#41

A GREAT first book in the Southern Reach trilogy. Don't read late at night in the dark. Reminds me of House of Leaves. Just started book 2 and the third book was released this week. Expecting great things! 

#40

Goodreads challenge for 2014 completed!! I love McSweeneys. Great short story collection on one half, and a Donald Barthelme symposium on the other. At least half of it was great. First story was the best. So was the story "Stockholm" which was a fictional account of the events that lead to the term Stockholm Syndrome. 

#39

Rumpus book club book for August! While it's a short, quick read, it raises all sorts of thought provoking ideas about the current state of football from the NFL all the way to youth leagues. Four stars on Goodreads. 

#38

Found this little gem on my page-a-day book calendar. It focuses on the life of a young man in an unnamed middle eastern county who's village is attacked and destroyed by a group of American troops. He is relocated to the Ohio rust belt and begins to live a new life in America, while dealing with the effects of that attack. An American solider who saves his life after the attack and the soldiers mom also play a key roll. Great book. Reminded me of We Are Called to Rise. Four stars on Goodreads! 

#37

This book came highly recommended from Wesley! So I bought a copy during the Bookaplazoa in Rapid City the first week of August. It was a great book on the summer of 1927. Lindbergh and Babe Ruth were the main focus, but Bryson touched on all sorts of minor historical figures that summer. Too bad 1929 had to ruin the fun. 

#36

Finished this for the August meeting of Books and Beers. The main character is kinda of a psycho, interspersing his fantasies of the Civil War with saving the towns Babe Ruth league. Some parts were pretty far-fetched. A good discussion though of travel team youth leagues versus local rec leagues and parental involvement. 

#35

This book was terrible. I started reading it in 2008 and never finished. Picked it up off my shelf last week and was able to pick right up where I left off. No wonder it took 6 years to finish. Not a real high caliber writing. 2 stars on Goodreads. 

#34

Finishing my cycling trilogy. This was a nice book about riding across the country on a bike in the late 1800's. 

#33

Another book about riding bikes that was also read from the air conditioned comforts of my living room. This was another book about bicycling touring, this time about riding a bike to the lowest point on each of the six continents. Guess which one he skipped? This book wasn't as solid as the book about the western US. Still an interesting idea. 

#32

A book about biking! Read from the air conditioned confines of my living room. This was a great book. The author retraced the ride he took 20 years earlier through the Western United States. I have visited many of the places he did, although via car and not bike. He did a nice job of balancing history, current events, geography, and stories of the people he met while riding. Great book! 

#31

Best book I've read so far in 2014! An incredible tale of three different families and how their lives intersect in current day Las Vegas. While the middle of the book sagged a little bit after a powerful start, by the end the author has brought it all back together and delivered a solid ending. A happy ending too! I guess it was based loosely on actuall events in Las Vegas in 2008. A great read. Should have selected it for book club. 

#30

The second selection for the Books and Beers Book Club. A charming little tale about a small town in the Deep South over Labor Day weekend. Lots of zany characters, interlocking stories, faith, hope and love. A good read. Three out of five stars on goodreads. 

#29

A nice quick read on the way home from Mexico. While I enjoyed it, and the storytelling was solid, did it really deserve a Pulitizer? 

#28

Pretty good first book selection for the Books and Beers book club. Told from the point of view of a 15 year old girl living near New Orleans in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. 

#27

McSweeneys 47 was a short story collection of South American crime stories. It was kind of an uneven collection. Some were pretty good, others were so-so, and 2 were terrible. Maybe 3 stars on Goodreads? 

#26

I loved the movie. Watched it twice. So I was interested to read the book it was based on. While the movie is based in present day as things unravel, the book is a retrospective of the Zombie Wars told from the perspectives of people around the world in an interview style. Very fun to read. 

#25

Blindness. A Nobel Peace Prize winning book. Took a bit to get into the groove of the authors writing. But once I did, the book was fantastic. Creepy. Sad. Scary. Sometime violent. But also touching. And kind. And hopeful. 

#24

This book is the May book selection for the Rumpus Book Club. It is based in Breckinridge which made it even more of a fun read! That being said, it was mostly about a mother who's son dies while snow boarding and three days in her life surrounding a visit to her house from a stranger. The writing could be a little more crisp at times, but overall a three and a half star book. 

#23

After some heavy and kind of depressing reading, decided on something lighter. This was a really quick read, that I thought would be better when I bought it with Wes on our used bookstore tour. I have really enjoyed the books from McSweeneys, and was quite disappointed at the lack of real humor in this one. Still, a book that was read in 2014, bringing the total to 23!

#22

Depressing collection of short stories. There were a few gems in here including What have you Done, Rollingwood, and The Loyalty Protocol. 

#21

A good book about a mother and son who decide to start a two person book club while she is going through cancer treatments. Some of the books they read and discussed gave me some good ideas for some books to read in the future. I'm sorry to my mom who thought I was reading this because my cancer had returned and I wasn't telling her. 

#20

This was the May selection for book club. The author is a pompous ass who has an extreme disliking of Christian groups helping in Africa and international aid groups helping in Africa. While some of his stories about traveling overland through the country were good, he just comes off as better then you. No one travels as well as he does, knows more important people in Africa then he does, or sees the problems the way he does. And enough already with the stupid erotic book he keeps mentioning he is writing. 

#19

I was glad to be done with this one. A brutal book from the first page until the very end. No real redeeming quality of the characters in the book. Everyone seems to lose, be confused, struggle mightily and then die. Or, if you were a lucky one, die first and skip all the other unpleasant stuff. Two stars on the Goodreads ranking. 

#18

This was a light a breezy read I received in Book Riots Quarterly Box #2.   I felt the author was pretty snarky throughout. She seemed to repeat the same jabs at the same authors over and over. What could have been a fun collection of short essays on the love of books and reading, soon grew rather tiresome. Maybe 2 stars on Goodreads. 

#17

This was the selection for the April Book Club. Not a real big fan of it. Maybe I just didn't get it? Too many people and too many points of view written over the course of several decades. Had to keep rereading previous chapters to keep things straight. Maybe I will appreciate it more after we discuss it on Saturday night. 

#16

Falling a little behind on my reviews. Here is book 16 for the year. This was suggested on my book lovers page a day calendar I recieved in Book Riots book box #1. It was an interesting read, written from many different peoples point of view in the family. Took a hundred pages or so to figure it all out and keep everyone straight. It seemed by the end it was just one long coming out story of the 16 year old girl. Would like to read a sequel to see what happens to the family. 

#15

I enjoyed de Bottons Art of Travel quite a bit, so when I saw he had a new book out on the news, I jumped at the chance to read it. Overall, it was a good read. I felt it started strong with a great premise, then faltered near the end. It did help me view my news diet in a different light. Maybe read/watch a lot less news and instead invest my time building relationships and focusing on what's important in the limited amount of time I have here on this earth. 

#14

I recieved this copy of Parnassus on Wheels from my quarterly subscription to Book Riot. I had read it years ago, and was excited to read it again. This short little novella tells the story of a woman buying a book wagon from a little red bearded man in the south during the 1920's. She later falls in love with him and they get married. Now I need to re-read the sequel, Haunted Bookshop. 

#13

I guess I missed posting that I finished reading the first book in this series. Silly me. The second book was actually a little better then the first. Peculiar children with peculiar abilities. In a protected home watched over by Miss Peregrine. The old pictures sprinkled throughout the book are really amazing.  Fun little read. 

#12

If you read the first book in a series and enjoyed it, might as well read the second, right? I really enjoyed this YA type book. The photos that the author found to include are really incredible. This story continues the tale of the children as they travel to London to find their leader and protector, Miss. Peregrine. Can't wait for book three in the series! 

#11

Not real good. Don't remember who or what recommended this collection of short stories, but I'll save you $15 and stear you away from it. The stories, while well written, are pretty liberal in their scope and very east coast centered. Which is fine if you are into those things, but it wasn't really my cup of tea. Thankfully it was a pretty short book with rather large print. 

#10

This was a fun little sci-fi/fantasy book I found after it was mentioned on Book Riot as a book that was given 5 stars by Neil Gainmen. He is the author who wrote Ocean at the End of the Lane. I was pleasantly surprised at how good this book was. Lots of 1980's trivia and obscure knowledge worked into the story line. I think Noah would enjoy reading it. 

#9

Epic. This book was one of Amazons 2013 books of the year for a reason. Thanks also to Uncle Ed for suggesting it. It centers around a family spanning multiple generations in west Texas starting in the early 1800's and carries the reader through present day. The writing is captivating and the family of characters vivid. I might have found my book selection for the book club. 

#8

This is a great book on the history of whiskey and moonshining here in America. There are suggestions for starting your own distillery,  recipes for whiskey based cocktails and even diagrams of all the American distilleries and how they all fit together. After finishing it, I almost want to try my hand at moonshining ( but I wouldn't of course since it's illegal). This book is a valuable resource for both the novice whiskey drinker like myself and seasoned pros who are looking for suggestions on what to drink next!

#7

Finished book number 7 this past week. It is a short story collection that was selected by the Rumpus Book Club for this months reading. It was ok. Lots of different styles of writing that the author tried. Some worked, some didn't. I felt there wasn't much closure in any of the stories. I kept reading hoping that the individual stories would come together at the end somehow. They didn't. Maybe the author would revisit these characters in a future book. Will be interested to chat with the author during our on line chat with him on March 5. 

#6

I originally started this book in the fall of 2012, shortly after it came out. I made it through about half, and just hated it. I didn't understand why it was on many Best Of lists for 2012. I stopped reading it for over a year. At times I would pick it up again and try and read a few pages. I just couldn't. It was awful. Well, I finally picked it up again this month with the intention of finishing it just so I could give it 1 star. But then a weird thing happened. I really started enjoying it. I got into the flow of the story. And finished it within a day of picking it back up. I think it would have helped me and maybe it would help you if you choose to read it, to read the note from the author at the end of the book first. That would have really helped me enjoy the beginning of the book more, and I would have finished it in 2012, not 2014. 

#5

McSweeneys is a publishing house founded by Dave Eggers. This is their quarterly publication. This quarter was a collection of short stories of science fiction and horror stories edited and published by Bradbury and Hitchcock in the 1930's, 40's and 50's. There are also four contemporary authors featured. It's an amazing collection. All the stories in this 448 page collection are solid, but a few of the best include "Night Flight", "Sorry Wrong Number" and the final story in the book "Don't Look Behind You."  Just as Eggers writes in the introduction, please don't read this one until the end. Also read it at night. Alone. 

#4

Finished book number 4 in 2014 yesterday. This was the book club selection for February. I haven't read any of Gaimans books before, so I didn't know what to expect. I guess I would call this a fairy tale for grown-ups. The story is centered around a man who has returned to the street he grew up on and the magicial things that occurred at the farmhouse at the end of the lane. Good book. Quick read. Not worth the $25.99 cover price. More of a short story then a novel. 

#3

The Goldfinch. Amazons 2013 Book of the Year. Finished it late this afternoon. It was an incredible read. Although at 770 pages, it could have been edited down a bit. Especially the last 100 pages or so. Overall though, a very good book, with strong characters, and an outstanding plot. 

NFL

Finished book number 2 yesterday. This one was written by a former Denver Broncos player named Nate Jackson. It was a recap of his seven years in the NFL and everything that goes with it: the injuries, the rehab, the loneliness, the parties, game day, meetings, travel, and the lifestyle. I really enjoyed it. The book really opened my eyes as to the lengths players go to stay in the league from year to year. Two down, 38 to go! 

First Book!

Just finished my first book of the year. This was for the January book club I'm in here in Greeley. It was a good read. I'm interested to hear what others think about it at book club on Saturday. Today is the 123 anniversary of the birth of Zora Neale Hurston, so Google honored her today with a doodle. 

Goals!

My reading goal for 2014 is pretty high. I'm shooting to finish 40 books this year. I am in two monthly book clubs, which, if I read each book each month, will give me 24. That's leaves 16 to pick on my own. Not quite one book every week all year long. So come along for the ride! I'll be posting here each book I finish throughout the year. Here's to great reading in 2014! 

As a quick review, here's the picture of all the books I read in 2013. I think the total was 30.