great reviews from other group members, so I'm going to give it a shot!

-A book written by a comedian.  I haven't read Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? yet, and so I plan to read that for this category.  Everyone I know who's read it has said they wish Mindy was their best friend, so that sounds like a nice, light, entertaining read for the year.

-A dystopian novel. I read Hugh Howey's Sand this year, and I'm going to carry on with Wool for 2016.  "Dystopian" is a loose term these days, but as far as I can tell Wool fits the bill--and a lot of other people have categorized it that way, too, so I'm going to go with the flow and say it is.

-A book with a blue cover.  I've never managed to get past Storm Glass in Maria V. Snyder's Glass series, so now I think I'll use this as a reason to take on Sea Glass.  There's a really weird relationship at the heart of this series that's always been kind of off-putting to me; it emerges in Storm Glass and must continue on in Sea Glass, but I'm hoping it'll dissipate and we can move past it.  And the cover is very blue!

-A book of poetry.

-The first book you see in a bookstore.

-A classic from the 20th century.  I'm going to do Lolita for this one, because I feel like I need to squish a Russian novel in here somewhere.  What really makes a classic, anyway?  I don't know, but this list that I found says Lolita is one.

-A book from the library.  I recently got my DC Public Library card (I've only lived here for almost six years; it was long past time) and one of the books I checked out was N. K. Jemisin's The Shadowed Sun, the second book in her Dreamblood duo.  Jemisin is an amazing fantasy author, and I can't wait to read this one.

-An autobiography.  I picked up Papillon by Henri Charriere at a used bookstore in New Jersey (Broad Street Books in Branchville, if anyone out there is in the area; it was absolutely lovely and I look forward to going back the next time we're in the area) but put it down in favor of another title.  Now I wish I'd bought it!  Charriere wrote this book about his wrongful conviction for a crime and his subsequent escapes from prison.  Most autobiographies bore me on principal, but this one actually sounds interesting.

-A book about a road trip.

-A book about a culture you're unfamiliar with.

-A satirical book.

-A book that takes place on an island.

-A book that's guaranteed to bring you joy.  This is easy.  A College of Magics is one of my favorite books ever.  The beautiful Ruritanian-romance aspects of it (bodyguard/client!  one of my favorites!) blend so wonderfully with the fantasy elements that I find it pretty much irresistible, and this is a great excuse to re-read it.

Perfect Ruin - Lauren DeStefano (Internment Chronicles #1)

This isn't so much a review to start the new year as it is to end the old, even though it comes in the new one.  I squeaked this title in just before the end of 2015, and it was my last-read book for the year.  It was one of the free reads on PulseIt, Simon & Schuster's social media/book promotion website where they post free books to read once or twice a week.  The books are up for two weeks; I noticed this one when there were two days left to read it, so I had to make progress fast!  Luckily, I did so, and managed to finish it before it went away.  Not that it was a difficult read, because young adult books never are, but because there was a lot else going on for vacation.  I know the PulseIt site is going down this year (I believe sometime in January) to make way for a new site, though their multiple emails on the subject have assured users that their policy of posting free reads will remain the same.  Though they don't post books I'm interested in often, I do think it's a great service for discovering young adult books, so I encourage you to check it out if that's a genre you're interested in, and I'll be sure to highlight the new service once more is known about it.  Anyway, here's the review!

Lauren DeStefano is perhaps better known for her first young adult dystopian series, The Chemical Garden, than she is for these Internment Chronicles books.  I read Wither, the first of the Chemical Garden books, in 2013 and found myself rather unimpressed by it.  The romance wasn't what I wanted, the plot wasn't what I wanted, and despite an interesting premise, the book and I just didn't click.  I didn't move on to the other books in the series, though I heard dissatisfied mutters from others--and so I was a bit apprehensive about reading Perfect Ruin.  But the description, about a city in the sky where the only rule is not to approach the edge, just seemed too delicious to ignore.

Well, it turns out that DeStefano's worldbuilding is a bit inconsistent there, because despite the fact that the "only rule" thing is stated multiple times, in the description and in the book itself, it's really clear that not approaching the edge is not the only rule.  And despite the narrator saying that everyone's life is theirs to do with what they choose, to use or to squander, that's also patently not true.  In fact, Morgan (our heroine) and her fellow Internment-ites are in a highly regimented society, and it's hard to believe that Morgan really doesn't see all of these other rules floating about her just as Internment floats about the sky.  Take the pills the government sends you.  Go to school, go to work, go to support groups, and so on and so forth.  Don't talk about this, or that, or the other...  It drives me crazy when authors are so inconsistent about their worlds, and how the characters view them, so this flip-flopping on how Internment's society functioned was extremely frustrating.  I was expecting a world more like Scott Westerfeld's Pretties, where people really are free to do whatever the hell they want, and do so--crazy parties, drinks and games and fun, not a worry to be had by most.  Interment wasn't like that, not at all, despite how it was originally made out to be.

The rules in Internment become even more prevalent following the murder of Daphne Leander, a girl in Morgan's grade who wrote a downright heretical essay about her doubts regarding the god of the sky.  Following her death, copies of the essay begin to appear all over the city, and a hunt begins for her killer--a hunt which eventually sweeps up Morgan, her friends, her betrothed, and her family.  Which was another frustrating thing for me: Morgan has very little agency.  For the most part, she's dragged along for the ride.  She does make a few choices, and they become a little more pronounced as the book goes on, but still, she's not a very active heroine.  She is a follower, not a leader; she doesn't charge into action, but merely lets herself get swept along by it.  Don't get me wrong: not every heroine has to kick butt in a very literal way.  But quiet, calm Morgan sees so many things going on around her, but hardly ever acts on them.  She seems completely content to live within Interment's confines, even though she professes to dream of the ground constantly.

Honestly, the things that redeemed this book for me are the mythology and the relationships.  Morgan's relationships with other characters feel very real, from her tenuous yet strong (contradictory, but true) bond with her brother, to her strained relations with her parents, her love for her betrothed, Basil (please don't turn this into a love triangle, it comes across as so pure and true and I'd hate to see it ruined by a love triangle trope) and her almost psychic friendship with Pen.  How Morgan deals with people and the troubled web surrounding them was so genuine that I couldn't help but like her, despite the qualms I discussed above.  And then there's they mythology, about the god of the sky and the god of the earth, and how Internment came to be and the people who believed and questioned, all of it surrounding Morgan's crisis of faith.  Because ultimately, that's what this book is about: a young woman's struggle to maintain her faith or find enough proof to cast it to the winds.  Daphne Leander's essay, portions of which headline each chapter, contributes greatly to this and makes it more prominent than it would seem from the main text alone.  But Morgan is indeed questioning, unsure of exactly where she stands, and I think that questioning is also a very real experience for people her age--sixteen--in one way or another, and it makes her easy to empathize with.

This book had its frustrating aspects, but ultimately I found the writing engrossing, the mythology and relationships beautiful, and I hope to read the other two books in this series soon.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Popsugar 2015 Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

Hi all!  This is a few days late due to vacation, but I wanted to provide the final list of titles I read for the 2015 Popsugar Reading Challenge, along with a brief thought about each--basically whether I think it's worth reading or not.  You can find links to the Goodreads listings for all of these books on my Popsugar 2015 Reading Challenge shelf here.

-A book with more than 500 pages.  For this I read Oliver Stone's The Untold History of the United States, which is a good history book that takes an alternative (but still factual) look at some aspects of the US's history.  Worth reading for those who like history.

-A book published this year.  The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy, which is by Julia Quinn and came out in January 2015.  Quinn's books can be a bit syrupy, and I disliked this one more than her others.  I'd say go for her Bridgerton series before this one.

-A book with a number in the title.  Nayomi Munaweera's Island of a Thousand Mirrors, which takes place in Sri Lanka, is a bittersweet look at how the conflicts in race there manifest, and how they affect communities.

-A book with nonhuman characters.  For this I read Brenda Pandos' The Emerald Talisman, which has vampires in it.  I hated it.  There are far better paranormal romances out there.  Skip this one.

-A funny book.  That would be Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple, which had me giggling to myself on several occasions.  Definitely recommended!

-A book by a female author.  I read a ton of female authors, but for this one I used Bread & Butter by Michelle Wildgen, which was a great character-driven book that revolves around a trio of brothers in the restaurant business.  I liked it, though those who like plot-driven books with lots of forward motion would likely be disappointed.

-A mystery or thriller.  Well, I finally got around to reading Inferno.  Thoughts?  It's a Dan Brown book.  If you liked the others, you'll probably like this, though I found the overall premise involving the virus to be more hokey than normal, and think it really backs Brown into a corner for future books.

-A book with a one-word title.  Sand by Hugh Howey is a fabulous science-fiction read in a really interesting setting with a great cast of characters.  Highly, highly recommended.

-A book of short stories.  Hilary Mantel's The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher was a very cool book of short stories that all hard really surreal aspects to them, but which were overall just real enough to be believable.  I'm not a huge short story person, but this was excellent.

-A book set in a different country.  I love reading books set in different countries, because I like to get a glimpse of places I will likely never go myself.  Aminta Arrington's Home is a Roof Over a Pig, which is a memoir set in China, filled this category, and I liked it well enough.  But if slice-of-life memoirs aren't your thing, look elsewhere.

-A nonfiction book.  Sarah Churchwell wrote (and I read) Careless People, which is about a murder that took place in the 1920s and how it might have influenced F. Scott Fitzgerald when he was writing The Great Gatsby.  I loved this.

-A book based entirely off its cover.  Ugh, what a disaster this one was!  I read Dorthea Benton Frank's The Last Original Wife based on the cover, and I hated it.  It looked so beachy and light and lovely, and it was a disaster that made me angry.

-A memoir.  I read a lot of these, but for this particular category, let's go with All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, which is Rachel Manija Brown's memoir about growing up as an American kid in an ashram in India.

-A book you can finish in a day.  After removing an earlier selection (Charlie Holmberg's The Master Magician) from this category because I didn't want to duplicate authors, I had to use Eloisa James' Three Weeks with Lady X.  I can pretty much read any Eloisa James book in under a day, because they are all delicious, and I would recommend this to historical romance lovers--though reading her other Duchess books first might help for some context.

-A trilogy.  I devoured and adored Rae Carson's Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy early this year, which is made of The Girl of Fire and Thorns, The Crown of Embers, and The Bitter Kingdom.  These were some of the first books I read this year, and I absolutely loved them.  I'll definitely read them again, and they really got me back in the writing mood!

-A book set in the future.  I pretty much inhaled These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman.  It's a beautiful young adult sci-fi story with a wonderfully worked romance aspect, and I can't wait to read the companion books.

-A book with a color in the title.  Well, that would have to be Scarlet, Marissa Meyer's awesome sci-fi adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood, which picks up where her sci-fi version of Cinderella, Cinder, left off.  The rest of the series was good, too, but Scarlet was definitely the strongest of the four.

-A book with magic.  Vera Nazarian's magical Cobweb Bride definitely fits this category.  It got off to a slow start, but was utterly enchanting (haha, I'm so funny) by the end.

-A book by an author you've never read before.  Burial Rites by Hannah Kent fits this.  I liked it, but it wasn't as mind-blowing as it was made out to be.

-A book that was originally written in a different language.  Skylight by Jose Saramago.  It's a beautiful character-driven novel that was originally written in Portuguese and wasn't published until after the author's death because of an early snafu with a potential publisher.  I enjoyed it, but did find it to be a bit slow, even for a character-driven novel.

-A book set during Christmas.  I hate books that are set during Christmas.  I find them to be really gimmicky, all "love thy neighbor" and "God is great," which is super annoying to be hit over the head with again and again and again.  But I did read Married by Midnight by Julianne MacLean earlier this year, not realizing at first that it was set during Christmas when I picked it up.  It was okay, I guess, but it didn't leave me rushing to pick up the others in the series.

-A book written by an author with your same initials.  Well, my initials are CH, so I'm going with The Paper Magician by Charlie Holmberg, which was a great Victorian-style fantasy about a girl who learns paper magic and has to save her tutor after his heart is literally stolen out of his chest.  I loved it.

-A book a friend recommended.  My friend Vilhelmina tore through Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses and pushed me to read it so we could discuss, so I tore through it, too.  I liked it, a lot, but it left me a little bit nervous about the next book in the series.

-A book that made you cry.  This was, unintentionally, How To Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz.  Oh, Malcolm...  A beautiful character-driven novel about three girls who come together and separate again over the course of their lives, and the triumphs and tragedies that drive their connections.

-A book you own but have never read.  As I intended, I finished this one with The Martian by Andy Weir, reading it after owning it for about six months.  It's very realistic science fiction, a great intro to the genre for those who are interested in the concept but find the more space-opera-y stories too out there.

-A book based on or turned into a TV show.  Again, as intended, I read Charlaine Harris' Dead Until Dark, the book that started the series that became the HBO show TrueBlood.  As with the show, it was okay but I didn't like it.  The whole necrophiliac aspect of vampire romances kind of creeps me out, to be honest...

-A book set somewhere you've always wanted to visit.  I eventually used Elizabeth Gillbert's The Signature of All Things (which is partially set in Tahiti) for this category, because filling up a category was about all it was good for.  Would not recommend.

-A book that became a movie.  I read Monuments Men by Robert Edsel for this one, and really liked it.  I thought it was going to closely overlap with The Rape of Europa, which I read in school, but it didn't.  It's much more of a narrative history, and includes tons of stuff that Europa didn't even touch on in regards to the Monuments Men and their efforts to protect Europe's treasures during the Allied advance.  Great for WWII history fans.

-A book more than 100 years old.  I'd originally planned to use 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for this, but I really wasn't feeling that, so I read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett instead.  Published in 1905, it fit the category, and I liked the story.  It's very simple, but full of heart.

-A book that came out the year you were born.  I read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander for this category, and had mixed feelings about it. I kind of hated Clare, and felt it was much too long, but I don't know...it kind of grew on me.

-A book from an author you love but haven't read yet.  I read Tamora Pierce's Battle Magic for this, and was quite disappointed.  This is definitely not her finest work, and I would really put it at the bottom of her works in quality.  Read pretty much anything else by her first.

-A book at the bottom of your to-read list.  I used Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit for this, after some convoluted "reading list" math, and actually really liked it.  I'm not a racing buff or fan, by any means, but this was a story with a lot of heart--and true, to boot!

-A book from your childhood.  I asked for the wonderful anniversary edition of the Harry Potter box set for my birthday last month, and quickly read J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for this.  I read the book initially when I was pretty young (probably 9 or 10, I'd say) but it was definitely just as magical today as it was then.

-A book that scares you.  This was another category I ended up inadvertently filling, with Robert Levy's The Glittering World.  It was definitely very creepy and made me sort of nauseous, in a weird way.  But I don't think I would recommend it.

-A book with a love triangle.  I read Kresley Cole's Endless Knight for this, along with its sequel Dead of Winter.  I love this series.  It's a guilty pleasure of mine, though I think it's probably going to get dragged out way longer than it should.

-A book set in high school.  When I couldn't get my hands on Perks of Being a Wallflower, I read The Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen instead.  While I found the writing beautiful and the story compelling, I was frustrated by the ambiguity of the ending.

-A banned book.  As planned, I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini for this.  I can see why people banned it in certain schools and areas, though I heartily disagree with their ideas for doing so, and feel that the beauty of the book and the compelling plot line more than outweigh any cursing or "dangerous" depictions of homosexuality that people object to.  I'd recommend it.

-A classic romance.  Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina isn't a classic romance in the traditional sense, because not all aspects of it are romantic, or happy, but Tolstoy is, of course, a literary genius, and I think this is really worth reading.  Much less philosophical than War and Peace, but with the same beautiful plot at heart.

-A book written by someone under 30.  Allison Beckert volunteered her book Mishap Mansion as fitting this category, due to her age, so I bought it, read it...and didn't really enjoy it.  I think there were some good ideas here but they weren't treated well, and the whole thing came off as annoying rather than enjoyable.

-A popular author's first book. Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People filled this.  It wasn't what I expected, and I found it a bit simplistic--not surprising, considering he originally wrote it when he was 16--but I liked it.  Probably a necessary read for Pratchett fans, but I don't think it was the best book of his to start with.

-A Pulitzer Prize-winning book.  Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See was absolutely beautiful and I can see why everyone loves it so much.  You should read it, if you haven't already.

-A book you were supposed to read in school but didn't.  I was a good student and read the books I was assigned, and I could only think of one exception that wasn't an actual textbook: Affairs of Honor by Joanne B. Freeman.  It had good structure and some interesting bits but was ungodly boring.  Would not recommend for pleasure reading.

-A graphic novel.  Sharaz-de by Sergio Toppi put itself forth as an adaptation of "Scheherazade," but it fell flat in my opinion.  It was notable for the beautiful art, but not for the storytelling.

-A book that takes place in your hometown.  Second Position by Katherine Locke takes place in my second hometown of Washington, DC, and dealt with some very heavy subjects like amputation and miscarriage while being strikingly beautiful at the same time. Wonderful, but not light reading by any means.

-A play. I read Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit for this category.  I know people like it, but I honestly can't recommend a play to be read.  Go see it instead; it'll make more of an impact.

-A book you started but never finished.  I'm glad I came back to Hal Duncan's Vellum for this one, because looking at it with more perspective and a fresh pair of eyes made it a book that I loved, rather than one I despised so much I couldn't finish it--but I think it only appeals to a certain type of reader.  Tread with care.

-A book based on a true story.  For this, I decided to use Kate Alcott's The Dressmaker, which relies heavily on the sinking of the Titanic and the trials that followed.  It's good, but I've read better; the main character was too lacking for my taste.

-A book your mom loves.  My mom loves The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, and after reading it, I really enjoyed it, too.  I bought my own copy after borrowing the one I read from the library, I enjoyed it so much.  I think fans of Gone with the Wind's variety of historical romance and struggle would like this, though the settings are very different in both time and place.

-A book with antonyms in the title.  I hadn't even realized I completed this category until Jeffrey Cook, author of Foul Is Fair, pointed out that his title counted for it!  Doi!  This was good, but lacked the dark edge of most faerie books, which is (in my opinion) what makes them tantalizing.

-A book with bad reviews.  I used Maggie Shipstead's Seating Arrangements for this, after seeing the reviews when I finished the book--I hadn't looked at them in advance.  The rating isn't terrible but the reviews certainly aren't favorable, and I could see why.  I didn't hate it, but also didn't enjoy it.  Just a meh title for me.