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It is weekly check-in time: Woot woot!

I finally finished A Prayer for Owen Meany. My short review was "M. Night Shamaylan read this book and turned it into the movie 'Signs'." It is a good friend's favorite book and ... I don't get it. Didn't fulfill a Popsugar prompt for me so I'm still at 36/41.

Confession: I had a really good question of the week all lined up and now I can't remember what it was. *sigh*

Question of the week: Are you a book bargain hunter? If so, what is your favorite source for bargain books? E-reader daily deals? Used book sales?

I am obsessed with e-book daily deal emails. I subscribe to six! Count 'em: Kindle Daily Deal, Book Bub, Early Bird Books, Book Perk, ŷ������ Deals and Book Riot. Plus I just added the Audible.com daily deal to my in box. I actually get a little angry when there isn't a book I want to buy that day, which is ridiculous when you consider I can't ever read a full book a day. But whoever said book buying and book reading was logical?

And now I turn it over to you ...

ETA: I remembered my original QoftheW ...
In honor of banned books week, what is your favorite banned book?

I have progress to report!!!! I'm so excited!! Last week I took a hard look at my remaining prompts. I don't have all that many left - 40/41 for my first set and 25/41 for the second set.

I finished four books this week. I decided I needed to really focus on finishing a book rather than switching between them so much, and it paid off.

Books finished:

Midsummer Night - this is a novella from a favorite series and it fulfills my second book under 150 pages.
Longbourn - this is my second book recommended by someone I just met
I Let You Go - second book set in Europe
The Martian - second Sci-Fi book

I have plenty of time left to read my remaining 17 books, BUT I need to put aside anything that does not meet a prompt so I can focus on those that do.

Currently I am reading:

America's First Daughter - my home state of Virginia. This is my second book for this category
The Little Prince - for my second book translated from another language
Northanger Abbey - audiobook for my second satirical book.

I really also need to get started on my political memoirs. Why did I save those for the last quarter of the year???

Question of the week: I don't buy many books, and I probably buy more kindle books than regular books (which is funny because I actually prefer print books. They usually come from the library though). Modern Mrs. Darcy's Daily Kindle Deals is my favorite way to receive information on sales. I do get some emails from ŷ������ and BookBub plus the audible daily deal, but MMD is still my top source.

PS - don't you hate it when you have something really good to say and then forget it??

Hi! I read four things this week. 1 for this challenge and two for around the year and one that doesn't fit in to anything (ugh).

Popsugar 34/41. Around The Year 32/52

~ Blackout satisfy book recommended to me by a family member. I'm not a fan of time travel books so this one fell flat for me.

~Freaky Friday - for around the year. Wow, for once I'm going to say the movie was better.

~Finding Audrey - I liked this one. I switched between the audio and the book. This has a blue cover if you need something to work for that category.

~Adulthood Is a Myth: A "Sarah's Scribbles" Collection - super sute. Should have used this for brings joy.

QOTW I get the BookBub emails and look at them. I also see the goodreads deal emails come through. With getting so many of my books at the library its hard for me to beat that!

Yay I have progress to report! I will finish The Nightingale tonight. I'm a little more than halfway through but I'm going to devote my free time at work to it today. Even though I know the ending already (I'm the worst - I looked it up), I still am hooked. I can't finish this update fast enough so I can start in on it again.

This has brought me out of my book slump finally and I have a big stack of books from the library to work through, most of them will fill prompts. Now that I've finished moving and gotten back from vacation I'll have some more time.

Question of the week: Are you a book bargain hunter? If so, what is your favorite source for bargain books? E-reader daily deals? Used book sales?
Not usually, I have so many others on my TBR list I want to work through. I do get e-mails through ŷ������ when there's a deal on a e-book I want to read which I really like.

I have a lot of good news. I was rehired after being laid off. Yay for jobs! I guess they couldn't live without me...but more like they didn't have an action plan for all of the leftover projects and many angry authors to deal with.

I also finished three books this week. I read You for a book with a character with the same occupation. It's not the protagonist, but rather the object of their affection that shares my occupation, a writer. This was a great, yet twisted, read.

I finally finished The Joy Luck Club for the culture I'm unfamiliar with. I have been working on this for months but once I finally devoted time to it, I breezed through. I liked it and learned a lot.

I also read We Were Liars for the set on an island prompt. I finished it in one evening, so it could also fill the finished in a day prompt. This book was okay. I kept wondering what the point was for most of the book and then the ending had a twist that it made it worth the time and effort.

QOTW: The ŷ������ Daily Deals are getting me in trouble. I keep buying books but they don't fit any of my remaining prompts so my (virtual) TBR pile is stacking up. I also like looking through used book stores and digging through B&N bargain areas.

Charlotte wrote: "I have a lot of good news. I was rehired after being laid off. Yay for jobs! I guess they couldn't live without me...but more like they didn't have an action plan for all of the leftover projects a..."

Congrats on the rehire!

And yes to digging through the B&N bargain books though I find less now that interest me than I used to.

Finished Zodiac for my Protagonist With Same Occupation book (chemist). Took a while to get through, but Neal Stephenson usually makes your investment of time worthwhile.

Just started my Dystopian Novel, Station Eleven.

36/41

QOTW: I get the Book Bub newsletter daily and sometimes get other offers. While I look, I'll usually only "buy" it if it's free. I figure that there's so much to read at the library for free that I won't ever run out of reading material before I have to start buying it. And I'm cheap. :)

Lindi wrote: "Even though I know the ending already (I'm the worst - I looked it up), I still am hooked. "

Well, I did the same thing when I read The Nightingale because I couldn't stand not knowing who the narrator was so I read ahead, got the answer, and then finished the reading. Much to my surprise: I was WRONG! I was not prepared for the very wonderful ending that totally surprised me. Much sobbing ensued.

This book is in my top 5 books of all time and may be my all-time favorite now. I've been thinking of re-reading too. I bought it in hardcover and then it was -- surprise -- a Kindle Daily Deal so I bought the e-version too.

Good luck! Such a marvelous book.

Juanita wrote: Well, I did the same thing when I read The Nightingale because I couldn't..."

I'm glad I'm not the only one that does this... sometimes I like to have a little more information when I start a book. And sometimes I get a little out of hand on the wikipedia page LOL.

I am still totally engrossed in this. I'm not prepared for the sobbing however :(

I finished 3 books this week, but alas, none of them were for this challenge, so I'm still at 36/41. Working on The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream for the political memoir prompt, but in this election season, it's tough to want to reach for anything about politics!

I read The Worrier's Guide to Life for Bustle Reads #9, a graphic novel written by a woman. It would work better as the webcomic it started as, I think, but I did like it.

I read We Were Tired of Living in a House for Bustle Reads #12, reread your favorite book from childhood. Still lovely!

I read Looking for Group, a super-cute queer YA novel that doesn't fit any challenge prompts, unfortunately.

QOTW: Since I work at a public library part-time and used to volunteer with the Friends of the Library, I have access to a LOT of great book bargains! I'll check out daily deals emails occasionally, too - just got The Soldier's Scoundrel for less than $2, and I'm saving it for a long plane ride next week!

Two books read this week; thus 62 on 82.

☑️26. A book and its prequel: John Updike, Gertrude and Claudius , Random House, 2000.

A really, really good book - I was worried it would turn out to be a tepid elaboration on an interesting concept: it's anything but. A rich, complex literary work in its own right, and one of my favorite of this challenge so far. Now re-reading Hamlet, obviously.

✅✅8. A book set in Europe (2): Alison Moore, The Lighthouse , Salt Publishing, 2012.

Speaking about tepid... This book has been quite aptly described by a Goodread reviewer as an overblown short story; indeed one could distill it into a nice, Flannery O'Connor-ish short story. But a novel it is, although not a huge one; and basically it's trying to do too many different things at once without quite achieving any of them. Good thing I got it cheap!

...wich segues into the QOTW: I don't do ebooks, so no ebooks deals for me; on the other hand, second-hand books are fine - and, as luck would have it, a charity bookstore has opened on the ground floor of my building. They even have some foreign language books (that's where I got the Alison Moore), and quite a lot of paperbacks for 1 or 2�� apiece.

I'm at 27/41. Finished one book this week for the protagonist with the same occupation - The Archivist by Martha Cooley. Very intense and emotional book.

QOTW: I get Book Riot deals of the day, along with Modern Mrs. Darcy's deals. I go in streaks buying but I do like to have ebooks available for reading while traveling. For actual books, I've ordered from thriftbooks.com - books are often $3.59 and an order above $10 gets free shipping. I don't know how they do it.

Charlotte wrote: "I have a lot of good news. I was rehired after being laid off. Yay for jobs! I guess they couldn't live without me...but more like they didn't have an action plan for all of the leftover projects a..."

Congrats on getting your job back!!

I finished four books this week (and I'm about to finish a fifth - just 10 pages left in The Hour of the Star).

I finished the PopSugar challenge this summer, and I have two books left to go in the BookRiot Read Harder challenge. I thought I was done with Challenges, and I would just read books that caught my interest for the rest of the year. But somehow last week I got sucked into another challenge: the 52 Books Around the Year challenge that several of you are doing. I like the challenge categories, and when I realized I can fill about half of them already, and a few more will be very easy, I figured I might as well go for it. No big deal if I don't finish it. I really love the hunt for a book to fit each category, it's so satisfying! And I love making lists and giant spreadsheets to track it all!!

This week I read:

Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas, a YA graphic novel biography; very underwhelming. I've read picture book biographies that go into more depth. This could fill a graphic novel category, or biography, science, and book you can read in a day.

North and South - ugh I just do not like Victorian literature, but I have this thing where I'm trying to read books from the 1001 books list, and I'd never read Gaskell, and this book is listed on the NPR list of 100 best romances, and of course it's free through Gutenberg, so ... well, I read it. Some romance! Margaret doesn't even express the least bit of interest in a guy until the second to last page!! Anyway, I will use it for the "first letter of your first name" category in Around the Year.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue audiobook, third in the Raven Boys series. I don't really even LIKE these books, but I love listening to Will Patton, and there is a certain guilty pleasure to be had waiting for Ganzey and Blue or Ronan and Adam to finally kiss. They had all better kiss in the fourth book!! This doesn't really fit any category for me. Maybe it was a YA bestseller, or maybe you could count the title as having a first name in it.

The Call of the Wild - I LOVED White Fang when I read it as a kid, but I never read this book! It was great. And another Gutenberg freebie. And I am using it for the "childhood classic" category in Around the Year. It was also quite short, so you could use it for "less than 150 pages," or "can read in a day."

QotW I don't buy many books, over 90% of my books come from the library. I do look at the GR Daily Deal sometimes, and I follow some authors on FB so they will alert us to deals. If you're looking for hardcopy books at a good price, I highly recommend Hamilton Books. I went through a real gardening phase about 20 years ago, and I bought A LOT of books from them, they have a great selection of new, used, and discounted books, some hard to find elsewhere. Just looking at the font in their catalog gets me all happy!

And there's always Gutenberg, because you cannot beat FREE!! (Just in case someone reading this is not familiar with the Gutenberg Project, check it out here: )

I finished some books this week but none for the challenge. I'm holding at 29/41.

To celebrate Banned Books Week I found some YouTube videos of people reading some of the challenged picture books, because WHY would you ban a picture book? They were If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, and And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell, and Henry Cole (Illustrator)

I also finished listening to Douglas Adams read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and have started the sequel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, which I will use for the PopSugar Fall Reading Challenge.

I've also started Station Eleven for my dystopian book, but my new store has me on much crazier hours (some days I'm in at 4:30am and some at 1:30pm) and every time I try to read print I fall asleep. This doesn't bode well for me as most of the books I have left are in print!

QOTW: I love a bargain book, though I almost never check my email. I'll pick up a free or nearly-free e-book every so often, especially it I can then get the audiobook for a buck on top of that. I picked up a few books at the thrift store this week and always look for a nice, cheap used copy of something when I'm at Powell's.

Other QOTW: I'm not sure what my favorite banned or challenged book is! I like Harry Potter, Shel Silverstein, Pooh, Dr. Seuss, James and the Giant Peach, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time... I finally bought a great used copy of 1984. Maybe I can find a spot for it in next year's challenge.

I also really enjoyed in a local library

Other QotW I don't really pay attention to whether books have been banned, so I have no idea!!

I scanned this list: and holy cow that's a big list!!! How am I supposed to pick a favorite??? Even The Clan of the Cave Bear is on there - surely that was innocuous? There are a lot of fantastic books on that list ...

I will randomly choose Their Eyes Were Watching God as my favorite. Or maybe it's The Hunger Games. Or Saga, Volume 1. Or The Awakening

Finished The Borrower for my book with someone who has the same occupation as you. I had mixed feelings about it, but still enjoyed.

If I'm being honest, I rarely buy books anymore. Working at the library has spoiled me by making it so easy to just grab while I'm at work and take it home. I do love a good deal if I come across it though!

And my favorite banned book is Speak. I read it in high school and loved it. It definitely has a lot of controversy around it because of graphic rape, but it tells an important story.

No progress this week.

Question of the week: Are you a book bargain hunter? If so, what is your favorite source for bargain books? E-reader daily deals? Used book sales?

I am! I'm always picking up free or cheap Kindles. We also have a nice used bookstore here. I also use interlibrary loan. I basically don't really want to spend more than $5 to get a book I'll just get rid of after I read it.

There is also a really nice internet used bookstore: betterworldbooks.com -- they donate a book for every book you buy.

In honor of banned books week, what is your favorite banned book?

The Grapes of Wrath

Last week, I finished The Silkworm (murder mystery). Just like the first in the series, it took me a bit to really get into it, because that's not really my genre, but I still enjoyed it and plan to continue the series.

My overall progress has slowed down again, but hopefully it'll pick back up again.

QOTW1: I get most of my books from the library, but I do love finding a good book for cheap. Not big on buying ebooks, because if I'm gonna spend money, I want it at least to look pretty on my shelf afterward. :)

QOTW2: Harry Potter, of course!

My favorite banned book is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. So funny.

After a crazy unplanned break from reading over the summer, I managed to get back to it and finished All Summer Long for my book set in summer and Hitler's Last Courier: A Life in Transition for my autobiography. But I'm so far behind now!! In a reading frenzy!