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Annual Reading Goal Challenge for 2016 - Come and join us!

Finished book #57/65 - The Fireman by Joe Hill

I LOVED this book. It's a long one, but worth it. It's about a worldwide pandemic and a woman trying to survive. This would make a great movie.

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.
Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.
In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.
 
I'm not doing the challenge, but I read the Fireman too and loved it. Joe Hill is Stephen King's son, so he comes by his talent honestly.

Before that I read Abaddon's Gate (part of the Expanse series - awesome science fiction). Just finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch who also wrote Wayward Pines. I am currently polishing off some Expanse short fiction and then The Martian.
 
LOL, I just started Dark Matter after finishing The Fireman. I was a Stephen King fan in high school/college, but don't care for his later works. I like Joe Hill b/c he can creep me out without it getting gruesome or too bizarre. I really liked NOS4A2 from Joe Hill too.
 
I don't have a count going, but I recently read Be Frank with Me, which I enjoyed immensely. It is a bit quirky, kind of like Where'd you go Bernadette? if anyone liked that:

Alice, a 20-something assistant at a New York publishing house, is sent by her boss to California to look after one of his clients, M.M. Banning (aka Mimi). Thirty years earlier, at the age of 19, Banning wrote a Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novel that continues to sell a million copies a year. As far as anyone knows, she has not written anything since, but now, having been swindled by an investment advisor, she needs money and someone to help her keep her household going while she writes another book. So Alice arrives on Mimi's doorstep in Bel Air and meets Mimi and her nine-year-old son, Frank. Frank is an old-for-his-age cinephile with an encyclopedic knowledge of old movies and a penchant for dressing like characters in those same films. Mimi is allegedly working on the promised book, but she never allows Alice to see any of it, and Alice finds herself acting as a full-time companion to Frank. Despite early misgivings, she is drawn into the rhythms of their odd family, which includes a gorgeous young man named Xander, who shows up occasionally, teaches piano to Frank, and does odd jobs around the place and whom Alice suspects might be Frank's father.
 


#63 - The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey

#64 - Throne of Glass by Sara Maas

Both YA fiction recommendations from this thread, very quick, fun reads, perfect for the last few days before a semester that will have me reading 8 scholarly non-fiction books in addition to the main textbooks and writing 10+ pages of essays and analysis every week on top of everything I'll be doing for my journalism capstone.

The Fifth Wave was my kind of story all around - lots of apocalyptic action with a little romance to keep it "human". And the author really impressed me with his ability to write convincingly from the perspective of a teenage girl. Throne of Glass was more of a 'chick' book, more predictable (at least if you've read much dystopian/fantasy) and with more emphasis on the romance angle, but still enjoyable enough to keep me turning the pages. I've requested the sequels to both from the library and look forward to seeing where each story goes next.
 
#42 The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas

From Goodreads:
The Darkest Corners
is a psychological thriller about the lies little girls tell, and the deadly truths those lies become.

There are ghosts around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about it after what happened there that last summer. Memories of things so dark will burn themselves into your mind if you let them.

Callie never left. She moved to another house, so she doesn’t have to walk those same halls, but then Callie always was the stronger one. She can handle staring into the faces of her demons—and if she parties hard enough, maybe one day they’ll disappear for good.

Tessa and Callie have never talked about what they saw that night. After the trial, Callie drifted and Tessa moved, and childhood friends just have a way of losing touch.

But ever since she left, Tessa has had questions. Things have never quite added up. And now she has to go back to Fayette—to Wyatt Stokes, sitting on death row; to Lori Cawley, Callie’s dead cousin; and to the one other person who may be hiding the truth.

Only the closer Tessa gets to the truth, the closer she gets to a killer—and this time, it won’t be so easy to run away.

Interesting enough but was glad when I finally finished it, lol.
 
#25/50: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: I really enjoyed this book. I've seen it reviewed here before and never got around to picking it up. Then I avoided it because I'm so "done" with the post-apocalyptic genre. But this one was different. It didn't dwell on the catastrophe (the flu) or spend too much time on trying to survive in the new world. It did touch on those things but it was mainly about the characters in the book. Who they were before, who they were now and how their lives were all connected in the "old world" and they didn't even realize it. I think that author did a great job with that story and character development and it was a page-turner for me. Best book ever? No, but still pretty good.
 


Finished book #58/65 - Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

This book made my head explode. Just the idea of it may catapult me into insanity. If you ever had the thought, "What if?", you will want to read this one. The science of this was over my head, but I liked that the theory this book is based on was talked about in The Big Bang Theory!

“Are you happy with your life?” Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”
In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable--something impossible.
Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.



Finished book #59/65 - Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt

This is a very quick YA read. I liked the tenderness of the story and it's worth a read.

Jack, 12, tells the gripping story of Joseph, 14, who joins his family as a foster child. Damaged in prison, Joseph wants nothing more than to find his baby daughter, Jupiter, whom he has never seen. When Joseph has begun to believe he’ll have a future, he is confronted by demons from his past that force a tragic sacrifice.
 
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Finished book #58/65 - Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

This book made my head explode. Just the idea of it may catapult me into insanity. If you ever had the thought, "What if?", you will want to read this one. The science of this was over my head, but I liked that the theory this book is based on was talked about in The Big Bang Theory!

“Are you happy with your life?” Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”
In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable--something impossible.
Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

My son has been recommending this book to me. He listened to the audiobook. My library does not offer the ebook for this and I haven't actually dragged myself to the library to see if the real book is there. And I don't pay for books.....so just trying to figure out how I'm going to read this!!
 
#30/30 - The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan

Seems I took a break from reading for a while. I just finished this one which is on a lot of best of 2016 lists.

From amazon.com
A bomb—one of the many “small” bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world—detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb. After a brief stint at university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with the mysterious and charismatic Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine. Woven among the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the gripping tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for the independence of his homeland.
 
#43/72

Come Sunday by Isla Morley

From Goodreads:

Abbe is a restless young mother living on the outskirts of Honolulu with her husband, Greg, the pastor at a small church. Their lives are suddenly riven by tragedy when their three-year-old daughter, Cleo, is struck and killed by car. As Greg turns to God and community for comfort, Abbe turns inward and reflects upon her own troubled past.

Isla Morley brilliantly weaves the story of Abbe’s grief with a gripping tale of her tempestuous childhood in apartheid South Africa---and how Abbe’s father, a villainous drunk, held her family hostage for decades with his rage, until they finally began to plot their escape from him. Come Sunday is a spellbinding drama about a woman breaking free of her grief and of her past, and what it takes to revive hope when all seems lost.

Ok, I wanted to like this one, but it just drug on & on & on. Was so glad when I finished it. The main character came off as spoiled & self absorbed to me.
 
#55/75: Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave (4/5) (historical fiction/ WWII London)

#56/75: Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (4/5) (Inspector Gamache #6)
 
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#44/72

Memory Boy by Will Weaver

'Ash is still falling from the sky two years after a series of globally devastating volcanic eruptions. Sunlight is as scarce as food, and cities are becoming increasingly violent as people loot and kill in order to maintain their existence. Sixteen year old Miles Newell knows that the only chance his family has of surviving is to escape from their Minneapolis suburban home to their cabin in the woods. As the Newells travel the highways on Miles' supreme invention, the Ali Princess, they have high hopes for safety and peace. But as they venture deeper into the wilderness, they begin to realize that it's not only city folk who have changed for the worse.'

YA book. I liked this one. Kinda mild, not too exciting but good.
 
#65 - Crown of Midnight by Sara Maas

Sequel to Throne of Glass, this one follows the main character as she gets into the heart of her work as the king's assassin and delves more into the history and mythology of the world in which the stories are set. It reminded me a lot of the series fantasy I used to read when I was in middle and high school, series like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms that aren't labeled YA but which probably have more in common with current YA writing than with most adult fiction, and I am enjoying where the story is headed.

#66 - The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey

Sequel to The 5th Wave, I didn't find this one as engrossing as the first. It wasn't disappointing, exactly, but it goes in more directions with a less unified story arc that made it not as much of a page turner. Still, it was good enough that I'm looking forward to starting book #3.

#67 - I Let You Go by Clare MacKintosh

Another recommendation I got from this thread, and honestly, I almost didn't make it through the first three chapters. It is a brutal, heart-wrenching story and even if you figure out the twist before it is revealed, that does nothing to lessen the emotional impact of the writing and the main character's journey. Despite the rough start, this was probably one of the best novels I've read so far this year.
 
#45/72

Darker Than Midnight by Maggie Shayne

From back cover:
Michael "River" Corbett--Confined to the state mental hospital and heavily drugged since the death of his wife, River cannot remember what truly happened the night he was arrested for her murder. But now someone is trying to kill him, and he is forced to run for his life. A fugitive from the law and from someone who wants him dead, all he wants is the truth.

Cassandra "Jax" Jackson---The uncompromising police lieutenant knows she's putting her career on the line when she encounters this desperate stranger and doesn't turn him in. Something in River's eyes has Jax convinced he's worth saving..whether he wants it or not.

Dawn Jones---The daughter of a madman, Jax's young friend is haunted by voices she doesn't want to hear. But she can no longer ignore the curse she inherited from her twisted father--because unless she listens to what the dead are telling her, Jax might be doomed to join them.

This was pretty good. Altho wish I had known it was the third in a series before I read it. Don't think I'll read the first two but looks like this author has lots of books so I will try another.
 
book #40/50: Blood Defense by Marcia Clark

From Goodreads:
Samantha Brinkman, an ambitious, hard-charging Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, is struggling to make a name for herself and to drag her fledgling practice into the big leagues. Sam lands a high-profile double-murder case in which one of the victims is a beloved TV star—and the defendant is a decorated veteran LAPD detective. It promises to be exactly the kind of media sensation that would establish her as a heavy hitter in the world of criminal law.

Though Sam has doubts about his innocence, she and her two associates (her closest childhood friend and a brilliant ex-con) take the case. Notorious for living by her own rules—and fearlessly breaking everyone else’s—Samantha pulls out all the stops in her quest to uncover evidence that will clear the detective. But when a shocking secret at the core of the case shatters her personal world, Sam realizes that not only has her client been playing her, he might be one of the most dangerous sociopaths she’s ever encountered.
 
#57/75: Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear (4/5) (Maisie Dobbs #10) (mystery/historical fiction/ pre WWI London)
 
Finished book #60/65 - The Life I Left Behind by Colette McBeth

I don't know what it says about this book that I could never remember the title while reading it & after. Fairly interesting murder mystery. I did figure out who the killer was fairly early though. Read this if you don't have anything else to read. 3 stars

Six years ago, Melody Pieterson was attacked and left for dead. Only a chance encounter with a dog walker saved her life. Melody's neighbor and close friend David Alden was found guilty of the crime and imprisoned, and the attack and David's betrayal of her friendship left Melody a different person. She no longer trusts her own judgment, she no longer trusts her friends. In fact, she no longer really has any friends. She's built a life behind walls and gates and security codes; she's cloistered herself away from the world almost entirely.
And then, soon after David is released from prison, Eve Elliot is murdered in an attack almost identical to Melody's. With the start of a new police investigation, Melody is suddenly pulled from her ordered, secluded life and back into the messy world around her. But as she learns more about Eve's murder, Melody starts to wonder if perhaps David hadn't betrayed her after all...if perhaps the killer is someone else entirely, someone who's still out there, preparing to strike again.
 
#46 Fire Point by John Smolens

From Goodreads:

At nineteen, Hannah LeClaire already has a reputation in the village of Whitefish Harbor, where she grew up. She is a solitary young woman who is given to long walks along the coast of Lake Superior. On a cold April day, she wanders into a dilapidated house and meets Martin Reed, who has moved to Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula to renovate the condemned Victorian once owned by his aunt. Quickly Hannah realizes that Martin is an outcast, too, and unlike anyone she has ever met.

Fire Point is the story of the summer Hannah and Martin attempt to rebuild their lives while restoring the house. But when Sean Colby returns to Michigan after being discharged early from military service, he cannot accept the fact that Hannah, his former girlfriend, is moving on without him—and commits a series of increasingly violent acts against Hannah, Martin, and the house.

This one was just ok. Probably would have put it down without finishing but had nothing else on hand at the time.
 

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