Wrap Up l December 2017

1. A Storm of Swords, George RR Martin (Song of Ice and Fire #3) *audiobook
2. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice (Vampire Chronicles Book #2)
3. The Queen of the Damned,Anne Rice (Vampire Chronicles Book #3)
4. The Snowman (Harry Hole #7), Jo Nesbo
5. HP Lovecraft Short Stories Collection
1. Dagon
2. The Music of Erich Zann
3. The Others
4. The Evil Clergyman
5. The Fisherman of Falcon Point
6. From Beyond
7. The Other Gods

Started

1. A Feast For Crows, George RR Martin (Song of Ice and Fire #4) *audiobook
2. The Body Thief, Anne Rice

Top 5 Wednesday l December

December 6th - Bookish Things You're a Grinch About

-- Since being a grinch is a funny thing, try not to make this serious topics that make you angry (like lack of diversity or abusive relationships in fiction, etc) as this is supposed to be more of a petty bookish things you hate. This can be stuff about covers, dumb tropes, etc. Have fun with it.

1. When one book cover is beautiful and gets super popular so then you end up with 1001 copycats
2. Books with super small print, you buy them because they make the whole book smaller but then you have to read that little print. 
3.  Amazing Books With Ugly Covers, this doubles down when they change the covers from something ok (or heaven forbid beautiful) to something ugly
4. When they mix and match the books in a series, 2 hard cover and then a paperback, changing the covers. So stressful. I mean really!
5. Sales Stickers / Recommendation Stickers on my book.

December 13th - Characters on the Naughty List

Characters You Don't Like

1. Clary and Jace, separately and together, I don't like these two at all. The Mortal Instruments, Cassandra Clare
2. Gwendolyn, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Dianna Wynne Jones
3. Tressa, Dragonlands, Megg Jensen
4. Hanna, and Just about everyone else in 13 Reasons Why, Jay Asher - this is a tough one because I liked the book overall, but I have huge issues with how it comes across. I have several rants about this already, but back to my point. The characters are all very whiney and shallow and one dimensional and have no redeeming qualities... 
5. Queen Levena - A whole book just trying to redeem her character, and it still wasn't enough. But I do love to hate her. 

December 20th: Top 5 Books of 2017 

1. The Hatching, Ezekiel Boone
2. Heartless, Marissa Meyer
3. The Cellar, Minette Walters
4. The Dark Tower, Stephen King
5. The Butterfly Garden, Dot Hutchison

December 27th: 2018 Wishlist
--Looking forward into the new year, this is a list of the types of books you'd like to see more of in 2018! Try to avoid actual titles, and discuss themes, genres, or tropes you'd like to see more of in the new year!

1. Creature Features
2. The Queen of the Damned (Anne Rice) and Sleeping Beauties (Stephen King) have both opened the doors to worlds that are 100% women (or at least 90%) using elimination techniques or science to both procreate or curb the male population, it is a really interesting concept and someone could really write an original and interesting book on a variety of premises in this setting. (if they are low key on the crazier feminist, pushy statement, angle)
3. Horror : Short Story Collections
4. A really good non-fiction on the issue of "popularizing problems" (warning this would be SO controversial). Though a variety of sources - non-fiction reading, TED talks, conferences, statistics, being an older sister, and simple observation - I have noticed that people love to belong (common well known fact) but what about when people want to belong to something incredibly risky and potentially destructive? For example its been "popular" to have various mental illness in particular lately Depression and Bipolar (which was ADD and then ADHD when I was a child) which people have been very adept at faking, hand in hand with companies wanting to sell their drugs... studies on "mental illness contagion" "suicide contagion" and any other danger that people are willing to risk in order to fit in. 
5. More books with platonic relationships, with normal people. Romance isn't everything and LGBTQ+ should be represented in literature, but authors are saturating us with these characters now.  Particularly YA. Not that I think we should be pressing the "straight, white non minority" into everyones face either. Plenty of these novels I've been reading would have been amazing and are amazing, for all the other reasons. Unless someones race, gender or sexuality is adding something, you just end up taking away from the story. 

Wrap Up - December

I missed a few novels in my November wrap-up, right at the end of the month I finished up

Sins of the Mother, Irene Kelley
Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Stephen King

The beginning of this month was a bit of a nightmare with school, I also picked up a few video games (Banished and Starcraft) which took up an embaressing amount of time. I also started watching a few Tv shows (SOA, Vikings - I want to start up True Blood again). So all in all I didn't do as much reading as I could have.

1. Night Shift, Stephen King
2. Eleanor, Jason Gurley
3. A Thousand Lives: The untold story of hope, deception and survival in Jonestown, Julia Scheeres
4. The Girl With All the Gifts, M R Carey
5. Everythings Eventual, Stephen King
6. Four Past Midnight, Stephen King
7. Different Seasons, Stephen King

Top 5 Wednesday - December 2016

December 7th - Books You Want to Finally Read in 2017 

1. The Dark Tower Series, Stephen King
2. The Diabolic, SJ Kincaid
3. The Girl With All the Gifts, MR Carey
4. Rituals, Kelley Armstrong
5. A Storm of Swords, George RR Martin

December 14th - Series That Got Worse with Each Book/Season 

1. Bloody Jack, LA Meyer
2. Warriors, Erin Hunter *way too long
3. 50 Shades of Grey, EL James * should never have been a trilogy. 
4. The Strain Guillermo Del Toro
5. Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snickett *Not bad but confusing, and the questions were never answered

December 21st - Fictional Items You'd Give as Gifts

1. Wands, Time Turner, Invisibility Cloaks, Broomsticks, Harry Potter, JK Rowling
2. Enchanted Swords, Magic Rings, Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
3. Dragon, Eragon, Christopher Paloni
4. The Horns, Joe Hill
5. Wonkas Factory, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Road Dahl

December 28th - Characters You'd Invite to Your New Year's Eve Party 
Pretty self explanatory. Who would you want to your NYE bash and why? 

1. Gabriel, Cainsville, Kelley Armstrong
2. The Monster, A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
3. Odd Thomas, Dean Koontz
4. Hannibal Lecter, Thomas Harris
5. Shot Gun Suzie, The Nightside, Simon R Green

TBR - December

Sorry that this is a little late, but better late than never! It is the final month of the year, the Christmas month! I got through 73 books so far this year and I am so happy with that, my goal was 52 books (one for every week of the year) so anything I read this month is more or less a bonus!

I am not putting any Christmas books on this list but I do read all my childhood favourites as I unpack them with the decorations!

1. Different Seasons, Stephen King
2. Everything's Eventual, Stephen King
3. Four Past Midnight, Stephen King
4. Just After Sunset, Stephen King
5. Elanor, Jason Gurley
6. Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women, Sara Helm

I have started all of these books, the first four are short story collections. The last two are reading challenge novels. 

Book Review - Watership Down

Watership Down

Richard Adams

6 stars
Fiction / New Classic / Movie / Children's book /
Medium Level Read
481 Pages

*Listened to this on Audiobook

The rabbits of Sandalwood Warren live in peace. One of the young bucks, Fiver, is psychic. He has a terrible vision of destruction coming to the Warren, most of the rabbits choose to stay but a small party including Fivers older brother Hazel, choose to leave in search of the Watership Down; the ideal place to start a warren.

This has been on my TBR list for years; I picked up the book several times and just couldn't get into the novel. I decided to give the audiobook a go, and finally I got through it.
The story is simple but beautiful, a novel worth reading, something I will one day read to my kids, the story has lots of great morals, and lessons.