75 Books...More or Less! discussion
Archive (2021 GR Completed)
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Shelby’s 2021 Reads
First book of the year done! And first buddy read of the new year! Read this in preparation for the movie, but honestly I have no idea how they'd make a movie like this work. It will be interesting to see what they tried.
Another read in preparation for the movie. Pretty sure I've never read this one, though I was familiar with the plot of it.
I have not been in a reading mood lately, but I did want to finish something again, even if it was short. A few years ago, I read a bunch of Edgar Allan Poe stories through two small collections, and they covered most of his most popular stuff, but The Fall of the House of Usher wasn't in either of them, and I wanted to at least read it.
I had fun with this anthology. My favourites included Atchafalaya by A. S. MacKenzie, Spots by Ariana Ferrante, Between the Trees by Dustin Walker, The Valley of Shadows by Chris Hewitt, Moonshadow Monster by Gina Easton, and When Called by David Kenney.
I read this mainly for a basic overview on robotics, so I ended up skimming a lot of it. Still useful.
Not directly reading-related, but today I can officially share that my horror short story Nightmares will be published early next year through Eerie River Publishing in their annual best of anthology, Midnight Shadows: Tales From the River Volume Two!
Mod
CONGRATULATIONS!!!! That's so awesome, Shelby!!!
Elyse wrote: "Shelby wrote: "Not directly reading-related, but today I can officially share that my horror short story Nightmares will be published early next year through Eerie River Publishing in their annual ..."Thank you!!! I’m so excited! I’m gonna be published next year!!!
Mod
That is so exciting!!
Shelby wrote: "Not directly reading-related, but today I can officially share that my horror short story Nightmares will be published early next year through Eerie River Publishing in their annual best of antholo..."That's exciting news! Congrats!
Charleen wrote: "Shelby wrote: "Not directly reading-related, but today I can officially share that my horror short story Nightmares will be published early next year through Eerie River Publishing in their annual ..."Thank you!
A reread I was meaning to get to for a while!
Quick readathon recap:
I’m pretty sure this is the first book I’ve read by this author. It was alright. We’ll see when I get around to World War Z.
Been meaning to pick this one up for a while. I think this is my third book by the author? Possibly the one I enjoyed the most too.
Mod
Congrats, Shelby! That is great news!
Juli wrote: "Shelby wrote: "Not directly reading-related, but today I can officially share that my horror short story Nightmares will be published early next year through Eerie River Publishing in their annual ..."Thank you!
Been meaning to update again.
So I loved this radio play. It was amazing, but honestly, I'm a little bummed that I didn't read the 'book' book version before I watched the movie. At some point, I need to come back to this and read the author-approved translation, but for now, if you're looking for a sci-fi radio production, check this one out!
I must've been busy lately, because I somehow forgot to update this book:
I enjoyed my time with this one. I knew the twist in the second half, so I've been looking forward to checking this one out for quite a while. I also watched the first two movies for the first time. They were interesting, but I did prefer the book.
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Quick Spring Break-a-thon wrap-up:
This book appeared on my GR feed recently, and it reminded me that I still hadn't taken the time to read this. Dear Martin came out the same year The Hate U Give did, and while I liked the later quite a lot, I'm pretty sure I prefer Dear Martin more. This book was glorious and heartbreaking. 5 Stars
So I announced last month that my first published story is going to be in the second volume of Midnight Shadows, so I knew I wanted to get to volume 1 this year, and I was in a horror mood, so I picked this one up. I wrote a short review for volume 1:
Another good collection from Eerie River Publishing. My favourites this time around included Blood Sisters by Brandon Ebinger, The Other Sunny by William A. Wellman, Inside Your Mind by Elizabeth Nettleton, and NPC by V.A. Vazquez.
At long last, I've crossed my first tome off my tbr for my personal challenge. This was . . . okay. I liked it more than The Green Mile last year, but not by a whole lot. I didn't really care for any of the characters, and King again leans on the tropes he uses that I'm not really a fan of. I did enjoy the time-travel aspect of this, that was when the book was most interesting to me, but beyond that, I wasn't really into it.
Mod
I enjoyed my time with this one. I knew the twist in the second half, so I've bee..."
I read The Neverending Story for the first time only a few years ago but grew up watching the movies multiple times. I did enjoy the book!
Dear Martin is definitely in my TBR for this year.
I also did not love 11.22.63. Some aspects were interesting but overall, I was pretty bored with it and it was SO. LONG.
Elyse wrote: "Shelby wrote: "I must've been busy lately, because I somehow forgot to update this book:I enjoyed my time with this one. I knew the twist in the second ha..."
I’d seen clips from Neverending Story, but I hadn’t seen the movie before. I definitely recommend Dear Martin! I was looking at my tbr and realized if I didn’t fit it into the readathon, who knew when I’d have time for it again? And I might’ve enjoyed 11.22.63 more if I’d liked any of the characters, but I really didn’t. 😕
Mod
I enjoyed my time with this one. I knew the twist in..."
Yeah, 11.22.63 did not have any likable characters and it's hard to truly enjoy a book when you don't like anyone! lol. Very few books can pull off unlikable but still have a stellar book.
Mod
I enjoyed my time with this one. I knew the twist in the second half, so I've bee..."
Bummer you didn't enjoy 11/22/63 as much. I thought it was really good and I just admire how much research SK did for this book.
Juli wrote: "Shelby wrote: "I must've been busy lately, because I somehow forgot to update this book:I enjoyed my time with this one. I knew the twist in the second ha..."
Yeah, I wasn’t a fan. 😕
Another catch-up post. I decided to wait on this one on purpose because most of these were reads for the Dewey's Pre-Readathon Board Game. It was such a relief to have an excuse to clear a bunch of series with this challenge.------------------------------------------
Needed something short and I thought I'd revisit a favourite.
Dewey's Pre-Readathon Board: Read a Short Story
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I realized I never really looked for indie graphic novels, so I decided to pick this one at random because it was short. I wrote little review:
As a fan of dark humour in general, these didn’t really work for me. I still like the cover illustration, though.
Dewey's Pre-Readathon Board: Read a Graphic Novel
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The only one of these that wasn't for the reading challenge. I grew up with this movie and revisiting it again was a blast. The book was cute too.
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I read Dear Martin earlier this year and loved it and I ended up really enjoying this one too.
5 Stars
Dewey's Pre-Readathon Board: Book Title Begins With 'D'
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At long last I've closed out the Binti trilogy! I was not expecting where this book goes at all. I think I liked the first two better, but I did enjoy this.
Dewey's Pre-Readathon Board: Read a Science Fiction/Fantasy
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I managed to read this one to fill a couple of challenges with a nice bonus motivation to get it done before the Shadow and Bone Netflix show was out. I wasn't sure about the beginning of the book. I could see the seams here and there, but further in the book really took off and I'm really happy with where it ends up. I also binged the entire Shadow and Bone series on Saturday and it was wonderful. I need more.
Dewey's Pre-Readathon Board: Read 100 Pages and Jump Ahead; Finish: Read 500 Pages
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That's all for now. Also my copy of Rule of Wolves is over 600 pages, so it also counts as my second book done for my tome challenge this year.
I was on hold on this for longer than I was hoping, so I had to finish it pretty quickly over the last few days and my other reading had to wait. I watched the movie for the first time today, so that was interesting.
Mod
I was on hold on this for longer than I was hoping, so I had to finish it pretty quickly over the last few days and my other reading had to wait. I watched t..."
I don't know that I'd be into the books. I liked the first movie but then they got repetitive. I have not seen the Jeremy Renner one and probably never will. lol.
Elyse wrote: "Shelby wrote: "I was on hold on this for longer than I was hoping, so I had to finish it pretty quickly over the last few days and my other reading had to wa..."
There were a lot of things in the book that didn’t age well. The first movie was fine, but I’m not interested enough to watch the rest.
Mod
I was on hold on this for longer than I was hoping, so I had to finish it pretty quickly over the last few days and my other rea..."
I liked the movies but am weary of reading the series. I read the first James Bond book and DID NOT LIKE to hear the inner sexist thoughts of James Bond. It's one thing to watch the movies and notice some of the sexism and another thing to have every page filled with it.
Juli wrote: "Shelby wrote: "Elyse wrote: "Shelby wrote: "I was on hold on this for longer than I was hoping, so I had to finish it pretty quickly over the last few days a..."
I know the Bond books are somewhat infamous for all the yikes. 😬
Another lightning-round post. I decided to step back from writing to restore the creative well by getting some much-needed reading done. I didn't end up reading as much as I was hoping, but I did need to cross all of these off the list:
Read this for research. Didn't care for it. If I hadn't already known what it was about going in, I still wouldn't be able to tell you now.
I did it. I finished Priory of the Orange Tree. I'm very happy to have read it. I do wonder how much more I'd pick up on a reread, but that's probably not something I'll be doing anytime soon. This was maybe the one I was most determined to cross off this year of the 5 tomes to read challenge. I buddy read this with some friends here in the group, if you're interested in checking that out.
A reread I've been meaning to do for a while. This year This Film is Lit is covering the Hunger Games series over the summer. I love the movies, but I'm less familiar with the books and boy did I have a lot of thoughts revisiting this book again.
Speaking of long-overdue rereads, we have my favourite book. This was fun to return to, and it was surprising to see how much wasn't in the book that was in the short-lived show and vice-versa. I'm planning to revisit that too when I'm done the trilogy again.
This was one of those books I saw all the time growing up, but I don't think I ever picked it up. I say that because some of this was vaguely familiar and I blew through so many short books as a kid, who really knows what I all read back then. But it could've easily been one of those other stranded-in-the-wilderness books I read too.
Mod
I read Hatchett as an adult as well. I would've loved that book as a kid.
Mod
Elyse wrote: "Hatchet was one of the few books that middle school forced into boys' hands because there were so few middle grade/YA books geared towards boys! I've never read it but I'm sure I will someday."I think part of the problem is how rigidly books are divided into book for boys and books for girls. Boys should be able to read whatever book interests them, regardless of who the protagonist is.
Mod
Absolutely!
More catch-up, because apparently this is how I do this now:
This book was okay. Another reread done. I'm interested to see what I think of the third one this time.
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Another reread of an old favourite. Absolutely loved it. The plotting is magnificent, and I hope I can deliver on a finale as good as this one someday. I already recommend the Silverwing trilogy to people, but this was such a great, suspenseful ride and it was wonderful to revisit it again. Other people should read them too. Maybe even . . . YOU???
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As much as I enjoyed Sunwing, I was in desperate need of a book that wasn't a reread, so I decided to pick this up. I wrote a bit of a longer review of it for once, too:
"I think this is the first zombie story I've read since, as they say these days, The Plague, and it was an experience to go back and read a pandemic scenario written pre-2020 and see how true to our real experience it was. Vaccines, virus tests, business as usual; I'm pretty sure zombie pandemics in media are going to hit differently for the next few years.
Regardless, it was good to read something with zombies again. Phoenix is a YA zombie apocalypse story with just a smidge of hope, in a similar vein to Jack Croxall's Wye and X, but Phoenix has a larger cast with more defined characters. I really liked Deidre's arc and her relationships with both Moth and Andy. It's the strength of these characters that made it hard to put the book down to go do 'necessary' things like work and sleep.
I really liked this iteration of the zombie virus. I don't know if Julian Greystoke based it on Encephalitis Lethargica, the unexplained epidemic that appeared and then disappeared from 1916-1930, but the initial virus in this book gave me a similar vibe. It reminded me a little of The Girl With All The Gifts in that both virus's are more extreme versions of things that already exist in our world.
However, I do need to mention that my kindle copy had many cases of extra words/grammatical mistakes that required me to read sentences over in places, but not enough to distract from the work overall, and I really enjoyed my time with it.
In the end, I was looking for something shorter to read among all my current rereads, and I decided now would be a good time to check out Julian Greystoke's debut before her sequel to The Wolf and the Hawk comes out. I was not disappointed."
Mod
..."Oooh I haven't heard of this one but I enjoyed X and Wye and and looking for a similar story with more!
Elyse wrote: "Shelby wrote: "..."Oooh I haven't heard of this one but I enjoyed X and Wye and and looking for a similar story with more!"
I hope you like it too!
Mod
..."Oooh I haven't heard of this one but I enjoyed X and Wye and and looking for a similar story with more!"
I hope you like it too!"
Just gotta read one of my other KU books and return it so I can get this one! lol.
I'm back updating again. Getting ready for the Magical Readathon starting in a few hours so I thought I'd better catch up again first.-------------------------------------
Not much to say about this one. I think I read the Grimm version years ago. It was nice and short.
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Another in this series down. I'm almost caught up on these now. While I've been lagging behind my updates, at least I've been keeping up with adding reviews for all the indies I've been reading this year, which is good because there've been a lot of them!
Review:
Another entertaining horror anthology. My favourite of this collection would have to be Please Leave by Watt Morgan, a deeply unsettling story where the main character finds himself in a situation that reminded me a lot of the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, only somehow even darker. It takes a lot for written horror to get under my skin, but this one certainly did.
A close second would be Dead Ships by Georgia Cook. I love horror stories about isolation, and the way that feeling of unease just grows and grows until the end really stands out.
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This is the one in the series I tend to like the most, and that was the same this time around too. Although I think I preferred the first half maybe.
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This was an interesting one. I've got a review for this one too:
A fascinating fantasy that’s very different from its peers. The building blocks of this world provide an excellent way to talk about gender and identity and the expectations of the people around us. There are plenty of readers who will get much more out of this book than I did, so if you’re at all interested, I would encourage you to pick this one up.
Magical Readathon: The Novice Path & Character----------------------------------------------------------
I've picked a book for each of these seven challenges, even though you officially have to do two to pass. I picked a few short ones in there to make them more manageable:
- The Novice Path Entrance: read a book with a map.
- Ashtorn Tree: a book that keeps tempting you (or top of your TBR).
- The Mist of Solitude: read a standalone.
- Ruin of the Skye: read a book featuring ghosts/haunted house, or other supernatural elements.
- Obsidian Falls: read a thriller or a mystery book.
- Tower of Rumination: read a five star prediction.
- Orilium Academy Arc: book with a school setting.
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I've created my character too. She doesn't have a name so far, but she's going to be an Air Earthling who was raised by an Iltirian in the city of The Underworld on Darkmeadow, which means my three character prompts are:
- Urban: book set in a city or town.
- Darkmeadow: read a dark academia.
- Earthling: read a book with elemental magic or an element word in the book or series title (air, fire, earth or water).
Some updates. I've been shuffling my tbr around a lot lately, and also I realized the Bourne Identity qualified for my big books challenge this year, which means I only have to finish Imaginary Friend yet, so yay.There's no way I'm going to do all the challenges for Magical Readathon, but I've done two so far, and I'm almost done my third one. Luckily you only need two to pass.
This was on my tbr for some time. I spent much of my teens rereading my favourite Norah McClintock series in high school. Those books were a big safety net for me. Unfortunately, she passed a few years ago. This is the first of the last series she released, with two sequels that came out after. It was okay, but it didn't really have the staples of her older works that I loved so much.
Obsidian Falls: read a thriller or a mystery book.
So I was planning to read this for a different challenge, but wouldn't you know, I opened the book and there was a map at the beginning. That prompt always gives me trouble.
I was putting this book off for a while, but I ended up really liking it. I ended up revisiting my favourite moments from Queen of Nothing for the next few hours after I finished it.
The Novice Path Entrance: read a book with a map.
What's this? I'm updating my recent reads again after only a few days???
I was in a Shakespeare mood, so I picked this one up. The reading challenge to read a five star prediction is a tricky one for me, because I used to overhype myself up with those predictions, so I don't really do that anymore. This play looked to be the most loved of the Shakespeare still on my tbr by my mutuals here on GR, so I decided this was about as close as it was going to count. I did enjoy this one, though I didn't end up giving it five stars. I'm stingy with that rating. ;p
Tower of Rumination: read a five star prediction.
I wanted one more book at least before the end of the month, so at long last, I picked this one up. Turns out, it was on my tbr for even longer than I'd thought. It was a nice change of pace to get to some books I've had on my tbr for a long time during this new Magical Readathon.
I wrote a short review for this one:
This book is about what you'd get if you crossed The Martian with The Thing but make it YA and set it on the moon. However, it takes about a third of the book to get there, so if you're picking this up hoping we jump right into it, keep that in mind. That said, I quite enjoyed those last two thirds.
Ruin of the Skye: read a book featuring ghosts/haunted house, or other supernatural elements.
Mod
Juli wrote: "Hi Shelby! Just wanted to say hello."Hey Juli! 💜
Meh. This is probably the thing by this author I liked the least.
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Finally done my reread of this trilogy. To be honest, I was wondering if I'd like this more as an adult. I still don't really, but overall there's things I enjoyed and I do respect that it doesn't pull it's punches. If you want to know what HP and the Cursed Child would be like if it had any teeth to it, Firewing is it. I still don't like the direction chosen for this final book.
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This was fun. Never read this as a kid, but perfect for spooky season.
Mod
This was fun. Never read this as a kid, but perfect for spooky season..."
I'm not entirely sure I've ever read the book but the original movie with Anjelica Huston scare the living daylights out of me as a kid!!!
Elyse wrote: "Shelby wrote: "This was fun. Never read this as a kid, but perfect for spooky season..."
I'm not entirely sure I've ever read the book but the original movie with..."
I’ve seen clips from it! Planning to watch it soon!
Decided to get a quick read in before the weekend readathon starting tomorrow.
This is a quick graphic novel that tells the harrowing events of a Canadian indigenous woman who was abducted, assaulted, and murdered in 1971. It's well executed, and a sobering read, to say the least, and an important story to tell when stories like Betty's don't get the attention they deserve.
Mod
Decided to get a quick read in before the weekend readathon starting tomorrow.
This is a quick graphic novel that tells the harrowing eve..."
Oh!!!! I should pick this up!
Juli wrote: "Shelby wrote: "Decided to get a quick read in before the weekend readathon starting tomorrow.
This is a quick graphic novel that tells th..."
I definitely recommend it!
75 Books...More or Less!
Books mentioned in this topic
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Gilded (other topics)
The Rumpelstiltskin Problem (other topics)
Gilded (other topics)
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2021! So my reading goals for this year are a bit different than they’ve been in the past. Basically, since joining Goodreads, I’ve set a goal of reading a certain number of books - usually a smallish number so I won’t stress out about how far I am, and sometimes I change it as the year progresses. Then I set a goal of reading 1 classic, 1 nonfiction, and 1 Shakespeare so that I actually get to them.
However, I knew about a week into 2020 that I wanted to make 2021 about focusing on the tomes that I usually don’t have time for. I ended up getting two of these done in 2020 already (those being Dune and Night Film), but there are still plenty to get to. I won’t only be reading monoliths (I’m counting books at least 500 pages), but that is a focus. I also read a second Shakespeare play in 2020, so I’m not gonna worry about it this year, but I will track my other goals like usual.
2021 Classic Read:
2021 Shakespeare read I didn't need to do but read anyway:
2021 Nonfiction Read:
5 Tomes:
All 2021 Reads:
Happy reading!