Category: Books Page 82 of 164

Book Blogger Hop: Books Per Month?

Book Blogger Hop

 

This prompt was submitted by Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews:

What is the average number of books you read per month?

You’d think I’d know that, wouldn’t you? I had to do a tiny bit of research for this. I could’ve gone back about a decade in coming up with this number, but that felt like overkill. I figured a look at the last three years would fit my current habits best (and was easiest to get the data from, which helped). But just the raw number looked boring, so why not make* a chart?

* Have my spreadsheet make a chart, after it did the math for me.

What about you?

WWW Wednesday, January 19, 2022

So the holiday Monday threw me off a little bit, it feels like I’m getting this ready far too early in the week. Hope you’re all having a good one, it’s time for WWW Wednesday!

This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at A Daily Rhythm and revived on Taking on a World of Words—and shown to me by Aurore-Anne-Chehoke at Diary-of-a-black-city-girl.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Easy enough, right?

What are you currently reading?

I’m reading the fiftieth Spenser novel, Robert B. Parker’s Bye Bye Baby by Ace Atkins. I’m also listening to a little-known novel, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, Andy Serkis (Narrator) on audiobook—have you heard of it?

Bye Bye BabyBlank SpaceThe Hobbit

What did you recently finish reading?

I just finished Sally Hepworth’s The Good Sister; A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape by Joe Pera, illustrated by Joe Bennett; and Dark Queen by Faith Hunter, Khristine Hvam (Narrator) on audio.

The Good SisterBlank SpaceA Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an EscapeBlank SpaceDark Queen

What do you think you’ll read next?

My next book should be a book that I’ve meant to read for years: Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure by David Rosenfelt. My next audiobook should be Dead Man’s Grave by Neil Lancaster, Angus King (Narrator).

DogtrippingBlank SpaceDead Man's Grave

Hit me with your Three W’s in the comments! (no, really, do it!)

Top 5 Tuesday – Top 5 books I will definitely* read in 2022


This week’s topic is, “Top 5 books I will definitely* read in 2022. Same disclosure from 2021. You won’t be subjected to punishment (from me) if you don’t read these. But what are 5 books you really want to tick off your TBR this year?” Sure, I could’ve just picked five books that are the next in a series (and, yeah, that’s what I mostly did)–but these are ones that either I am champing at the bit to read or that I know I have every intention on reading, but can see myself getting distracted from and still wanting to read in 2023 (see the entry for Return of the Paladin on Top 5 books I haven’t read yet in 2021). So, calling my shot at the others should help me remember to do it.

1 Bye Bye Baby
Robert B. Parker’s Bye Bye Baby by Ace Atkins

The fiftieth Spenser novel is also the last one that Atkins will write. I can only imagine that Atkins is going to go out with a bang. This is the epitome of me champing at the bit to read a book. I will be abandoning whatever I’m reading to dive into this as soon as I get my hands on it.

2 The Botanist
The Botanist by M. W. Craven

The Poe/Tilly novels have become a (the?) highlight of my summers. I cannot wait to see what happens here.

3 Lives Laid Away
Lives Laid Away by Stephen Mack Jones

August Snow was one of my favorite “discoveries” of 2021–I was practically giddy reading it. I’d expected I’d read this one last year, and don’t know how I didn’t get to it. This will happen soon.

4 Adult Assembly Required
Adult Assembly Required by Abbi Waxman

This made my list without me knowing anything about it–I’ve just enjoyed Waxman’s voice so much the last few years. Also, I wanted something on this list that wasn’t a Mystery/Detective/Crime novel or part of a series.

Oops. It turns out that this is a sequel to The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. 1 out of 2 ain’t bad, right?

5 City on Fire
City on Fire by Don Winslow

I’ve loved almost every Winslow book I’ve read–and was impressed with those I didn’t. So it would seem I’d be super-excited about this–and I am. But after The Cartel–both in scope and impact–I’ve been intimidated by him. This is going to be one of those I have to push myself to read, oddly enough.

Saturday Miscellany—1/15/22

Odds ‘n ends about books and reading that caught my eye this week. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:
bullet Americans Reading Fewer Books Than in Past—pretty sure this is news to no one. Still depressing to see.
bullet Book bans in schools are catching fire. Black authors say uproar isn’t about students.
bullet The 23 most popular books of the past year, according to Goodreads members—huh.
bullet Have We Forgotten How to Read Critically?—Um, yeah?
bullet Ace Atkins bids Robert B. Parker’s Spenser farewell
bullet The Future of Robert B. Parker’s Sunny Randall—I meant to include this last week, but it fits the theme of the previous item.
bullet Some Books That Inspire Me—On the eve of his first novel’s publication, Adam Shaw talks about some books that got him to that point.
bullet Maybe Reading Goals Are Good, Actually—Templeton has some good ideas about reading goals for a self-described “free range reader”
bullet How BOOK IT! Made Reading Delicious—from Mental Floss
bullet Bookish Bucket List—Now this is a good idea…
bullet Misrepresentations of Autism in Fiction—good stuff from The Coycaterpillar Reads.
bullet StoryGraph vs. Goodreads – The Good & the Bad
bullet The importance of book reviews

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet The Jackals by Adam Shaw—Jack Dotson returns to his hometown for a funeral and has to deal with the past he tried to leave behind—and doing so may cause trouble for the rest of his life. (oof, that sounded lame…go read the link, it’s better when not summarized in a sentence)

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to Rabhya Maini who followed the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger!

Book Blogger Hop: Bookish Art?

Book Blogger Hop

 

This prompt was submitted by Penelope @ The Reading Devil:

Do you have any bookish posters or artwork on your walls?

Yes, some. I should really have taken photographs here, but it’d be better to go look at the art at the links instead–I know what my photographs look like 🙂

On my walls are:
bullet a pair of Dresden Files prints by Mike Kuloda
bullet a print from Bearded by Jeremy Billups
bullet a print by Gene Mollica of Atticus, the Iron Druid (signed by Kevin Hearne)
bullet I also have a nifty print from No Country for Old Gnomes> signed by Delilah S Dawson, Kevin Hearne, and the artist (but I can’t read their name)
bullet a print by Chris McGrath of The Brightest Fell (October Daye) cover art
bullet and a mash-up of things like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ready Player One that my daughter painted for me a few years ago.

I’d get more, but I’m about at the point where I have to decide between space for bookcases and space for art. So something’s gotta give. (although I saw three prints while getting links for the artists I almost bought today, so…)

What about you?

WWW Wednesday, January 12, 2021

It’s WWW Wednesday time already, eh? Twelve days into the year and I’m already 2 books behind schedule, but I’m catching up. Hopefully, by this time next week, I’ll be on schedule—maybe even ahead (it could happen, don’t laugh).

This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at A Daily Rhythm and revived on Taking on a World of Words—and shown to me by Aurore-Anne-Chehoke at Diary-of-a-black-city-girl.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Easy enough, right?

What are you currently reading?

I’m reading the ARC of The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz and am listening to Two Witches and a Whiskey by Annette Marie, Cris Dukehart (Narrator) on audiobook, which is a lot less intense.

The AccompliceBlank SpaceTwo Witches and a Whiskey

What did you recently finish reading?

I just finished Seanan McGuire’s Where the Drowned Girls Go, the latest Wayward Children novella, and The Curious Dispatch of Daniel Costello by Chris McDonald, Stephen Armstrong (Narrator) on audio—you may have seen me talk about the series a bit today.

Where the Drowned Girls GoBlank SpaceThe Curious Dispatch of Daniel Costello

What do you think you’ll read next?

My next book should be Nice Dragons Finish Last by Rachel Aaron, I’m finally getting to it years after buying it, and my next audiobook should be Dark Queen by Faith Hunter, Khristine Hvam (Narrator).

Nice Dragons Finish LastBlank SpaceDark Queen

What about you?

Saturday Miscellany—1/8/22

(really quick—I could still use a recommendation or two for the 12 Books Challenge, if you’re in the mood to help a guy out)

Odds ‘n ends about books and reading that caught my eye this week. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:
bullet Never Donate These Books to Little Free Libraries (or Anywhere Else)—Some of this seems like common sense. Probably those parts need to be emphasized.
bullet Public Domain Day 2022—a list of some of the works that hit Public Domain this year, it’s not just Winnie-the-Pooh.
bullet Noah Hawley Keeps Changing Lanes—a profile of Hawley and his new novel
bullet #R3COMM3ND3D2021 The After Show Party—A look back at #R3COMM3ND3D2021 (a truly impressive number of books got mentioned in these posts—if you’re looking for a 2022 TBR list, you could do worse than working your way through these.
bullet Humor in Books, and Other Places, Too! An Interview with Darran Handshaw—Lockhaven’s series continues—and includes a fire safety tip!
bullet These are probably the last of the 2021 Wrap Up posts (although I might not be the only one taking too long to do theirs), those that caught my eye:
bullet Raven’s Yearly Round Up 2021 and Top 10 Of The Year—plenty of good recommendations here
bullet Bookworm Blues lists their 25 Best Books of 2021
bullet Bookforager’s 2021 Progress Report
bullet The Bookwyrm’s Den brings us something from the other end of the spectrum comes To All the Books I DNF’d (2021 Edition), which is a much nicer way of dealing with this idea than I’d come up with.
bullet 2022 Reading Challenge for Overwhelmed Book Readers—for those who need something like this
bullet Why I’m ditching star ratings in 2022—I keep circling back to this idea myself
bullet 10 Reasons to Read Indie and Self-Published Books

This Week’s New Releases that I’m Excited About and/or You’ll Probably See Here Soon:
bullet And Your Enemies Closer by Rob Parker—the first (fairly disturbing) book in this Audible Original series was my introduction to Parker, and this follow-up is just as riveting as the predecessor. Former detective DI Foley kicks off a war between criminal factions. (I almost wrote my post about the book right here…oops. No one has time for that right now)
bullet Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire—a non-reading/blogging project this week sucked up more time than I expected, which is the only reason I didn’t start (and likely finish) the 7th Wayward Children book two days ago.
bullet Anthem by Noah Hawley—”An epic literary thriller set where America is right now, in which a band of unlikely heroes sets out on a quest to save one innocent life—and might end up saving us all.” Yeah, that’s pretty vague, but it’s as good as I can do right now.

Lastly, I’d like to say hi and extend a warm welcome to MaureenBaks who followed the blog this week. Don’t be a stranger!

WWW Wednesday, January 5, 2022

It’s already Wednesday? Where has the year gone?? (I’m not proud of that, but I was struggling to come up with anything else). Let’s put that weak attempt at humor behind us and get on with the WWW Wednesday, okay

This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at A Daily Rhythm and revived on Taking on a World of Words—and shown to me by Aurore-Anne-Chehoke at Diary-of-a-black-city-girl.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Easy enough, right?

What are you currently reading?

I’m reading the SF/Urban Fantasy combo, Bloodlines by Peter Hartog, and am wrapping up Gone Missing by Linda Castillo, Kathleen McInerney (Narrator) on audiobook.

BloodlinesBlank SpaceGone Missing

What did you recently finish reading?

I just finished S.J. Rozan’s Family Business—what a great way to start the year—and The Case of the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy Springer, Katherine Kellgren (Narrator) on audio.

Family BusinessBlank SpaceThe Case of the Left-Handed Lady

What do you think you’ll read next?

My next book should be Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire and my next audiobook will probably be The Finders by Jeffrey B. Burton, Matt Godfrey (Narrator).

Where the Drowned Girls GoBlank SpaceThe Finders

How are you kicking off 2022?

2022 Plans and Challenges

Thanks to Facebook’s On This Day, today I was reminded of my 2014 New Year’s Reading Resolutions. Boy Howdy, did I do a lousy job with those. Of the 12 specific resolutions, I still need to accomplish at least 5 (there’s room for interpretation on a couple of them)—I still want to accomplish 4 of them. Maybe this reminder will help?*

* Yeah, I’m not counting on that, either. But it’s nice to dream.

So, I’m reticent to get into calling my shots, as it were, too much anymore—there’s a project from 2020 still hanging over my head, too. And a few others, too, I’m sure—I just don’t want to go spelunking through the archives to find more personal failures (minor, to be sure, but technically failures).

So, here’s what I’m going to shoot for around here in the next 12 months.
bullet Cut down on my Goodreads Want-to-Read list and the unread books that I own (a perennial project, but I made some strides last year)—one of the Book Challenges this year should be a fun way to help.
bullet I’m going to finish my Classic Spenser series and maybe find another Classic to do a project read-through. We’ll see about that. (I added this one after scheduling this post, but you know what? I’ve been kicking myself for ages for dropping this…)
bullet Be pickier in the Book Tours I participate in—I’ve already started this (Damp Pebbles Blog Tours ceasing operations helped, too—no slight intended to the Tour Organizers I still enjoy working with, but Emma was better at getting me to take risks). I still like Tours, they expose me to things I wouldn’t normally read—and I’m going to keep doing them. But I’m going to be pickier about them.
bullet Similarly, I’m doing fewer Book Challenges. I like the ones I’ve picked out—but they’re concrete things, no more of these “Read as Many of X as You Can” challenges. They don’t move the needle one bit for me as far as picking books—I read as many as I’m going to anyway, just with a count. But Challenges with specific targets can be fun. I’ll talk about those in a minute.
bullet Get better at proofreading—apparently, there’s a need.
bullet Try to interview more authors (maybe others, too?), and get better at that, too.
bulletThere are a few other ideas, but they’re harder to explain than to just do. You’ll know them if you see them.

2022 Book Challenges

12 Books
Perhaps you’ve seen this on everyone’s timeline this last week or so—12 months to read 12 books recommended by 12 friends. This looked like a great way to read something out of my wheelhouse—and so far, it should be. Only 1 of the 9 recommended so far is something that I’d have really considered. I still need 3 more recommendations—so hit the comments, folks!
12 Books Challenge


2022 “Support Book Bloggers” Challenge
Support Book Bloggers Challenge
This just looks like fun, mostly things I should be doing anyway. Go check it out.


2022 While I was Reading
While I Was Reading
I’ve done this one for the last few years—and Ramona’s done a great job of stretching me. And will continue to do so—this year’s categories are more challenging than I’m used to (I have to figure out authors’ astrological signs?).


Your TBR Reduction Book Challenge

Your TBR Reduction Book Challenge
I dig the way this one is organized—if nothing else, my TBR should go down by 12. 🙂


I’ll also undoubtedly do the 20 Books of Summer Challenge…that’s been pretty fun.


That’s everything I have planned, I can’t wait to see what unplanned things happen around here. Hope you’re around to join in the fun!


(Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay)

December 2021 in Retrospect: What I Read/Listened to/Wrote About

Even if the month brought me a bad Jack Reacher (stupid Lee Child wanting to retire…how selfish), I think it was pretty good for reading around here: 33 Books finished, 8,149 pages (or the equivalent) with a rating of 3.5 Stars on average (a little lower than I’ve had lately, but still really good).

I don’t have any books unfinished–sure, that meant I read short works for the last day and a half of the month, but I wanted to start 2022 with a clean slate (something I almost never do, so I was pretty happy about that).

Writing-wise, I put out a variety of things, and a pretty good number of posts, but the things left unfinished stack is way too large…

All in all, color me pleased. Although, at this point, anything that brings an end to the up-and-down year that 2021 was is good to me. Anyway, here’s what happened here in December.
Books Read

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Fortune Favors the Dead Who Is Jesus?
3 Stars 3 Stars 3 Stars
The Last Time She Died Dr. Rick Will See You Now Cold Reign
4 Stars 3 Stars 5 Stars
Mistletoe and Crime Better Off Dead We Had a Little Real Estate Problem
4 1/2 Stars 2 Stars 3 Stars
A Christmas Carol: A Signature Performance by Tim Curry Faith in the Time of Plague A Sheep Remembers
5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars
Grave Reservations A Private Investigation Risen
4 Stars 4 Stars 5 Stars
Messy The Nutcracker My Contrary Mary
3.5 Stars 3 Stars 3 Stars
The Sentence Is Death Things Unseen Why Did Jesus Have to Live a Perfect Life?
3.5 Stars 5 Stars 4 Stars
A Dream About Lightning Bugs Fortune and Glory Some Things I Still Can’t Tell You
3.5 Stars 3 Stars 3.5 Stars
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas Stuff You Should Know Agent to the Stars
3.5 Stars 2 1/2 Stars 4 Stars
Anonymous The Case of the Left-Handed Lady The Iggy Chronicles, Volume One
4 Stars 3 Stars 3 Stars
Dogtology Zoth-Avarex's Escape Plan
3 Stars 3 Stars

Ratings

5 Stars 1 2 1/2 Stars 1
4 1/2 Stars 1 2 Stars 1
4 Stars 7 1 1/2 Stars 0
3.5 Stars 5 1 Star 0
3 Stars 13
Average = 3.5

TBR Pile
Mt TBR December 21

Breakdowns
“Traditionally” Published: 21
Self-/Independent Published: 11

Genre This Month Year to Date
Children’s 0 (0%) 2 (1%)
Fantasy 1 (3%) 7 (20%)
General Fiction/ Literature 5 (16%) 24 (8%)
Horror 0 (0%) 0 (0%)
Humor 2 (6%) 9 (3%)
Mystery/ Suspense/ Thriller 11 (34%) 117 (38%)
Non-Fiction 4 (13%) 22 (7%)
Science Fiction 1 (3%) 20 (7%)
Steampunk 0 (0%) 0 (0%)
Theology/ Christian Living 5 (16%) 38 (13%)
Urban Fantasy 3 (9%) 49 (16%)
Western 0 (0%) 0 (0%)

Review-ish Things Posted

Other Things I Wroteotherwriting
Other than the Saturday Miscellanies (the 4th, the 11th, the 18th, and the 25th), I also wrote:

How was your month?

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