Author Topic: 50 Books in 2018!  (Read 115459 times)

Raenia

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #450 on: May 26, 2018, 05:26:55 PM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD

40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)

bucketsofrain

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #451 on: May 26, 2018, 08:41:59 PM »
1.) Gorilla and the Bird by Zack McDermott 4/5
2.) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 3/5
3.) Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabo 5/5
4.) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 3/5
5.) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie 5/5
6.) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 3/5
7.) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf 4/5
8.) My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris 5/5
9.) Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 5/5
10.) Universal Harvester by John Darnielle 2/5
11.) We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 5/5
12.) Red Winter by Anneli Furmark 4/5
13.) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 5/5
14.) Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson 4/5
15.) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby 3/5
16.) What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi 4/5
17.) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 4/5
18.) This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz 4/5
19.) This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett 4/5
20.) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 5/5
21.) The Vegetarian by Han Kang 3/5
22.) The Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henriquez 4/5
23.) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris 4/5
24.) What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah 4/5
25.) The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky 4/5
26.) The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty 4/5
27.) A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
28.) Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen 4/5
29.) Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
30.) Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti 5/5
31.) The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel 4/5
32.) The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti 4/5
33.) I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara 4/5 (I do think there was a chance I would have given this 5/5 if McNamara had been able to finish the book while she were alive and carry out her vision for it)
34.) Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness by Rebecca Solnit 5/5

ringer707

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #452 on: May 27, 2018, 06:04:58 PM »
1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
2. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
4. How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
6. Between the World and Me by Ta Nahisi Coates
7. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
8. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
9. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Illustrated) by J.K. Rowling
11. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
12. Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
13. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
14. Beloved by Toni Morrison
15. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
16. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
17. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
18. Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
19. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
20. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
21. In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park
22. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
23. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez
24. Monster by Walter Dean Myers
25. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
26. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
27. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

woopwoop

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #453 on: May 27, 2018, 06:06:39 PM »
1. Cane River - this was for a book club, which is the only reason I finished it. Five hundred pages of depressing slavery historical fiction, ranging from super depressing slave rape and torture to slightly-less-depressing institutional racism by the end of the saga. Would not recommend.
2. The Road Less Traveled - this is a psychology cult classic from the 70s that's fun to read. In one chapter he mentions in a footnote that "the only healthy marriage is an open marriage." Lol, the seventies were awesome.
3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - a well-written and darkly funny YA fantasy novella. Think CS Lewis with vampires.
4. The Hating Game - this was just a bubble gum contemporary romcom about a love-hate-love relationship. Super fast and sexy read, recommended as a nice beach read if you like romance.
5. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - How did I end up reading so much YA at the beginning of this year? I don't even particularly like YA, these were all recommended to me. This was a fun romp of pirates and highwaymen and gay interracial relationships in the 1800s, but it was very very YA. I can't even put my finger on what "Very YA" means, but whatever it was, this book was that. My next read is YA, too, then I think I'm done for a while. I think it's the quirkiness that gets me. Everyone is so goddamn quirky in YA books.
6. Jane Unlimited - ugh, another YA, this one with a quirky main character who makes artsy umbrellas. Four mentions of Doctor Who in the first half of the book, how weird and nerdy lolol!!! I'm so done with YA.
7. Dead Wake - okay, this one is historical fiction about the Lusitania. I don't know history so this is always good for me. Plus Erik Larsen is the tits, this was a guaranteed Good Book after my latest string of failures. This book is not quite as good as his epicly awesome Devil in the White City that I love love loved, but it's still good and suspenseful.
8.The Duke and I - Regency romance, definitely more erotic than Jane Austen. Fun and light but not particularly great. Recommended all over the place as one of the best contemporary-written regency romances, which probably means I just don't really like this genre. I love Jane Austen, though, oh well.
9.Paris To the Moon - Another French travelogue about an American moving his family to Paris. Funny, well-written, but not epically hilarious like my favorite of this genre, Toujours Provence.
10. Drop the Ball - nonfiction, about how women need to stop trying to do it all. Kind of a companion book to Lean In, which I also didn't like. This book just feels repetitive. It did get my husband and I to make a spreadsheet for our grocery lists, though.
11. A Man Called Ove - another book club read, I guess it was a movie? Anyway, it made me ugly cry at the end although the opening chapters were hard for me to get into. Old grumpy man inspirational lit, I would classify it.
12. The Artist's Way - I am not in the right spot to get into this kind of book, in that I have a toddler and would love to do "morning pages" but it's clear from the way this author writes that she cannot imagine not having alone time every day. Well, bully for her. I'll pick this back up in a few years.
13. Designs for Living and Learning - really great book about childhood learning environments. Gave me a bunch to think about as I create living spaces for my young toddler.
14. Voyage  -a play by Tom Stoppard that's a witty sendup of every Russian play from the greats. Lots of philosophizing and wordplay, but not nearly as entertaining as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which everyone should read (and watch the movie version!) if they have ever read Hamlet. For you Game of Thrones fans out there, Jorah is Hamlet, and that should seal the deal. He also wrote Shakespeare in Love which was a fun screenplay.
15. Chrysalis - nonfiction, an account of female naturalist Maria Meriam. The book I'm writing is going to have a main character named after her, so I thought I'd do some research. Really interesting so far, she was a gifted artist and scientist back when science was stuck more in naming and classifying rather than experimenting. Makes me excited to write my book!
16. The Kingmaker's Daughter - historical fiction by the same woman who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl which I loved. This was a great book, made even greater by the fact that I don't know any history at all. What will happen to Anne and Richard? I don't know, it's a mystery! Makes reading historical fiction all the better, imo.
16b. The Shadow of the Wind - I... really didn't like this. I didn't even finish it, so that's why it's going on the list as 16b. Just awful, pretentious writing. Maybe it's the translation? I had high hopes and a lot of people recommended it, but I found it utterly lacking.
17. The Refrigerator Monologues - On recommendation by this thread. I didn't really care for this one, maybe because I don't know an awful lot about comics. Most of the characters had the same voice, there weren't any great new perspectives. I dunno, I might have been in the wrong frame of mind for this.
18. The Whole-Brain Child - Some really good suggestions for how to handle parenting decisions, based on brain science of developing children. Some of it was for older kids so not quite as useful, but a lot of excellent practical advice for toddler meltdowns, etc. We have been lucky so far with our kid (not quite 2!) but I'm sure she'll be testing our patience soon enough so I want to be prepared.
19. Transatlantic - Another historical fiction about Ireland, transatlantic flight, Frederick Douglass, and some other things that are not really interesting to me. Also the author uses way too many. Sentence fragments. For dramatic effect. And I'm sick of it.
20. Brain on Fire - Nonfiction account of a NY Post journalist who went crazy due to a rare form of encephalitis. Super interesting, like reading a House episode. Ending kind of dragged on weakly but otherwise very engaging.
21. The Philosophical Baby - An overview of studies on the cognitive and emotional capabilities of developing babies. I liked it, but not a lot of good parenting takeaways other than "don't neglect your baby".
22. The Importance of Being Earnest   -Reread this one for funsies. It was fun, like all Wilde is fun.
23. Lady Windemere's Fan - Oh, so fun!
24. The Thirteenth Tale - Solid meh. Gothic mystery type book, very debut-novel in that there's lots of meta-commentary on books and reading and literature. I did the same thing in my debut novel, and I cringe whenever I read it somewhere else. Too long for not enough payoff and I guessed the ending.
25. The Wizard of Earthsea -Thanks to whoever recommended this one in this thread. Leguin is amazing but I've only read The Left Hand Side of Darkness by her and I need to read more. I didn't realize it was YA but I just ran through it super fast.
26. All Our Wrong Todays - GREAT time travel romance book, really really fun. If Chuck Palahniuk wrote The Time Traveller's Wife, this is what it would have turned out as.
27.The Girl Who Drew Butterflies - another biography of Maria Merian as research, YA stuff so very light. My toddler liked looking at all the pictures of butterflies, haha.
28.Superintelligence - Holy moly, this is a fascinating book. Regardless of when you think the singularity will come, there are risks associated with AI and this book does a great job of giving an overview of possible pitfalls where our world will be turned into a ball of paperclips... or something. Really interesting if you're at all into artificial intelligence.
29.Parenting in the Digital Age - pretty much a memoir of an advertising/TV guy with some little parenting stuff thrown in with plenty of unsourced speculative assertions. Fun to read, but just about useless when it comes to making evidence based decisions.
30.How to Raise a Child with a High EQ - that's an "emotional quotient", and it's pretty straightforward stuff, lots of repetition I'd already read in books about positive parenting and emotional discipline. Also not super useful until my kid gets a bit older. 
31.Evening Star - Oh, my freaking god, this book is amazing. Larry McMurty is the guy who wrote Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment, and this book was actually a sequel to the latter but it didn't read like a sequel at all. It was amazing, poignant, and made me ugly cry at the end, and then again at midnight when I woke up and thought about the book, and probably a couple more times in the future if I'm being honest here. Great writing, characters, interesting take on how relationships work. BEST BOOK SO FAR ON MY LIST.

Raenia

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #454 on: May 28, 2018, 04:43:21 PM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)

41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018) - Very long, repetitive, and often dated, but there were some useful sections as well.  I recommend not reading the whole thing, just picking the sections that look useful to you.

Tick-Tock

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #455 on: May 28, 2018, 08:18:44 PM »
56.  Elizabeth Willard Thames, Meet the Frugalwoods
57.  Connie Willis, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories
58.  Sally Andrew, Recipes for Love and Murder
59.  Susan Elia MacNeal, Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante
60.  Susan Elia MacNeal, Princess Elizabeth's Spy

FireHiker

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #456 on: May 29, 2018, 10:26:02 AM »
1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read in one night since it's been 20 years and my son was reading it in school)
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
13. All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (I WILL get through his complete works...eventually)
14. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
18. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
19. Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames
20. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
21. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
22. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
23. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
24. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
25. Shattered Air by Bob Madgic
26. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
27. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
28. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
29. The Comedy of Errors by Willliam Shakespeare

30. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
31. Eat & Run by Scott Jurek

tnrunner

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #457 on: May 30, 2018, 04:43:11 PM »
1. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
2. Three to get deadly by Janet Evanovich
3. Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
4. Seamless by Angie Smith
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Hot six by Janet Evanovich
7. Seven up by Janet Evanovich
8. hard eight by janet evanovich
9. Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors
10. To the nines by Janet Evanovich
11. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
12. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich
13. The Lazarus Vendetta by Patrick Larkin
14. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
15. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
16. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
17. The Maze by Catherine Coulter
18. The Silenced by Heather Graham
19. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
20. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
21. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille
22. Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
23. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
24. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner

25. Find Her by Lisa Gardner

FireHiker

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #458 on: June 01, 2018, 09:26:45 AM »
1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read in one night since it's been 20 years and my son was reading it in school)
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
13. All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (I WILL get through his complete works...eventually)
14. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
18. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
19. Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames
20. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
21. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
22. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
23. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
24. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
25. Shattered Air by Bob Madgic
26. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
27. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
28. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
29. The Comedy of Errors by Willliam Shakespeare
30. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
31. Eat & Run by Scott Jurek

32. Cymbeline by William Shakespeare

bucketsofrain

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #459 on: June 01, 2018, 08:29:59 PM »
1.) Gorilla and the Bird by Zack McDermott 4/5
2.) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 3/5
3.) Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabo 5/5
4.) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 3/5
5.) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie 5/5
6.) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 3/5
7.) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf 4/5
8.) My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris 5/5
9.) Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 5/5
10.) Universal Harvester by John Darnielle 2/5
11.) We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 5/5
12.) Red Winter by Anneli Furmark 4/5
13.) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 5/5
14.) Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson 4/5
15.) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby 3/5
16.) What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi 4/5
17.) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 4/5
18.) This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz 4/5
19.) This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett 4/5
20.) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 5/5
21.) The Vegetarian by Han Kang 3/5
22.) The Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henriquez 4/5
23.) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris 4/5
24.) What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah 4/5
25.) The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky 4/5
26.) The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty 4/5
27.) A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
28.) Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen 4/5
29.) Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
30.) Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti 5/5
31.) The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel 4/5
32.) The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti 4/5
33.) I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara 4/5
34.) Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
35.) How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti 4/5
36.) Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard 4/5

Raenia

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #460 on: June 02, 2018, 06:34:49 AM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018) - Very long, repetitive, and often dated, but there were some useful sections as well.  I recommend not reading the whole thing, just picking the sections that look useful to you.

42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)
« Last Edit: June 03, 2018, 06:10:26 AM by Raenia »

tnrunner

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #461 on: June 04, 2018, 06:37:27 PM »
1. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
2. Three to get deadly by Janet Evanovich
3. Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
4. Seamless by Angie Smith
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Hot six by Janet Evanovich
7. Seven up by Janet Evanovich
8. hard eight by janet evanovich
9. Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors
10. To the nines by Janet Evanovich
11. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
12. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich
13. The Lazarus Vendetta by Patrick Larkin
14. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
15. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
16. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
17. The Maze by Catherine Coulter
18. The Silenced by Heather Graham
19. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
20. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
21. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille
22. Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
23. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
24. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
25. Find Her by Lisa Gardner

26. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich

Bracken_Joy

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #462 on: June 05, 2018, 07:18:50 AM »
1. A Torch Against The Night- Sabaa Tahir- 1/8/18
--I cannot wait until the next one. Excellent books.
2. Hounded - Kevin Hearne - 1/17/18
3. Hexed - Kevin Hearne- 1/23/18
--fun short reads. Doritos for the brain. Not quite as good as Dresden, but still entertaining.
4. Hammered- Kevin Hearne- 2/9/18
--this one wasn't quite as good at the first two, but it was readable. Hope the next is better again.
5. Lab Girl- Hope Jahren- 2/24/18
--God this took me forever. It just was not compelling for me. Got better at the half way point, but just not my cup of tea. My book club all loved it, though, so maybe I'm alone on this one! I think it would be way more interesting to people who haven't worked in research before, because it'd be 'exploring an unknown life' style.
6. Tricked- Kevin Hearne- 3/2/18
7. World War Z- Max Brooks - 3/5/18
--As always (it was a reread for book club), an excellent book.
8. Trapped- Kevin Hearne - 3/12/18
9. Hunted- Kevin Hearne - 3/23/18
10. Shattered- Kevin Hearne - 4/2/18
11. Staked - Kevin Hearne - 4/11/18
12. Beseiged- Kevin Hearne- 4/17/18
13. Scourged- Kevin Hearne- 4/25/18
14. The Maze Runner- James Dashner- 5/6/18 -- This was another re-read for book club. Still a good read. I'll probably not bother to read the whole series again- the first one really is the best one.
15. A Court of Thorns and Roses- Sarah J Maas- 5/11/18 -- It was a compelling read, but not necessarily a good read. Ended up way more romance than action bend. Supposedly the second is better though, so I'll keep going.
16. A Court of Mist and Fury- Sarah J Maas - 5/19/18-- Definitely was better than the previous one. Not going to make it on a top YA series list for me, but good enough I'll finish out the series.
17. A Court of Wings and Ruin - Sarah J Maas - 5/21/18 -- The best of the 3 so far I think. Less romance, more bloody fields of war. I can get behind that. =P
18. Meet the Frugalwoods - Elizabeth Willard Thames - 5/30/18 -- Good read if you're interested in them as people. Autobio, not a how-to. Fills in some timeline gaps from their blog on their life stories.
19. Uglies - Scott Westerfeld - 6/3/18 -- Read for book club. It was pretty good! Definitely more on the children's lit than the YA side for most of it, but a compelling read. Easy to predict though. Still, finding myself looking forward to getting past the book group meeting so I can read the next in the series.

20. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green --Never read a John Green novel, got this for free from Buy Nothing. Only 1 chapter in so far.

FireHiker

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #463 on: June 05, 2018, 04:56:52 PM »
1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read in one night since it's been 20 years and my son was reading it in school)
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
13. All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (I WILL get through his complete works...eventually)
14. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
18. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
19. Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames
20. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
21. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
22. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
23. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
24. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
25. Shattered Air by Bob Madgic
26. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
27. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
28. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
29. The Comedy of Errors by Willliam Shakespeare
30. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
31. Eat & Run by Scott Jurek
32. Cymbeline by William Shakespeare

33. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

eliza

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #464 on: June 06, 2018, 08:18:05 AM »
2018 Focus: Russia - Goal is 50 Books About Russia, Written by Russians, or Novels Set in Russia
1. The Duel - Anton Chekhov
2. The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden
3. The Unwomanly Face of War - Svetlana Alexievich
4. Lost and Found in Russia: Lives in the Post-Soviet Landscape - Susan Richards
5. Dressed Up for a Riot: Misadventures in Putin's Moscow - Michael Idov
6. The Girl in the Tower - Katherine Arden
7. Russia: A Short History - Abraham Ascher
8. Hadji Murad - Leo Tolstoy
9. Russia - The Story of War - Gregory Carleton
10. The Cossacks - Leo Tolstoy
11. Red Notice - Bill Browder
12. The Invention of Russia - Arkady Ostrovsky
13. Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible - Peter Pomerantsev
14. Father Sergius and Other Stories - Leo Tolstoy
15. Secondhand Time - Svetlana Alexievich
16. The Man Without a Face - Masha Gessen
17. The Girl from the Metropol Hotel - Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
18. Where the Jews Aren't - Masha Gessen
19. A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
20. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter - Robert K. Massie

diapasoun

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #465 on: June 06, 2018, 10:23:21 AM »
1. Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin (library)
2. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf (library)
3. The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley (library)
4. The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Joshua Hammer (mine)
5. The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok, trans. Ben Waggoner (mine)
6. Practical Sigil Magic, Frater U.:D.: (pdf)
7. The Refrigerator Monologues, Catherynne Valente (library)
8. What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah (library)
9. Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark (library)
10. Everfair, Nisi Shawl (library)
11. Bobbed Hair and Bath-tub Gin, Marion Meade (library)
12. Ghost Talkers, Mary Robinette Kowal  (mine)
13. Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber (mine)
14. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling with Stephen Fry (borrowed)
15. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen with Juliet Stevenson (mine)
16. Earth Power, Scott Cunningham (mine)
17. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (library)

18. Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan (mine). This is an utterly charming book. I enjoyed the first two of the series, but felt a bit eh after the second; I'm really glad I forged ahead and picked this one up. It's got some amazing new characters (Suhail, Aekinitos, Heali'i), it's full of exciting travel, and it's got DRAGONS did we mention that this series is about dragons?

Currently reading:

Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (mine)
Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber (library)

On docket:

An Unkindness of Ghosts, River Solomon (library)
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (library)

ringer707

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #466 on: June 06, 2018, 01:43:43 PM »
1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
2. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
4. How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
6. Between the World and Me by Ta Nahisi Coates
7. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
8. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
9. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Illustrated) by J.K. Rowling
11. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
12. Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
13. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
14. Beloved by Toni Morrison
15. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
16. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
17. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
18. Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
19. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
20. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
21. In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park
22. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
23. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez
24. Monster by Walter Dean Myers
25. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
26. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
27. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
28. Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

Raenia

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #467 on: June 10, 2018, 06:38:00 AM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018)
42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)

45. Babylon's Ashes - James S.A. Corey (6/9/2018)

woopwoop

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #468 on: June 10, 2018, 03:27:17 PM »
1. Cane River - this was for a book club, which is the only reason I finished it. Five hundred pages of depressing slavery historical fiction, ranging from super depressing slave rape and torture to slightly-less-depressing institutional racism by the end of the saga. Would not recommend.
2. The Road Less Traveled - this is a psychology cult classic from the 70s that's fun to read. In one chapter he mentions in a footnote that "the only healthy marriage is an open marriage." Lol, the seventies were awesome.
3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - a well-written and darkly funny YA fantasy novella. Think CS Lewis with vampires.
4. The Hating Game - this was just a bubble gum contemporary romcom about a love-hate-love relationship. Super fast and sexy read, recommended as a nice beach read if you like romance.
5. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - How did I end up reading so much YA at the beginning of this year? I don't even particularly like YA, these were all recommended to me. This was a fun romp of pirates and highwaymen and gay interracial relationships in the 1800s, but it was very very YA. I can't even put my finger on what "Very YA" means, but whatever it was, this book was that. My next read is YA, too, then I think I'm done for a while. I think it's the quirkiness that gets me. Everyone is so goddamn quirky in YA books.
6. Jane Unlimited - ugh, another YA, this one with a quirky main character who makes artsy umbrellas. Four mentions of Doctor Who in the first half of the book, how weird and nerdy lolol!!! I'm so done with YA.
7. Dead Wake - okay, this one is historical fiction about the Lusitania. I don't know history so this is always good for me. Plus Erik Larsen is the tits, this was a guaranteed Good Book after my latest string of failures. This book is not quite as good as his epicly awesome Devil in the White City that I love love loved, but it's still good and suspenseful.
8.The Duke and I - Regency romance, definitely more erotic than Jane Austen. Fun and light but not particularly great. Recommended all over the place as one of the best contemporary-written regency romances, which probably means I just don't really like this genre. I love Jane Austen, though, oh well.
9.Paris To the Moon - Another French travelogue about an American moving his family to Paris. Funny, well-written, but not epically hilarious like my favorite of this genre, Toujours Provence.
10. Drop the Ball - nonfiction, about how women need to stop trying to do it all. Kind of a companion book to Lean In, which I also didn't like. This book just feels repetitive. It did get my husband and I to make a spreadsheet for our grocery lists, though.
11. A Man Called Ove - another book club read, I guess it was a movie? Anyway, it made me ugly cry at the end although the opening chapters were hard for me to get into. Old grumpy man inspirational lit, I would classify it.
12. The Artist's Way - I am not in the right spot to get into this kind of book, in that I have a toddler and would love to do "morning pages" but it's clear from the way this author writes that she cannot imagine not having alone time every day. Well, bully for her. I'll pick this back up in a few years.
13. Designs for Living and Learning - really great book about childhood learning environments. Gave me a bunch to think about as I create living spaces for my young toddler.
14. Voyage  -a play by Tom Stoppard that's a witty sendup of every Russian play from the greats. Lots of philosophizing and wordplay, but not nearly as entertaining as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which everyone should read (and watch the movie version!) if they have ever read Hamlet. For you Game of Thrones fans out there, Jorah is Hamlet, and that should seal the deal. He also wrote Shakespeare in Love which was a fun screenplay.
15. Chrysalis - nonfiction, an account of female naturalist Maria Meriam. The book I'm writing is going to have a main character named after her, so I thought I'd do some research. Really interesting so far, she was a gifted artist and scientist back when science was stuck more in naming and classifying rather than experimenting. Makes me excited to write my book!
16. The Kingmaker's Daughter - historical fiction by the same woman who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl which I loved. This was a great book, made even greater by the fact that I don't know any history at all. What will happen to Anne and Richard? I don't know, it's a mystery! Makes reading historical fiction all the better, imo.
16b. The Shadow of the Wind - I... really didn't like this. I didn't even finish it, so that's why it's going on the list as 16b. Just awful, pretentious writing. Maybe it's the translation? I had high hopes and a lot of people recommended it, but I found it utterly lacking.
17. The Refrigerator Monologues - On recommendation by this thread. I didn't really care for this one, maybe because I don't know an awful lot about comics. Most of the characters had the same voice, there weren't any great new perspectives. I dunno, I might have been in the wrong frame of mind for this.
18. The Whole-Brain Child - Some really good suggestions for how to handle parenting decisions, based on brain science of developing children. Some of it was for older kids so not quite as useful, but a lot of excellent practical advice for toddler meltdowns, etc. We have been lucky so far with our kid (not quite 2!) but I'm sure she'll be testing our patience soon enough so I want to be prepared.
19. Transatlantic - Another historical fiction about Ireland, transatlantic flight, Frederick Douglass, and some other things that are not really interesting to me. Also the author uses way too many. Sentence fragments. For dramatic effect. And I'm sick of it.
20. Brain on Fire - Nonfiction account of a NY Post journalist who went crazy due to a rare form of encephalitis. Super interesting, like reading a House episode. Ending kind of dragged on weakly but otherwise very engaging.
21. The Philosophical Baby - An overview of studies on the cognitive and emotional capabilities of developing babies. I liked it, but not a lot of good parenting takeaways other than "don't neglect your baby".
22. The Importance of Being Earnest   -Reread this one for funsies. It was fun, like all Wilde is fun.
23. Lady Windemere's Fan - Oh, so fun!
24. The Thirteenth Tale - Solid meh. Gothic mystery type book, very debut-novel in that there's lots of meta-commentary on books and reading and literature. I did the same thing in my debut novel, and I cringe whenever I read it somewhere else. Too long for not enough payoff and I guessed the ending.
25. The Wizard of Earthsea -Thanks to whoever recommended this one in this thread. Leguin is amazing but I've only read The Left Hand Side of Darkness by her and I need to read more. I didn't realize it was YA but I just ran through it super fast.
26. All Our Wrong Todays - GREAT time travel romance book, really really fun. If Chuck Palahniuk wrote The Time Traveller's Wife, this is what it would have turned out as.
27.The Girl Who Drew Butterflies - another biography of Maria Merian as research, YA stuff so very light. My toddler liked looking at all the pictures of butterflies, haha.
28.Superintelligence - Holy moly, this is a fascinating book. Regardless of when you think the singularity will come, there are risks associated with AI and this book does a great job of giving an overview of possible pitfalls where our world will be turned into a ball of paperclips... or something. Really interesting if you're at all into artificial intelligence.
29.Parenting in the Digital Age - pretty much a memoir of an advertising/TV guy with some little parenting stuff thrown in with plenty of unsourced speculative assertions. Fun to read, but just about useless when it comes to making evidence based decisions.
30.How to Raise a Child with a High EQ - that's an "emotional quotient", and it's pretty straightforward stuff, lots of repetition I'd already read in books about positive parenting and emotional discipline. Also not super useful until my kid gets a bit older. 
31.Evening Star - Oh, my freaking god, this book is amazing. Larry McMurty is the guy who wrote Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment, and this book was actually a sequel to the latter but it didn't read like a sequel at all. It was amazing, poignant, and made me ugly cry at the end, and then again at midnight when I woke up and thought about the book, and probably a couple more times in the future if I'm being honest here. Great writing, characters, interesting take on how relationships work. BEST BOOK SO FAR ON MY LIST.
32. How to Create a Mind - by Ray Kurzweil, of singularity fame. Really interesting look at how artificial intelligence has come so far and the path it has to go. Highly recommend to anyone interested in AI.
33. The Parent's Tao Te Ching - Eh, I liked The Tao of Pooh better. This just seems like a weird adaptation of the TTC so that someone could dole out parenting advice. And as a depressed person, advice like "Be happy and your children will be happy" just makes me feel more depressed that I'm fucking up this whole parenting thing.

bucketsofrain

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #469 on: June 10, 2018, 07:09:53 PM »
1.) Gorilla and the Bird by Zack McDermott 4/5
2.) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 3/5
3.) Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabo 5/5
4.) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 3/5
5.) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie 5/5
6.) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 3/5
7.) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf 4/5
8.) My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris 5/5
9.) Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 5/5
10.) Universal Harvester by John Darnielle 2/5
11.) We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 5/5
12.) Red Winter by Anneli Furmark 4/5
13.) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 5/5
14.) Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson 4/5
15.) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby 3/5
16.) What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi 4/5
17.) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 4/5
18.) This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz 4/5
19.) This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett 4/5
20.) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 5/5
21.) The Vegetarian by Han Kang 3/5
22.) The Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henriquez 4/5
23.) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris 4/5
24.) What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah 4/5
25.) The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky 4/5
26.) The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty 4/5
27.) A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
28.) Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen 4/5
29.) Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
30.) Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti 5/5
31.) The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel 4/5
32.) The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti 4/5
33.) I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara 4/5
34.) Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
35.) How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti 4/5
36.) Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard 4/5
37.) All Over the Place by Geraldine DeRuiter 3/5

ahptex

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #470 on: June 11, 2018, 11:24:19 AM »
(1) Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
(2) A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
(3) The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell
(4) Wildwood by Colin Meloy
(5) Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin
(6) Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu
(7) Family Matters:Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson
(8) Street of Eternal Happiness:  Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz
(9) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
(10) The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
(11) Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits by Pema Chodron
(12) The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
(13) The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
(14) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
(15) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
(16) The End of Alzheimer's by Dale Bredesen
(17) Christodora by Tim Murphy
(18) How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
(19) Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
(20) Trumpocracy by David Frum
(21) The More of Less by Joshua Becker
(22) The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking
(23) The Knowledge by Martha Grimes
(24) Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
(25) Move your DNA by Katy Bowman
(26) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
(27) Better than College by Blake Boles
(28) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
(29) Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
(30) Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
(31) A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
(32) The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
(33) Educated by Tara Westover

(34) Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
(35) A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World by Scott Tong

haypug16

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #471 on: June 11, 2018, 11:26:13 AM »
1. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - Finished 1/14/18
2. How to Make Your Money Last by Jane Bryant Quinn - Finished 1/16/18
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell - Finished 1/20/18
4. The Awakening by Kate Chopin - Finished 2/7/18
5. J is for Judgement by Sue Grafton - Finished 2/9/18
6. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - Finished 2/20/18
7. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Finished 3/3/18 (re-read)
8. Cress by Marissa Meyer - Finished 3/8/18 (re-read)
9. K is for Killer by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/17/18
10. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Finished 3/21/18
11. L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/30/18
12. Candide by Voltaire - Finished 4/6/18
13. M is for Malice by Sue Grafton - Finished 5/2/2018
14. Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Finished 5/3/2018
15. Winter by Marissa Meyer - (re-read) Finished 6/9/2018

16. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - Currently Reading
17. N is for Noose by Sue Grafton - Currently Reading


15/50 Read

diapasoun

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #472 on: June 11, 2018, 11:30:06 AM »
1. Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin (library)
2. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf (library)
3. The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley (library)
4. The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Joshua Hammer (mine)
5. The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok, trans. Ben Waggoner (mine)
6. Practical Sigil Magic, Frater U.:D.: (pdf)
7. The Refrigerator Monologues, Catherynne Valente (library)
8. What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah (library)
9. Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark (library)
10. Everfair, Nisi Shawl (library)
11. Bobbed Hair and Bath-tub Gin, Marion Meade (library)
12. Ghost Talkers, Mary Robinette Kowal  (mine)
13. Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber (mine)
14. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling with Stephen Fry (borrowed)
15. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen with Juliet Stevenson (mine)
16. Earth Power, Scott Cunningham (mine)
17. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (library)
18. Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan (mine)

19. Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (mine). Old feminist utopian fiction; really refreshing read, if no truth bombs dropped. :)
20. Beneath a Sugar Sky, Seanan McGuire (mine). Strange and inventive and fun.
21. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire (mine). When McGuire does fantasy mixed with horror, great things ensue.

Currently reading:
Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber (library)
The Sky is Yours, Chandler Klang-Smith (mine)

On pause:

An Unkindness of Ghosts, River Solomon (library)
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (library)
[/quote]

ringer707

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #473 on: June 11, 2018, 11:35:26 AM »
1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
2. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
4. How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
6. Between the World and Me by Ta Nahisi Coates
7. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
8. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
9. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Illustrated) by J.K. Rowling
11. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
12. Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
13. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
14. Beloved by Toni Morrison
15. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
16. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
17. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
18. Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
19. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
20. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
21. In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park
22. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
23. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez
24. Monster by Walter Dean Myers
25. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
26. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
27. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
28. Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
29. Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty

Bracken_Joy

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #474 on: June 11, 2018, 11:42:06 AM »
1. A Torch Against The Night- Sabaa Tahir- 1/8/18
--I cannot wait until the next one. Excellent books.
2. Hounded - Kevin Hearne - 1/17/18
3. Hexed - Kevin Hearne- 1/23/18
--fun short reads. Doritos for the brain. Not quite as good as Dresden, but still entertaining.
4. Hammered- Kevin Hearne- 2/9/18
--this one wasn't quite as good at the first two, but it was readable. Hope the next is better again.
5. Lab Girl- Hope Jahren- 2/24/18
--God this took me forever. It just was not compelling for me. Got better at the half way point, but just not my cup of tea. My book club all loved it, though, so maybe I'm alone on this one! I think it would be way more interesting to people who haven't worked in research before, because it'd be 'exploring an unknown life' style.
6. Tricked- Kevin Hearne- 3/2/18
7. World War Z- Max Brooks - 3/5/18
--As always (it was a reread for book club), an excellent book.
8. Trapped- Kevin Hearne - 3/12/18
9. Hunted- Kevin Hearne - 3/23/18
10. Shattered- Kevin Hearne - 4/2/18
11. Staked - Kevin Hearne - 4/11/18
12. Beseiged- Kevin Hearne- 4/17/18
13. Scourged- Kevin Hearne- 4/25/18
14. The Maze Runner- James Dashner- 5/6/18 -- This was another re-read for book club. Still a good read. I'll probably not bother to read the whole series again- the first one really is the best one.
15. A Court of Thorns and Roses- Sarah J Maas- 5/11/18 -- It was a compelling read, but not necessarily a good read. Ended up way more romance than action bend. Supposedly the second is better though, so I'll keep going.
16. A Court of Mist and Fury- Sarah J Maas - 5/19/18-- Definitely was better than the previous one. Not going to make it on a top YA series list for me, but good enough I'll finish out the series.
17. A Court of Wings and Ruin - Sarah J Maas - 5/21/18 -- The best of the 3 so far I think. Less romance, more bloody fields of war. I can get behind that. =P
18. Meet the Frugalwoods - Elizabeth Willard Thames - 5/30/18 -- Good read if you're interested in them as people. Autobio, not a how-to. Fills in some timeline gaps from their blog on their life stories.
19. Uglies - Scott Westerfeld - 6/3/18 -- Read for book club. It was pretty good! Definitely more on the children's lit than the YA side for most of it, but a compelling read. Easy to predict though. Still, finding myself looking forward to getting past the book group meeting so I can read the next in the series.

20. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green - 6/10/18 --Never read a John Green novel, got this for free from Buy Nothing. It was okay, not stellar. In no rush to read any of his other books. Seems like it would be great for teens feeling disconnected from their peers.
21. A Court of Frost and Starlight - Sarah J Maas

tnrunner

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #475 on: June 11, 2018, 04:39:01 PM »
1. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
2. Three to get deadly by Janet Evanovich
3. Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
4. Seamless by Angie Smith
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Hot six by Janet Evanovich
7. Seven up by Janet Evanovich
8. hard eight by janet evanovich
9. Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors
10. To the nines by Janet Evanovich
11. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
12. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich
13. The Lazarus Vendetta by Patrick Larkin
14. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
15. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
16. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
17. The Maze by Catherine Coulter
18. The Silenced by Heather Graham
19. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
20. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
21. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille
22. Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
23. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
24. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
25. Find Her by Lisa Gardner
26. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich

27. The Partner by John Grisham

grantmeaname

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #476 on: June 11, 2018, 06:57:11 PM »
20. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green - 6/10/18 --Never read a John Green novel, got this for free from Buy Nothing. It was okay, not stellar. In no rush to read any of his other books. Seems like it would be great for teens feeling disconnected from their peers.
IMHO John Green books vary widely in quality. I thought Katherines was a solid book, but I wouldn't want you to walk away thinking that's what they're all like. Paper Towns and The Fault in Our Stars are both superb books, two of my favorite books fom the 150+ I've read the last three years. (And on the other hand, Turtles All the Way Down and Looking For Alaska are both far worse than Katherines in my opinion - dunno why either has so much acclaim.)


Bracken_Joy

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #477 on: June 11, 2018, 07:20:08 PM »
20. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green - 6/10/18 --Never read a John Green novel, got this for free from Buy Nothing. It was okay, not stellar. In no rush to read any of his other books. Seems like it would be great for teens feeling disconnected from their peers.
IMHO John Green books vary widely in quality. I thought Katherines was a solid book, but I wouldn't want you to walk away thinking that's what they're all like. Paper Towns and The Fault in Our Stars are both superb books, two of my favorite books fom the 150+ I've read the last three years. (And on the other hand, Turtles All the Way Down and Looking For Alaska are both far worse than Katherines in my opinion - dunno why either has so much acclaim.)

That's good to know! Paper Towns was the other one I got from the Buy Nothing lady, so maybe I will give that a read before gifting it on. I don't want to read the Fault in Our Stars, but then, as a pediatric nurse I think it would either be way too real or way too inaccurate, and I'm not sure which would be worse. Either way, I'm not one for cancer plot lines. Get enough of that IRL.

grantmeaname

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #478 on: June 11, 2018, 07:55:53 PM »
My goal for the year was 52 books. I made it this weekend! Between a long work trip, vacations, and a move I have been traveling for probably 8 weeks so far this year, and that's when I get most of my reading done. I may get through 10 more books this year, but I would be shocked if I get through another 50.

I've been lurking in this thread as well as elsewhere on the forum for book recommendations and found all sorts of good things. So, to those of you who pointed out one of this list's finds, thanks! Hopefully my reading list can pay the favor forward.

Jan 17
1. A Year in Provence Mayle, Peter
2. Gone for Soldiers: A Novel of the Mexican War Shaara, Jeff

Jan 19
3.The Willpower InstinctMcGonigal, Kelly

Jan 20
4.Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, #1) Campbell, Jack

Jan 26
5. Fearless (The Lost Fleet, #2) Campbell, Jack

Jan 27
6. Courageous (The Lost Fleet, #3) Campbell, Jack

Jan 28
7. Valiant (The Lost Fleet, #4) Campbell, Jack

Feb 1
8. Relentless (The Lost Fleet, #5) Campbell, Jack

Feb 2
9. Victorious (The Lost Fleet, #6) Campbell, Jack

Feb 3
10. The Value of Debt in Building Wealth: Creating Your Glide Path to a Healthy Financial Life Anderson, Thomas J

Feb 10
11. Invincible (The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier, #2) Campbell, Jack
12. Dreadnaught (The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier, #1) Campbell, Jack.

Feb 11
13. Guardian (The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier, #3) Campbell, Jack

Feb 12
14. Steadfast (The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier, #4) Campbell, Jack

Feb 13
15. Leviathan (The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier, #5) Campbell, Jack

Feb 15
16. Eaters of the Dead Crichton, Michael

Feb 16
17. The Last Season: A Father, a Son, and a Lifetime of College Football Stevens, Stuart

Feb 18
18. War As They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and America in a Time of Unrest Rosenberg, Michael

Feb 21
19. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America Bryson, Bill

Feb 23
20. International Night: A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World Kurlansky, Mark

Feb 25
21. Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco Burrough, Bryan

Feb 26
22. At Home: A Short History of Private Life Bryson, Bill

Feb 28
23. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World Newport, Cal

Mar 2
24. The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football Gwynne, S.C.
25. The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph Holiday, Ryan

Mar 4
26. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 Judt, Tony

Mar 5
27. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves Sorkin, Andrew Ross

Mar 9
28. Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything Weinersmith, Kelly
29. Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living Thames, Elizabeth Willard

Mar 25
30. Carlisle Vs. Army: Jim Thorpe, Dwight Eisenhower, Pop Warner, and the Forgotten Story of Football's Greatest Battle Anderson, Lars

Apr 9
31. Havana: A Subtropical Delirium Kurlansky, Mark
32. Billion-Dollar Ball: A Journey Through the Big-Money Culture of College Football Gaul, Gilbert M.

Apr 10
33. Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Season Meyer, Urban

Apr 11
34. Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder Mahaffey, James

Apr 15
35. Revolution (The History of England, #4) Ackroyd, Peter

Apr 17
36. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails Bakewell, Sarah

Apr 18
37. Exile on Wall Street: One Analyst's Fight to Save the Big Banks from Themselves Mayo, Mike

Apr 20
38. Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less Pang, Alex Soojung-Kim

Apr 21
39. The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1) Russell, Mary Doria

Apr 23
40. The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks Feldman, Bruce

Apr 26
41. Woodlawn: One Hope. One Dream. One Way. Gerelds, Todd
42. The Quarterback Whisperer: How to Build an Elite NFL Quarterback Arians, Bruce

May 05
43. Children of God (The Sparrow, #2) Russell, Mary Doria

May 06
44. An Unkindness of Ghosts Solomon, Rivers
45. The Creature in the Case (Abhorsen, #3.5) Nix, Garth

May 12
46. Sailing to Sarantium (The Sarantine Mosaic, #1) Kay, Guy Gavriel

May 13
47. Lord of Emperors (The Sarantine Mosaic, #2) Kay, Guy Gavriel
 
May 15
48. The Secret Garden Burnett, Frances Hodgson
 
May 23
49. The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy Stanley, Thomas J.
 
Jun 02
50. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Smith, Betty

Jun 05
51. The Refugees Nguyen, Viet Thanh

Jun 09
52. The Traveler (Fourth Realm, #1) Hawks, John Twelve
 
Jun 10
53. The Dark River (Fourth Realm, #2) Hawks, John Twelve

grantmeaname

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #479 on: June 11, 2018, 07:58:10 PM »
That's good to know! Paper Towns was the other one I got from the Buy Nothing lady, so maybe I will give that a read before gifting it on. I don't want to read the Fault in Our Stars, but then, as a pediatric nurse I think it would either be way too real or way too inaccurate, and I'm not sure which would be worse. Either way, I'm not one for cancer plot lines. Get enough of that IRL.
Yeah, that's definitely tough. The Fault in Our Stars is a great book but definitely not an easy one. Paper Towns rules, and it's much lighter, so you should definitely check it out.

Serendip

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #480 on: June 13, 2018, 10:35:50 AM »
1. Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (Robert Wright) *IMO very good!
2. Plastic Free : How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too (Beth Terry)
3. Taking the Leap : Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears (Pema Chodron)
4. Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Hurari)
5. Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement (Katy Bowman)
6. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Margareta Magnusson)
7. The Year of Less  (Cait Flanders)
8. The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection (Scott C. Anderson) *quite liked this, neuroscience and food
9. Why Isn't My Brain Working: Brain decline and effective strategies to recover your brain's health ( Datis Kharrazian)
10. The Back of the Turtle (Thomas King)
11. The War of Art  (Steven Pressfield)
12. Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School (Andrew Hallam)
13. Homo Deus : A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari)
14. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression--and the Unexpected Solutions (Johann Hari)
15. Spark : The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain  (John J. Ratey)
16. Tonglen: The Path of Transformation (Pema Chodron)--a more advanced meditation style than I am currently at
17. The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas)
18. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (Daniel. H. Pink)
19. What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength (Scott Carney)
20. Every Word Is A Bird We Teach To Sing : Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language (Daniel Tammet)
21. The Transformation Power of Fasting (Stephen Harrod Buhner)
22. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha (Tara Brach)
23. Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road (Kate Harris) **beautifully written, intelligent adventure story
24. Fifteen Dogs (Andre Alexis)
25. Microadventures: Local Discoveries, Great Escapes (Alastair Humphries)
26. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (Pico Iyer)-lovely book
27. The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North (Beverly Gray)
28. The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (Meik Wiking)
29. What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky (Lesley Nneka Arimah)
30. Men Explain Things to Me (Rebecca Solnit)
31. A Monks Guide to a Clean House and Mind (Shoukei Matsumoto)
32. A Mind at Home with Itself (Byron Katie & Stephen Mitchell)
33. Abandon: A Romance (Pico Iyer)
34. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Marie Kondo)
35. The Heart of Zen (Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi & Keith Martin-Smith) *didn't quite finish
36. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
37. Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World ( Michael Harris)

38. Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive (Mark. L Winston)
39. Devotion (Patti Smith)

* recently started so many other books that were abandoned half-way when I acknowledged I wasn't enjoying them

ahptex

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #481 on: June 14, 2018, 09:06:15 AM »
(1) Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
(2) A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
(3) The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell
(4) Wildwood by Colin Meloy
(5) Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin
(6) Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu
(7) Family Matters:Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson
(8) Street of Eternal Happiness:  Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz
(9) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
(10) The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
(11) Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits by Pema Chodron
(12) The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
(13) The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
(14) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
(15) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
(16) The End of Alzheimer's by Dale Bredesen
(17) Christodora by Tim Murphy
(18) How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
(19) Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
(20) Trumpocracy by David Frum
(21) The More of Less by Joshua Becker
(22) The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking
(23) The Knowledge by Martha Grimes
(24) Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
(25) Move your DNA by Katy Bowman
(26) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
(27) Better than College by Blake Boles
(28) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
(29) Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
(30) Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
(31) A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
(32) The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
(33) Educated by Tara Westover
(34) Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
(35) A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World by Scott Tong

(36) The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

ringer707

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #482 on: June 15, 2018, 09:37:40 AM »
1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
2. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
4. How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
6. Between the World and Me by Ta Nahisi Coates
7. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
8. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
9. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Illustrated) by J.K. Rowling
11. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
12. Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
13. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
14. Beloved by Toni Morrison
15. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
16. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
17. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
18. Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
19. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
20. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
21. In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park
22. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
23. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez
24. Monster by Walter Dean Myers
25. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
26. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
27. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
28. Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
29. Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty
30. Educated by Tara Westover

haypug16

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #483 on: June 15, 2018, 12:18:30 PM »
1. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - Finished 1/14/18
2. How to Make Your Money Last by Jane Bryant Quinn - Finished 1/16/18
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell - Finished 1/20/18
4. The Awakening by Kate Chopin - Finished 2/7/18
5. J is for Judgement by Sue Grafton - Finished 2/9/18
6. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - Finished 2/20/18
7. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Finished 3/3/18 (re-read)
8. Cress by Marissa Meyer - Finished 3/8/18 (re-read)
9. K is for Killer by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/17/18
10. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Finished 3/21/18
11. L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/30/18
12. Candide by Voltaire - Finished 4/6/18
13. M is for Malice by Sue Grafton - Finished 5/2/2018
14. Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Finished 5/3/2018
15. Winter by Marissa Meyer - (re-read) Finished 6/9/2018
16. N is for Noose by Sue Grafton - Finished 6/14/2018

17. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - Currently Reading
18. Heartless by Marissa Meyer - Currently Reading


16/50 Read

Melisande

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #484 on: June 15, 2018, 01:43:38 PM »
1. The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy
2. The Girl with a Pearl Earing by Tracy Chevalier
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4. & 5.  Mémoires d’Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
6. In the Land of the White Death by Valerian Albanov
7. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
8., 9. & 10. Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins
11. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline.
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
13. Conquistador Voices: Volume 1 — Christopher Columbus; Hernán Cortés, by Kevin H. Siepel.
14. Conquistador Voices: Volume 2 — Francisco Pizarro and his brothers; Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; Hernando de Soto by Kevin H. Siepel
15. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles .
15. & 16. La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq.
17. Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica by Noah Stryker.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I have 4 new books read.
18. Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls
19. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approah to the Good Life, by Mark Manson
20. Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Account’s Right Now, by Jason Lanier
21. Who Owns the Future?, by Jason Lanier






Raenia

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #485 on: June 15, 2018, 02:04:16 PM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018)
42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)
45. Babylon's Ashes - James S.A. Corey (6/9/2018)

46. Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro (6/14/2018)
47. Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing - Joe Domanick (6/16/2018)
48. The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House - Audre Lorde (6/17/2018)
49. The Last Dragonslayer - Jasper Fforde (6/17/2018)
« Last Edit: June 18, 2018, 04:52:55 AM by Raenia »

woopwoop

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #486 on: June 15, 2018, 10:35:35 PM »
Beep beep, check in! We're almost halfway through the year, it looks like most people are well ahead of 25 books. That's incredible! You are all awesome readers and I am so proud that everyone here is making time to sit and enjoy some literature.

1. Cane River - this was for a book club, which is the only reason I finished it. Five hundred pages of depressing slavery historical fiction, ranging from super depressing slave rape and torture to slightly-less-depressing institutional racism by the end of the saga. Would not recommend.
2. The Road Less Traveled - this is a psychology cult classic from the 70s that's fun to read. In one chapter he mentions in a footnote that "the only healthy marriage is an open marriage." Lol, the seventies were awesome.
3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - a well-written and darkly funny YA fantasy novella. Think CS Lewis with vampires.
4. The Hating Game - this was just a bubble gum contemporary romcom about a love-hate-love relationship. Super fast and sexy read, recommended as a nice beach read if you like romance.
5. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - How did I end up reading so much YA at the beginning of this year? I don't even particularly like YA, these were all recommended to me. This was a fun romp of pirates and highwaymen and gay interracial relationships in the 1800s, but it was very very YA. I can't even put my finger on what "Very YA" means, but whatever it was, this book was that. My next read is YA, too, then I think I'm done for a while. I think it's the quirkiness that gets me. Everyone is so goddamn quirky in YA books.
6. Jane Unlimited - ugh, another YA, this one with a quirky main character who makes artsy umbrellas. Four mentions of Doctor Who in the first half of the book, how weird and nerdy lolol!!! I'm so done with YA.
7. Dead Wake - okay, this one is historical fiction about the Lusitania. I don't know history so this is always good for me. Plus Erik Larsen is the tits, this was a guaranteed Good Book after my latest string of failures. This book is not quite as good as his epicly awesome Devil in the White City that I love love loved, but it's still good and suspenseful.
8.The Duke and I - Regency romance, definitely more erotic than Jane Austen. Fun and light but not particularly great. Recommended all over the place as one of the best contemporary-written regency romances, which probably means I just don't really like this genre. I love Jane Austen, though, oh well.
9.Paris To the Moon - Another French travelogue about an American moving his family to Paris. Funny, well-written, but not epically hilarious like my favorite of this genre, Toujours Provence.
10. Drop the Ball - nonfiction, about how women need to stop trying to do it all. Kind of a companion book to Lean In, which I also didn't like. This book just feels repetitive. It did get my husband and I to make a spreadsheet for our grocery lists, though.
11. A Man Called Ove - another book club read, I guess it was a movie? Anyway, it made me ugly cry at the end although the opening chapters were hard for me to get into. Old grumpy man inspirational lit, I would classify it.
12. The Artist's Way - I am not in the right spot to get into this kind of book, in that I have a toddler and would love to do "morning pages" but it's clear from the way this author writes that she cannot imagine not having alone time every day. Well, bully for her. I'll pick this back up in a few years.
13. Designs for Living and Learning - really great book about childhood learning environments. Gave me a bunch to think about as I create living spaces for my young toddler.
14. Voyage  -a play by Tom Stoppard that's a witty sendup of every Russian play from the greats. Lots of philosophizing and wordplay, but not nearly as entertaining as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which everyone should read (and watch the movie version!) if they have ever read Hamlet. For you Game of Thrones fans out there, Jorah is Hamlet, and that should seal the deal. He also wrote Shakespeare in Love which was a fun screenplay.
15. Chrysalis - nonfiction, an account of female naturalist Maria Meriam. The book I'm writing is going to have a main character named after her, so I thought I'd do some research. Really interesting so far, she was a gifted artist and scientist back when science was stuck more in naming and classifying rather than experimenting. Makes me excited to write my book!
16. The Kingmaker's Daughter - historical fiction by the same woman who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl which I loved. This was a great book, made even greater by the fact that I don't know any history at all. What will happen to Anne and Richard? I don't know, it's a mystery! Makes reading historical fiction all the better, imo.
16b. The Shadow of the Wind - I... really didn't like this. I didn't even finish it, so that's why it's going on the list as 16b. Just awful, pretentious writing. Maybe it's the translation? I had high hopes and a lot of people recommended it, but I found it utterly lacking.
17. The Refrigerator Monologues - On recommendation by this thread. I didn't really care for this one, maybe because I don't know an awful lot about comics. Most of the characters had the same voice, there weren't any great new perspectives. I dunno, I might have been in the wrong frame of mind for this.
18. The Whole-Brain Child - Some really good suggestions for how to handle parenting decisions, based on brain science of developing children. Some of it was for older kids so not quite as useful, but a lot of excellent practical advice for toddler meltdowns, etc. We have been lucky so far with our kid (not quite 2!) but I'm sure she'll be testing our patience soon enough so I want to be prepared.
19. Transatlantic - Another historical fiction about Ireland, transatlantic flight, Frederick Douglass, and some other things that are not really interesting to me. Also the author uses way too many. Sentence fragments. For dramatic effect. And I'm sick of it.
20. Brain on Fire - Nonfiction account of a NY Post journalist who went crazy due to a rare form of encephalitis. Super interesting, like reading a House episode. Ending kind of dragged on weakly but otherwise very engaging.
21. The Philosophical Baby - An overview of studies on the cognitive and emotional capabilities of developing babies. I liked it, but not a lot of good parenting takeaways other than "don't neglect your baby".
22. The Importance of Being Earnest   -Reread this one for funsies. It was fun, like all Wilde is fun.
23. Lady Windemere's Fan - Oh, so fun!
24. The Thirteenth Tale - Solid meh. Gothic mystery type book, very debut-novel in that there's lots of meta-commentary on books and reading and literature. I did the same thing in my debut novel, and I cringe whenever I read it somewhere else. Too long for not enough payoff and I guessed the ending.
25. The Wizard of Earthsea -Thanks to whoever recommended this one in this thread. Leguin is amazing but I've only read The Left Hand Side of Darkness by her and I need to read more. I didn't realize it was YA but I just ran through it super fast.
26. All Our Wrong Todays - GREAT time travel romance book, really really fun. If Chuck Palahniuk wrote The Time Traveller's Wife, this is what it would have turned out as.
27.The Girl Who Drew Butterflies - another biography of Maria Merian as research, YA stuff so very light. My toddler liked looking at all the pictures of butterflies, haha.
28.Superintelligence - Holy moly, this is a fascinating book. Regardless of when you think the singularity will come, there are risks associated with AI and this book does a great job of giving an overview of possible pitfalls where our world will be turned into a ball of paperclips... or something. Really interesting if you're at all into artificial intelligence.
29.Parenting in the Digital Age - pretty much a memoir of an advertising/TV guy with some little parenting stuff thrown in with plenty of unsourced speculative assertions. Fun to read, but just about useless when it comes to making evidence based decisions.
30.How to Raise a Child with a High EQ - that's an "emotional quotient", and it's pretty straightforward stuff, lots of repetition I'd already read in books about positive parenting and emotional discipline. Also not super useful until my kid gets a bit older. 
31.Evening Star - Oh, my freaking god, this book is amazing. Larry McMurty is the guy who wrote Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment, and this book was actually a sequel to the latter but it didn't read like a sequel at all. It was amazing, poignant, and made me ugly cry at the end, and then again at midnight when I woke up and thought about the book, and probably a couple more times in the future if I'm being honest here. Great writing, characters, interesting take on how relationships work. BEST BOOK SO FAR ON MY LIST.
32. How to Create a Mind - by Ray Kurzweil, of singularity fame. Really interesting look at how artificial intelligence has come so far and the path it has to go. Highly recommend to anyone interested in AI.
33. The Parent's Tao Te Ching - Eh, I liked The Tao of Pooh better. This just seems like a weird adaptation of the TTC so that someone could dole out parenting advice. And as a depressed person, advice like "Be happy and your children will be happy" just makes me feel more depressed that I'm fucking up this whole parenting thing.
34. The Master Algorithm - Not as interesting as the Kurzweil AI book, kind of a summary of different styles of machine learning which is interesting in parts but gets somewhat dry. I guess I'm not as into ML as I thought I was.
35. Swamplandia! - What a weird book. I liked it, kind of reminded me of Geek Love (which, if you need a great book that's like magical realism about a wacky circus family, that is the book for you). Had a lot of weird characters and good writing, but it turned into a weird rape thing at the end which I dunno, felt off from the rest of the book and just didn't work well in the plot imo.

ahptex

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #487 on: June 21, 2018, 05:34:36 AM »
(1) Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
(2) A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
(3) The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell
(4) Wildwood by Colin Meloy
(5) Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin
(6) Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu
(7) Family Matters:Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson
(8) Street of Eternal Happiness:  Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz
(9) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
(10) The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
(11) Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits by Pema Chodron
(12) The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
(13) The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
(14) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
(15) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
(16) The End of Alzheimer's by Dale Bredesen
(17) Christodora by Tim Murphy
(18) How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
(19) Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
(20) Trumpocracy by David Frum
(21) The More of Less by Joshua Becker
(22) The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking
(23) The Knowledge by Martha Grimes
(24) Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
(25) Move your DNA by Katy Bowman
(26) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
(27) Better than College by Blake Boles
(28) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
(29) Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
(30) Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
(31) A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
(32) The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
(33) Educated by Tara Westover
(34) Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
(35) A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World by Scott Tong
(36) The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

(37) How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
(38) River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler

jeninco

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #488 on: June 21, 2018, 08:27:27 AM »
Spent the last three weeks visiting my aunt, with no internet access (except when I drove to the library -- I did have a bit of work to do...) Lots of time for reading, reading in the pool, reading near the pool, reading inside when it was too hot...

1. An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sachs
2. Song of the Quarkbeast, Fford
3. David and Goliath, Gladwell
4. Why Buddhism is True, Wright
5. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain
6. B is for Burglar, Sue Grafton
7. Siddhartha, Hesse
8. Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, Harari
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,  Haddon. Talked about this with a high school student on my way out of tutoring last week, and grabbed it to (re-) read so I can ask him about it more next week. Love it!
10. Glass Houses (librarian recommendation when I asked for something lightweight)
11. Lavinia, Le Guin
12. Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card (Yuck)
13. Debt Free U (I liked it! Lots of good ideas and perspective in here.)
14. Fledgling, Octavia Butler (loved it!)
15. How to Tame a Fox, Dugakin (also very good, especially in tandem with #14)
16. Lab Girl, Jahren (BJ, I loved it, although I see how various parts could slow one down...)
17. Grocery, Ruhlman LOVED IT! How did our food system get this crazy way! What can be done?
18. Hard Truth, Nevada Barr: HATED IT! I do not need to know that much about (how you imagine) the inside of the mind of a sadistic psychopath. To be fair, I've enjoyed some of her earlier books.
19. Where you go is not who you'll Be, Bruni
20. Artemis, Weir: Meh. The writing is pretty bad, and the main character sounds just like Mark Whitney, i.e. what Andy Weir probably wishes he sounds like.
21. The Leftovers, Perrotta. Saw it at the library next to something I was looking for, thought "why not." Meh.
22. When Breath Becomes Air,  Kalanithi. So well written!
23. The Essex Serpent, Perry. Meh, not what I thought it would be about.
24. Fantasyland: Recommended by a guy on a plane. Highly depressing, if you want to live in a reality-based world.
25. Finished Between the World and Me. I had to be in the right mood, but it was awesome.
26. The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. Very cool read, especially since I had an expert in central/north African politics available to talk with after.
27. The Shepherd's Crown, Terry Pratchett
28. Going Postal, Terry Pratchett
29. The Truth, Terry Pratchett (yes, I went on a bit of a bender)
30. All the Weyrs of Pern, Ann McCaffrey

Bracken_Joy

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #489 on: June 21, 2018, 08:29:22 AM »
1. A Torch Against The Night- Sabaa Tahir- 1/8/18
--I cannot wait until the next one. Excellent books.
2. Hounded - Kevin Hearne - 1/17/18
3. Hexed - Kevin Hearne- 1/23/18
--fun short reads. Doritos for the brain. Not quite as good as Dresden, but still entertaining.
4. Hammered- Kevin Hearne- 2/9/18
--this one wasn't quite as good at the first two, but it was readable. Hope the next is better again.
5. Lab Girl- Hope Jahren- 2/24/18
--God this took me forever. It just was not compelling for me. Got better at the half way point, but just not my cup of tea. My book club all loved it, though, so maybe I'm alone on this one! I think it would be way more interesting to people who haven't worked in research before, because it'd be 'exploring an unknown life' style.
6. Tricked- Kevin Hearne- 3/2/18
7. World War Z- Max Brooks - 3/5/18
--As always (it was a reread for book club), an excellent book.
8. Trapped- Kevin Hearne - 3/12/18
9. Hunted- Kevin Hearne - 3/23/18
10. Shattered- Kevin Hearne - 4/2/18
11. Staked - Kevin Hearne - 4/11/18
12. Beseiged- Kevin Hearne- 4/17/18
13. Scourged- Kevin Hearne- 4/25/18
14. The Maze Runner- James Dashner- 5/6/18 -- This was another re-read for book club. Still a good read. I'll probably not bother to read the whole series again- the first one really is the best one.
15. A Court of Thorns and Roses- Sarah J Maas- 5/11/18 -- It was a compelling read, but not necessarily a good read. Ended up way more romance than action bend. Supposedly the second is better though, so I'll keep going.
16. A Court of Mist and Fury- Sarah J Maas - 5/19/18-- Definitely was better than the previous one. Not going to make it on a top YA series list for me, but good enough I'll finish out the series.
17. A Court of Wings and Ruin - Sarah J Maas - 5/21/18 -- The best of the 3 so far I think. Less romance, more bloody fields of war. I can get behind that. =P
18. Meet the Frugalwoods - Elizabeth Willard Thames - 5/30/18 -- Good read if you're interested in them as people. Autobio, not a how-to. Fills in some timeline gaps from their blog on their life stories.
19. Uglies - Scott Westerfeld - 6/3/18 -- Read for book club. It was pretty good! Definitely more on the children's lit than the YA side for most of it, but a compelling read. Easy to predict though. Still, finding myself looking forward to getting past the book group meeting so I can read the next in the series.
20. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green - 6/10/18 --Never read a John Green novel, got this for free from Buy Nothing. It was okay, not stellar. In no rush to read any of his other books. Seems like it would be great for teens feeling disconnected from their peers.
21. A Court of Frost and Starlight - Sarah J Maas - 6/19/18 - MEH. I should have stopped after the one before this.
22. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Garbiel Garcia Marquez

diapasoun

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #490 on: June 21, 2018, 09:25:55 AM »
@jeninco What did your north/central African expert have to say about the book/the things brought up in the book? I am super curious!

Raenia

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #491 on: June 22, 2018, 07:22:01 AM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018)
42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)
45. Babylon's Ashes - James S.A. Corey (6/9/2018)
46. Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro (6/14/2018)
47. Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing - Joe Domanick (6/16/2018)
48. The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House - Audre Lorde (6/17/2018)
49. The Last Dragonslayer - Jasper Fforde (6/17/2018)

50. Persepolis Rising - James S.A. Corey (6/22/2018)

diapasoun

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #492 on: June 22, 2018, 03:28:23 PM »
@Raenia Are you our first 50?!

ahptex

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #493 on: June 23, 2018, 03:14:48 PM »
(1) Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
(2) A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
(3) The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell
(4) Wildwood by Colin Meloy
(5) Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin
(6) Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu
(7) Family Matters:Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson
(8) Street of Eternal Happiness:  Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz
(9) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
(10) The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
(11) Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits by Pema Chodron
(12) The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
(13) The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
(14) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
(15) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
(16) The End of Alzheimer's by Dale Bredesen
(17) Christodora by Tim Murphy
(18) How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
(19) Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
(20) Trumpocracy by David Frum
(21) The More of Less by Joshua Becker
(22) The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking
(23) The Knowledge by Martha Grimes
(24) Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
(25) Move your DNA by Katy Bowman
(26) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
(27) Better than College by Blake Boles
(28) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
(29) Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
(30) Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
(31) A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
(32) The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
(33) Educated by Tara Westover
(34) Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
(35) A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World by Scott Tong
(36) The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
(37) How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
(38) River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler

(39) Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

bucketsofrain

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #494 on: June 23, 2018, 06:22:35 PM »
1.) Gorilla and the Bird by Zack McDermott 4/5
2.) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 3/5
3.) Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabo 5/5
4.) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 3/5
5.) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie 5/5
6.) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 3/5
7.) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf 4/5
8.) My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris 5/5
9.) Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 5/5
10.) Universal Harvester by John Darnielle 2/5
11.) We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 5/5
12.) Red Winter by Anneli Furmark 4/5
13.) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 5/5
14.) Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson 4/5
15.) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby 3/5
16.) What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi 4/5
17.) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 4/5
18.) This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz 4/5
19.) This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett 4/5
20.) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 5/5
21.) The Vegetarian by Han Kang 3/5
22.) The Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henriquez 4/5
23.) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris 4/5
24.) What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah 4/5
25.) The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky 4/5
26.) The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty 4/5
27.) A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
28.) Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen 4/5
29.) Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
30.) Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti 5/5
31.) The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel 4/5
32.) The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti 4/5
33.) I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara 4/5
34.) Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
35.) How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti 4/5
36.) Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard 4/5
37.) All Over the Place by Geraldine DeRuiter 3/5
38.) Heartburn by Nora Ephron 3/5
39.) Coming to My Senses by Alice Waters 3/5
40.) Sick by Porochista Khakpour 3/5

In a rut of 3/5s! Guess it was bound to happen eventually.

jeninco

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #495 on: June 23, 2018, 09:34:46 PM »
@jeninco What did your north/central African expert have to say about the book/the things brought up in the book? I am super curious!

Mostly, depressingly, that after the book ended the Islamic Extremists came back...

She did have a funny story about some special forces guys helping dig up things that had been buried in advance of the extremist wackos. Apparently people buried all manner of things that the AQIM (Al Queda in the Islamic Maghreb) fighters would've destroyed and geo-tagged the spots on their phones without indicating what was there. (and they buried stuff in a hurry, and for a while, so didn't necessarily remember, exactly). So the teams who went out to help dig things up never knew if they were going to find, for example, priceless thousand-year-old manuscripts or cases of beer. In the later case, since most stuff was buried pretty far down -- hey, cool beer! Sounds like it made for a few interesting diplomatic cables.

Raenia

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #496 on: June 24, 2018, 05:57:30 AM »
@Raenia Are you our first 50?!

I believe Grantmeaname beat me out by a bit.  I'm going to keep on and see how many I can get done in a year, though!

tnrunner

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #497 on: June 24, 2018, 06:10:33 AM »
1. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
2. Three to get deadly by Janet Evanovich
3. Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
4. Seamless by Angie Smith
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Hot six by Janet Evanovich
7. Seven up by Janet Evanovich
8. hard eight by janet evanovich
9. Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors
10. To the nines by Janet Evanovich
11. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
12. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich
13. The Lazarus Vendetta by Patrick Larkin
14. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
15. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
16. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
17. The Maze by Catherine Coulter
18. The Silenced by Heather Graham
19. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
20. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
21. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille
22. Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
23. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
24. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
25. Find Her by Lisa Gardner
26. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
27. The Partner by John Grisham


28. Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell

grantmeaname

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #498 on: June 24, 2018, 06:24:22 AM »
@Raenia Are you our first 50?!

I believe Grantmeaname beat me out by a bit.  I'm going to keep on and see how many I can get done in a year, though!
I dont think I was the first either... Tick Tock had 60 in May.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2018, 06:26:26 AM by grantmeaname »

WorkingStiffABC

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Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #499 on: June 24, 2018, 01:55:06 PM »
Have fallen off a bit with balancing full time work, going to school for Computer Science/Electrical Technology, and working through Udacity scholarship. Will need to pick up the pace...

I will also admit to falling off the wagon and reading a few non-CS related books. As my personal goal is all technical/CS related books, I will try not to count them.

13. Code Simplicity - Kanat-Alexander 3.30.2018
14. The Art of Readable Code - Boswell 4.7.2018
15. Dark Territory: The Art of Cyber Warfare - 5.20.2018 (Frigging fantastic book--highly recommend!)
16. Zero to One - Theil 6.1.2018
17. What I've Learned from Failure - Braithwaite 6.16.2018
18. Do What You Love and Get Paid What You are Worth as a Programmer - Braithwaite 6.17.2018

Long time lurker whom was really inspired by the challenge in 2017. Started in June and finished 37.

For 2018, I am targeting only computer science and coding--as I am inspired to change my life:

1. The Annotated Turing - Petzgold 1.14.2018
2. System Thinking: A Primer - Meadows 1.16.2018
3. The Mythical Man Month - Brooks 1.17.2018
4. Humble Programmer - Dykstra 1.19.2018 (This one was a tease--I am now aware that there are tons more whitepapers to leap down the worm hole!
5. Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby - Stiff 1.20.2018

6. Bite of Python - Swaroop 1.28.2018 (Gentle introduction to Python)
7. The Design of Everyday Things - Norman 2.8.2018 (Wish the photos were in color...)
8. Timeless Way of Building - Alexander 2.22.2018 (Easy to understand the parallelism between architecture and design patterns in programming.)
9. The Art of Deception - Mitnick 3.3.2018
10. Hackers and Painters - Graham 3.14.2018
11. The Cathedral and Bizaar - Raymond 3.17.2018 (Open source; I'm inspired.)
12. Getting Real - 37 Signals 3.17.2018

On pace for hitting this 2018 goal but battling not being distracted by books unrelated to coding/computers...

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!