I finished my A to Z Challenge and am already lining books up to do another A to Z for next year, both authors and titles again. I guess the best thing about this type of challenge, it helped me to open up to new authors and genres. Of course, that also led to discovering authors I didn't like. Such is the reading life. Some of my favorite surprises were Geraldine March's Year of Wonders, Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson, and Zeitoun by Dave Eggers.
It's not likely that I'll make it to my goal of seventy-five books for the year. I'm at sixty and that's pretty darn good, especially with a month and a half (almost) left to 2017. I could maybe hit seventy? Maybe...I'm currently reading Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann--it's got me head over heels. It's gorgeously written, the characters are wrapped tight around my heart, I've already sat sobbing this morning, not even a hundred pages in...Just loving this book and ordered another of McCann's, Zoli, for my A to Z for next year (a girl's gotta look ahead, right?)
However...I had promised myself, after realizing I'd hit 200 books on my On Hand list, that I would NOT buy any new books until I'd read twenty first...I am only human and I am completely addicted to books. Okay, I also bought Paul Tremblay's Head Full of Ghosts (it was only $1.99 for my brand new Kindle Voyage this morning...too good of a deal to let slip) What's a girl to do, right? So, I'm forging ahead toward the end of the year with full intention to beat my backlist or at least put a decent dent in it before we start off the new year...I will try to be more accountable for not ADDING to the backlist--my goal is to read 10% of my on hand titles before buying any new books. Then another ten percent, and so on...It's something to aim for anyways!
Books I'm hoping to finish before the end of the year:
- White Tiger by Adiga
- Dante's Divine Comedy
- The Old Man and the Sea-Hemingway
- A Christmas Carol--which I always read for Christmas
- Anne of Green Gables, which I also hear is a Christmas story?
- Germinal by Zola, though I'm likely to just get this one started, but then it will be my Z author for next year's A to Z!
