#AMonthofFaves - This is How We (Don't) Read (Much)

Brought to you by Traveling with T, Estella's Revenge, and Girlxoxo

Mon. | Dec. 4 – This Is How We Read #AMonthofFaves – eg. Number of books read so far, genre you read the most from, picture of favorite (or most often used) reading location, most read author, % eBooks, hardcovers, paperbacks and/or audiobooks, hint at what your favorite read of the year is (let us guess), types of books you wish you read more of, month you read the most and least

This should be an entertaining post considering I'm too filled with shame to own up to my reading statistics this year and, well, most of the other years. But especially this year, the year of the "DNF I spent too much time on." I started and labored through a number of books this year, investing more than 50 pages in many of them before reaching that point where I was pretty sure I just didn't like them or was not interested enough to continue, so my DNF stack is high, but it didn't save me much reading time for other worthier books. I attribute this to my year of general book and life slumpery where, at numerous times, I couldn't differentiate between whether the books I was reading were really not any good, really were not for me, or I just, like, was so slumped that I just didn't like books anymore. Of late, I've been more inclined to blame the books and jettison them with impunity and have found that that's lead to a much more enjoyable round of reading.

I would tease some of my favorites in this post, but I'm starting to think I'm only just getting to them.

End of Year Reading Status: I have read *redacted* books so far this year which, in my more optimistic moments, I hope will end up equaling the value of the amount of books I read last year which was...*redacted.*

Favorite Genre: I read most from the genre I typically read the most from, which would be literary fiction. However, it seems my favorites this year fell into the sub-genres of literary horror, literary historical fiction, and literary "books with plucky southern heroines."
 

Favorite Reading Locale: Meet my couch. This is my favorite place to read books I don't like with occasional interruptions for reading books I actually do like. In the warm weather months, I occasionally read books I don't like that much on the balcony which is also pictured. I have taken the photo in this style to obscure my current read, which is likely to be one of my favorites which you'll have to wait to the end of the month to have revealed unto you.  No, really, I just took a really bad picture and am too lazy to take a better one. Focus on the nice view outside. Blogging is hard.

Most Read Author of the Year: Well, this is weird, it's a three way tie. Normally I'm hard pressed to read more than one book by the same author in single year, this year Justin Cronin, Stephen Kiernan, and Courtney Summers all qualify for this honor, which is especially honorific considering I've only read *still redacted* books this year!

Favorite Disregarded Gadget for Reading: My poor Kindle Paperwhite. It is a lovely reading tool crammed to bursting with enticing reads I've purchased for $2.99 or less over the years I've owned it. I've read only 2 e-books on it this year which, while it may be a significant portion of my redacted reading total for the year, it is also about .0031% of the amount of e-books housed on said neglected device. Oh wait, but I did DNF one e-book after spending too much time on it, so that totally counts as a third, right?

Favorite Book Format: Trade paperbacks. Far and away my favorite is the trade paperback. Hardbacks are too heavy, e-books aren't pretty and pagey enough, and mass markets are lucky if they can even retains their spots on my shelves, I'm usually so averse to them. Ironically, however, one of my favorites from this year actually was a mass market. There, I've duly teased a favorite.

Reading Accomplishment of the Year: Reading the longest book I've read since I read The Stand in 2012. Even at close to 800 pages, it's one of my favorites of the year. And it reminded me of The Stand, only I think I might have liked it better. Another favorite teased!

So that's my reading year to date. I'll be sharing my favorite books of the year at the end of the month (you know, after I've finished reading them), so stay tuned!

How was your reading year?

#AMonthofFaves : 10 Books That Made My Year

2015 has nearly drawn to a close, and it's been a rough one life-wise, but reading-wise it was certainly rewarding.  I think what's funny about my favorites this year is that so few other people seem to have read them, at least the ones that were published this year.  When I read great books published in the current year, it seems like they're never the same ones that everyone else is reading!  On a positive note, though, that gives me a chance to tell you about a few great books that maybe you haven't heard about from everyone and their mother......right? 

Anyhow, here is the top of the crop from my year of reading (in conjunction with a #AMonthofFaves).

 1. In a World Just Right by Jen Brooks - This book gets awarded the "Ugly Cry of the Year" award.  At first it's a strange little romance about a plane-crash survivor that can create worlds with his mind.  In one, his dream girl is his girlfriend, but what happens when the worlds start to meld together?  I never even saw it coming.

2. The Marauders by Tom Cooper - This one gets the "Surprise Hit" award.  When it first arrived, I thought I'd made a severe ARC requesting misstep.  However, this story of the hard luck people in a Louisiana bayou town turned out to be a hit for me because I've never been made to feel more sympathy for a bunch of less likeable characters, and I've never been so surprised at a book packing an unexpected emotional punch.

3. When She Woke by Hilary Jordan - I actually hate when I read a really great book at the beginning of the year because I know when it comes time to make this list, I'll nearly always forget to put it on the list because it seems like I read it an eon ago.  I loved Jordan's dystopian world where Christian fundamentalists dominate and dyeing people the colors indicative of their crimes has replaced imprisoning them.  Very believable world-building, very interesting retelling of The Scarlet Letter.

4. The Happy Christian by David Murray - Look!  It's a non-fiction title on my best of list, and it's not a memoir or even narrative non-fiction.  Be amazed!  This was a great read from last winter/spring full of practical ways to let God's promises make us more happy on a daily basis.  An ill-fit for my blog audience, perhaps, but a great fit for me as a human.

5. The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory by Stacy Wakefield - I fell in love with Sid, the narrator of this book, who is a girl caught up in the "romantic" idea of getting involved in the New York City squatter scene, which doesn't quite turn out like she expects.  The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory is a perfect slice of life book that follows Sid in her highs and lows with a little friendship and a little romance, nights when everything is perfect and others when everything goes wrong, but there's always a chance for a little happily ever after. 

6. Girl Underwater by Claire Kells - This one seems to have flown under the radar a bit, so all the more disappointed am I in myself for not having reviewed it.  It's the story of girl and the guy that dared to tell her to be true to herself, their survival of a plane crash and the long wait for rescue (with three young, newly orphaned boys in tow), and the aftermath. I loved Avery and Colin and their reluctant love story that emerges from tragedy.

7. Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum - I never fail to be captivated by stories set in World War II Germany, and this one didn't disappoint.  Those Who Save Us captures the moral ambiguities of surviving the war when a German woman, whose daughter is the product of her forbidden love affair with a Jew who has been taken away to a concentration camp, has an affair with a German officer to survive and to continue in the dangerous pursuit of supplying extra bread to the prisoners of the camp where her true lover is imprisoned.  

8. The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma - How to describe this book?  Eerie.  One ballerina in prison, one ballerina performing her final dance before she heads to Julliard, a prison haunted by a tragic event, guilt, innocence, and lots of lies.  I won't spoil it by writing more words.  It's way too good to be spoiled. 

9. The Visitors by Sally Beauman - I was a little daunted by The Visitors when I started reading it, lots of pages, small print, but I was totally captivated by this story of 1920s Egypt where the the last of the undiscovered tombs are being excavated in the Valley of Kings.  The narrator is a young girl who proves the perfect observer to the astonishing chain of events when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered King Tut's tomb.  Beauman's story is the perfect blend of reality and fiction that left me feeling like I'd learned something and enjoyed every bit of it.

10. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson - I wrapped up my reading year with this one, and it was a fantastic choice.  After a slow start, I was totally engaged in this story of a princess turned queen, chosen by God for some feat of service.  I loved the narrator, Elisa, a young, pudgy princess who feels ill-suited to her role as queen and for whatever service may be required of her.  Watching her come into her own amid desperate times made this book positively unputdownable.

Which books have been the highlights of your reading year?

#AMonthofFaves : A Few of My Favorite Things (of 2015)

Today's Month of Favorites topic: These Are A Few of My Favorite Things in 2015 – eg. to eat, drink, wear, smell, see, do, enjoy, best thing I bought, most used gift received etc, favorite concert, outdoor activity, place visited, most squee worthy moment of the year, biggest change.

I have to admit, I won't be sad to see 2015 go.  It's been a year marked by injuries and injury recovery followed by other injuries and more recovery, and when I wasn't busy being injured (or recovering) I was working like a dog.  And when I finally finished working like a dog and was finally on the brink of a well-earned vacation I broke my ankle, successfully obliterating any semblance of normal life.  I'm still waiting to get back to normal life.  So, yeah, adios 2015, don't let the door hit ya.  

It's been tough trying to pick some favorite things out of the morass of this year, but good news!  I came up with a few! 

My New Apartment - Okay, so I'd lived here not quite a full month when I missed a few steps and see above, but solo living has its perks, like I get to live among my books now.  They're on shelves!  Where people can see them, and I can see them! And my apartment is big enough that 1000 or so books don't make it feel claustrophobic.  I can watch what I want on TV.  I can not watch TV and just read in the living room without being constantly interrupted.  My friends come over way more now.  Which is good, since I'm kind of stuck here.  Still.

That Train Concert - In between the injuries and the recoveries and the moving and the workaholism, I did kind of a bucket listy thing for me and got tickets to see Matt Nathanson, The Fray, and Train in concert.  I love Train and liked the other two acts, and it was a fantastic show and a great time with my cousin driving through the barren wilds of Pennsylvania and New York to get to the (beautiful) venue of Bethel Woods (original site of Woodstock) where they have the thickest grass and the most expensive bottles of water.

Movies -  Going to the movie theatre, is (yippee!) something you can still enjoy while you are fairly handicapped.  Since the movies are one of the only places I went for three months that didn't include x-rays, they easily make the list.  Highlights?  Bridge of Spies and Mockingjay the second.

Chopped - They put it on Netflix just in time!  Whose spirits aren't lifted by watching a professional chef attempt to create an entree from black licorice, kimchi, a species of mushroom that only grows in the hills of a war-torn African nation, and eye of newt?  Obviously, I made these ingredients up, but you get the idea.  

The Voice - It took me until I finally subscribed to Hulu Plus to finally get hooked on The Voice.  Love those blind auditions!

The Awkward Yeti - This was the best moment of serendipity of the year.  First, my friend had to get her gallbladder out, and then this happened to show up in my Facebook feed...

Picture credit: The Awkward Yeti

I looooove these comics.  They're pretty much all about bodily organs and pretty much totally relevant to everyday life all the time.  There is an Awkward Yeti comic for every feeling you've ever had.  There is a book, too.  I should get it.  What I did get was an adorable stuffed sad gallbladder for my now gallbladderless friend.  Too priceless!  

What's your favorite thing from 2015?

#AMonthofFaves : My Reading Year

Wow, can it be December again already?  This year has flown past at a glacial speed.  (This sort of comment may make better sense to those with broken ankles.  Days go by so slowly, yet it still seems as if three months of my life have vanished with astonishing speed.)  Anyhow, no ankle sob stories today.  I was excited to see that Estella's Revenge, girlxoxo.com, and Traveling with T have brought back their December blogging event - A Month of Favorites.  They've got blogging prompts for most of the weekdays of December to help us keep up our blogging mojo even through this busiest of months.  If you'd like to join the fun, just click over to the one of the hosts' blogs to find out the schedule.

To kick things off, we're doing a little "my reading year" overview.  My reading year was...good.  One more book read and I will have surpassed my number of books read at the end of the year last year.  Astonishingly however, I tallied up my number of pages read this year and last year, and I kid you not, I am within 50 pages of my number of pages read last year at this time.  I might be a slow reader, but it seems I am consistently slow.  Ha!

Also, strikingly similar to last year is my ratio of books authored by females to books authored by males.  The girls have it, making up around 75% of my reading.  I did a good job of balancing review copies with titles from my stacks.  An even half of my reading was not furnished by a publisher for my review consideration.  This was something that I meant to be better about, so it's exciting to have not lost track of that goal over the year.

May was tops for both quantity and quality of books read.  Thank you busted back and beautiful weather.  August was the worst.  Thank you workaholism and ankle surgery.  Ugh.  Thankfully, what the ankle stole in August, it returned in September and October when there was a major uptick in reading.  Obviously.  Those who cannot walk, read.  That's how that saying goes, right?

Thanks to a mid-summer move into a new apartment, I purged around 400 books from my collection, and I also haven't read a single e-book since most of the summer my goal was to unload books that would need to be lifted. I feel a little guilty about leaving my Kindle in the corner (nobody puts Kindle in a corner!), but hopefully I can make a return to occasional e-book reading in 2016.  I certainly haven't taken a break from e-book buying.

On the whole, 2015 was a much better quality reading year than 2014.  There were a random few duds that if I could go back in time I would totally DNF.  That said, looking back over the past few months, while I haven't read anything that's totally knocked my socks off, the books I've been reading have been consistently good.  Here's hoping the trend continues (except maybe a, uh, "sock knocker" is in order before the calendar turns another page) for the rest of the year!

What has been the highlight of your reading year?

#AMonthofFaves / Top Ten Tuesday: Best of the Year

The day has finally come!  It's time for my top ten favorite books of the year in conjunction with #AMonthofFaves and Top Ten Tuesday.  I don't really like doing this before the end of the year proper, but my current read is definitely not in danger of unseating any of these, so I think I might be clear to divulge my top ten even before the year is fully over. Drumroll, please!

1. One Hundred and Four Horses by Mandy Retzlaff - This year's reading started off truly dreadfully.  I DNFed two books before I even made it halfway through January.  Just when I was starting to get really bummed out that my reading year was starting off as such a bust, Mandy Retzlaff rescued it with her memoir about saving the horses left behind in a hostile Zimbabwe by their white owners who were being forced off the land by Mugabe.  Retzlaff's writing reminded me of getting letters from an old friend, and her story would definitely appeal to any animal lover.

2. Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen - Kagen's novel has a really great precocious narrator, Sally O'Malley, who lightens up what is really a pretty dark story of a murderer/molester on the loose during a summer when Sally's mother is in the hospital, apparently near death.  Kagen's great narrator and her perfect descriptions of the essence of childhood summers, not to mention her great picture of the bond between Sally and her sister Troo almost make you forget how dark the story is without compromising the tension leading up to the final climax.

3. The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis - Okay, so, my mom sells used books through Amazon, and when I spotted this one in one of her piles to go out, I couldn't help sneaking it away for a few minutes to read it, kind of as a cheater book to kick off my Bout of Books with an early success.  Sis's graphic memoir of his growing up in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War really got me.  It's got great art that really shows the transformation of a kid and a country reawakening after being squelched beneath Soviet communist rule.  I was totally captured by how Sis reveals the resurgence of the human spirit that longs for freedom and color and creativity.

4. The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi - This is the first book I read this year that I knew would go on my end of year best list.  I loved this story of two courageous Afghani women separated by decades who refused to let fate and destiny and men determine the outcomes of their lives.

5. Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert - Here's to William Morrow for delivering some great debuts from new authors this year.  Hashimi's book is one, and Last Night at the Blue Angel is another.  This story of an old school night club singer in Chicago, her daughter, and the man who is in love with her totally broke my heart (in a good way?).  It shifts points of view between the steadfast daughter and the mercurial mother and what emerges is a story of a misunderstood woman on the cusp of fame and a daughter desperate for love that she can count on.  A little sad and a lot powerful, this is a captivating debut.

6. Divergent by Veronica Roth - I finally read this book after hearing all the hype and seeing the movie version, and I loved it.  Roth's strictly delineated dystopian world of factions is well-built, and Tris is a powerfully sympathetic character, and Four is tinged with just the right amount of mystery.  Divergent was everything I expected.  Too bad the rest of the series flagged and didn't quite live up the standard set out by the first book.

7. Something Like Normal by Trish Doller - This is another book that I saw a bunch of YA book bloggers raving about that absolutely lived up to the hype.  Travis is a young marine who has returned home from a tour in Afghanistan.  His struggle to fit back into his old life with struggling with PTSD and his slow budding romance with a girl he wronged in the past are pitch perfect.  Loved.

8. The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood - This is the second book by Marwood I read this year, and I think I really like her style.  Her books are ostensibly thrillers/crime fiction, but Marwood digs a little deeper and provides some really penetrating character studies, too.  People looking for fast-paced semi-brainless page-turners will probably find themselves disappointed, but if you like good character-driven stories with a touch of suspense and mystery, check out Marwood's books.  Excellent for fans of Tana French's books, I'd think, and fans of Criminal Minds on TV.

9. Gonzales and Daughter Trucking Co. by Maria Amparo Escandon - This is a different sort of book, kind of a mix of Orange is the New Black and a quirky modern fairytale.  Libertad grew up living the life of a long haul trucker with her father who is perpetually fleeing the dangers of a (probably) forgotten crime from his past.  Libertad longs for a home that's not on wheels and freedom from her overprotective father and, well, freedom itself.  Her story is delivered from the Mexican prison where she is incarcerated with a pack of weirdly lovable inmates and a corrupt, if unexpectedly decent, warden.

10. The Mapmaker's War by Ronlyn Domingue - I should have read this book a while ago, and I'm glad I finally did.  It's been forever since I've read anything that could be considered fantasy in its purest sense, and I'd missed it.  This entire book is told in the second person by a woman exiled from her kingdom for treason who finds refuge among a mysterious (and pretty awesome!) people.  This is a unique (Did I mention that it's written in the second person?  And how that's so cool?) and powerful story with a decidedly feminist bent that I adored. 

 

 

My Five (or so) Fave Movies of the Year (So Far)

Today, for A Month of Favorites we get to journey outside the bookish and share some other faves from this year.  My mom and I go to see tons of movies, and there were more than a few excellent movies to be seen this year, a lot of them based on similarly good books.  Here are the great movies that distracted me from my reading this year...

This Is Where I Leave You - I missed the boat on reading this book before it, but I loved the movie.  I love movies that can make you laugh and cry literally at the same time, and this movie about a dysfunctional family sitting Shiva for their father totally did it.  It was serious at times and sad at times and funny at times and sometimes sad and funny at the same time, and, in my humble opinion, it was brilliantly cast.

St. Vincent - I saw the preview for this one a couple times and almost let it pass me by because of the perpetual worry about comedies airing all their funniest moments in the preview and then having nothing to offer once you've ponied up your hard earned dough at the movie theater.  Not so here.  Weirdly, Melissa McCarthy's not the comic relief.  The kid that plays her son and Bill Murray, as the world's unlikeliest babysitter, definitely are, but here's another movie that's masquerading as a comedy but is actually touching enough that you'll be wiping your eyes by the time the credits are rolling.  I'm not going to spoil it because you should see it.

Fury - There are some movies you go into expecting to like.  There are other movies you end up going to instead of Gone Girl because your dad never wants to go to the movies but finally figures out one he wants to see.  Lots of World War II movies don't quite capture the full horror of war, this movie seemed to get that Germany by the end of World War II was a pretty dreadful place to be, especially in tank, and showed it.  It's definitely a testosterone movie of a sort, but with a bunch of A-list actors putting in time in a World War II tank, the ante is definitely upped.  I didn't expect to like it, but ended up thinking about it long after it was over.

Jersey Boys - There are other movies that you see because you meant to see The Fault in Our Stars but end up being too disgustingly late for the show because you were, uh, buying books at a giant yard sale next door.  This is that movie.  If you're behind the curve, it's the movie version of the musical version of the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  I seriously had to stop myself clapping after these guys finished their songs on screen.  Loved.  Loved much more than The Fault in Our Stars (the movie, not the book). 

The Giver - Hey, I did read this book before I saw the movie.  A looooong time before I saw the movie.  I hear the movie's nothing like the book, but that didn't bother me so much because I read the book when I was, like, 12, and I am nowhere near twelve anymore.  I loved the story of humans learning to feel again, even if feelings make for an "imperfect" society.  It translated to the screen very nicely in the opinion who read the book more than 15 years ago.  ;-)

I may have mentioned that I saw a crap ton of movies this year, so here's 5 more good ones for luck...

Gone Girl - Here's another book I totally failed to read before seeing the movie.  Ben Affleck was good, even though I've never really liked him all that much, but Rosamund Pike, could she have been any more perfectly freaking creepy?

Interstellar - Downgraded to runner up for making my brain hurt with all this talk of complex physics concepts.  I mean, ouch, my brain.  Other than that, this was yet another high quality mind*bleep* from Christopher Nolan, bringer of films such as Inception and Memento, wherein you don't quite know what is happening or how it's happening, but you find in the days following the viewing you can't stop thinking about it and being impressed that somebody could make so many different plot strands and difficult concepts work together to make a movie people still want to see.

Divergent - Er, I finally read the book right after seeing the movie.  Another book fail.  But it says something that I enjoyed the movie depiction of dystopian Chicago enough to finally plunge into this series.  Loved Shailene Woodley and Theo James cast as the main characters. 

The Lego Movie - A token animated contender.  I love cartoon movies that throw in some humor for the grown-ups.  Also, who spent most of the late winter with the "Everything Is Awesome" song stuck in their head?  Who has it back in their head now?  You're welcome.

Mockingjay (Part 1) - Loses because the first part is the draggy part of Mockingjay anyway, and then they stretched it out to feature film length.  Still has that Hunger Games awesome though, and I can't wait to see the conclusion!

Frighteningly, there are still plenty of contenders to kick these ten off their pedestals.  I mean - Unbroken, The Hobbit, and Into the Woods are ending the year with a bang and definitely stand a chance to unseat some of the top five ten.

What's the best movie you saw this year?

Check out Estella's Revenge for more miscellaneous favorites today! 

#AMonthofFaves : Year in Books Timeline

And I'm back with #AMonthofFaves stuff today.  Bookish timelines are the order of the day today, so here's a brief look at my year in books...

January - Started the year with not a bang, DNFing two historical fiction titles that definitely didn't live up to their 2013 predecessors. While I'm failing to actually read any books, I become the unwitting poster child for the Friends of the Library book sale when a picture of me appears in the local newspaper clutching a stack of my new (used) acquisitions. I am the picture of bookish irony.  Literally.

February - The month when I was ready for summer to come. I blame Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen and her very convincing Milwaukee summer.

Is it summer yet?

March - Doesn't look like the month I read the least, but probably is. I turned 30 and changed jobs. I was busy eating a cake every week and discovering that lunch break reading was a thing in my past, leaving little time for the mediocre reading that marked this month.

April - My book group ruined Ender's Game (which I finally read!) for me with, like, all their intelligent ethical qualms about Ender's character. D'oh.

May - This is the month I remember that I have a blog and start posting on it which some regularity again. I attempted my first Bout of Books leading to an excellent five book month.

Blogging, I does it.

June - It takes until June for me to read a book I know will end up on my top ten for the year. I think I'll keep the title under wraps until next week, though. ;-)

July - My records say I only read one book. My brain knows I was digging my way through John Irving's substantially long and dense The Cider House Rules (which I finally read!).

August - Bout of Books take two on the year results in an even bigger reading month than May. I finally start reading the Divergent series after years of meaning to.

September - I read the best YA book I read this year. Nope, not telling til next week.

 Nope, really not telling. Yet.

October - Marks something else I never do - read a second book by an author I'd read earlier in the year that's not part of series. Maybe I'll eventually even get around to reviewing it.

November - Is when I start reading Christmas books, for once achieving the aim of actually reading Christmas books during the holiday season.

December - I trade reading a lot for blogging way more dependably than usual. I imagine I can do it all and still finish a few more books this month even while writing 70% more posts than usual (and forget all that extra commenting!).  Endeavor seems destined for failure on one front or another...  To be determined.

I love you, you little thief of reading time.

What's a notable event in your year in books?

Month of Faves: Books with Kick-@$$ Girls

A Month of Favorites continues today with five favorites in our choice of a theme.  I wasn't going to do this one, actually, because I didn't think my reading really fit any certain themes this year, but then I spied on the list of examples, "Books with Kick-ass Girls."  As it so happens, I've read oodles of books with strong female characters this years, so many that they easily surpass the five called for in the post prompt.  So here are 5 books with female characters that prove that they can be vulnerable and afraid but not overcome, in fact, they are the stronger for conquering their fears in their own unique ways.

Divergent by Veronica Roth - Here's an obvious one. Yes, I finally read the Divergent trilogy this year. I realize I'm behind the curve, but Tris is pretty fierce, no?

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi - Hashimi's story of two girls in Afghanistan who triumph in a culture that threatens to rob them of control over their own lives and destinies was one of the highlights of my year.

Say What you Will by Cammie McGovern - Despite the hype, this book wasn't one of my favorites this year, but it definitely has one tough girl. Amy has cerebral palsy, computer to talk, and can't eat without difficulty, but she refuses to let her disability define her or stand in the way of her dreams.


Beauty by Frederick Dillen - Carol grew up on the mean streets of Detroit, holding her own among all the boys on her block. She grew up to shut down failing factories for a living, but where she really proves her strength is in saving a factory and its town and herself in the process.

The Mapmaker's War by Ronlyn Domingue - Aoife is a girl who never accepted the place that was set out for her. Rather, she becomes her kingdom's mapmaker, discovers a new settlement, and risks her life to warn them of danger from her own kingdom. Facing exile, she finds the courage to start over and raise a daughter who is even more kick-ass than she is.

Who's the strongest female character you read about this year?

A Month of Favorites: Introduction

Happy December, everyone!  You may recognize this month as being the (or, um, another) month in which I unintentionally let my blog go dark while being swept away by either the busy-ness or the lethargy of life.  This year, with the help of a few clever bloggers and one fun December event, I'm hoping to reverse the December curse.  This December the lovely ladies at Estella's Revenge, Girlxoxo, and Traveling with T have brought us a fun December event all about sharing our favorite things from this year, bookish and otherwise.  In between my blundering through my back log of reviews before the first of the year, playing along with The Month of Favorites seems like a fun and easy way to up my blogging this December.  Check out the link if you want to see all the post topics and join the fun!

Today, we're introducing ourselves and sharing a little about our reading this year.  I'm Megan, and I've been blogging here at Leafing Through Life for 7 years now.  Yes, this is the year that my blog hit it's lucky seventh birthday, and I can't believe I'm still at it.  If you're new here, you haven't heard me go on and on about what a slow reader I am.  I'm definitely not working with a high quantity of books read for the year, but it's still been a banner year for reading in other ways.  Here's how...

• This is the year that I finally started getting over my fear of chunksters.  I was never afraid of a book 500+ pages long before I started blogging, but being a slow reader and a blogger mix poorly with the reading of chunksters.  This year I stopped putting pressure on myself to finish more books and started just reading.  It's paid off wonderfully, considering I've read the same amount of books as last year at this time, but way more pages.  Good chunksters aren't scary - they're awesome!
• This is also the year that I really started to embrace not finishing books.  I've never been the sort to force myself to finish books I'm not enjoying, but this year, I think I've done a particularly good job of recognizing when it was time to call it quits on a book that just wasn't doing it for me.  Life's too short for mediocrity, right?
• Finally, this is the year of the Readathon.  I've always been a big fan of Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, but I've never sampled any of the other readathons cropping up around the book blogosphere.  This year I did the Bout of Books twice and loved having a low pressure readathon that went on for a week and helped me refocus on reading instead of life's many distractions while staying plugged into the book blogging community.  

Does your inner stat hound care about my stats?  Mine kind of does, but only in the loosest kind of way.  So breaking it down in a nutshell, my reading has been...

1/5 chunksters, about half review copies and half from own collection (this is very excellent!), definitely skewed toward female authors (think 60/40ish), predominantly composed of new to me authors, almost all paper books rather than ebooks (sorry, Kindle), mostly fiction (1 non-fiction book for every 7 fiction books, yikes!), and had a generous sprinkling of YA among the "grown-up" books (a welcome departure from my YA lacking recent past).

So, yeah, it's been a nice year, a different sort of year for reading and blogging.  Low pressure, higher page counts, and more fun in general.   I'm going to wrap this up for now, but I'm looking forward to sharing some of this year's favorites as the month marches on, and I'll hope you'll join the fun!

What's something unique about your year in reading?