Review: Two Truths and a Lie

Two Truths and a Lie by Meg Mitchell Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a good summer read. It moved quickly and kept my interest. The comparison to Lianne Moriarty is a good one.
The story is told from different points of view, one of which is 'The Squad'—the group of moms of middle school girls—that act as a 'greek chorus' by filling in details from there perspective. They aren't a likeable group of women. They are catty and cliquish—think 'Mean Girls' all grown up.
We know from the beginning that this is a book that does not end happily—somebody dies. We just don't know who or how. I enjoyed the journey. Though I wouldn't classify this book as a mystery or a suspense, there is some suspense along the way. One character is 'in hiding', on the run from a bad marriage. For the most part, the characters were likable and well-developed, though they often made questionable decisions.
The book is a great beach read, but will also appeal to book clubs. It would make a great selection for the summer when clubs are looking for a quick, fun read, but also something with discussion potential. Topics of discussion could include parent-teen relationship, grief recovery, abusive relationship, cliques, and more.

I won this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway!

View all my reviews

2016 Goodreads Reading Challenge

2016 Reading Challenge

kim has read 1 book toward her goal of 55 books.

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1 of 55 (1%)

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I have taken a few days to revisit my reading journey in the 2015. Now it’s time to move on to 2016. I’m going to start with challenges, and of course, I’ll start with the easiest one — the 2016 Goodreads Reading Challenge. This is pretty easy. I simply set a goal for the number of books I want to read in 2016, and track them on Goodreads. This will be my sixth year of participation in this challenge. I usually set a goal of about one book a week, and that hasn’t really changed much. The only thing I’m going to change up is that I am going to count a book as ‘read’ if I DNF it. That means if I’ve read at least 100 pages, or a third of the book if the book is shorter than 300 pages, and I decide for whatever reason that it is not for me, I am not going to struggle through it just to reach my Goodreads numbers. I’m going to record it as read, even though it won’t show up in my official challenge numbers. But I will keep a running tab on my blog. I am going to commit to reading at least 55 books, with up to 5 DNFs counting toward this total. I’ll have to think about how I want to actually record them so my numbers still show as 100%, LOL! This is the only challenge I seem to be successful at and I don’t want to change that!

If you are on Goodreads and haven’t yet signed up for the challenge, you can do that here.

I need to think a little more about the other challenges I want to attempt this year. I will be adding those in as I decide to commit, so keep watching.

Goodreads 2015 Reading Recap

A new year has begun. It’s probably time for me to talk about my Reading Journey 2015. It’s probably past time! But I spend a lot of time tracking my reading, so it is probably appropriate to take a few days to see where that journey took me! I’m going to start out looking at some numbers and how I did with my goals in reading and completing (or not!) challenges, and then take a few days to think about where I want to go in 2016.

I’m going to start today by looking at the actual books I read in 2015. I tracked these both on Goodreads and with a spreadsheet. If you are on Goodreads, you probably have already seen the pretty page Goodreads has prepared to summarize our 2015 reading journey. Sadly, though you can share a link on Facebook or Twitter, there is no way to preserve and share a copy of the full page. Maybe next year, Goodreads? I did capture a screenshot of the most important information, which I am sharing with you hear.

As you can see I read 59 book or a total of 20, 583 pages, or an average of 349 pages. (That jives well with a question I answered by an author earlier today, who asked if we prefer to read long books or short books. My answer was ‘medium books’ of ‘about 350 pages’!)

The longest book I read was Lone Star by Paullina Simons, coming in at 576 pages, and the shortest was a book of poems, Poisoned Apples by Christine Heppermann, coming in at only 107 pages.

The average rating I gave was 3.5 Stars, which is also good. It means I liked most of the books I read, and that I don’t just hand out stars easily. The most highly rated book by other people that I read in 2015 was Montpelier Today by Marylee MacDonald, with a rating of 4.33 Stars.

The most popular book of all that I read was The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins, read by 477, 545 readers, and the least popular book was An Old-Fashioned Christmas by Ellen Stimson, read by only 44 readers. These numbers are not all that surprising. These numbers are about readers and not ratings. The first came out early in the year with a lot of hype, and the latter came out only last month and had appeal for a very specific audience.

If you’d like to see more, take a look at my 2015 Goodreads Year in Review here!

This post turned out to be a little longer than I anticipated, so I am going to continue tomorrow with a post based on my reading spreadsheet.

2015 Goodreads Choice Awards Challenge

I have a few more reading goals for myself this year. These are not official ‘challenges’ hosted on a blog, though of course, you are welcome to join me in my quests. These are challenges I made to myself.

The first is a Goodreads Choice challenge, based on the annual Goodreads Choice Awards. One of my goals this year is to read a wider variety of genres. My reading is largely fiction, and a good portion of that is historical fiction. I don’t really expect that to change much, but I do want to make an effort to try something new. So this year, I will try to read nominees from at least ten of the Goodreads Choice Awards categories. The catch is that I will not restrict myself to 2014 nominees. If you check the bottom of the right column at the link above, you will see links to the five previous years. I am not going to choose genres or books in advance, because I want this to fit in with my ‘free range’ freedom to read what I want when I want!  But here are some of the categories that I want to read from.

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Poetry

Graphic Novels and Comics

Mystery and Thrillers

Memoir and Autobiography

History and Biography

Young Adult Fiction

Yound Adult Fantasy

Middle Grades and Children

Food and Cookbooks

Debut Authors

Romance

Nonfiction

Humor

While I’m not eliminating the possibility of reading from these categories, they are not categories I’m likely to pick up.

Business Books

Horror

Picture Books

And I am excluding the categories of Fiction and Historical Fiction, because I will have those checked off multiple times, I’m sure!

Feel like joining me in this challenge? Just leave a comment and we maybe can encourage each other to expand our reading horizons!

2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge

It’s officially a new year, and time for me to set some reading goals. So over the next few days, I will be doing multiple postings as I set my goals. Once I am done, I can start tracking my progress. You can follow along here.

The first goal I set every year is my goal for the Goodreads reading challenge. And every year, the hardest part is actually finding the link to sign up with Goodreads! It appears they waiting until the New Year to post the challenge, because it was very obviously displayed today.

Last year I set a goal of reading about one book per week, or 52 books for the year. I attained that goal pretty easily, with my 52 books reached well before Thanksgiving. I actually finished the year with 64 books read! So I toyed with the idea of setting a higher target this year. But in the end, I decided to stay with 52 books as my target. For one thing….I like to be successful...lol! But what really made my decision is that I have a goal of interacting more with the books I do read. While I don’t necessarily expect to analyze every book I read, I do want to take time to look at the discussion questions when available, and perhaps find someone who also likes to discuss books! So my target for the 2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge is 52 books.

Have you signed up for the 2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge? How many books do you plan to sign up for? You can find the challenge here.

Review: The Explanation For Everything

The Explanation For Everything

by Lauren Grodstein

Why did you choose this book? the evolution vs. intelligent design debate I expected

When did you read this book? September 2014

Who should read this book? readers of historical fiction who enjoy mysteries

Source: Library Thing Early Reviewers

Here is a synopsis of The Explanation For Everything from Goodreads

As she did in the bestselling novel A Friend of the Family, Lauren Grodstein has written another provocative morality tale, this time dissecting the permeable line between faith and doubt.

College professor Andy Waite is picking up the pieces of a shattered life. Between his research in evolutionary biology and caring for his young daughters, his days are reassurringly safe, if a bit lonely. But when Melissa Potter—charismatic, unpredictable, and devout—asks him to advise her study of intelligent design, he agrees. Suddenly, the world that Andy has fought to rebuild is rocked to its foundations.

My Review

This book was a real disappointment to me. I picked it up because the synopsis led me to believe that I would be witnessing a debate about evolution vs. intelligent design. I was misinformed!

The book is about Andy Waite, a biology professor at a small east coast liberal arts college. Andy, the single father of two young daughters, lost his wife in a drunk-driving accident several years earlier. The young man responsible for his wife’s death is in prison in Florida, and Andy is determined to attend every parole hearing to argue against parole until the young man serves out his sentence. Andy also believes that he is visited by his wife’s ghost.

Andy’s mentor in grad school was a firm evolutionist who taught a class, There Is No God, Andy is following in his footsteps and currently teaches this class at his small college. One of his students, Lionel, is a firm believer in Intelligent Design and is taking the class for a second time, just to annoy Andy apparently. One day a new student, Melissa, approaches Andy to request that he sponsor her independent project on the validity of Intelligent Design, and he agrees! You would think that this would lead to some great discussions about the evolution and intelligent design, but instead, the few times it comes up, Andy passively sits back and lets Melissa say whatever she want with no counterpoint or debate from him. Instead, he and Melissa form a close bond. Melissa knows he is grieving and at times is manipulative.

I’m still not really sure what the book is about. It definitely is NOT a discussion of evolution vs. intelligent design! One thing I really don’t like about the book is that it seems to present the idea that you can not be a biologist and still believe in a higher being, or God, which in my experience, is absolutely untrue! The story may be trying to make a point about the acceptance of death, or possibly forgiveness, but  I really didn’t feel there was much resolution of anything in the story, and was left wondering….what happens next.

There are discussion questions at the end of the book, which could make this a good pick for book clubs. I think this is one of those books that will improve with discussion! Though I was disappointed in the book, many people rated it very highly, so if you think this might appeal to you, check out the other reviews on Goodreads.

My Rating:  ★★  2 Stars

I received a review copy of this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program and have written an honest review which appears above.

Wow! I can't believe it's been so long since I've been here. I've really missed blogging. Has anyone missed me?

I HAVE been doing a lot of reading. Just a quick note. I DID meet my reading goal of 52 books last year in the Goodreads reading challenge. I don't know how I did on my other challenges. I decided it was too much trouble to actually track them! I'd rather be reading, LOL!

A couple of things have happened in the past few weeks that have ignited my interest in starting up my blog again. The first is the announcement of the end of Google Reader. That is how I have been following and keeping up on my blog reading and will be a real loss to me. And I know I am not alone there. I have been using Feedly for the past week or two. It took a little getting used to, but I think it is going to work out fine for me. I actually prefer using it on my Mac. It will take a little more getting used to on the iPhone, but I'm sure it will be fine. 

Check it out if you are looking for a Google Reader replacement. You can take a look at it here. And if you have something you like better, please leave a comment with a link so I can check it out!

The other big news, of course, is the sale of Goodreads to Amazon. That one is really a major blow to me! I really appreciated having an INDEPENDENT place to share reviews and get book news. I'm not sure why it bothers me that Amazon now owns Goodreads, but it does. 

For now, I am keeping my account while I see how it plays out, but I am also investigating alternatives. I opened a Library Thing account and have transferred my Goodreads collection there. It will take a bit of time to get it organized the way I want, so for now, I have it marked as 'private'. I will change that, though, when I get it the way I want. 

So far, I think I like it. It definitely is not as 'visual' as Goodreads, so the set up took a bit for me to get used to, but I really like how I can set collections AND use tags. I think this gives a lot more flexibility when I search for one of my books. And it seems to me that it will be easier to keep track of a book I 'used to own' once I let it go than it is on Goodreads. I also like that it gives Library of Congress info easily if you select that view.

There are a couple of downsides to Library Thing, though. One is that Amazon does have an interest in Library Thing, too, so if my reason for leaving Goodreads is to 'escape' Amazon, it is not totally working. However, though some have reported that Amazon owns 40% of Library Thing, information on Library Thing says it is much lower. Apparently Amazon 'inherited' their interest when they bought Abe's Books (which I didn't know they owned!). 

The other big thing is that, as far as I know, none of my friends or fellow bloggers are there. One thing I really like on Goodreads is that as soon as I sign in, I can see recent activity of my friends, and their reviews are always at the top of the list. Eventually some of my friends may show up on Library Thing, but until they do, it will be a lonely place!

So for now, I plan to keep both Goodreads and Library Thing going. But obviously, it will be a lot of work to constantly add reviews to both sites, so I'm sure at some point, I will let one or the other just 'fade away'. Library Thing actually charges a fee if you want to keep more than 200 books active with them, but it is very low. You can get a lifetime membership for $25. And temporarily they are offering upgrading anyone who joins now a one-year 'grace' period to try them out, so you can story unlimited books without paying. It only lasts until Friday, but it is a great time to give them a try. So even if you think you MIGHT be interested at some point, give them a try NOW. 

You can get more info here. 

HAPPY READING!