Sean191's 2019 book challenge

I'm going to be upfront and say I haven't hit 75 books in a year since hitting 100 the year my son was born (he's 8 now) but I still want to keep track so here I am!

I'm facing facts that it may be years before I get up to the numbers to complete a real challenge again. Instead, I'm going to just try to read more than I did in 2018.

Record so far:

2009: 87 titles
2010: 100
2011: 31
2012: 34
2013: 26
2014: 26
2015: 26
2016: 11 (sad trombone sound)
2017: 20
2018: 22

1. Hong Kong Noir - Akashic Series
2. Ramona's World - Beverly Cleary
3. Sydney Noir - Akashic Series
4. Make It Right - Ron Yates
5. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - John Boyne
6. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
7. Days by Moonlight - Andre Alexis
8. White Noise - Don DeLillo
9. Prince Caspian - C.S. Lewis
10. Walking Through Brambles: - G.W. Latimer
11. Miracles and Conundrums of the Secondary Planets - Jacob M. Appel
12. Houston Noir - an Akashic Noir Series book edited by Gewndolyn Zepeda
13. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C.S. Lewis
14. I Know a Secret - Christopher Morley
15. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach
16. Tell Me Who We Were- Kate McQuade
17. Go Set a Watchman - Harper Lee
18. The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis
19. We Are Still Here - Emily Koon
20. The Green Man - Kingsley Amis
21. 100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know - Russ Kick
22. The Starlight Claim - Tim Wynne-Jones
23. The Power of Six - Pittacus Lore
24. The Rise of Nine - Pittacus Lore
25. The Fall of Five - Pittacus Lore
26. The Revenge of Seven - Pittacus Lore
27. The Fate of Ten - Pittacus Lore
28. United as One - Pittacus Lore
29. Despair and other Stories - André Alexis
30. The Horse and His Boy - C.S. Lewis
31. The Vicar of Nibbleswicke - by Roald Dahl
32. Come the Morning - Jeannie Burt
33. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
34. A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman
35. The End of Nature - Bill McKibben
36. The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks - Max Brooks
37. The Impossible Fortress - Jason Rekulak
38. Cutting Edge - edited by Joyce Carol Oates
39. There's a Porcupine in my Outhouse - Michael Tougias
40. Bech: A Book - John Updike
41. Hater - David Moody
42. Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
43. Lost Boys: A Novel - Orson Scott Card
44. The Magician's Nephew - C.S. Lewis
45. The Committee - Sterling Watson

1. Hong Kong Noir edited by Jason Ng

Another entry into the Akashic Noir series and shows that the minds behind the series are still sharp as ever. With Hong Kong Noir, the focus of many of the stories is on tradition, family and China's looming shadow. And ghost tales (but that really ties into the previously mentioned topics). The stories are dark, they're masterful, they're another feather in the cap of the Akashic Noir series.

2. Ramona's World by Beverly Cleary

Reading Ramona's World is bittersweet. Just as I read the first Ramona book (Ramona the Pest) to my children a few years back, they, like Ramona, are growing up and gaining independence. My son can read chapter books on his own now, but he's still young enough that he likes to have me read to him. His sister, a couple years younger, I have more time left with still.

Ramona though, she's almost into her teens! She turns 10 during the course of the story, finds herself not really disliking Yard Ape as much as she might have been trying to convince herself, and just takes those little steps away from being the little willful spirit we were first introduced to. She's still willful to be sure, but it's balanced with a little more self-awareness and control. She's growing up. :*(

3. Sydney Noir edited by John Dale

I recently read Hong Kong Noir, but I liked Sydney a little more. In part I'm sure, because I visited Sydney once. But more, I think it was just the different style. Most of the stories in Hong Kong Noir were slow burns and culminated in a smoking ruin for the protagonists. In Sydney Noir, if it's a slow burn at all, when the flame finally catches, it's a flash and everything you expected is gone before your eyes. This had more surprise endings with a couple maybe even forcing out a audible reaction from me.

4. Make It Right by Ron Yates

A novella and eight stories, yet each had such full-developed characters. There were a couple of little spots of detail that Yates seemed to lean on more than once (for instance, I have to double-check a reference about a play kitchen to make sure it wasn't a second story about a character) but overall, it's wonderful writing, even if the stories are pretty dark. Yates turned to writing well into life, but I hope he stays with it, because these stories were really well-written and the characters were easy to care about. I think most of these stories could have been novels on their own.

Welcome back! Looks like a good start!

>6 drneutron: Thanks! With me reading books to my kids at bedtime long enough to feel I can reasonably include them, I might have a decent go of things after all this year!

5. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

I initially was going to give this 4 stars since I enjoyed the reading...but the more I thought about it, the more i had problems.

The first problem was a minor nag at first, but it grew to something that was grating on me. Boyne uses some word play to put the main character's naivete out on display, but it's incredibly lazy word play that jumped out at me from the start. Bruno, the young boy (I believe 8 at the start of the story) refers to the Fuhrer as "The Fury" and Auschwitz as "Out-With" respectively. There's even acknowledgement that he's mispronouncing both these words. But he's German...he wouldn't have been pronouncing these words in English (and in fact, it's acknowledged he doesn't speak English). The German words for "Fury" and "Out With" sound nothing like the words they were supposed to be. It's lazy and gimmicky.

The second problem and definitely the bigger, the focus of the story was on Bruno. Readers I take it are to feel bad for him... but that takes away from the tragedy of his Jewish friend.

The third problem was the limited scope of the tragedy. It's largely contained within the story of Bruno and to a lesser extent his friend Schmuel with a couple of small side characters we're made to feel bad about. With Holocaust deniers on the rise and those who lived through the horrors nearly gone, having stories that "introduce" a new generation to one of the most horrific events of modern times in such a limited scope is problematic to me. I don't think Boyne, an Irish writer, had any real commitment to getting across the horrors of the Holocaust, he just used it as an established foundation for a fictional tale.

6. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

The one that started it all. Sure, it's Lewis so it has heavy Christian overtones...but as a kid, they flew right over my head and as an adult, although I know they're there...it doesn't make a difference one way or the other. It's a good fantastical tale and a story that challenges kids but also is manageable for younger ones. My 8-year-old enjoyed it, my 6-year-old enjoyed it more. They're looking forward to the next Narnia installment and I still have them all after 30+ years.

7. Days by Moonlight by Andre Alexis

I don't know what I was expecting of Andre Alexis' book, but I can tell you I'm glad I received it to review. I believe the teaser mentioned it was something like a modern Gulliver's Travels and I don't think I can come up with a better description.

The characters are very well-crafted, giving insight into each, but providing enough mystery for the reader to craft his or her own take on them. The settings are fantastical, but manage to be believable enough in many cases, that I found myself checking a couple of things to see if they were factual (they weren't - they were created by Alexis). Days by Moonlight is funny, captivating and well-written. It provides some moments for the reader to do some inward reflection.

8. White Noise by Don DeLillo

I was disappointed in this book. It's the first I've read from DeLillo, but since it was raved about for so long, I had high hopes. I think maybe when it came out nearly 35 years ago, it was amazing and fresh. In ways, it reminded me of the movie Clerks or a number of other Indie movies from that time - ridiculous dialogue that people would never actually have, but funny nonetheless. Here though, I think as with many works of literature and art, the works it inspired built upon the foundation of the original to create something better.

9. Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis

If I recall, Prince Caspian might have been the driest of the chronicles. I sure hope I remember right, because this was a dull read. As a child I enjoyed it, but I devoured all the Narnia books in short order. My children enjoyed the book well enough and frankly, they managed to make the movie worse (we watched it after reading). I know Lewis wrote so much of his work as allegories and Caspian is no different, but I just didn't have the focus for that with answering my six-year-old's constant questions about words she wasn't familiar with.

We're on to the Voyage of the Dawn Treader!

10. Walking Through Brambles: A Narrative of Circumspection by G.W.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I requested this book, but I'm sure it wasn't what I got. There's not much of a story, it's more a quiet series of observations would be the best way I could explain it. If you've read Nicholson Baker, you'll have an idea of what I mean.

It starts out a bit slow....the first 20 pages had me worried about slogging through the rest of the fairly short book. Fortunately, it settles into a better pocket after that and continues up until nearly the end when I felt it lost its thread again. It's kind of a book about nothing, but it's not Seinfeld. You'll find some smile-inducing passages, but not laugh-out-loud moments. It's just a comfortable read and Latimer is a decent weaver of tales.

11. Miracles and Conundrums of the Secondary Planets by Jacob M. Appel

Maybe the collection's title (also the opening story's title) will tip you off. In case it doesn't, I'll make it clear - this is a collection of stories featuring eccentric characters and odd stories. Aliens? Yep. Cataclysmic climate disaster - but not what's expected? You bet! The dead returning/resurrecting? Sure, why not?

All that said, each story, each character is wonderfully crafted. The stories are sometimes cringe inducing from the social awkwardness a character embraces, but always interesting, engaging and funny in their own way. I was reminded a little of Etgar Keret - and he's a favorite, so that's a good thing.

It's a quick read or at least it's an enjoyable read which makes the time fly. Recommended!

12. Houston Noir edited by Gwendolyn Zepeda

I think this would make the 9th Akashic Noir collection I've read. Each before has been fantastic, with true gems and a solid contribution from every author. Eight fantastic collections (and I'm sure the dozens of others are all or nearly all stellar as well). For Houston Noir, I felt the collection was just good. To be clear, it's still a better collection than you're likely to see from any number of other publishers, but in comparison to the others I've read in the series, these stories didn't have the same magnificence. I felt like some of the stories had very similar plots and that's probably my main problem. It's not a problem with the writing (always tight and professional) or even the story plots (captivating). In this case though, it seemed like a few good authors had similar good ideas.

I still recommend this - especially if you live in, have lived in or have a familiarity with the Houston area. But if not, check out some of the other Akashic offerings instead. Chances are, you'll find one covering a place you know, making the stories all the more captivating and unsettling.

13. Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

Voyage of the Dawn Treader was better than Prince Caspian, still not as good as The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. But my six and eight-year-olds still were attentive, particularly my six-year-old daughter. Each piece in the story had a natural progression of adventure that kept the excitement flowing. No grand final battle, but still a moment that sticks with you.

Having read these as a child and then read the Harry Potter series as a young adult and now returning to Narnia (just reading the stories...obviously I can't physically return to Narnia at my age - Aslan wouldn't allow it!) I'm making the connections and seeing the influence Lewis had on Rowling and it adds another layer of appreciation and joy for me.

14. I Know a Secret by Christopher Morley

I Know a Secret is a collection of short stories mostly about talking animals that act like humans in many ways - wearing clothes, driving wagons, going on picnics. Humans in the story don't find this odd.

Released in 1927, there are a number of dated references, but nothing struck me as offensive to today's sensibilities. It's cute, and Morley tells his tales with a wink and smile, but maybe they wouldn't be interesting and flashy enough for the children of today.

15. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Mary Roach does an admirable job covering a lot of ground (a lot of underground?) in this book. It's humorous in a dry way, not the laugh-out-loud funny I was led to expect...but it's a book about corpses so maybe that's a bit demanding.

Roach does a great job offering facts peppered with dark humor so it doesn't come across as text book clinical, but somehow you manage to learn something.

There's a coincidence worth mentioning *spoiler alert*: I had this as a car book, meaning I'd read a few pages when my wife ran into a store or I was waiting to pick up the kids, etc. So it was over the course of two months maybe that I read this. The very same day I read the chapter on composting bodies, where Roach interviewed people and they said it was unlikely to ever happen in the U.S., there was a news article that Washington state that talked about how they just legalized composting bodies. So...it took 15 years from the mention in this book, but it happened!

16. Tell Me Who We Were by Kate McQuade

Tell Me Who We Were starts in the aftermath of an accident. The characters, young private school girls, are together in the first short story/chapter to introduce a small part of each of their personal stories for later. After that first chapter, the tale jumps ahead a few years to cover part of the story of one of the girls. Later, the tale jumps far ahead and by the end of the book - the last two tales - it's at the end of a character's long life and into the supernatural/mystical.

The writing is strongest when there's character dialogue. The characters move the plot along better than the narrator and the narrator's voice is too lackluster, too removed from the emotion of the situation. That equates to a little more than half the book being decent and a little less (the narrator-driven) being a bit weak.

I wish the first story was longer, to better-establish the girls as I had some trouble remembering who was who when their part of the story as adults came up later. I also think dipping into the supernatural for the last two (or to be fair, maybe just the final story) hurt the overall narrative. It would have been stronger to keep the telling in the concrete world...there was plenty of interesting places to go with the last character. Returning to the lie from the first chapter would have been the best thing to focus on since it created such a big potential for a plot. Why'd she lie? Was that a pattern throughout her life? Was there a bigger final lie?

17. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

What was Lee thinking? What were her publishers thinking? Going into this book, I was aware that people were distraught because Atticus turned out to be a racist - and was his whole life, but his dedication to the letter of the law (if not the spirit) outweighed his bigotry. So, I was prepared for that. I was also prepared for writing that wasn't as polished as To Kill a Mockingbird as this was purportedly written first and then scrapped in lieu of the other story. What I wasn't prepared for was the deeper racism that was written as "fact" by Lee through Scout.

It's more problematic because I'm not sure that Scout isn't Lee's way of inserting herself into the story, to share her point of view. There are things Scout agrees to about people of color in this book that are just over-the-top racist. Really blatantly disgustingly so, but their couched in her defense of PoC. So agreeing with others that they're less intelligent or child-like, or lazy...but saying that doesn't make it right to not give them a chance to grow.

Maybe those misguided views paired with defending their right to live as free and equal people would have been boundary-breaking in the deep south in the '50s...but that's not when this book was released. Instead, it came out decades later and the offensiveness of those statements only grew with time. I won't give Lee the credit of complexity to believe she introduced those glaring flaws to Scout to stoke discussion. There's not enough other work from her to be able to determine satire or social criticism and frankly, I think taking into account the age she was when she wrote Go Set a Watchman and the deep-seated beliefs of the South (and the North for that matter) at the time, it's likely that Lee didn't see anything wrong with what Scout was saying and that makes me reluctant to ever re-read TKAM as I'm going to look at it through a very different lens and I don't know if the view will be as flattering for what was an American classic that was propped up as an indictment against racism.

I nearly forgot - the story as a whole, wasn't horrible. It had an interesting premise and it would have worked without TKAM having existed, even if all the characters were deeply flawed. But the writing itself and the characters were bland. Lee had an amazing legacy with one book. She was well into her later life. I don't understand why after not releasing anything for 50 years or so, she chose to put this out there. It was a mistake.

Edit: I wrote my initial review and then read other reviews and after a dozen or so, saw no one calling out the deep racism of Scout/Jean Louise and it's at least as horrible as Atticus' because Jean Louise doesn't even realize how racist she's being and Lee is putting her forward like a champion to fight against oppression. It took me just a moment to find a passage that illustrates what I mean. This conversation is between Scout and Atticus:

"Let's look at it this way," said her father. "You realize that our Negro population is backward, don't you? You will concede that? You realize the full implications of the word 'backward' don't you?"
"Yes sir."
"You realize that the vast majority of them here in the South are unable to share fully in the responsibilities of citizenship, and why?"
"Yes sir."

There are more examples...they're not good.

18. The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

My least favorite so far of the books (I can't recall how the next three are, but I think I enjoyed the Last Battle as a kid).

I think as the books moved further from the original four children, my enjoyment of the series moved further away as well. Puddleglum the Marshwiggle was the ironic highpoint of this book seeing as his personality is downbeat. The children didn't do much to advance the plot this time around and while Eustace was more "heroic" that heroism didn't really make sense. He didn't have the years in Narnia that Lucy, Edmund, Peter and Susan had, so his knowledge of it was only soaked up in a few months from the prior book. Aslan barely makes an appearance, there's barely an appearance of the main antagonist... all in all, just the weakest of the lot so far.

19. We Are Still Here stories & a novella by Emily Koon

My first impression of Emily Koon's stories was that she was a poor man's Etgar Keret. The stories had his high level of absurdity, but somehow they work with Keret whereas Koon seems to force them too much. The writing was fine, neither good nor bad.

Part II of the collection "Dark Paradise (A Go Wherever Novella)" is an adult pick-a-path adventure. You really do need to pick a path to read through to enjoy it, you can't just read page to page. And it's recommended you do pick the path, because this was the highlight of the collection. It wasn't just that Koon was doing something novel in her novella which told a tale of Lizzy Borden (with multiple alternate endings) it's that the story(ies) while absurd, just hit the right notes. It was well-done. The main character (Borden) was funny, disturbing and interesting. The supporting characters were entertaining as well. It brought the collection up from maybe a 2 1/2 to a 3 star for me.

20. The Green Man by Kingsley Amis

True to the blurb from the Times Literary Supplement on the back jacket, Amis had three stories rolled into one - a ghost story, a moral fable and a comedy of sorts. For me, it didn't work. The ghost story was pretty good. But the side story of his wife and mistress didn't blend well. The pacing was fine and the climax (at least the one the main character was involved in) was good. But it felt like Amis made this more salacious to interest readers with a pretty tame story by today's standards, but going back 50 years, maybe it was something spicier.

21. 100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know by Russ Kick

At times reaffirming, at other times informative and at still other times, questionable. 100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know is filled with information. Some of it I was aware of and knew to be true, other stuff I looked up to confirm and other stuff just bumped this from a higher rating to a lower because now I am more deeply questioning anything I haven't looked up yet.

There's the false assumption that if some states something as "fact" and backs it with some kind of citation that challenges a long-held belief, the long-held belief was wrong. But it doesn't work that way - it only works that way if the evidence strongly supports the repositioning of a belief. So, the lost nuclear warheads - it's been officially documented and there's no reason to not believe that since it's something the U.S. Government wouldn't benefit from saying. Other things like old laws still on the books are verifiable, just maybe not common knowledge. And still others have been shown to be true long after the publication of this book, giving Kick some good proof of his research.

However, quoting Dr. Mercola, the anti-vaccine proponent for a piece about how sunscreen causes cancer made me raise an eyebrow. Having researched Mercola and written an article about him, I don't find him as a dependable source. I do find him as an opportunist though, and it was disappointing to see Kick give him ink. It did have the silver lining of shaking me out of the mental complacency I mentioned earlier - believing something just because it's "authoritative" and contrary.

There's interesting information here and a lot if not most is true and accurate (and depressing) but I don't have faith that it's all true, so read with open eyes.

22. The Starlight Claim by Tim Wynne Jones

Without giving away too much, I'll just say the main character's reason for being at his parent's cabin was well-reasoned. His reaction and actions were pretty good too. His interaction with his friend was a little overdone in my opinion, but was needed for the plot I suppose. It's a great YA book and I'm interested in tracking down the prequel that apparently starred the main character's dad and was published about 20 years prior.

Update: After reading nearly all of the main Lorian Legacy books, I'm back to say how much I appreciate the work Tim Wynne Jones did with this. This is YA lit done right in my opinion. Just as thrilling, just as entertaining, but better writing.

23. The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore

Formulaic, no great work of literature, but fun enough for a summer read. I picked up 6 of the 7 books at a library book sale for $4, so I'll keep working my way through.

Other 7-series books way better to spend time with: Narnia, Harry Potter

24. The Rise of Nine by Pittacus Lore

Formulaic, no great work of literature, but fun enough for a summer read. I picked up 6 of the 7 books at a library book sale for $4, so I'll keep working my way through. I'm hoping the formulaic doesn't make it too painful to finish...we'll see!

25. The Fall of Five by Pittacus Lore

Another one down!

I've mentioned before that the Lorien Legacies series is formulaic and no great works of literature. But then came "The Fall of Five!" I stand by my earlier assessment. It's fun enough to keep reading the series, but it's definitely just all empty calories with no healthy nutritional value. There's also slopping proofreading from someone - Six, a main character, who's been described in detail repeatedly, is noted to have blonde hair almost throughout...and then black hair at one point...and back to blonde. I initially chalked it up to disguises, thinking I forgot something...but no, it was just careless editing/writing.

The presentation of a couple key story points early in this installment were so blatant with their foreshadowing that I was thinking they were surely intentionally placed as misdirects. But they weren't. Based on the info I received in the first quarter of the book, I could have written the last 3/4 fairly accurately to how it turned out.

Another gripe - I get this is a YA book... but I don't get why they need to include curses (super rare but still). There is at least one instance of the f*** word, sh** and a couple other minor ones. It doesn't add...I don't think teens or pre-teens reading these books would get less out of them without the curses. It just seems unnecessary and lazy.

All that said, I'm more than halfway through, no turning back now!

26. The Revenge of Seven by Pittacus Lore

Another Lorien Legacy book down. I'm already almost done with the next one as I write this. There's still a few good twists and turns to not make it completely formulaic, but since it's not a labor of love by the author (who's not allowed to take credit) it's no great work of literature and there's definitely a carelessness to the work.

Still, fun summer read. Not much heavy lifting for the brain on these!

27. The Fate of Ten by Pittacus Lore

I'm diverging from my regular rating rules. Normally, a 2 1/2 star would mean I'm not reading more from an author. But I'm six books in with one to go (unless I read the side stories, which I don't plan to do). So this review will sound repetitive. The Lorien Legacies are fluff, even for YA lit I think. But they've been that all along and managed to throw in just enough curves to keep it from being completely formulaic. So why the half-star drop? Constant poor attention to detail.

One case, the author described two different characters as "sneering" within 14 pages. It's a strong descriptor. Don't overuse. A bigger problem was continuity. A character shows up and is described as having an arm in a sling. A few pages later, that same character puts both hands on their hips in disapproval. Really? Where'd the sling go? There was a mention of healing the arm, but it's very clearly declined. Just sloppy. Pretty sure the arm gets used later too without mention of healing. That's just one case of a handful. Maybe the editor is getting paid as poorly as the writers are by James Frey.

28. United As One by Pittacus Lore

I've griped about the level of literary merit of this series for a while. It's formulaic and predictable. There's also needless cursing dropped in. None of that changes in this last of the books in the seven-volume series, but this one was more fun and exciting than the previous four. It's still formulaic, but it doesn't fail to entertain. I think in part, doing away with all the romance (or very nearly all) to focus on the overall battle was what redeemed this last book. Maybe I'll read the novellas if I run across them, but even though I did grow to like the characters and story, I won't go out of my way to track them down I think.

29 Despair and Other Stories by André Alexis

With the title "Despair" you'd be inclined to think the collection would be a lot of dark stories. Well, you'd be right. Although you might underestimate how dark the stories are. They're black as midnight during an Arctic winter. That's not to say they're not wonderfully written - they are. Alexis is a superb writer. The stories are haunting, the characters are memorable and the unease you'll feel during and after reading these strange, haunting tales is palpable. Recommended! 4 stars.

*Edit - I read Days by Moonlight earlier this year. I totally forgot that was also written by Alexis. I picked Despair up at a book sale just by happenstance. This makes two four-star books from him. I'll be tracking down more.

30. The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis

I thought the Horse and His Boy was more heavy-handed with its religious tilt than any of the previous Narnia books, but it was also a more exciting story than the Silver Chair certainly and possibly better than The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. With new characters not tied to previously introduced stories (with the exception of the late and limited cameos from Lucy, Edmund and Susan) it nearly stands on its own as a story. 3 1/2 stars.

31. The Vicar of Nibbleswick by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl + cartoonish illustrations doesn't mean it's a children's book. Luckily, my 8-year-old wasn't reading along so i was able to think quick and alter the lines that would have been problematic.

The story is about a Vicar who has a unique form of dyslexia, just saying some words backwards. That causes problems among his congregation especially when it comes to telling them not to park on the street in front of the church...

Amusing and very short... extra funny when reading it with kids and realizing you have to alter the story on the fly!

32. Come the Morning by Jeannie Burt

I hadn't heard of Jeannie Burt before this book and that's unfortunate. This is (I believe) her third novel and if the previous works are as good as this, it's a crime she's not better-known.

Come the Morning is wonderfully written. The characters have depth and are interesting and the story, while slow-moving, is engrossing. The main character's decisions made sense in general and I think taken in context of the time, they were reasonable. Even so, it did have me disliking him at points, but there's nothing wrong with that.

My copy was an early review copy, so I hope the errors that I caught will be corrected before publication. It's a great book and I wouldn't want it to be pulled down by some errors here and there. I'll be seeking out the prequel to this at some point in the near future.

33. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

My wife saw the title and said, "isn't that a teen romance book?" Well, no. Yes a little...but no too. There's teens, there's romance, but I wouldn't call it a teen romance book. It's not Twilight replacing vampires with cancer. The Fault in Our Stars is hilarious, heartbreaking, depressing and life affirming. You might shoehorn in "teen romance" but I think this is a book for all ages, just happens to be with teen protagonists. The two main characters are brilliant with their dialogue. Supporting characters shine in their own right and every piece of the narrative puzzle fits into place so well.

34. A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman

I don't know what I expected from this book....I know what I HOPED for...and somehow, that's what I got. It was shaky though...the first few pages, the title character was to me so horrible, that I was dreading getting through another 200+ pages with him. But so quickly I realized he was something better than most people will ever be. And from there, I enjoyed laugh-out-loud moments, falling in love with a colorful cast of characters and maybe I got some dust or something in my eye toward the end. Favorite read of the year so far!

4 1/2 stars.

35. The End of Nature by Bill McKibben

I was supposed to see McKibben speak, so figured I should delve into his books, having only read his essays in the past. That was maybe a mistake. First, work responsibilities popped up meaning I won't get to go to the presentation. Second, End of Nature is as bleak as the title sounds. I don't think there's anything in it about the environmental crisis that I didn't know prior to picking up this book, but there's two key differences. First, a slew of the problems I already knew about were presented in one book, whereas I learned about them piecemeal through different deep science/environmental works before. Second, McKibben wrote about these problems 32 years ago! That's 32 years that we've done little to address the problems and plenty to make them worse. The book overall though, doesn't offer solutions and to be fair, being honest, I agree that there's not any practical solutions. People just don't see the danger and don't care to see. But a lot of the book was personal musings, peppered with science but not as deep a science as I've been used to in other environmental books. It's a dark, dark book and unfortunately, it's honest.

3 stars

36. Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks

While this was a cool premise, the scarcity of actual writing made me feel like this was just a quick cash-grab built on Brooks' name recognition from World War Z (which is such an amazing book....) So overall, this was a let down, but it's like a 30 minute letdown, so enjoyable enough for that short time frame. Story was mostly told through the illustrations with just enough writing to fill in where blanks might otherwise have cropped up.

3 stars

37. The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

The Impossible Fortress is impossible to believe - or at least a bit of the story's vehicle seems to stretch the boundaries of feasibility. And yet - it's a wonderful book. First, author Jason Rekulak seems to love the topic of early computer gaming. I even saw a name or two I recognized fondly from when I was a kid - Roberta Williams of Kings Quest and The Realm fame was definitely a familiar one. (The Realm STILL exists and holds the record for first and therefor longest running MMORPG).

I may have actually spoken aloud early on with something like "Oh come on!" when it seemed obvious how the story was going to play out. It made me angry to see that Rekulak, who has talent with the written word would be so lazy with his actual story. Fortunately, he's a smarter person than I am and threw the twists in to make the story something other than the same tired tale.

The Impossible Fortress is fun, it's a little upsetting (as you get invested in the characters as I did), but ultimately, it's impossible not to like what Rekulak put together.

One additional note - just like movies sneaking in content during the credits, don't put the book down when you finish the story. Rekulak offers a list of the most popular songs from 1987. He also offers a list of '80s cover songs and there were a few gems on the second list that I didn't know about. But wait, there's more! There's a playable "The Impossible Fortress" game online! It's free, it's very simple to understand the mechanics of, but ties everything in so wonderfully. It's worth playing for a few minutes to wrap up the experience of this book.

38 Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers edited by Joyce Carol Oats

Akashic has been putting out the Noir series for a while now and I've read 8 or 9 I think at this point. If you're familiar with the series, you'll know they almost always pick a locale for the theme and then have writers from that area do a story about the area. This collection's a bit different. It wasn't centered on a locale. The theme was women writers. Maybe it was due to not having to link to a particular place, or maybe Joyce Carol Oates just isn't pulling punches, but this was noir extra strength. These stories were dark! That doesn't mean they weren't good- because again, if you've ever read an Akashic noir collection, you know they are amazing with how well they select their stories. Maybe it's just that women have hit way past their limit with the world today and have channeled it into a collection of stories to give a heads up to meatheads out there that they're not to be messed with.

39. There's a Porcupine in my Outhouse by Michael Tougias

Kind of in the vein of Pat McManus, but not quite as ridiculous or as funny, but still enjoyable. Tougias buys a cabin in the woods (I think it was late '70s early '80s) and with mountain man dreams, he falls into a bunch of misadventures with the wildlife, elements and locals. It's a quick read and fun enough, if not a little sad to run across another book where the experiences you're reading about are much harder to personally experience as the years go buy and the nature that was there isn't necessarily there anymore.

40. Bech: A Book by John Updike

I'm not sure how close to autobiographical Bech is to Updike. I image there's some interchange and it's intentional, but I'm not an Updike scholar, so I won't go too far out on that limb. I'm willing to bet however, that when Bech came out, it was something that ruffled the feathers of polite society even if it would be considered tame today.

The book is funny in a non laugh-out-loud way. It's Updike, so the writing is brilliant as I expected, but I wasn't too enthralled with the story of a middle-aged writer, past the prime of his art, and his exploration of the world only open through his past success. It was alright. However, there were three different passages that made the entire book worth reading. If you plan on reading it, don't read further here. If you don't and you're curious, here you go:

Talking about one of his soon-to-be mistresses:
"He was on the dark side of the earth in a cab with a creature whose dress held dozens of small mirrors. Her legs were white like knives, crossed and recrossed. A triangular bit of punctuation where the thighs ended. The cab moved through empty streets, past wrought-iron gates inked onto the sky and granite museums frowning beneath the weight of their entablatures, across the bright loud gulch if Hyde Park Corner and Park Lane, into darker quieter streets."

"In short, one loses heart in the discovery that one is not being read. That the ability to read, and therefor to write, is being lost, along with the ability to listen, to see, to smell, and to breathe. That all the windows of the spirit are being nailed shut."

"And to think that all the efforts of his life--his preening, his lovemaking, his typing--boiled down to the attempt to displace a few sparks to bias a few circuits, within some random other scoops of jelly that would, in less time that it takes the Andreas Fault to shrug or the tail-tip star of Scorpio to crawl an inch across the map of Heaven, be utterly dissolved. The widest fame and most enduring excellence shrank to nothing in this perspective."

41. Hater by David Moody

The protagonist is unlikeable throughout. If he were someone you'd care about, maybe the last quarter of the book would have been better. I don't think I've ever intentionally put a book down after reading 30 or 40 pages in and that's the only reason I can give for finishing this. I don't feel great about finishing this one. Knowing it was popular enough to be turned into a trilogy and that it's going to be a movie is just a depressing indictment of society.

42. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Well...it's Shakespeare, so pretty much everyone dies, but there are some good plays on words and good speeches throughout.

43. Lost Boys: A Novel by Orson Scott Card

The more I read of Orson Scott Card the more I think he just figured out how to game the system. In the Lost Boys, his story is pretty simple - boys disappearing, job struggles, family move. But the boys disappearing barely pops up in the story for the first 3/4 of the novel. Instead, it's a weird cast of characters introduced to get the reader wondering who did it. Except from very early on, it was too obvious who did it. And then the ending was just there to manipulate reader emotions to save the wreck of the rest of the book. Only reason I gave it a three star is because I cared enough to be upset. But then, if I wasn't a parent and didn't get the understanding of the attachment, maybe it would have been more like a 2 star.

44. The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

Solidly in the middle of the Narnia chronicles for me in terms of enjoyment. While there's some debate about whether this should really be the first Narnia book, there are a couple instances in it that make it obvious it's right where it's supposed to be when it's in the 6th position of the 7 books. (But I forgot to note the passages...so take my word for it).

Also though, if this were the introduction book, I think it would steal a lot of the wonder and magic from LW&W and likewise, I don't think it would add that wonder and magic to this book. It just wasn't positioned the same. The introduction of certain wondrous elements were too far into the book and if kids were expected to read that far before meeting Aslan or talking beasts or even getting to Narnia, then they might never have made it. Also, as the "Chronicles of Narnia" half the book isn't in Narnia, so for that to be the first foray wouldn't make sense.

Getting to the story though, plenty of action and adventure and better fleshed-out characters than in the Silver Chair.

45. The Committee, sterling watson by Sterling Watson

Bam! Akashic ends the year on a high note. I'm very familiar with the publisher's noir anthologies and love them, but hadn't read a novel put out by them before. So glad I got this introduction. While there was a number of big stretches that required a willing suspension of disbelief, Watson is a great writer. His pacing and character development was perfect to me and he gave just enough about each character to care without slowing down the story so much that you lost the thread of the narrative.