JANUARY READING GROUP UPDATE

A great line up of books to discuss this month:

Tiny Book Club:

 

Molly's Group:

 

Carol's Group:

 

One Book At A Time:

 

Bookie Babes:

 

I have already met to discuss the first four titles. I can attest that those made for good discussions.

Have you read and/or discussed any of these novels? Did you discuss any others lately that worked well for a reading group?

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2019

Once again, it was hard to choose only 25 of all the wonderful books I read last year. I made a short runners up list. Not all of these were published in 2019 but all were read during the year.

Starred titles indicate books reviewed on the blog.

*Bowlaway, Elizabeth McCracken

*Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, Janet Fitch

*Daisy Jones & the Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid

*Disoriental, Negar Djavadi

*The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin

*Juliet the Maniac, Juliet Escoria

*Little Big Man, Thomas Berger

*The Lonely Hearts Hotel, Heather O’Neill

*Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, T Kira Madden

*The Loved Ones, Sonya Chung

*Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli

*Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem

*The Neverending Story, Michael Ende

*The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead

*Once Upon A River, Diane Setterfeld

Palm Latitudes, Kate Braverman

*Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

*Stone Upon Stone, Wieslaw Mysliwski

*Sula, Toni Morrison

*The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E Harrow

*The Testaments, Margaret Atwood

*The Time of Our Singing, Richard Powers

*Trust Exercise, Susan Choi

The Vexations, Caitlin Horrocks

*Washinton Black, Esi Edugyan

Runners Up

*The Blue, Nancy Bilyeau

*A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani di Franco

*The Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

*Sisters In Law, Linda R Hirshman

*Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

*Wintering, A Novel of Sylvia Plath, Kate Moses

Happy Reading in 2020!

 

BOOKS READ IN DECEMBER

Happy New Year! My holiday break went a bit longer than planned. I spent the last week in December reading enough books to make my yearly goal of 156 books. It was glorious reading that many books in one year but keeping up with the reviews of them became more time consuming than I had predicted and writing on my own book went completely dead by about May.

So I spent the first week of the New Year figuring out what changes I needed to make. I decided that my own writing must take priority and my reading should be focused on the lists of My Big Fat Reading Project because that is the main research for my book. I considered giving up entirely on the blog but I treasure the relationships I have made through it. So for now, here is the plan: Read primarily from My Big Fat Reading Project and for my reading groups. Write reviews for my own edification as relates to my writing. Post here about once a week, mostly lists such as the books I read each month, the Reading Group Update and possibly the occasional review of books that I especially love.

One day a week I will visit the bloggers I follow and leave comments when I truly have something to say. (I hope this is enough to keep in touch.) Write at least five days a week (that also includes research and revision as I go.)  If you want to see what I am currently reading you can follow me on Goodreads or Twitter. Thank you in advance for understanding.

Stats for December: 13 books read. 11 fiction. 8 by women. 3 from My Big Fat Reading Project.
2 historical. 4 thrillers. 1 mystery. 1 memoir. 1 biography. 1 picture book.

Countries I visited: Brazil, Great Britain, Greece, France, Poland, USA.

Authors new to me: Kate Braverman, Ani DiFranco, Lili Anolik, Caitlin Horrocks, Julie Otsuka, Simms Tabak

Favorites: Palm Latitudes, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, The Vexations

How did your reading go in December? Have you read any of these?