Lisa's 2014 Reading With Less Categories

Hi everyone: I've officially finished my 2014 Challenge with 10 books in 14 categories, and wanted to continue with the group but not with the same 14 categories.

My categories for the remainder of the year will be minimal: Books from My Shelves, Books from the Library, and Books from My Nook.

I'll just hang out here for the rest of the year and see where I end up. This will help me plan better for 2015.

CURRENTLY READING

BOOKS FROM MY NOOK



1.Takedown Twenty September 24 ***1/2
2. Cross My Heart October 6 ****
3. Troubled Daughters Twisted Wives October 9 ****
4. The Burning Room November 5****

BOOKS FROM MY SHELVES



1. Purity in Death October 1 ****
2. The Cocktail Waitress October 10 ****
3. Death Walked In October 14 ***
4. Laughed Til He Died October 20 ***1/2
5. The Hanging Garden ***1/2
6. Dead Souls October 26 ****
7. The Woods November 2 ****
8. Dead By Midnight November 8 ***1/2
9. The Chocolate Bridal Bash November 13 ***
10.Set in Darkness November 15 ****
11.Death of A Dentist November 17th ***1/2
12.Killing Orders November 21st ***
13.The Teaberry Stangler November 22 ***1/2
14.The Falls November 26 ****
15.Imitation in Death December
16.Berlin Noir December
17.Portrait in Death December
18.Divided in Death December
19.The Body in the Sleigh December
20.A Certain Justice

BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY



1. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena September 29th *****
2. The Paying Guests October 6 ***1/2
3. The Secret Speech October 21 ****
4. Serena
5. The Haunting of Hill House
6. Moral Disorder and Other Stories October 30 ****1/2
7. Too Much Happiness November 10 ****1/2
8. Hope To Die December 4 ****

Looks like you have all your bases covered, Lisa. Here's to relaxing and enjoying the remainder of the year!

Excellent way to read out the year!

Congrats on finishing up your challenge! Enjoy your new set of categories :)

Takedown Twenty

I was in the mood for laughter, and I can always count on Stephanie. Grandmom Mazur, Lula and various other characters for that.

I enjoy Stephanie's endless disasters and the fact that Ranger always comes to save the day. However, I'd like to see a little shakeup in the Stephanie, Ranger and Joe triangle. Maybe Ranger could have a new female interest in his life?

Better yet, didn't Ranger have a daughter, maybe she can come to town and keep Dad on his toes?

Next I will be reading A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, which I just realized is DQ (Judy) book bullet. I should have saved it for October's Random CAT, but it's due at the library fairly soon.

Love the new thread. Love the new setup and looking forward to seeing what you think of the Marra book! I own a copy so I may take a BB from you.... you never know. ;-)

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena was such a powerful read! I really liked the manner in which the author weaved together the individual stories of the various characters. At first, I couldn't figure out what all the various pieces of information were leading up to, but then through various flashbacks, the present day and the past became clear.

Little Havaa is eight years old when her father it taken from her and her home is burned down. Her neighbor Akmed takes her to an abandoned hospital where the last surgeon in Chechnya, Sonja, is doing her best to care for patients with limited supplies and staff to care for them. Akmed calls himself an incompetent doctor, but he is an artist at heart.

The only reason Sonaj has stayed in the area is her hope that she will find her sister Natasha, who has recently disappeared. She doesn't realy want the responsibility of caring for Havaa, but finds herself drawn to the child anyway.

This was a very thought provoking and riveting read. Excellent, and easily a five star read for me.

ETA: I forgot to give DQ (Judy) a wave for this BB!

Thanks for visiting the new thread everyone. It's funny, I'm enjoying my "free reading" but I find I am all over the place about what to read.

I finally settled on the 15th book in the Eve Dallas series, Purity in Death. I would like to catch up a little more with the series, but wow, was the 40th book just released? I don't even count all the various in between books the author has written. I think she will always write faster than I can keep up with her, but I'll try:)

Hi Lisa, I'm glad that you also found A Constellation of Vital Phenomena a five star read.

The Paying Guests started out really powerful, then kind of fizzled out for me.

Frances, at the age of 26, is considered a spinster and living with her mother in large house that they can no longer afford to maintain. They reluctantly take in boarders or to soften the blow of the stigma with their society acquaintances, "paying guests".

The paying guests, Lillian and Leonard Barber, are a young married couple, around Frances's age, but Frances seems so much mature and has much more responsibility.

A romantic relationship develops, then a murder, then a murder trail, and that was pretty much how the story developed. This book was almost 600 pages, and at times, very interesting, but other times it was kind of boring.

By the end of the book, I really didn't care what happened to the characters at all. It wasn't a bad read, I just expected more of a "bang" ending and the endless pages of self reflection by one of the characters grew just a bit tiresome.

I'm looking forward to finding out what you think of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives.

I'm a big fan of James Patterson's Alex Cross series, and I found this installment to be a pretty good one, filled as usual with a lot of action, serial killers, and the special relationship Alex has with his children and his grandmother.

Imagine reading along and then realizing that the ending of the book is actually a part one of a part two story! I'm not even talking about an up in the air ending, just a stay tuned for book two. Hope To Die will be released late next month, so I guess I will not get to read part two until sometime next year. Usually this is one series I would preorder, but not for 14.99 in e book format:)

It was a good read, but I wish there had been some clue that this book was half of a story.

>14 RidgewayGirl: Hi Kay: I am loving Troubled Daughters Twisted Wives, I'm reading the Vera Caspary story and it is riveting!

Congrats of finishing the Challenge. And enjoy the pressureless rest of the year. :)

>15 lsh63: - Lisa - I was a big fan of Alex Cross until I read Kill Alex Cross a couple of years ago. I couldn't believe there was so little substance compared to the earlier novels. I've pretty much given up on Jmaes Patterson except for the Women's Muder Club series and if they get as thin as some of his other series have gotten the longer they go on, then I'll be quitting on that one too.

Good Morning !

It appears as though I have abandoned my own thread for a few weeks. I have been reading though, and I wanted to mention my two noteable reads for the month:

The first is Troubled Daughters Twisted Wives a wonderful anthology of short stories all written by women. All of the stories were written between the 1940's and 1970's some by authors I had heard of before such as : Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar, and Shirley Jackson, as well as some unknown to me such as Joyce Harrington and Nedra Tyre. I could really picture most of the earlier stories in black and white with a definite noir aspect to them.

My favorites of the collection were: Patricia Highsmith's "The Heroine", about a nanny with some definite issues, Joyce Harrington's "Purple Shroud" about a woman who weaves to get even with her cheating husband, and Neda Tyre's " A Nice Place to Stay" about a woman looking for the perfect home.

My other notable read for the month was a book I just finished yesterday Margaret Atwood's Moral Disorder and Other Stories, an excellent collection of short stories at various stages of her life all skillfully and seamlessly woven together. I think I've only read The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale so I will definitely be looking for more of Ms. Atwood to read.

I've also been trying to catch up with Mr. Rebus enjoying both The Hanging Garden and Dead Souls.

I also enjoyed Serena, The Secret Speech and The Haunting of Hill House.

Oh, and I forgot to add Twisted Wives Troubled Daughters was a BB from >14 RidgewayGirl: Thank you Kay!

I'm glad you liked it too, Lisa, but I was pretty sure it would be right up your alley!

Looks like a good reading month! Will have to pick up the Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives anthology sometime.

I have Twisted Wives, Troubled Daughters on deck for January. I am looking forward to this one!

Hi Lisa, congrats on finishing!!

I've had a terrible reading year. I'll be lucky if I reach 100 books this year, which is far below my usual standards. Too much Quiz Up early in the year. Reading more now but playing Quiz Up less.

>23 lindapanzo: Hi Linda! Thanks! I've tapered off with playing Quiz Up, for the time being. I wanted my brother to play me ( we have a friendly rivalry going) but so far he doesn't seem interested, he is however, beginning to play Candy Crush, go figure!

>24 lsh63: And now there's a new one - Candy Crush Soda!

Good Morning Everyone:

It's really bad when you don't make an appearance in your own thread!

>25 mamzel: I still can't seem to leave Candy Crush alone. I'm not sure if I'll try the Soda version.

So let's see , in November I read 2 Rebus books Set in Darkness and The Falls. My other book that I really enjoyed was the long awaited (at least by me) latest Harry Bosch The Burning Room. Other reads were of the cozy/on my shelf variety: Dead by Midnight, The Chocolate Bridal Bash, Death of a Dentist, and The Teaberry Strangler.
I'll finish the year with trying to read books off my shelves mixed with holiday reads.

I still need to finalize my plans for the 2015 challenge, it's surprising to me that I haven't done that. I usually do this in late summer but had no clue what I wanted to do except that I know that I really want to remove as many physical books as possible. My aging eyes are doing much better with my e reader these days even with glasses......

Right now I'm reading the latest Alex Cross Hope To Die, if anyone has read Cross My Heart you'll probably remember feeling as though you read half a book and had to wait almost a year for the other half. I can say the wait was worth it, I'm at the halfway mark after starting it on Monday evening!

I also hope to get to:

The Body in the Sleigh
The Man With A Load of Mischief
Resurrection Men
The Girl Next Door
Imitation in Death

Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas, Lisa.

Merry Christmas, Lisa! All the best in 2015.

Ha, I haven't started my plans for 2015 thread! You're ahead of me. Merry Xmas!

Merry Christmas Lisa and a Happy reading New Year!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Just doing a last visit to my 2014 thread, I doubt that I will post anything else this week. Christmas was great, there's nothing like the joy of seeing little people tear into their presents is there?

So here's what I've read in December:

Hope to Die
Imitation in Death
Berlin Noir
Portrait in Death
Divided in Death
A Question of Blood
The Body in the Sleigh
A Certain Justice
Resurrection Men
Orphan Train

Right now I'm reading Murder at Christmas and Other Stories, and hope to finish it soon. I'll be back to post year end stats, and try to think of my favorite or memorable books of the year were.

I think I may have read too many Eve Dallas books back to back so I will take a break from them for a little bit. I do want to read the next installment in the Rebus series though, Fleshmarket Alley.

What am I reading now? Ruby which is very dark but beautifully written.

It's sad to see the various threads winding down, but it's also fun to see the bright, shiny ones over on the 2015 Challenge. I avoided going over there until this week, and I'm a little daunted by the size some of those threads have already reached! See you over there, Lisa.

This is my attempt to wrap up my 2014 reads. Why? Because I really enjoy reading and watching year in review recaps and I like lists!

I technically finished my 2014 challenge in late September and added an additional 40 books for a grand total of 180 books. 44 books were borrowed from the library, 54 books were on my Nook, and 82 books came from my bookshelves.

My favorite or memorable reads for the year were:

Doc
Burial Rites
The Luminaries
The Goldfinch
Snow Falling on Cedars
A Land More Kind Than Home
Ordinary Grace
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Natchez Burning
Lonesome Dove re-read

My most disappointing book was Twitch Upon a Star a biography of Elizabeth Montgomery.

I also adored The Goldfinch and Doc. I'm holding onto my copy of The Luminaries for when I need an extended involvement in a good book.

I also loved Doc -- one of my top 5 books when I read it in 2013!