Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Hi everyone!

Chilly week here in Michigan but I was glad to see the sun!

Finished this week: The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women I really loved this, overall. It was tragic, but it was really great to hear about the stories of the girls and women affected, not just as a footnote but as what their lives were like and how the radium destroyed them. However i was having a pretty bummy weekend and it made for really grim reading. Library holds don't wait for moods though, I had to finish by Monday morning or mess with turning wifi off and trying to finish before a new book came in.

After that read I needed some comfort reading, so I re-read The Masterharper of Pern which is an old favorite I've read more times than I can count.

Binti - This was a fast read, less than 100 pages. Probably a novella then? I forget where the cut off was. It is really good, but I felt like I was missing a lot of world building. Not sure if there's another series in the universe that expands more, or she just didn't focus on that. I had to just guess a lot of stuff based on context. Still was good, will try to find more by her.

currently reading: Etiquette & Espionage which I got on sale recently. I'd been meaning to check it out, i like Gail Carriger. It's fun so far, fast read. Will probably finish by tonight or early tomorrow.

How's everyone else doing? Excited for next year's challenge? I admit to eyeing my TBR pile and considering what I want to round out the year with, based on whether it fits in next year's challenge, and how hard it'd be to find something else I want to read if I read it now. I put one title on suspension at the library, just to try to make sure I don't get it this year. I have 4 people ahead of me, if everyone takes 2 weeks that puts me right at the end of the year. But if anyone skips it, returns early, etc. I'd get it too soon. But it's for a prompt that I feel like might be tricky to fill with something that interests me, so I'd rather wait.

Hi! Chilly here in Minnesota too!

I finally finished World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. It was OK. It didn't particularly hold my attention. I was always content to read 1 or 2 vignettes and then close the book. Finally a few days ago I forced myself to finish it. Overall, I'm glad I read it. However, I still can't believe how little of the book made it into the movie - basically the title and maybe 5 details. I guess that's the difference between a name like "World War Z" and a name like "World War Z: An Oral History."

Next up for me is Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency as a political memoir. The first couple chapters are better than I expected. I generally dislike all things politics, so I was dreading this prompt. Still kind of am dreading the prompt....

Including Killing Reagan, I have 4 prompts (5 books) left this year. Definitely doable for me as long as I stay on it. I've left the prompts I'm least looking forward to as the last ones. In hindsight that probably wasn't the best plan, but it does make me excited to finish the challenge and get to other books on my TBR list. I"m still contemplating the reading challenge for next year. I might pick 15 or 20 of the prompts to start. For those of you that don't do full lists, how do you pick the prompts you do? Do you pick your favorites? Go in order of the prompt list? I almost feel guilty just picking the ones I really want to do - seems like I should just read the books I want to read without bothering to fit them into prompts. On the other hand, I do like having reading goals and stretching my reading boundaries.

Hi Sara!

Maybe you could do a combination? Decide how many books you want to challenge yourself with. Half of them pick prompts that you are excited about/think are easy. The other half pick ones you think are more challenging or harder to fill. I don't think there's any reason you HAVE to pick ones you dread, just leave those out. Then if you finish those earlier than you expect, you can always add more!

I'm on vacation this week--well, it's more of a working vacation, but I should have time to get some more reading done! I'm STILL reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I really, really love this book, but I find that they way it's laid out, I've had to take breaks from it to do some quick reads so I feel like I'm actually accomplishing something! A curse on whoever formatted this book--its 650+ pages of small, dense print makes me think that this book is actually closer to the 1000 page mark (and it feels like the 1200 page mark when reading it...) But, it is a great book and I'm hoping to finish it up in the next few days. Also, the further I get into it, the more I think it's perfect for the book about an immigrant prompt. By the time I'm done, I think this will be one of my favourite books--despite all my complaining about how long it's taking to read, haha.

So, this week I also read Justice Calling, which was a super quick, fun read to give myself a bit of a break. I picked this up as a free ebook offer a while back. It's the first in the series, so I'll probably read the second book at some point, which came with the first, but I don't see the whole series holding my attention enough to keep at it--mostly because I have so many other books that I really want to read. This book didn't count toward any challenges.

Speaking of books I want to read, I forgot to put a hold on my copy of Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women Who Helped Launch Our Nation into Space, and it was automatically downloaded to my reader yesterday. Now I have a bit of a dilemma: once I'm done The Amazing Adventures(...), I only have two books left before I'm done my challenge, but I don't think I'll get through them in time to read Hidden Figures. So, get back on the super long wait list for Hidden Figures or put off the challenge....stay tuned for the end of this cliffhanger!

As for how I prioritize books, I started off this year's Popsugar challenge thinking I'd read the prompts in order, but I gave that up about 10 books in. I realized that I just wasn't in the mood for the next book on the list, or I might feel that it would be really interesting to read two books in order for some specific reasons. Now, I did commit to doing the whole list, but I also intentionally did a few that I knew I wouldn't be keen about near the beginning, and I saved some favourites to the end to keep me motivated.

Last week I finished Alan Alda's If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating and really liked it. My husband is reading it now. As a technical person it now makes me think about how I present information to different people. And building a connection to the audience is key. He strongly suggests improv-style classes to learn how to make that connection. I was at a circus workshop this past weekend where some work was improv-like and I am terrible at it so this may be a long journey! I don't feel like I have a creative bone in my body!

Right now I'm reading I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. It is pretty dense but very interesting. Both my husband and son have ulcerative colitis and the gut biome is important. It is eye opening. This one may take a while to get through. I will need some lighter reading either interspersed with that or right after it.