I’m late to the game but I’ve finally read Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

Between gardening chores and a heap of volunteer activities in June, I don’t know how I read more than usual—but I completed six books and pushed my mid-year tally to 35 books read. Yay! I’m ahead of schedule on my 52-book goal for 2017!

I found some stellar books in May, from time travel to a dystopian series called the Gender Game, which is described as like Hunger Games or Divergent. I’ll also admit why I’m critical of a best-selling historical fiction novel that I should have liked way more than I did and gush about two titles by Angie Stanton.

My April reads were mainly done on my trip to Spain . . . and mostly during our airplane adventures. (You can read more about that in last week’s post if you missed it.) I can give an enthusiastic thumbs up to three of the four.  So why mention the fourth book at all?

Ah, March! I had a lot of book-ish things going on in March that prevented me from reading as much as I would have liked to. I know we can all relate to that. I was happy to attend the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association Conference and the University of Wisconsin Writers’ Institute as well as visit St. Mary's School in Portage, but that means my review list is much smaller for March. 

Books – Books – Books! I continue to wish for a real-life working Time Turner (like the one Hermione Granger had in Harry Potter) so I could live each day twice: Once to do all the things I’m supposed to do, and a second perfectly wonderful day just for reading.

There’s a reason I didn’t get much (okay any!) writing done in January. I was reading! And I’m happy to tell you all about my favorite books of the month . . . full of deadly diseases, crumbling societies, and murder. 

The answer should be NEVER – but it appears that both portions of the literary community and now the film community are embracing an author who describes her use of others’ work in her bestselling novel as a type of “mixing” and that “there is no such thing as originality anyway, there’s only authenticity.”

For the last few years I have taken the Goodreads website reading challenge. My goal for 2016 was to read 80 books but I read fewer than that. (Big sigh.) I had high hopes for the year, but writing and editing three novellas as well as one full-length novel took away a lot of reading time. In my defense, I did finish the year strong by reading a lot in December and tallying in at 55 books for the year.