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The Midnight LibraryStarted: 02/06/2021
Finished: 02/07/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽✽✽
LoR BoM Discussion
SR BoM Discussion
LoaBA BoM Discussion
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
Sookie StackhouseReading with Sweeter Reads
1. Start Date: 01/02/2014
2. Time Limit: 01/04/2015 (1 month per book)
3. Series Name: Sookie Stackhouse
4. Author: Charlaine Harris
5. Books in this series:
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)
v)
vi)
vii)
viii)
ix)
x) Dead in the Family
xi) Dead Reckoning
xii) Deadlocked
xiii) Dead Ever After
6. No. of books in this series: 13
7. No. of books complete: 13
8. My overall rating for this series (when complete): 4 star. Easy reads.
Kate BurkholderLoR Series Read
Start Date: 01/26/2021
Time Limit: September 2022
Series Name: Kate Burkholder
Author: Linda Castillo
Books in this series:
1.
2.
3.
4.
4.5
5.
6. The Dead Will Tell
6.5. A Hidden Secret
7. After the Storm
7.5 Seeds of Deception
8. Among the Wicked
8.5 Only the Lucky
9. Down a Dark Road
9.5 In Dark Company
10. A Gathering of Secrets
10.5 In Plain Sight
11. Shamed
11.5 The Pact
12. Outsider
13. Fallen
No. of books in this series: 20
No. of books complete: 6
My overall rating for this series (when complete):
American DirtStarted: 07/21/2020
Finished: 01/29/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽✽✽
También de este lado hay sueños.
On this side, too, there are dreams.
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.
Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying VampiresStarted: 01/23/2021
Finished: 02/09/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽
LoaBA May 2021 BoM
Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.
Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia's life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they're more likely to discuss the FBI's recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.
But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club's meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he's a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she--and her book club--are the only people standing between the monster they've invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.
Dear EdwardStarted: 09/19/2020
Finished: 02/03/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽✽
LoR February 2021 Side Reads
After losing everything, a young boy discovers there are still reasons for hope in this luminous, life-affirming novel, perfect for fans of Celeste Ng and Ann Patchett.
What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?
One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them is a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured vet returning from Afghanistan, a septuagenarian business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. And then, tragically, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.
Edward's story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place for himself in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a piece of him has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery--one that will lead him to the answers of some of life's most profound questions: When you've lost everything, how do find yourself? How do you discover your purpose?
Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again.
Sworn to SilenceStarted: 01/15/2021
Finished: 01/24/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽✽
LoR 2021 Series Group Read
Some secrets are too terrible to reveal . . .Some crimes are too unspeakable to solve . . . In the sleepy rural town of Painters Mill, Ohio, the Amish and "English" residents have lived side by side for two centuries. But sixteen years ago, a series of brutal murders shattered the peaceful farming community. In the aftermath of the violence, the town was left with a sense of fragility, a loss of innocence. Kate Burkholder, a young Amish girl, survived the terror of the Slaughterhouse Killer but came away from its brutality with the realization that she no longer belonged with the Amish. Now, a wealth of experience later, Kate has been asked to return to Painters Mill as Chief of Police. Her Amish roots and big city law enforcement background make her the perfect candidate. She's certain she's come to terms with her past--until the first body is discovered in a snowy field. Kate vows to stop the killer before he strikes again. But to do so, she must betray both her family and her Amish past--and expose a dark secret that could destroy her.
Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and their Accusers in the Salem Witch TrialsStarted: 01/01/2021
Finished:
Rating:
BB October 2014 Bitchen Biography
BB 2021 Catch Up Challenge
Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted", 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn’t include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev. Cotton Mather called "a desolation of names."
The individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation. And although the flood of names and detail in the history of an extraordinary event like the Salem witch trials can swamp the individual lives involved, individuals still deserve to be remembered and, in remembering specific lives, modern readers can benefit from such historical intimacy. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.
Big BrotherStarted: 01/13/2021
Finished: 05/22/2021
Rating: ★★
SR 2021 TBR Jar Challenge
From the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin comes a striking new novel about siblings, marriage, and obesity.
When Pandora picks up her older brother Edison at her local Iowa airport, she literally doesn't recognize him. In the four years since the siblings last saw each other, the once slim, hip New York jazz pianist has gained hundreds of pounds. What happened?
And it's not just the weight. Imposing himself on Pandora's world, Edison breaks her husband Fletcher's handcrafted furniture, makes overkill breakfasts for the family, and entices her stepson not only to forgo college but to drop out of high school.
After the brother-in-law has more than overstayed his welcome, Fletcher delivers his wife an ultimatum: It's him or me. Putting her marriage and adopted family on the line, Pandora chooses her brother—who, without her support in losing weight, will surely eat himself into an early grave.
Rich with Shriver's distinctive wit and ferocious energy, Big Brother is about fat—an issue both social and excruciatingly personal. It asks just how much we'll sacrifice to rescue single members of our families, and whether it's ever possible to save loved ones from themselves.
I am just going to keep this going :p2021 - 15,613 Pages
86. Ninth House - 459P - 01/05
87. The Girl Puzzle: A Story of Nellie Bly - 263P - 01/12
88. Lincoln in the Bardo - 343P - 01/13
89. Afraid - 286P - 01/14
90. Girl, Interrupted - 169P - 01/23
91. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer - 328P - 01/23
92. Sworn to Silence - 355P - 01/24
93. American Dirt - 400P - 01/29
January = 2,603P
94. Rameau's Nephew - 88P - 02/01
95. Dear Edward - 352P - 02/03
96. The Midnight Library - 288P 02/07
97. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - 400P - 02/09
98. Pray for Silence - 304P - 02/13
99. Annihilation - 195P - 02/18
100. Hopeless - 410P - 02/21
101. Lilac Girls - 487P - 02/26
102. Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After - 300P - 02/26
February = 2,824P
103. The Sanatorium - 390P - 03/02
104. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - 458P - 03/05
105. The Island of Sea Women - 384P - 03/05
106. Breaking Silence - 302P - 03/10
107. A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future - 272P - 03/21
108. The Guest List - 330P - 03/23
109. Anxious People - 352P - 03/28
March = 2,488P
110. The Arctic Fury - 432P - 04/15
111. Why We Swim - 277P - 04/19
112. The House in the Cerulean Sea - 394P - 04/30
April = 1,103P
113. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II - 369P - 05/04
114. The Queen's Gambit - 266P - 05/10
115. The Witch's Heart - 363P - 05/17
116. The Poppy War - 530P - 05/20
117. Big Brother - 384P - 5/22
May = 1,912P
118. The Henna Artist - 368P - 06/08
119. The Starless Sea - 498P - 06/15
120. The Last Flight - 311P - 06/20
121. Gone Missing - 276P - 06/24
June = 1,025P
122. The Four Winds - 464P - 07/01
123. Red at the Bone - 207P - 07/04
124. The Lost Apothecary - 320P - 07/06
125. Long Lost - 62P - 07/07
126. Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society - 320P - 07/20
July = 1,373P
127. More Happy Than Not - 293P - 08/02
128. The Glass Hotel - 302P - 08/09
August = 595P
129. Find You First - 438P - 10/25
October = 439P
130P. Elevator Pitch - 453P - 11/01
November = 453P
AfraidStarted: 01/13/2021
Finished: 01/14/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽✽
LoR January 2021 Tea of the Month
Nestled in the woods of Wisconsin, Safe Haven is miles from everything. With one road in and out, this is a town so peaceful it has never needed a full-time police force. Until now...
A helicopter has crashed on the outskirts of town and something terrible has been unleashed. A classified secret weapon programmed to kill anything that stands in its way. Now it’s headed for the nearest lights to do what it does best. Isolate. Terrorize. Annihilate.
Soon all phone lines are dead and the road is blocked. Safe Haven’s only chance for survival rests on the shoulders of an aging county sheriff. And as the body count rises, the sheriff realizes something even more terrifying - maybe death hasn’t come to his little town by accident...
WELCOME TO SAFE HAVEN, POPULATION 907... 906... 905...
AFRAID by Jack Kilborn
Are you afraid of the dark? You will be.
Rameau's NephewStarted: 01/12/2021
Finished: 02/01/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽
BB January 2021: Hit the Reset
18th Century Frenchman Diderot uses a fictional conversation between two men to criticize those who argued against the Enlightenment. As his prior works of political opinion had caused his imprisonment, Diderot was especially careful to craft "Rameau's Nephew" in such a way to not face further trouble.
Girl, InterruptedStarted: 01/12/2021
Finished: 01/23/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽
BB Bitchin Biographies
BB January 2021: Hit the Reset
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele--Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles--as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.
Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching documnet that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
I'll Be Gone in the DarkStarted: 01/06/2021
Finished: 01/23/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽✽
LoR September 2018 BOM Discussion
BB March 2020 Non Fiction
LoR January 2021 Tea of the Month
A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer—the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade—from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.
"You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark."
For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.
Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.
At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.
Lincoln in the BardoStarted: 12/28/2020
Finished: 01/12/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽
SR 2021 TBR Jar Challenge
LoR January 2021 Tea of the Month
In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.
February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.
From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.
Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?
The Girl Puzzle: A Story of Nellie BlyStarted: 12/28/2020
Finished: 01/12/2021
Rating: ✽✽✽
BB January 2021: Hit the Reset
Her published story is well known. But did she tell the whole truth about her ten days in the madhouse?
Down to her last dime and offered the chance of a job of a lifetime at The New York World, twenty-three-year old Elizabeth Cochrane agrees to get herself admitted to Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum and report on conditions from the inside. But what happened to her poor friend, Tilly Mayard? Was there more to her high praise of Dr Frank Ingram than everyone knew?
Thirty years later, Elizabeth, known as Nellie Bly, is no longer a celebrated trailblazer and the toast of Newspaper Row. Instead, she lives in a suite in the Hotel McAlpin, writes a column for The New York Journal and runs an informal adoption agency for the city’s orphans.
Beatrice Alexander is her secretary, fascinated by Miss Bly and her causes and crusades. Asked to type up a manuscript revisiting her employer’s experiences in the asylum in 1887, Beatrice believes she’s been given the key to understanding one of the most innovative and daring figures of the age.
Ninth HouseStarted: 12/28/2020
Finished: 01/05/2021
My Rating: ✽✽✽✽
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
January 2021 Reading StatsLoR Reading Stats
1. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo 01/05 ★★★★
2. The Girl Puzzle: A Story of Nellie Bly by Kate Braithwaite 01/12/2021 ★★★
3. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 01/13/2021 ★★★
4. Afraid by Jack Kilborn 01/14/2021 ★★★★
5. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen 01/23/2021 ★★★
6. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara 01/23/2021 ★★★★
7. Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo 01/24/2021 ★★★★
8. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins 01/29/2021 ★★★★★
New Authors: 7
Female Authors: 6
Male Authors: 2
POC Authors:
Debut:
New Series: 2
4-star: 4
5-star: 1
Favorite of Month: American Dirt
Worst of Month:
Biggest Surprise of Month: Ninth House
2021 Reading ListJanuary
1. Ninth House - 01/05 ★★★★
2. The Girl Puzzle: A Story of Nellie Bly - 01/12 ★★★
3. Lincoln in the Bardo - 01/13 ★★★
4. Afraid - 01/14 ★★★★
5. Girl, Interrupted - 01/23 ★★★
6. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer - 01/23 ★★★★
7. Sworn to Silence - 01/24 ★★★★
8. American Dirt - 01/29 ★★★★★
February
9. Rameau's Nephew - 02/01 ★★★
10. Dear Edward - 02/03 ★★★★
11. The Midnight Library - 02/07 ★★★★★
12. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - 02/09 ★★★
13. Pray for Silence - 02/13 ★★★★★
14. Annihilation - 02/18 ★★★
15. Hopeless - 02/21 ★★★★
16. Lilac Girls - 02/26 ★★★★
17. Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After - 02/26 ★★★★★
March
18. The Sanatorium - 03/02 ★★★★
19. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - 03/05 ★★★★
20. The Island of Sea Women - 03/05 ★★★★
21. Breaking Silence - 03/10 ★★★★
22. A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future - 03/21 ★★★★★
23. The Guest List - 03/23 ★★★★
24. Anxious People - 03/28 ★★★
April
25. The Arctic Fury - 04/15 ★★★
26. Why We Swim - 04/19 ★★★★
27. The House in the Cerulean Sea - 04/30 ★★★★★
May
28. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II - 05/04 ★★★★★
29. The Queen's Gambit - 05/10 ★★★★
30. The Witch's Heart - 05/17 ★★★★
31. The Poppy War - 05/20 ★★★★
32. Big Brother - 05/22 ★★
June
33. The Henna Artist - 06/08 ★★★★
34. The Starless Sea - 06/15 ★★★★
35. The Last Flight - 06/20 ★★★
36. Gone Missing - 06/24 ★★★★
July
37. The Four Winds - 07/01 ★★★★★
38. Red at the Bone - 07/04 ★★★
39. The Lost Apothecary - 07/06 ★★★★
40. Long Lost - 07/07 ★★★
41. Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society - 07/07 ★★★★★
August
42. More Happy Than Not - 08/02 ★★★
43. The Glass Hotel - 08/09 ★★★★
September
October
44. Find You First - 10/25 ★★★★★
November
45. Elevator Pitch - 11/01 ★★★★★
December
