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I finally finished Color of Law last night, so my current non-fiction book is Auschwitz, by Laurence Rees. I've actually had this book for about 10 years and never gotten around to reading it, which is odd, considering how much Holocaust stuff I've read over the years and Rees is a fantastic author in regards to this era. 

 

Well, better late than never. 

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I finished Small, Great Things pretty quickly. It wasn't terrible, but I had some serious issues with it and don't quite understand all the praise it got. Aside from the obvious inaccuracies with nursing practice, I definitely felt like I was reading a book about racial issues, written by a white woman, targeting white women. 

 

Moving on, though, I decided for my next fiction, I'd read The Light Between Oceans, by ML Stedman. Heard good things about it, so here's hoping I don't get consecutive disappointments. 

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I'm reading Educated by Tara Westover. It is very highly rated on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. and it was on Obama's summer reading list. :p  

 

It's about a girl who grows up in a family of fundamentalist Mormons in Idaho (where I'm from) who are also survivalists--stockpiling food, guns, etc. for the end of the world. She and half of her siblings have no birth certificate, no driver's license, no medical records, and they have never been to school. At the age of 16 she decides to leave home and to begin pursuing an education. I'm only about 30 pages in so far but it's exceptionally well-written, and I find that the setting is enthralling. 

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21 minutes ago, Nokra said:

I'm reading Educated by Tara Westover. It is very highly rated on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. and it was on Obama's summer reading list. :p  

 

It's about a girl who grows up in a family of fundamentalist Mormons in Idaho (where I'm from) who are also survivalists--stockpiling food, guns, etc. for the end of the world. She and half of her siblings have no birth certificate, no driver's license, no medical records, and they have never been to school. At the age of 16 she decides to leave home and to begin pursuing an education. I'm only about 30 pages in so far but it's exceptionally well-written, and I find that the setting is enthralling. 

I bought in it my Kindle a while back, in part because it was on Obama's reading list, it seemed interesting, and I had a 40% off credit on my Amazon account for a list of Kindle books. 

 

I need to get around to reading it. Gotta finish Auschwitz, then I'm gonna go for that or Michelle Obama's book.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have so many books, that I almost never read what I say I'm gonna read next. I spot something else on my shelf I haven't read and decide to go with that.

 

I finished My Turn at Bat, by Ted Williams. Love baseball biographies and The Kid is probably my favorite of all time. That was book #57 on the year.

 

Now I'm reading Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, by Chris Matthews and From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, by Elizabeth Hinton.

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I finished the Dune Trilogy last night. I guess its technically a saga, but I wish I would have stopped after the second book. I ended up just reading on the wikia what happens in future novels and it gets even weirder.

Just wasn't really into what happened with pretty much any of the central characters in the first two books. I felt that the second book was a much better ending to the story than what was continued.

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Currently reading What Happened, by HRC. I bought it when it came out and it's taken me a while to be able to read it. Still painful, though. But it's good to hear her speak candidly. 

 

Also reading Victim Six, by Gregg Olsen. A coworker gave me one of the books in the series, but I figured I'd start from the beginning. Sometimes I just enjoy a cheap murder mystery/thriller.

 

If I can finish these two books by the end of the year, that'll make 60 for me.

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6 minutes ago, rc0101 said:

Think I'll start the Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris 

A coworker gave me that one and another called The Dutch Wife. I'm starting the latter tonight, but will be reading the former shortly after. 

 

I finished 60 books on the year, not too bad. I also added another 7 books to my collection, courtesy of my parents and brother for Christmas. I'm a happy camper. :)

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I really need to get back into the habit of reading. I think the only two I read this year was 1984 and Paradise Lost. Which is crazy for me. And those were in audiobook form.

 

It feels like ever since Trump got elected if I had the time and inclination to start a book I hopped on a news site and tortured myself reading about all the shit he was doing instead.

 

With the New Year and finally a real, if not entirely satisfactory, check on Trump I want to make an effort to spend more time on hobbies and less time stressed about the tangerine tyrant.

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18 hours ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

A coworker gave me that one and another called The Dutch Wife. I'm starting the latter tonight, but will be reading the former shortly after. 

 

I finished 60 books on the year, not too bad. I also added another 7 books to my collection, courtesy of my parents and brother for Christmas. I'm a happy camper. :)

Yeah, I just have to get in the right mood to start it since I am sure it will be a sad read. Might push it back a little bit haha. 

 

60 is impressive! I hit 30, was on pace for 48 until July and sort of fell off. Hopefully I hit 48 on 2019. 

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I read Evicted by Matthew Desmond over vacation, and it was utterly phenomenal. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants an inside peak to the plight of the inner-city poor.

 

That puts me at 10 books for 2018, which is a disappointment (and far fewer than I read in 2017). Volunteering as a tutor has really cut into my reading time, but I guess that's alright in the end.

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1 hour ago, Chris- said:

I read Evicted by Matthew Desmond over vacation, and it was utterly phenomenal. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants an inside peak to the plight of the inner-city poor.

 

That puts me at 10 books for 2018, which is a disappointment (and far fewer than I read in 2017). Volunteering as a tutor has really cut into my reading time, but I guess that's alright in the end.

Evicted really was a great read. I read it last year and couldn't recommend it enough. Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein is another good read in that vein.

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1 hour ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Evicted really was a great read. I read it last year and couldn't recommend it enough. Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein is another good read in that vein.

As a matter of fact, I read The Color of Law last year. They are indeed very complimentary of one another.

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1 hour ago, Mercury33 said:

Based on how amazing The Last Kingdom is I picked up The Winter King. Doing the audio book and the guy acting it out is amazing. Only a couple chapters in but it’s already grabbed me. Really like where it’s headed s a historically grounded take on Arthur 

That's one of my favorite series! I'd love to see a tv adaptation some day.

 

I just finished The Force. Ripped through it in a few days. Don Winslow can write.

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I managed to complete my goal on Goodreads of 35 books for the year, finishing the last one close to midnight on Dec. 31. :lol:

 

For 2019 I think I'm going to set my sights much lower--maybe around 12 books for the year. I love reading and I'm glad that I was able to do so much of it this year, but at times I also felt like I was actually under (admittedly self-inflicted) pressure to meet my goal, rather than just reading for the fun of it. 

 

With the book club I'm in I'll easily reach my 12 book goal (1 per month) and then anything beyond that is gravy. 

 

I think my top 5 books I read in 2018 were, in no particular order:

 

1. Fantasyland - How America Went Haywire by Kurt Andersen (recommended by @SFLUFAN - thanks again!)

2. Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams

3. The Emperor of All Maladies - A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

4. Educated by Tara Westover

5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

 

I'm going to start 2019 off by reading one of these three books that I've bought but haven't gotten to yet:

 

1. At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell

2. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

3. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

 

How about you all? Do you have a top 5 for 2018? 

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