2015 Reading Wrap-up - Part III

Consider this 2015 Reading Wrap-up - Part III. (You can click to read Part I and Part II if you missed it.)  I thought I was done with my 2015 Reading Wrap-up. But as I read other blogs, I realized that I’d never told you about my favorite books! So today, that is what I am doing.

Here are my best (and worst) of 2015!

Favorite reads of 2015

I could list a lot of books here but I will just give you my 5-Star reads for 2015.

A Sister To Honor by Lucy Ferris

I liked this one so much I read it twice!

Lone Star by Paullina Simons

This one left me with extreme book hangover! I still miss Jonny Rainbow!

When The Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi

I read this one just before the Syrian refugee crisis made headlines when a toddler washed up on shore. It left quite an impact on me.

Moloka’i by Alan Brennert

Another re-read. I first read it about ten years ago. I enjoyed it just as much this time.

Orphan #8 by Kim van Alkemade

I recommend this one to my book club and we will be reading it  in 2016.

Biggest Surprises

These are books that were pleasant surprises for me; they turned out to be better than I expected

In The Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters

This is one that I had on my list when it first came out because it sounded interesting. But then I kind of lost interest in paranormal fiction and took it off my list. Then last fall it was chosen by Overdrive for Big Library Read. It still didn’t seem that interesting, but I decided to download it and read it if I had time. It turned out that I liked it quite a bit. It was paranormal, but it was also historical fiction, a bit of mystery, and a bit of romance!

The Sound of Glass by Karen White

This is another one that was more than I expected. I thought I was getting a light ‘chick lit’ type read, but it turned out to be more. It was a surprise and I enjoyed it.

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

This is another I was gifted with by the publisher. I don’t read a lot of suspense / thriller stories and I expected to trudge through this one. But I raced through it and enjoyed it very much.

Biggest Disappointments

The opposite of a pleasant surprise, these are books that left me disappointed in some way.

After You by Jojo Moyes

This was not a bad book; it’s just that I expected so much more. Me Before You was a pleasant surprise for me, and I was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, it was quite a let down for me after anticipating it with so much enthusiasm.

The Ocean At The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

This was a book club pick and not one I would have normally chosen because of the paranormal storyline. So it shouldn’t have been such a disappointment when I didn’t enjoy it. However, there was so much hype around the book and so many in my book club were excited to read it, that I’d hoped for a better reading experience.

The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve

This one has been on my shelf a long time. I picked it up off an exchange shelf because I’d seen a few minutes of the movie while scanning channels several years ago, and it seemed to be a story I wanted to read. However, it turns out that the part of the movie I’d seen was the climax; near the end of the story. Rather than learn what happens next, I only saw what led up to the moments I’d seen. That was disappointing.

Best Book Club Reads

These are the books I read for my book club this year that I most enjoyed

A Sister To Honor by Lucy Ferris

Moloka’i by Alan Brennert

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Best covers

I could add a lot of covers here but these are the ones I like best. I’ll just say it with pictures!

Here are the links in case you want to read more! **Letters To The Lost by Iona Grey
**Moloka’i by Alan Brenner
**The Race For Paris by Meg Waite Clayton
**The Sound of Glass by Karen White
**Sisters of Shiloh by Kathy and Becky Hepenstal

Well, NOW I think I am done with my wrap-ups and ready to look at my 2015challenges….I think. I guess you’ll have to check back here to see if I think of anything else!

Talk 2 Me: Book Jackets

I love dust jackets, don’t you! They can be beautiful! And I know some disagree, but to me, a hard cover without it’s jacket is just….so…..boring….

In fact, I’ve been known to pick up the paperback just because it looks so much more interesting than a hard cover without it’s jacket!  But seriously….what is the PURPOSE of the dust jacket; to look pretty or to protect the book. So I can never decide; do I take the jacket OFF while I read to avoid damaging it? Or do I leave it ON while I read to protect the book? (And of course, there is the built-in bookmarks when I use the flap to mark where I left off reading!) Or maybe the solution is to just always use my iPad to read my books on?

I think I may have stumbled on a solution that works for me. About a month ago I was in my local Walmart and they had all of their back-to-school supplies marked down for clearance. My eye was caught by some ‘stretchy’ fabric book covers marked down to only a quarter, so I picked up half a dozen in different colors figuring we could use them next fall. They’ve been sitting there on my desk since then, and every time I see them, I wonder why I bought them. I mean, really, is my 15 year old going to be willing to carry his books around in high school next year with bright primary colored books? I don’t think so!

But when I was removing the jacket from my new book so I could dig in, and feeling bad about the whole should I or shouldn’t I dilemna all over again, there they were! So I grabbed one and quickly put it on my ‘naked’ book! It fits very well but not perfectly. As long as I just leave the book sitting, it looks great, but because the fabric is stretchy, as soon as I open the book, the material gaps away from the top and bottom of the spine. But as long as I remember to stretch it back over the spine when I set the book down, it will work great! And as an added bonus, the pack even came with a cheap cardboard bookmark, so I don’t even miss the flaps!

I decided to try a paperback, too, It didn’t work so well. The book is smaller than the cover, so it gaps and wrinkles instead of clinging to the book. A smaller cover might work. But I did discover that if I take the back flap off and stretch it over the entire book (so the flap overlaps) it makes a pretty nice little pouch that protects the book when it is in my purse.

So talk to me….do you leave the jackets on or take them off when you read? Do you have other ways of protecting your books while preserving the jackets? Leave me a comment!