Reading Challenge/Goals for 2023--2024 link added

[bobbiwoz]

21/75 “The Summer Kitchen” by Lisa Wingate. A friend a had recommended, and it didn’t take long for me to realize I had read it and enjoyed it before, so I read it again. 4.5/5

 

[mrs. magoo]

9/30 - Gilded Live, Fatal Voyage by Hugh Brewster

I picked this one up since someone else mentioned it. This is non fiction and focuses on the lives of the wealthy 1st class passengers. It was an interesting read and I enjoyed it for the information it provided. If you are into the history of the Titanic I would recommend it as it is a different view point on the tragedy. I follow Lynnewood Hall and it preservation attempts on Instagram and I was surprised to see the owners were on the Titanic also my son attends Bucknell University and the founders wife was a passenger as well. Cool connections.

 

[tiggrbaby]

21/75 “The Summer Kitchen” by Lisa Wingate. A friend a had recommended, and it didn’t take long for me to realize I had read it and enjoyed it before, so I read it again. 4.5/5

Looked this up in my library and it was listed as #2 in a series. Did you read the first one (A Month of Summer)?

 

[bobbiwoz]

Looked this up in my library and it was listed as #2 in a series. Did you read the first one (A Month of Summer)?

Yes, in 2020, I had read the series. I have “Beyond Summer” now and will read it again.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Lumpy 1106;
3/20 - Taylor Jenkins Reid, "Carrie Soto is Back", 5/5 - this is a solid read
4/20 - David Grann, "The Lost City of Z..." 3/5 - I had trouble staying interested in this one, and it felt unfinished even at that.

 

[luvmarypoppins]

6/32 - Love’s Escape by Carrie Fancett Pagels
Two white businessmen devise a plan to help their enslaved future wives escape using the Underground Railroad. Full of heartbreak and hope.

7/32 - Snowstorm Sabotage by Kerry Johnson. Ski resort owner is framed for murder and her ex husband helps her prove her innocence and find the real killer. Lots of action. Good ending.

8/32 - Dangerous Beauty by Melissa Koslin. A human trafficking ring is tracked down and exposed after a young Mexican woman escapes and marries her rescuer. This was a hard read with a difficult subject.

 

[sdk1231]

Lumpy 1106;
3/20 - Taylor Jenkins Reid, "Carrie Soto is Back", 5/5 - this is a solid read
4/20 - David Grann, "The Lost City of Z..." 3/5 - I had trouble staying interested in this one, and it felt unfinished even at that.

I loved Lost City of Z the novel (and was disappointed in the movie). I'd never heard of Carrie Soto, but based on your 5/5 review, I've put it on my list for future consideration. I'm a big tennis fan, so that's a plus.

 

[sdk1231]

Book 15: Joy to the Just by T. R. Pearson. Another western adventure with another group of eclectic characters. I didn't like it as much as I liked Devil Up, the first book I read by this author and in a similar vein. That said, Joy to the Just was still totally engaging and fun to read. I think I finished it in a day.

 

[mgarbowski]

6 of 24 - The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football

I've followed football for 50 years and never much cared about Xs and Os. I loved this book. Read it in 2 days.

From the late 1970s to early 2000s American football underwent a slow but massive revolution and eventually almost every team at every level featured a pass-dominant offense instead of the run-oriented style that was universal for decades. Several coaches, teams and programs generated the innovation, including Air Coryell in San Diego, Bill Walsh's West Coast offense in San Francisco, LaVell Edwards at BYU, Dennis Erickson's one-back spread, the run-and-shoot developed by multiple innovators, and the Air Raid developed by Hal Mumme (with Mike Leach) at a series of small colleges and eventually the University of Kentucky.

This book is about the Mumme and the Air Raid, and it's fascinating. One of my favorite themes is how Mumme was obsessed with expanding the field and forcing defenders to cover more space which is a very soccer-familiar concept. Another element is simplicity. Multiple times they hit a plateau and they broke through by simplifying the system and reducing their plays. Their playlist was so small it was not written. They practiced and then ran the same plays over and over and because they practiced roughly a dozen or so plays dozens of times every practice instead of a few hundred plays each once or twice a week, they got really good at them, and could beat teams who were bigger and faster. Plus practices were short which made everyone happy.

Today, almost nobody runs a pure Air Raid, but everyone uses multiple Air Raid elements because defenses still have not figured out how to counter them, which is not as true of the other innovative pass offenses mentioned above.

 

[Lumpy1106]

I loved Lost City of Z the novel (and was disappointed in the movie). I'd never heard of Carrie Solo, but based on your 5/5 review, I've put it on my list for future consideration. I'm a big tennis fan, so that's a plus.

You will love Carrie Soto. I am not a tennis fan and appreciated that she didn't get too deep into the actual game play. It's just a really solid story cover-to-cover. Being a tennis fan would definitely add to it though.

 

[Simba's Mom]

#11/#56-"The Auschwitz Escape" by Joel C. Rosenberg-5 stars. I've read quite a few books about the Holocaust, but this book made my cry at the end like no other had. And it was based on fact. Amazing!

 

[bobbiwoz]

22/75
Reread Beyond Summer by Lisa Wingate and enjoyed it again! 3.5/5

 

[melk]

7/35 Vacationland by Meg Mitchell Moore

Maine is the setting for a summer full of family secrets, marriage, motherhood and privilege.

I read this on the recommendation of others on here and I really enjoyed it.

 

[willowsnn3]

#13/50 The Night Shift by Alex Finlay
From Goodreads:
It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.
Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive.
Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words... “Goodnight, pretty girl.”

I actually finished this a couple weeks ago, just getting around to posting it. I really enjoyed it.

 

[willowsnn3]

7/35 Vacationland by Meg Mitchell Moore
I read this on the recommendation of others on here and I really enjoyed it.

Working on this one also!

 

[willowsnn3]

 

[sdk1231]

#16 Eaglesworth by T. R. Pearson 3 stars. A weird story, several old men sit around a town bar gossiping like townies do, discussing an odd mystery up at the old town mansion called Eaglesworth. Readable but forgettable.

# 17 A Short History of a Small Place by T. R. Pearson - ZERO STARS... and here comes a rant, so feel free to skip over it:

Apparently the first book by T. R. Pearson. Awful. A very rare Did Not Finish. Stopped at 34%. Utterly baffled at so many rave reviews. How did this get published?? This book is a never ending blathering ramble chock full of nothing. At one point this thought came bubbling up: "Whoever wrote this must be out of their mind."

You know what reading this book is like? It's like when you're sitting around with a friend and they start telling you some long rambling third-or fifth-hand story about a cousin of their friend's husband's aunt. A long and boring story that they think is HI-larious. Your eyes immediately glaze over. You go "Uh-huh, hm, oh wow" but really you're calculating how soon you can cut them off without being totally rude. Honest to god.

It's set in a small town in the south. Narrator is... a kid? Setting is... what year? Who knows, and who cares. The narrator is telling tales he's heard from his dad about all the "wacky" townies. No actual plot. Just a long string of near stream-of-consciousness blathering. Each sentence must run 50 words on average. I made it through about 4 suicides (some wacky, some not), 4 or 5 people going insane (some wacky, some not), a child death, a choking death, multiple "wacky" drunks, a (wacky/tragic) spinster with her pet monkey... all the way up to some blathering tale about a legal dispute between a guy and his plumber over an unrepaired toilet seat. The guy previously dated 2 sisters - the Bald One and the Fat One (not particularly funny). He married the Bald One. I am not making this up. At this point, I finally went "Joke's on me", returned to my Kindle home screen and bought an actual book.

This is the 4th book I've read by T. R. Pearson. It may be the last. I read as follows:
Devil Up. Loved it.
Joy to the Just. Good.
Eaglesworth. Okay.
A Short History of a Small Place. Total crap. I can't believe it got published. **Edited to add - I just looked it up. This book was self-published in 1985. Penguin picked it up and did a reprint in paperback in 2003. I also found out that T. R. Pearson got the endorsement from John Grisham because he worked with Grisham on the screenplay of The Rainmaker.

 

[bobbiwoz]

…


#10 - Overground Railroad by Candacy Taylor

I've been looking forward to this one for a while, but it took a bit for my turn to come up on the library request list. The book is a history of The Green Book, a guide put out for Black drivers and travelers during the segregation era, and with it the history of much of early/mid 20th century America. It makes for a compelling story that puts a lot of the major events and trends in that history into context, both in how they relate to one another and how they shape the current moment. It is very much a double-sided narrative, in the way Taylor presents evils of segregation and the violence used to enforce it but also honors the many Black-owned and desegregated businesses that sprung up to meet the needs of people excluded from so much of the commercial mainstream. I really enjoyed it, and jotted down a few of the former Green Book sites that are still in business to visit myself on an upcoming drive cross country.

23/75 I put a hold on it after reading your review, and I just finished it. It’s eye opening, and I am glad I read it, and I have mentioned it to my friends. 4/5

 

[willowsnn3]

#16 Eaglesworth by T. R. Pearson 3 stars. A weird story, several old men sit around a town bar gossiping like townies do, discussing an odd mystery up at the old town mansion called Eaglesworth. Readable but forgettable.

# 17 A Short History of a Small Place by T. R. Pearson - ZERO STARS... and here comes a rant, so feel free to skip over it:

Apparently the first book by T. R. Pearson. Awful. A very rare Did Not Finish. Stopped at 34%. Utterly baffled at so many rave reviews. How did this get published?? This book is a never ending blathering ramble chock full of nothing. At one point this thought came to bubbling up: "Whoever wrote this must be out of their mind."

You know what reading this book is like? It's like when you're sitting around with a friend and they start telling you some long rambling third-or fifth-hand story about a cousin of their friend's husband's aunt. A long and boring story that they think is HI-larious. Your eyes immediately glaze over. You go "Uh-huh, hm, oh wow" but really you're calculating how soon you can cut them off without being totally rude. Honest to god.

It's set in a small town in the south. Narrator is... a kid? Setting is... what year? Who knows, and who cares. The narrator is telling tales he's heard from his dad about all the "wacky" townies. No actual plot. Just a long string of near stream-of-consciousness blathering. Each sentence must run 50 words on average. I made it through about 4 suicides (some wacky, some not), 4 or 5 people going insane (some wacky, some not), a child death, a choking death, multiple "wacky" drunks, a (wacky/tragic) spinster with her pet monkey... all the way up to some blathering tale about a legal dispute between a guy and his plumber over an unrepaired toilet seat. The guy previously dated 2 sisters - the Bald One and the Fat One (not particularly funny). He married the Bald One. I am not making this up. At this point, I finally went "Joke's on me", returned to my Kindle home screen and bought an actual book.

This is the 4th book I've read by T. R. Pearson. It may be the last. I read as follows:
Devil Up. Loved it.
Joy to the Just. Good.
Eaglesworth. Okay.
A Short History of a Small Place. Total crap. I can't believe it got published. **Edited to add - I just looked it up. This book was self-published in 1985. Penguin picked it up and did a reprint in paperback in 2003. I also found out that T. R. Pearson got the endorsement from John Grisham because he worked with Grisham on the screenplay of The Rainmaker.

Sometimes when I read rave reviews on a book I thought was terrible, I wonder if they read the same version I did, lol.

 

[willowsnn3]

Happy first day of Spring!
29 degrees here this morning but supposed to be 80 in a couple days.
Currently working on Vacationland 1 & 2.