Phew. Well, I did it. I finished my 12th book in December a few moments ago, which means I hit my goal of 156 books read this year. The 12 books I read this month were:
145) Run Fast, Eat Slow: Nourishing Recipes for Athletes by Elyse Kopecky & Shalane Flanagan - Not entirely sure how to rate a cookbook, especially since I haven’t had the chance to make anything in it yet. So the rating is based off of how interested I am in the different recipes. 3.5/5
146) City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg - A decent read, but at almost 950 it felt to long. In my option it could have been about 650 or so and not have lost anything important. Also, I am personally not a huge fan of jumping around in time when telling a story. 3/5
147) Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot- Mailhot is a First Nation Canadian and this memoir flows from her troubled childhood up through her adult struggle with mental health and personal identity. 4/5
148) A Beautiful Poison by Lydia Kang - Set in New York during WWI and the Spanish Influenza outbreak; three childhood friends who have grown apart reconnect when they start to believe that deaths happening around them that have been attributed to the flu are actually poisonings. 4/5
149) Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher - Fisher’s first published novel, the semi-autobiography work is about an actress trying to put her life and career back together after a drug overdose and time in rehab. 3.5/5
150) Telling Tales by Neil Gaiman - Five short stories by Gaiman. They were all pretty short and so a bit hard to get into. 3.25/5
151) The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World by Haemin Sunim - Sunim is a Zen meditation teacher and this is his nice simple book of mindfulness. 4/5
152) We Have Always Lived in the House by Shirley Jackson - Jackson’s last work. This is a gothic mystery masterpiece 4.25/5
153) Hayao Miyazaki: Japan's Premier Anime Storyteller by Jeff Lenburg - A look at Miyazaki’s life and career. It’s a short read, only 120 pages and could have definitely gone longer and deeper. 3.5/5
154) Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron - Styron’s personal account of his slide into suicidal depression and his struggles to come out of it. 4.25/5
155) Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke - In 1902 a 19 year old cadet wrote to Rilke. Over the next 6 years they would write back and forth. This is a collection of 10 of those letters. 4/5
156) The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich - While trying to figure out exactly what to say for this great poetry collection I came across an excerpt from an article and I’m going to quote that. “The Dream of a Common Language explores the contours of a woman’s heart and mind in language for everybody—language whose plainness, laughter, questions and nobility everyone can respond to. . . . No one is writing better or more needed verse than this.”—Boston Evening Globe. 4.5/5
but, again, 
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