Hi! With the year at an end, I've been reviewing how I did over the past year, which brings me to this year's reading challenge. Last year's In Review post was abysmal in so many ways but I am happy to report that this one was better. Somewhere on the title of the book will be the entry it fulfilled, and then I'll share a bit of what the book is about or what I thought about it. There may be a bit of smut in this year's list. I'd apologize buuuuut I'm not sorry. Maybe a little really embarrassed 😓 but not particularly sorry. Part of the reason I read so much smut is because I'm a book reviewer and I'd like to review more than just mysteries, clean romances and non-fictions. Part of it is because I enjoy the actual plot of the book and the dirty parts are secondary for me. Part of the reason is because with me being a book reviewer, I've seen a bunch of smut books. It gets hard to change the formula and to do so successfully is something I like to read. The final part of the reason is because I'm disgusting. lol First, let's review the challenge entries and we'll get to the books.
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| Entries 1-9 |
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| Entries 10-18 |
This book is set in late 1800s Illinois and is about a teenager whose stepfather sends her to a boarding house after she gets pregnant. As Nell gets used to a new life on her own she begins to plot how exactly to run away from the boarding house, but she finds a couple of welcoming faces and realizes it will be harder to leave than she initially anticipated. The warden is a cruel man who keeps a number of secrets about his boarding house--literally, as Nell finds the bodies of a young woman and a child boarded up inside the building. She tries to get to the bottom of things all while wondering if the same fate could happen to her. This was a solid mystery. I was expecting a romance to develop and that part of the plot was a bit confusing, but I liked that the meat of the story involved Nell and her finding her way.
Oh this is absolutely smut. It's extremely dirty. lol It is also, however, partially about time travel. Basically, Gwynne finds herself transported through time, where not one but two men are waiting to call her theirs. No, it's not a love triangle per se. She doesn't have to choose between the two; they're a package deal. The three of them are together in every sense of the word. The men don't sexually interact with each other; they're both there for Gwynne. As a sexually liberated broad living in today's times (LOL), I mean......that's kinda hot. 😅 I'm not really a judgmental person when it comes to people's intimate tastes; my brother and sisters-in-law are polyamorous so triad relationships don't bother me. I actually find them really interesting if done correctly and with the attention that building a healthy relationship of this kind deserves. It doesn't fetishize a triad in the way I've seen other books do, nor was it a seamless or conflict-less transition. I appreciate that more books are being written with this setup, and this is a mythical/supernatural book so that's a bonus. It is heavy on the dirty and I'm fine with that too. lol All of that aside, I enjoyed the book. It wasn't the best I'd read all year but I liked the differences between the men, I enjoyed the supernatural bit, and I liked the world that the author created in order for these characters to exist.
I can't clearly remember if this book has smut in it but if it does, I'm sorry for not warning you. lol This is the story of Shelly and Cal, a married couple whose happiness is shattered by a drunken night and one mistake. At a friend's bachelor party, Cal gets blackout drunk and has a one-night stand. When he remembers what he did, he comes clean to his wife Shelly, who leaves him. Desperate to keep his wife, he asks her to give him 8 weeks in which he will work his hardest to show her the depth of his love and his willingness to fight for their marriage. It's a sappy, emotional book but I enjoyed it. Shelly started to get on my nerves a little, but I find that common with romance heroines. lol Overall though, I liked it. For me, cheating has and will always be a dealbreaker. I don't eff with those who cheat, I won't cheat on mine, and once that's been broken there's no turning back. I don't do second chances with that, which I know is harsh, but I just can't do it. Because of my intolerance, it has always intrigued me to read the stories, even the fictional ones, of those who fight through those situations and come out better for them. Sometimes a mistake really is just a mistake, and it helps for people like me to read stories in which that's actually true. Again, because of my intolerance I found myself feeling conflicted and eventually going against my opinion as I made my way through the book and I love books that challenge my ideals and opinions. I've read a couple of other books in this series (8 Weeks is the intro and setup for some of the other couples who get a book in the series) and I enjoy this author's work. I almost added this to the anthology entry in the series, but I think I'm missing the last two books so I can't add it just yet.
I read this shortly after finishing Beyond Narcos, another novel by Shaun Attwood, which is a few entries down on this list. I can't remember which came first in the series; I want to say Beyond Narcos was the first book and this was the follow-up. I believe that's what it was because there were details in American Made that had been touched on briefly in Beyond Narcos. Anyway, American Made delves into a lot of heavy stuff but brings everything full circle to answer the question on the title. Barry Seal was a pilot for the Medellin cartel and at some point flipped sides but just before being able to give the government his side of the story, he was murdered. Most people pinned it on a vengeful Pablo Escobar wanting to shut Seal's mouth due to the amount of things he knew, but another theory--that holds a surprising amount of weight--is the theory that the American government had him killed with the idea of making the public think it was the Medellin cartel. It explores the relationship between the Colombian and US governments and reveals that things were a bit more chummy than initially thought, which you also see a bit of in Narcos. If you're into conspiracy theories that suggest our government does not have our best interests at heart, you'll like this one.
I don't often read books about improving the brain. Much like self-help books, I don't really put too much stock into what I read in books like these. It's become a solid argument that brain exercises and general exercises that are recommended for the brain aren't very effective and for some people, are more of a placebo effect than anything else. I agree and disagree with that theory, as I have found using different parts of my brain for the exercises does help strengthen my retention skills and get the rust off of the parts I don't use as often. But I also didn't notice an improvement in other targeted areas I was trying to improve so for me, I find myself somewhere in the middle of the argument. I wanted to see what this book had in the way of 'exercising' the brain--I also think I won this book in a giveaway and had to review it--so I gave it a look. I read it at the beginning of the year so I can't remember if I liked it or not. I tried to go back and look at it to jog my memory but Kindle deleted it from my library. lol I'm sorry I can't detail what it's about, but there is a free sample available for download in the Kindle store if you'd like to check it out for yourself.
Gladly Beyond is another kinda sappy book that I read sometime in the fall but ended up enjoying. The book is set in Italy, fulfilling the requirement for this entry, and I think I underestimated what the book would be about. I was expecting a basic romance but it actually ended up being quite interesting. An ancient familial curse affects three brothers, who each grow up with some kind of powerful supernatural talent, but each have the curse of eventually being destroyed in part by said power. At least I think that's what the curse was, I'm sorry if I'm wrong. lol Anyway, one of the brothers meets a newly single art appraiser during a job and not only is she unaffected by his curse, she seems to have something supernatural going on in her own life. In each selfie she takes, a mysterious man is always somewhere in the background of the photo. The two team up and obviously fall in love, but they realize their love story is apparently centuries in the making. I appreciate a good mix of supernatural, romance and mystery but it's often basic and predictably executed and this book had a little of both things, but ultimately came together in a way that I liked. The heroine was a little irritating, as they often are to me lol, but I liked the plot. The elements came together in a way that felt true for this series, even if I did have my suspicions as to who the true villain was pretty early on. I didn't feel like I could have read this book somewhere else and slapped someone else's characters onto it, a typical issue with some supernatural books. Gladly Beyond was a good lead-in to other books in the series and left just enough unanswered questions to make you come back.
I read this book at the beginning of the year while I was waiting for season 3 of Narcos and its well worth the read. Every time I watch Narcos, I fall into this rabbit hole of sorts where I become totally absorbed in the show and the characters depicted in it. I start reading articles, books, finding other shows that were based on the events that took place, and that leads me to Beyond Narcos. This pulled me in because of the top caption, which I found intriguing as I now see how much of the story Netflix left out. They kept true to the general timeline of events, but there are a lot of other things they didn't include, probably so that they'd have more time to develop the other plotlines. The most disappointing thing Netflix left out was the supposed American involvement in the drug war in Colombia. They touched on it a little, alluded to it a couple of times, but never came out full stop and said that the American government got involved in this war and others for its own benefit. This book does and the follow-up, American Made, goes into more detail about it. If you know me then you know I love a good conspiracy theory. I've always thought the hands of the American government were dirtier than they let on, and this book makes you question just how dirty they may be. Of course, you have to take these types of stories with a grain of salt but the notion that they may be accurate is a pretty strong one.
I could have picked this book for the "In a genre you don't read" category because I usually don't bother with books like this too often anymore. I find many of them to be filled with vaguely motivating statements and the same repeated rhetoric or a get-rich-quick style approach to the topic at hand, whether it be cultivating happiness, becoming more emotionally aware or moving beyond your past. Topics like these aren't a one-and-done situation and I found that out the hard way after feeling like a failure for not always being able to maintain the things I read in these books. It's an ongoing thing that requires lifelong effort and work, which is something many self-help books don't tell you. They make it seem like once you 'unlock' or 'unleash' the secret, your life immediately transforms and nothing ever knocks you the way it once did and if it does, you did something wrong because it isn't supposed to do that. It's a false narrative that I only realized after I'd failed repeatedly and didn't understand why. Life doesn't work that way, that's why I kept failing. Once I discovered that secret, self-help books that promise to teach you something in a certain duration or promise to change your life didn't seem so appealing anymore. They seem more like greedy attempts to capitalize than they do genuine efforts to help. I'm probably wrong, but that's what it feels like. Anyway, enough bitching about self-help books. This particular book is a guide about how to become more mindful and emotionally aware by integrating a 7 step, 20-minute routine into your life. I don't mind a daily integration of mindfulness practices; I think we could all benefit from a small recess during the day just to recenter our brains because everything's so fast-paced. This book has a lot of helpful quotables about how to learn to listen to ourselves, the importance of emotional health, and helpful exercises to help you learn to take accountability of your feelings and thoughts. Despite all the bitching I just did, I actually liked this book. The exercises were helpful, not time consuming or overwhelming, and can actually help someone to become more emotionally conscious over time.
I could cook and read cookbooks all day long. To look at all of the different ways you can manipulate an ingredient and the different taste profiles you can create from one ingredient is so fun for me. I'm familiar with Mexican food because of where I live but this recipe covers the main countries in Central America and I was interested in the native foods of some of these places, so I checked it out. There are a few recipes that I'm familiar with the Mexican versions of (like chilaquiles, which are called chilaquilas in Central America or picadillo, which is a mixture of ground beef and potato but in Central America the potatoes are switched out for plantains), but there are tons that I've never heard of, like papaya milk and jibarito, which is a sandwich with buns made of fried plantains. I can't see myself cooking all of the dishes in the cookbook, but there were quite a few that I'm interested in making.
I reviewed this book back in August so I won't go into too much detail here, but it was probably the most exciting book I read this year. It's a government thriller that I recommend you read if you like thrillers, suspense films or conspiracy theory-type books. It can be read as a standalone, but it's actually the final in a trilogy of books based on CIA secrets, murder and corruption at all levels of the US government.
A few months ago, Smashwords had a massive sale and marked tons of books down to free, so obviously I was all over it. Something I've noticed about Smashwords is that it seems a bit easier for an indie author to make their debut there rather than Amazon or other well-known platforms, and I like that. I came across How to Defeat Procrastination through said sale and to be honest, I wasn't sure if I was going to like the book or not. I've made no secret of my issues with procrastination so if anyone had any helpful advice or things I could do to slowly whittle it out of my life, I was down. This is a very quick read and it did have some useful tips and quotables that I highlighted, but I found myself distracted by the grammatical errors and I noticed that a few of the tips to help one stop procrastinating were more motivational tips rather than procrastination assistance tips. You would assume there isn't a difference between motivating someone to be active and motivating someone to stop procrastinating, but listen. I'm a procrastination connoisseur. I know about most of the typical tricks, tips and strategies to combat a procrastinating spirit and trust me, there's a difference between the two. The book had the right idea and I enjoyed the motivational bits, but it wasn't quite what I needed.
And those were the challenge entries I had throughout the year. Obviously I wish I could have completely finished the challenge but I can deal with what I was able to finish. If I've learned anything from doing these reading challenges over the years, its that I do much better with challenges geared at one genre or number-based challenges. Targeted challenges where I have to read a specific kind of book don't really seem to be where it's at for me and I fail every single time I try them. So I won't be doing a targeted reading challenge next year. I'm just going to stick with the Goodreads challenge, which looks at the number of books you read rather than a specific genre.
If you want to try your hand at a reading challenge next year, Reading Challenge Addict already has a master list of different sites holding a 2018 reading challenge. You should be able to find something you like on there; the list has a lot of variety and options for you to check out. I had fun trying to create my own reading challenge for a couple of years; it was never something I expected to take off like the lists on RCA's page, it was just something I wanted to try doing. Maybe I'll revisit creating my own someday but until then, I'm going to follow the crowd. lol See you tomorrow!
I don't often read books about improving the brain. Much like self-help books, I don't really put too much stock into what I read in books like these. It's become a solid argument that brain exercises and general exercises that are recommended for the brain aren't very effective and for some people, are more of a placebo effect than anything else. I agree and disagree with that theory, as I have found using different parts of my brain for the exercises does help strengthen my retention skills and get the rust off of the parts I don't use as often. But I also didn't notice an improvement in other targeted areas I was trying to improve so for me, I find myself somewhere in the middle of the argument. I wanted to see what this book had in the way of 'exercising' the brain--I also think I won this book in a giveaway and had to review it--so I gave it a look. I read it at the beginning of the year so I can't remember if I liked it or not. I tried to go back and look at it to jog my memory but Kindle deleted it from my library. lol I'm sorry I can't detail what it's about, but there is a free sample available for download in the Kindle store if you'd like to check it out for yourself.
I was starting to think that maybe this entry wouldn't get filled because most celebrity memoirs are either out of my price range or I'm simply not interested in the celebrity. I was out at my favorite thrift shop a couple of weeks ago when I randomly stumbled on this one and I had to get it. Lauren Bacall was one of my favorite classic film actresses and I was always more intrigued by her marriage to Humphrey Bogart than I have ever been by today's celebrity couples. I'm not finished with this book yet but I already love it.
Gladly Beyond is another kinda sappy book that I read sometime in the fall but ended up enjoying. The book is set in Italy, fulfilling the requirement for this entry, and I think I underestimated what the book would be about. I was expecting a basic romance but it actually ended up being quite interesting. An ancient familial curse affects three brothers, who each grow up with some kind of powerful supernatural talent, but each have the curse of eventually being destroyed in part by said power. At least I think that's what the curse was, I'm sorry if I'm wrong. lol Anyway, one of the brothers meets a newly single art appraiser during a job and not only is she unaffected by his curse, she seems to have something supernatural going on in her own life. In each selfie she takes, a mysterious man is always somewhere in the background of the photo. The two team up and obviously fall in love, but they realize their love story is apparently centuries in the making. I appreciate a good mix of supernatural, romance and mystery but it's often basic and predictably executed and this book had a little of both things, but ultimately came together in a way that I liked. The heroine was a little irritating, as they often are to me lol, but I liked the plot. The elements came together in a way that felt true for this series, even if I did have my suspicions as to who the true villain was pretty early on. I didn't feel like I could have read this book somewhere else and slapped someone else's characters onto it, a typical issue with some supernatural books. Gladly Beyond was a good lead-in to other books in the series and left just enough unanswered questions to make you come back.
I read this book at the beginning of the year while I was waiting for season 3 of Narcos and its well worth the read. Every time I watch Narcos, I fall into this rabbit hole of sorts where I become totally absorbed in the show and the characters depicted in it. I start reading articles, books, finding other shows that were based on the events that took place, and that leads me to Beyond Narcos. This pulled me in because of the top caption, which I found intriguing as I now see how much of the story Netflix left out. They kept true to the general timeline of events, but there are a lot of other things they didn't include, probably so that they'd have more time to develop the other plotlines. The most disappointing thing Netflix left out was the supposed American involvement in the drug war in Colombia. They touched on it a little, alluded to it a couple of times, but never came out full stop and said that the American government got involved in this war and others for its own benefit. This book does and the follow-up, American Made, goes into more detail about it. If you know me then you know I love a good conspiracy theory. I've always thought the hands of the American government were dirtier than they let on, and this book makes you question just how dirty they may be. Of course, you have to take these types of stories with a grain of salt but the notion that they may be accurate is a pretty strong one.
I could have picked this book for the "In a genre you don't read" category because I usually don't bother with books like this too often anymore. I find many of them to be filled with vaguely motivating statements and the same repeated rhetoric or a get-rich-quick style approach to the topic at hand, whether it be cultivating happiness, becoming more emotionally aware or moving beyond your past. Topics like these aren't a one-and-done situation and I found that out the hard way after feeling like a failure for not always being able to maintain the things I read in these books. It's an ongoing thing that requires lifelong effort and work, which is something many self-help books don't tell you. They make it seem like once you 'unlock' or 'unleash' the secret, your life immediately transforms and nothing ever knocks you the way it once did and if it does, you did something wrong because it isn't supposed to do that. It's a false narrative that I only realized after I'd failed repeatedly and didn't understand why. Life doesn't work that way, that's why I kept failing. Once I discovered that secret, self-help books that promise to teach you something in a certain duration or promise to change your life didn't seem so appealing anymore. They seem more like greedy attempts to capitalize than they do genuine efforts to help. I'm probably wrong, but that's what it feels like. Anyway, enough bitching about self-help books. This particular book is a guide about how to become more mindful and emotionally aware by integrating a 7 step, 20-minute routine into your life. I don't mind a daily integration of mindfulness practices; I think we could all benefit from a small recess during the day just to recenter our brains because everything's so fast-paced. This book has a lot of helpful quotables about how to learn to listen to ourselves, the importance of emotional health, and helpful exercises to help you learn to take accountability of your feelings and thoughts. Despite all the bitching I just did, I actually liked this book. The exercises were helpful, not time consuming or overwhelming, and can actually help someone to become more emotionally conscious over time.
I could cook and read cookbooks all day long. To look at all of the different ways you can manipulate an ingredient and the different taste profiles you can create from one ingredient is so fun for me. I'm familiar with Mexican food because of where I live but this recipe covers the main countries in Central America and I was interested in the native foods of some of these places, so I checked it out. There are a few recipes that I'm familiar with the Mexican versions of (like chilaquiles, which are called chilaquilas in Central America or picadillo, which is a mixture of ground beef and potato but in Central America the potatoes are switched out for plantains), but there are tons that I've never heard of, like papaya milk and jibarito, which is a sandwich with buns made of fried plantains. I can't see myself cooking all of the dishes in the cookbook, but there were quite a few that I'm interested in making.
I reviewed this book back in August so I won't go into too much detail here, but it was probably the most exciting book I read this year. It's a government thriller that I recommend you read if you like thrillers, suspense films or conspiracy theory-type books. It can be read as a standalone, but it's actually the final in a trilogy of books based on CIA secrets, murder and corruption at all levels of the US government.
A few months ago, Smashwords had a massive sale and marked tons of books down to free, so obviously I was all over it. Something I've noticed about Smashwords is that it seems a bit easier for an indie author to make their debut there rather than Amazon or other well-known platforms, and I like that. I came across How to Defeat Procrastination through said sale and to be honest, I wasn't sure if I was going to like the book or not. I've made no secret of my issues with procrastination so if anyone had any helpful advice or things I could do to slowly whittle it out of my life, I was down. This is a very quick read and it did have some useful tips and quotables that I highlighted, but I found myself distracted by the grammatical errors and I noticed that a few of the tips to help one stop procrastinating were more motivational tips rather than procrastination assistance tips. You would assume there isn't a difference between motivating someone to be active and motivating someone to stop procrastinating, but listen. I'm a procrastination connoisseur. I know about most of the typical tricks, tips and strategies to combat a procrastinating spirit and trust me, there's a difference between the two. The book had the right idea and I enjoyed the motivational bits, but it wasn't quite what I needed.
And those were the challenge entries I had throughout the year. Obviously I wish I could have completely finished the challenge but I can deal with what I was able to finish. If I've learned anything from doing these reading challenges over the years, its that I do much better with challenges geared at one genre or number-based challenges. Targeted challenges where I have to read a specific kind of book don't really seem to be where it's at for me and I fail every single time I try them. So I won't be doing a targeted reading challenge next year. I'm just going to stick with the Goodreads challenge, which looks at the number of books you read rather than a specific genre.
If you want to try your hand at a reading challenge next year, Reading Challenge Addict already has a master list of different sites holding a 2018 reading challenge. You should be able to find something you like on there; the list has a lot of variety and options for you to check out. I had fun trying to create my own reading challenge for a couple of years; it was never something I expected to take off like the lists on RCA's page, it was just something I wanted to try doing. Maybe I'll revisit creating my own someday but until then, I'm going to follow the crowd. lol See you tomorrow!
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