Friday Reads: December 02 to December 22 2017

Currently Reading

- Peony by Pearl S. Buck
- The Three Daughters of Madame Liang by Pearl S. Buck
- The Jungle Books v2 by Rudyard Kipling (30%)
- Ulysses by James Joyce (05%)
- From Holmes to Sherlock by Mattias Bostrom (01%)
- Dragon Seed by Pearl S. Buck (47%)
- The Mortifications by Derek Palacio (05%)
- Slaughter: Origin Story by James Beltz (60%)
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (37%)
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (15%)

- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (24%)

- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (15%)

- To the Letter by Simon Garfield (51%)

- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (19%)

- The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (24%)

* * *

I am aware that I forgot to write much this last few weeks. Christmas shopping is a killer. I am sorry about that. I have been forgetting for a bit now. I'll go back through my journal and see if there's anything that I can post for you. I was working on my 2018 Bookish Resolutions. I'll post those for the time: 

1. Meet/exceed my Goodreads goal for the year – This year I decided to keep it somewhat simple and set my goal for only 50 books. Something I'm sure I can reach and I will feel great when I read over the goal. Anything more is almost beyond my capabilities as a reader at the level I currently am at.

2. Review all of the books that I read – I had this same goal last year and I think I nearly got 100% completion on it. I realized that I didn't actually post my review for a few books, but it was in my own personal blog, so I count it.

3. Read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo – I sorted it out, in a comment to be seen later on in the entry, that if I read 308.25 pages per quarter from 1 January forward, I should finish the book on or near 31 December.

4. Enter and win Camp NaNo and NaNoWriMo – Yeah this is a difficult challenge to meet since I will have a job by then and my time set to write will be going down. That's okay, we can still do it if we actually plan it out a little bit. I planned 2015's and I won with 57,000.

I also came up with the 24 books I want to read in 2018. These do not have to all be read in the order they appear in, or even completed. It's just something that I thought of that I thought would be fun to try to accomplish. 

 Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics

 Butcher Bird by Richard Kadrey

 How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather

 Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

 With Malice by Eileen Cook

 Critical Failure by Robert Bevan

 Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco

 The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

 The Mortifications by Derek Palacio

 Butterfly's Child by Angela Davis-Gardner

 Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery

 Villette by Charlotte Brontë

 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

 The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

 The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

 Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

 The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

 Horns by Joe Hill

 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

 Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

 Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

 Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

 Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys

I think most if not all of these books are manageable for 2018. 

Top 5 Wednesday: Characters on the Naughty List

Okay. I joined the group “Top 5 Wednesday” and the topic I'm coming in on is “Characters on the Naughty List: Villains or Just Characters You Don't Like.” Well if that's not a big title, I don't know what is. I think that the majority of the characters that I'm going to end up choosing aren't necessarily villains, but just characters that I really don't like. Be warned, there are spoilers.

1. Mary Catherine Blackstone (We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson) – This bitch was absolutely bonkers. Her sister was charged with the death of their parents/family and when the sister is acquitted of the crime, she is taken back to the house she shares with her sister and their uncle. It turns out at the end of the book that her sister wasn't the one who had done it at all, and had actually had no idea at all what was going on. It had been Mary Catherine who had done it after some silly argument with her parents. I don't know what in the hell the argument was about, but to take it to such drastic measures immediately is amazing. She is one damaged little girl.

2. Wu Lien (Dragon Seed by Pearl S. Buck) – The man is a terrible person. He sold out his entire country (basically) to keep his own business afloat while the country he lived in was being invaded by foreigners who don't give two shits about him to begin with. Yes, he thinks he's doing well, but anything he tries to do for the villagers will be tainted with the blood of those that died at the hand of the enemy. I hate sellouts like that. Bad fat Chinese man. He put his business safety above the welfare of an entire NATION.

3. Esther's Father (The Book of Esther by Emily Barton) – I don't know his name. I'm sure they named him, but I cannot remember what it is offhand and I don't feel like digging out the book. I just did not like him at all. Not even because he was a villain, but because he treated his daughter in such a way that would have been unheard of, even then. He treated her far worse than what one would have expected. I really just didn't like her dad.

4. Shere Khan (The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling) – This one is because he's half a bad character, he tried to kill a child during the Peace and then partly because I just have never liked him. No matter what version. The absolutely not scary version of him from the original Disney animated film, the new version of the movie with Idris Elba as Shere Khan to even the original books. He was just over all a very crappy character even when he wasn't actively trying to kill people.

5. Nathaniel Wadsworth (Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco) – He was just.....I don't even know if there is any way to describe him properly. He let his sister go months thinking that he was helping her look for Jack the Ripper when it turned out to be him the entire time. I cannot believe that he was doing that for the reasons he was. It was just horrible and I don't like him. He seemed so sweet and helpful at first, going around talking to people as if he weren't fully aware of what was happening. It was so gross.


So, that's my top five for this week. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you next week for the next Top 5 Wednesday~

Friday Reads: November 25 to December 01 2017

Currently Reading

- The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry (04%)
- From Holmes to Sherlock by Mattias Bostrom (01%)
- Dragon Seed by Pearl S. Buck (47%)
- The Mortifications by Derek Palacio (05%)
- Slaughter: Origin Story by James Beltz (60%)
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (37%)
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (15%)

- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (24%)

- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (15%)

- To the Letter by Simon Garfield (51%)

- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (19%)

- The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (24%)

* * *

So for November I didn't have a Book Wrap-Up. I didn't finish anything until December 01 at like 00:15, so I'm not doing November's Wrap-Up. 

Another boring week of nothing. Now that November is over and I can get back into reading like I was before, we will have a much better Friday Reads. See you next time.

November 2017 Book Haul

Yeah, I picked up so many books and forgot to mark them down in the last two months, probably 100+, and I just don't remember which ones I got and which one I didn't. So, instead, we're just going to move on and write up November's instead. Sorry about skipping September and October. I know I got 46 books in September and probably an equal or greater amount in October.

On to the books that I bought/borrowed/acquired in November:


Book #1: The Jungle Book (vol. 1) by Rudyard Kipling

Set in faraway India and the Aleutians, the animals and humans who inhabit Kipling's Jungle Books have been children's favorites for generations. Book I introduces the black panther Bagheera, the lame and evil tiger Shere Khan, the rock python Kaa, the brown bear Baloo who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle, the man cub Mowgli who lives with the wolves, Toomai of the elephants, and many others. Though the stories and characters are exotic, the themes they address are universal ones: courage, loyalty, and adventure. Stories include: "Mowgli's Brothers," "Kaa's Hunting," "Tiger-Tiger!", "The White Seal," "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," "Toomai of the Elephants," and "Servants of the Queen."

I have always wanted to read the original stories. Of course I only just now read the synopsis on Goodreads to realize that my favorite story ever from when I was a child, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a tale of a mongoose, is part of the Jungle Book. How did I not know this? We have the Children's Classic Library set and that was the story I picked every single time it was my turn. I think the story that I love is in the second volume, but that's okay.

Book #2: The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry

When a teenage boy dies suspiciously on Halloween night, Salem's chief of police, John Rafferty wonders if there is a connection between his death and Salem’s most notorious cold case, a triple homicide dubbed "The Goddess Murders," in which three young women, all descended from accused Salem witches, were slashed on Halloween night in 1989. He finds unexpected help in Callie Cahill, the daughter of one of the victims newly returned to town. Neither believes that the main suspect, Rose Whelan, respected local historian, is guilty of murder or witchcraft. But exonerating Rose might mean crossing paths with a dangerous force. Were the women victims of an all-too-human vengeance, or was the devil raised in Salem that night? And if they cannot discover what truly happened, will evil rise again?

I saw this one on Blogging for Books but was probably four seconds too late to get a copy. It looks interesting definitely and the premise is weird enough for me to enjoy it. I saw it on the "New Items" shelf at my local library and had to have a go at it. Hopefully I like it. I think I might pick up How to Hang a Witch either right before or right after. Since they both deal with witches in Salem.