Monday, August 24, 2015

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Happy Monday!

There are only 2 Monday's left in August and I am so excited for Fall right around the corner. Not only are there a ton of new books coming out this year that I can't wait to get my hands on, the cooler weather is so much more conducive to laying around and reading.

This week, I'm focusing on a few things.

On my Kindle, I'm reading Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari.  I picked this up a few weeks ago when it was on the Kindle Daily Deal.  I love Aziz's stand up, so I'm excited to see how his humor comes across in print.

On audio, I will be listening to What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey.  I prefer nonfiction audio during my commute and while doing housework.  Plus, this book is only about four hours long so I should be able to complete it while driving to work without a problem this week.

I also have The Chosen by Chaim Potok and Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia by Susan Massie waiting for my at the library to pick up.  I'm sure I will start, but most likely not finish these books by the end of the week.

On the blog front, I would like to have at least one more post up by the weekend.  I'm not sure what that will be yet (maybe a monthly wrap up?) so let me know if you have any suggestions!


Sunday, August 23, 2015

Bout of Books 17 Wrap Up

Well hello there, stranger.  6 1/2 months, no post.  Whoops!

I have been reading in ebbs and flows over the past few months and I utilized this week's Bout of Books 17 readathon as a way to refocus on books and to finish my 2015 Goodreads Challenge.

This week, I started and finished The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons (810 pages!).  The first 200-300 pages of the book were really compelling.  So compelling, that even though I started reading my library's copy of the book I went out and bought not just one, but the entire trilogy so I could read straight through.  In hindsight, I'm not sure the $50 I spent on the trilogy was entirely worth it after finishing the first book.

Some parts of the book dragged on and on, beating their message or a monotonous theme over my head (the God is going to save the Soviet Union message was pretty heavy in the middle section of the book) and if the book were shorter, around 500-600 pages, I think I would have enjoyed the overall reading experience more.  Now, rather than moving on directly to the second books in the trilogy, Tatiana and Alexander, I'm going to move on to something else.

During the week I also listened to Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson on audiobook on a whim at work.  I had a lot of paperwork filing to do and I thought listening to this wouldn't be too difficult or distracting and it was relatively short so I could complete it in one day.  Unfortunately, the story was so simple and non-engaging that I found myself not paying attention.

Despite the fact that most of my reading has been lackluster this week I reached my Goodreads goal of reading 40 books in 2015! I increased my goal to 50 and I am confident I will reach that by December.