of interest

Top Ten Tuesday - Books I've Decided I'm No Longer Interested in Reading

February 20, 2018 by Megan 2 Comments

Hi everyone, and happy Tuesday! Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Tuesday. This is an original weekly blog meme that was created at The Broke and the Bookish but is now hosted over at The Artsy Reader Girl. I participate about once a month, but each week there is a new, fun bookish topic for bloggers to create literary lists about. If you’d like to know more about it, check it out here.

This week’s topic is Books I’ve Decided I’m No Longer Interested In Reading, which is kind of a funny one. I’m warning you ahead of time I’m not going to have much to say about any of them...because I haven’t read them yet! If you stopped by for my list of Books I Really Liked but Don’t Remember Much/Anything About, I imagine this list will be similar.

Show Us Your Books - February 2018

February 13, 2018 by Megan 19 Comments

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I hope you’re somewhere warmer than I am! I don’t mind wintery weather - as I shouldn’t if I’m going to continue to live in Michigan for the foreseeable future - but sometimes it’s a little more than I can take. We were literally snowed in this weekend; Scott only really left the house to shovel and use the snowblower! (I supported him from the couch...under a blanket...with a book.) I was going to say I’m surprised at the amount of books I’ve read over the last month, but now that we’re talking about it, perhaps the snowy weather has something to do with it. Let's get into this month's book list, shall we?

Valentine's Day + A Trio of Unexpected Love Stories

February 7, 2018 by Megan 6 Comments

Valentine’s Day is just one week away, and while I’m usually not much of a romance gal, I do love a good love story. As it so happens, I’m not alone in that! In honor of the holiday, I’m collaborating with four other book bloggers to bring you plenty of romantic inspiration from some of our favorite books.

We each chose recommendations suited to our own reading styles and tastes. If you frequent my blog, you may not be surprised to see that I opted to share some of my favorite unconventional love stories. (If you’re stopping by The Hungry Bookworm for the first time, welcome!)

Top Ten Tuesday - Books I Really Liked But Don't Remember Much/Anything About

January 23, 2018 by Megan 14 Comments

Hi everyone, and happy Tuesday! Welcome to my first Top Ten Tuesday of 2018. This is an original weekly blog meme that was created at The Broke and the Bookish but is now hosted over at The Artsy Reader Girl. I participate about once a month, but each week there is a new, fun bookish topic for bloggers to create literary lists about. If you’d like to know more about it, check it out here.

Today’s list is kind of funny, in that I’m not sure how much I can say about each book on it - I guess we’ll just have to see! To arrive at the 10 Books I Really Liked But Can’t Remember Anything/Much About, I culled through my Goodreads, starting at the highest rating and going down. (Reminder: here’s how I rate.)

Show Us Your Books - January 2018

January 9, 2018 by Megan 22 Comments

Happy second Tuesday of 2018, everyone, and welcome to the first Show Us Your Books of the year! I’m excited to share with you what I read over the holidays and what I’ve gotten into so far this year, especially thanks to some fun reading challenges that I’m hoping will help me read my shelves and get through my TBR.

Before I kick off today’s SUYB, I want to explain how I’ll be rating the books today and moving forward. I’m going to start using my Goodreads rating method here to keep my ratings consistent across every platform. This is how I typically rate books:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 stars = LOVE LOVE LOVE. I will recommend a 5-star to anyone and everyone and won’t shut up about it. I absolutely need to own a 5-star read, so I can lend it out and have it available for re-reads. I usually have half a dozen or less books in this category each year because they need to be really outstanding to warrant 5-stars.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 stars = REALLY liked it. I will recommend a 4-star book to someone I think would like it - depending on interests/genre - and like to have them as part of my collection (for the same reasons as above). I’ll probably rave about this one a fair amount as well.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 stars = liked it. A 3-star book was good. I didn’t feel like it wasted my time and walked away with an overall positive feeling about it. I give the majority of the books I read each year 3 stars, and I don’t consider this rating to be a bad one.

⭐⭐ 2 stars = not a fan. This book just didn’t do it for me. It may have been a bit of a waste of time, or it may have been an experimental genre/topic that didn’t work out. I’m not upset about the time I spent reading it; I was likely just hoping for more. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t really like it either.

⭐ 1 star = hated it. Pretty self-explanatory, and I don’t hand a 1-star rating out lightly. Like the 5-star books, these are pretty rare.

Linkup Guidelines:
This linkup happens the second Tuesday of every month. The next is Tuesday, February 13, 2018.
1. Please visit and comment with both of your hosts, Jana & Steph
2. Please display the button or link back to me and the linkup hosts on your blog post
3. Please visit a few other blogs who've linked up and get some book talk going!

Last Month’s Edition

4-Star Reads ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Boat People - Inspired by true events, this fictional account of refugees seeking asylum in Canada tackles a timely topic. It did an excellent job straddling the complexities surrounding asylum-seekers and the emotional decisions refugees must face not only at the beginning of their journeys but throughout the process. In short, it was everything I wanted Exit West to be.

The Secret Life of Bees - I adored this coming-of-age story about fourteen-year-old Lily Owens and her black caretaker Rosaleen, as they navigate the troublesome South in 1964 and take refuge in a pink house owned by beekeeping sisters. It was a strong show of female power, heartwarming and uplifting.

3-Star Reads ⭐⭐⭐

In the Midst of Winter (3.5) - This seemed like the perfect book to read in the cold of December - and it was. It takes place over the course of a week or so, in the middle of a snowstorm in New York; the cold was palpable. Allende weaves together the beautiful and harrowing stories of three very different characters, taking us to 1970s Central and South America and back to present day America. It brings to light the struggles of undocumented immigrants and issues of human rights, and it all starts with a seemingly innocuous fender bender.

The Nest (3.5) - Cynthia d’Aprix Sweeney’s novel is the story of four siblings who must learn to deal with disappointment and potential financial ruin when their trust fund, or “the nest” as they call it, is not quite as big as they anticipated. Filled with unlikable characters in unlikely situations (compared to most of us), it wasn’t a story I expected to like. But, low expectations may have saved this book for me and I was quite surprised to find myself enjoying it throughout - even the epilogue, which left me walking away satisfied.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society (3.5) - A book about books and so much more than that, I’m looking forward to discussing this one in my book club tomorrow night (for which I’m making actual potato peel pie...stay tuned for that). Through a series of letters, this novel tells the story of a group known as the Guernsey Literary Society, which comes together while Germans occupy their island during WWII. It was like a less tragic The Nightingale combined with everything I wished The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend was.

Standard Deviation - This was one of those completely random, stumbled-upon books; I can’t even remember how I heard about it. Still, it was funny and entertaining. Katherine Heiny’s novel was a quick read about Graham, his second wife Audra, his son who may have Asperger’s, and all of the random house guests that flit in and out of their NYC apartment.

No Time to Spare - Ursula K LeGuin is an inspiring woman, and though I’ve only read one of her novels, I have every intention of exploring her work further (thanks, in part, to Karen Joy Fowler who is an admirer of hers). As I am not as familiar with LeGuin as I’d like to be, I probably didn’t appreciate this memoir as bigger fans may but it was still enjoyable. As in her fiction writing, she discusses gender equality and meditates on life.

I will not be doing a longer post on this book, but if I were to do so, I would definitely have to make soft-boiled eggs, to which LeGuin devoted an entire chapter. It became very clear that I do not have the very specific tools required, nor the patience to handle a food that requires such delicate precision.

MAUS I & II - I read MAUS I as part of the Literary Feast 2018 Reading challenge, since it was published in the year of my birth; it was the first book I picked up and finished this year. I also read the second MAUS because it just felt right to complete the story.

Though graphic novels aren’t my genre of choice, I tend to end up reading one almost every year. I’m always surprised when I don’t really like them, especially these since the ones I choose are so critically acclaimed. I just found it hard to get into, I suppose; the style didn’t evoke as much emotion as I would expect from a story about concentration camp prisoners. That being said, both were quick reads (as graphic novels are) and the content was clearly heartfelt and personal. It’s an important story to be told.

Britt-Marie Was Here - I wanted to like this more than I did, probably because I love Fredrik Backman’s writing (especially A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry). Like all of his novels, there was quite a cast of characters, some likable and some not. Britt-Marie fell in both categories intermittently, though of course she grows more endearing as you get to know her. I certainly enjoyed the story, but I wish there’d been a different ending.

When the English Fall - I’ve always been fascinated by the Amish lifestyle, so when I saw this dystopia about what happens when the power grid goes down and no one but the Amish are situated to survive, I knew I had to pick it up. I read it in a few hours - it was quite riveting for the most part. I think I was hoping for more about how the rest of the world was surviving, aside from the bits of information brought in to the Order from the outside, and in that, it fell short.

2-Star Reads ⭐⭐

Manhattan Beach (2.5) - Jennifer Egan may not be my author. I didn’t like her much-acclaimed A Visit from the Goon Squad, and while this one was a bit better, it wasn’t really my thing either. A historical novel set first during the Great Depression and then in WWII, it primarily follows the young, fearless Anna Kerrigan. There are several chapters that focus on other main characters, but her story was the most interesting to me; I especially enjoyed her journey to become a female scuba diver and wish it was a bigger focus of the narrative.

Books I Didn't Finish

None!

Books I'm Reading Right Now

I haven’t actually picked anything up yet, since I just finished When the English Fall last night, but my plan is to dive into another Book Challenge by Erin selection - I’m leaning towards The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo because it’s been on my shelf long enough!

What did you read last month?

This post contains affiliate links. Full disclosure here.

New Year + Reading Challenges

January 6, 2018 by Megan 1 Comment

The first week of 2018 is almost over, and I hope everyone’s year is off to a great start! I’m coming at this year with a positive outlook, and while I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions, I do have some personal, professional and blogging goals in mind. To have a successful book-related blog, of course, it requires lots of reading.

As such, I’ve committed to two reading challenges this year - because what better way to read more than to be (somewhat) competitive about it? Now, both of these challenges are intended to be low-key, low stress and not really all that competitive. But, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try to do my best to succeed at the challenges I set for myself. So, I wanted to share a bit about them with you (accountability and all that). And, if you’re interested, there’s still time to join both of them, so you too can enjoy the benefits of reading more in 2018. 🙂

Book Challenge by Erin (8.0)

Duration: January through April 2018

Challenge: Choose 10 books across specific categories and read as many of them as you can during the first 4 months of the year

All books must be 200 pages or more and you each book can only be used for 1 category. If you’d like to include a book you’ve already read, you can only do so once but you must actually re-read it for it to count.

You’re supposed to pick your 10 books up front, but it’s no big deal if you change your mind and want to read something else for that category instead! Most of all, this challenge is supposed to be fun - I personally am using it as a motivator to read a bunch of books on my TBR list, and I pulled the titles using as many books as I could from those I already own.

5 points (Freebie): Read a book that is at least 200 pages - The Secret Life of Bees

This was the third book I read this year (after MAUS I & II, more on that below), and I loved it. Great way to start the challenge!

10 points: Read a book that starts with the letter “L” - Love & Gelato

This has been on my TBR for a bit now, and while I don’t own it, the library has it readily available. I picked it before I joined the challenge from A Literary Feast, but it fits for the February pick, so it’s conveniently going to do double-duty for me.

10 points: Read a book that has a (mostly) red cover - Red Clocks

This is one of the books I’m most looking forward to this year, and I was so excited to see that BOTM had it as one of their January selections! You can bet I scooped it up, so there will be no library waitlists for me this time. I can’t wait to get started on it.

15 points: Read a book with a character’s name in the title - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

This was a BOTM sometime in the middle last year, and it’s been sitting on my shelf ever since. I’ve heard amazing things about it, though, which is why I’ve kept it, and now I have a great excuse to pick it up and experience it for myself.

20 points: Read a book from Book Riot’s list of 100 Must-Read Books with Plot Twists - The Book of Unknown Americans

I was lucky enough to receive a copy of this book through my office’s Diversity Book Club, but was unfortunately not able to attend when the time came (due to meetings and all that). I was surprised to see it on this list - not exactly a book I was expecting to have a big plot twist. Now I’m all the more excited to finally be able to check it out.

20 points: Read a book with the words “house” or “home” in the title - The Two-Family House

Another book from my TBR, but not one I owned until this past week - thanks to a very fortunate book swap! I had a few books I could’ve chosen for this category, but this one has intrigued me from a distance for long enough.

25 points: Read a book by an author whose first and last name begins with the same letter - The Mothers by Brit Bennett

When I was perusing my shelves for alliterative authors this is the first one that caught my eye. I got it in a book swap last year (seriously, where would I be without book swaps?) and don’t know a ton about it, but I’m sure it’ll be worth the read.

30 points: Read a book that was originally published in a different language than your own - Britt-Marie Was Here

Britt-Marie was originally published in Swedish by the wonderful Fredrik Backman, who has written a couple of my favorites (such as My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry), so naturally I was excited to dive into his charming writing again. It’s the second book I decided to tackle from the challenge and I'm about a third of the way through. So far, so good!

30 points: Read a book where most of the action takes place on a form of transportation (i.e. bus, boat, car, plane) - Life of Pi

Such an interesting category! My first thought was of the movie Speed, but that wasn’t a book and so obviously I couldn’t pick that. I remember loving Life of Pi when I read it before, but it’s been so long now, that I don’t recall much of the specifics - except that it takes place mostly on a raft. Perfect for this challenge! And another book already on the shelf 🙂

35 points: Read a book with a character that suffers from a debilitating physical illness - Tell the Wolves I’m Home

Full disclosure: I don’t know much about this book, except that when I was googling around trying to find a book for this category that I hadn’t already read (since I used my re-read for the previous category), it popped up. It was on my TBR and the library had some copies, so here we are. I’m looking forward to it, and also a grateful that I don’t have any high expectations to hamper my reaction.

Have you read any of the books above? What would you recommend picking up next?

If you're interested in joining Erin's challenge, stop by her Facebook page here. There are typically three challenges per year, each lasting four months.

2018 Reading Challenge from A Literary Feast

Duration: Entire year

Challenge: Read a book in each appointed category, which changes each month

My kindred spirit in the book blogging community, the lovely Grace of A Literary Feast, started this challenge and I'm excited to be able to support her and participate. I only chose the first few months, since even summer seems so far away in these frigid temperatures! I’ve outlined all the categories below though, so you can get a feel for what the rest of the year will bring.

January: A book that was published in your birth year - MAUS I (and MAUS II)

MAUS I has been on my TBR list for several years now, and conveniently it was also published in 1986! The second one was published a few years later, but together they’re still pretty short - and as graphic novels, quick to get through. These were the first books I picked up in 2018 because the library was super quick on their interlibrary loans, and I finished both on January 1.

February: A book that has a food in the title - Love & Gelato

I already mentioned the double-duty this book is doing, which is awesome in and of itself. I’m also excited about the prospect of making gelato. (Ice cream has no season, so I don’t care that it will still be unbearably cold outside when I do it.)

March: A book that was made into a movie you’ve already seen

I haven’t chosen a book for March yet, and I’m all over the map for this category. Initially, after a quick search, I was leaning towards The Green Mile because I enjoyed the movie… but I’m super terrified the book will be scary where the movie wasn’t really. Then, while watching Funny Farm over the holidays, I discovered it was actually based on a book and thought maybe I’d pick that because it’s more light-hearted. I don’t know, guys… I’ve seen a lot of movies but I’ve also read a lot of books-turned-movies, so I’m trying to find one I’ve seen but not read yet. Looking for suggestions!

April: A book set in a country that intimidates you

May: A book that you saw a stranger reading in a public place

This would’ve been amazing when I lived in NYC and rode the subway all the time. I think I’m going to have to start hanging out in some coffee shops or airports between now and then.

June: A book about a mid-life crisis or finding your true self

July: A childhood classic that you’ve never read - The Little Prince

This is the lone book I chose past February, mostly because as soon as I saw this category, I knew what it had to be. The Little Prince is one of my coworker’s favorite books, and after hearing all of her praise about it, I’m looking forward to finally reading it too. That being said, I’ll probably have to get it out of the library since her copy is in French.

August: A book that you’ve loved and read before

I don’t usually re-read so this will be a welcome change of pace.

September: A book that was published in 2018

October: A blind date book (someone else chooses for you)

I’m going to let Deanna pick this one for me, since I am constantly forcing her to read books I recommend, and I know I can trust her to pick a good one.

November: A book with an ugly cover

Because you should never judge a book by its cover.

December: A book set in a cold climate

Obviously looking for recommendations for the book/movie category, but if you have suggestions for the others I haven’t chosen yet, please comment below! I’d love to hear from you. 🙂 If you're interested in joining the 2018 challenge from A Literary Feast, there may still be time - check out the original post here.