Here it is - the OFFICIAL 2014 READING GOAL CHALLENGE THREAD

[tiggrbaby]

23. The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer
Jeffrey Archer writes books that span generations and are rich in detail. The Prodigal Daughter is the 2nd of a trilogy. I had read the first book, Kane & Abel a couple of years ago. Kane & Abel were enemies. This book continues the saga focusing on Abel's daughter from her birth until her mid 50s. Early on she meets Kane's son. It was very interesting and I am looking forward to the final book.

Oh, I read those books YEARS ago more than once! I did not know there was a third!

 

[Swimnoid]

Oh, I read those books YEARS ago more than once! I did not know there was a third!

Yes, it is Shall We Tell the President.

It was funny reading the Prodigal Daughter knowing it was written in 1982. He follows history pretty well up until that point but then goes into the future and had to make up the rest. Interesting to see how close or far off he was.

 

[xlsm]

Book 16 of 45 - A reread of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my all time favorites. No review necessary since I assume most people have read this. If you haven't, you should!

"Hey, Boo." makes me cry every time.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

# 4 The luck Uglies by Paul Durham

Won it on Goodreads
This is the second time I won and I enjoyed this book more that the other, both were YA but this was a little younger than the other. Reminded me kind of Robinhood woods adventure but younger audience. I really think I would have liked this when was little.

If anyone is interested in entering I have two goodreads giveaways going.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18086777-written-for-you
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/85497-cemetery-girl

I am also more than willing to send free Kindle Gift version. If you are interested in reading just let me know here or on Goodreads.

 

[StephMK]

#8 - Three Girls and a Baby - girl in love w/ex, they have a night together and she gets pg; lives with her 2 best friends and tries to deal with situation.


Ginny McKensie's life is spiraling out of control.

Finished with college, she should have been planning her wedding. After all, Ginny and Josh were made for each other—everyone said so. Except the love of her life didn't agree. From Amazon -

"Now Ginny is back in her hometown, unwillingly single, and stuck in a dead-end job. When she discovers she's pregnant, Ginny is convinced her life is ending. Instead of planning a future with Josh, she's learning the truth about morning sickness, juggling bills, and seeing just how far designer jeans can stretch.

Her life-plan never included dating again (not even with her too-hot new boss), or being a single mother at 23. Now, with the help of her best friends, Annie and Jen, Ginny must try to re-imagine—and rebuild—a life she never wanted.

Don't miss the sequel, Three Girls and a Wedding!"

This was a cute, chick lit book and an easy read. It was a really stressful week and I had trouble sleeping so this was a relaxing light book. I have not felt like getting into anything heavy. I'm looking forward to this summer when school is out and more time to relax and read!

 

[Pig Pen]

#8 of 25 - The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

This is the 3rd book I've read by this author. I still favor "Olive Kitteridge" but this one was pretty good. The Burgess Boys are two brothers, both attorneys in NYC, who return to their Maine hometown after their sister's son commits a hate crime. Jim Burgess is the golden boy who is contemplating a political career. His brother Bob caused a family tragedy during his childhood and has always lived in his brother's shadow. Susan is the sister, still stuck in Maine, who is bitter over how her life turned out. Zach is her socially inept son who inexplicably tossed a pig's head into a Somali mosque.

The story explores the family dynamics, childhood, current relationships, and the plight of refugees from Somalia who were the victims of the hate crime.

Next up: The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud.

 

[Pig Pen]

24. The Mountain Between Us by Charles Martin
A young man is trying to return home when a snow storm grounds all planes. He meets a young woman in the airport while waiting on the plane's status. She is trying to get home to attend her wedding the next day. On a whim he finds a private pilot who will fly him to the next airport so he finds the woman he had met and off they go...and the plane crashes. What follows is their tale of survival. I liked it. I've read other books by the author and they have all been good. There is a little twist at the end I didnt really see coming but finishes it up nicely.

25. A Dog's Purpose by W Bruce Cameron
This story starts out with a puppy just becoming aware of himself as a being and follows what happens to him. I dont want to say a lot about the plot because not knowing what was going to happen was the best part of it for me. But if you like books about dogs you should love this. I just had to put my dog of 15 years to sleep about a month ago and this really hit home. It is sad in parts but also very uplifting. Highly recommended for dog lovers. Possibly my favorite book of the year so far.

.

I am adding both of these books to my Wish List! Thanks.

 

[Glynis]

Goal - 70 books

Book #10 - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

From Goodreads: A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs.

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

My review: I really, really liked this book! The photographs were so intriguing, and the story was really compelling. Thanks to this thread, I knew that the ending would be unsatisfactory, and it was. However, I have the sequel to look forward to!

Next up: I need to finish "Wait Till Next Year" by Doris Kearns Goodwin for book club on Thursday, and then finish "The Maze Runner."

 

[Momof3dogs]

13/50
Always Something there to remind Me---Beth Harbison

From Goodreads:

Can you ever really know if love is true? And if it is, should you stop at anything to get it?

Two decades ago, Erin Edwards was sure she’d already found the love of her life: Nate Lawson. Her first love. The one with whom she shared everything--dreams of the future, of children, plans for forever. The one she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. Until one terrible night when Erin made a mistake Nate could not forgive and left her to mourn the relationship she could never forget or get over.

Today, Erin is contentedly involved with a phenomenal guy, maneuvering a successful and exciting career, and raising a great daughter all on her own. So why would the name “Nate Lawson” be the first thing to enter her mind when her boyfriend asks her to marry him?

In the wake of the proposal, Erin finds herself coming unraveled over the past, and the love she never forgot. The more she tries to ignore it and move on, the more it haunts her.

Always Something There to Remind Me is a story that will resonate with any woman who has ever thought of that one first love and wondered, “Where is he?” and “What if…?” Filled with Beth Harbison’s trademark nostalgia humor and heart, it will transport you, and inspire you to believe in the power of first love.


I thought it was cute, but I wasn't drawn to it. Took me forever to read. I do really enjoy this author though.

 

[KrazyPete]

2014 Reading Challenge Goal: 26 Books

March Update:
Book #6: Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen
I love Carl Hiaasen. I love his crass and sarcastic leading men. I love his absurd villains. I love his ridiculous plot twists. This book was not as laugh out loud funny as Bad Monkey but still very entertaining. In Skin Tight, your detective hero impales a man with a stuffed marlin in the first chapter and goes up against a hit man with weed eater attached to his arm. Yes, please!

Book #7: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
I like to put older books on my reading list from time to time. I usually start them with low expectations and end up liking them a lot. That's what happened here. I really enjoyed the dry humor in this tale of the end of the World. Anti-war books are usually preachy, but this one wasn't adversely affected by its agenda at all. I can't wait to read Slaughterhouse-Five.

Book #8: Radical by David Platt
How to be a better Christian. It's mostly stuff that you already know you just haven't heard it stated quite so bluntly before. A lot of Christian authors like to step on toes. David Platt goes for the jugular.

Also Read: The Boston Rob Rule Book by Rob Mariano
This was a short "book" and a third of it was photos of the frequent reality show contestant "Boston Rob" Mariano. This book probably sounded like a good idea when he was drinking with his buddies. Unless you're a huge Rob fan, you can skip it. I'm not even counting it towards my reading goal for the year.

Currently Reading:
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Too many characters you say? Confusing plots and counterplots you say? I've got an app for that.

 

[willowsnn3]

Goal 72

#23 Lying With Strangers by Jonnie Jacobs

I didn't think much of this one. The writing seemed very amateurish to me. I finished it only because it was only around 300 pages but kept thinking I could be reading something better, lol.

 

[PigletsPal2]

Goal: 100 books plus the Bible in its entirety.

#13 - The Women of Pemberley by Rebecca Ann Collins. Fanfic follow-up to Pride and Prejudice, following the lives of the female progeny of Jane Bennet Bingham and Elizabeth Bennet Darcy. I had a little trouble following who's who, and the listing of such at the end of the book would have been better placed at the front. A good read for Jane Austen fans.

Queen Colleen

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

2014 Reading Challenge Goal: 26 Books
Book #7: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
I like to put older books on my reading list from time to time. I usually start them with low expectations and end up liking them a lot. That's what happened here. I really enjoyed the dry humor in this tale of the end of the World. Anti-war books are usually preachy, but this one wasn't adversely affected by its agenda at all. I can't wait to read Slaughterhouse-Five.

Was always one of my favorite Vonnegut books

 

[Colleen27]

#22 of 52 - The Twelve by Justin Cronin

From Goodreads: At the end of The Passage, the great viral plague had left a small group of survivors clinging to life amidst a world transformed into a nightmare. In the second volume of this epic trilogy, this same group of survivors, led by the mysterious, charismatic Amy, go on the attack, leading an insurrection against the virals: the first offensives of the Second Viral War.

To do this, they must infiltrate a dozen hives, each presided over by one of the original Twelve. Their secret weapon: Alicia, transformed at the end of book one into a half human, half viral—but whose side, in the end, is she really on?

My Thoughts: Not as good as the first book. The first was long and intricately detailed, not an easy read but so intense and engrossing that I had a hard time putting it down (which is saying something - at 700+ pages in hardcover, it was heavy! ). But The Twelve just didn't draw me in the way The Passage did. Told in two different timelines the story was a little faster paced but also a little more predictable, so even the faster pacing and more direct writing style felt at times like it took too long getting where it was going.

 

[jenny105]

Halfway through The Night Circus. I'm having trouble understanding why people love this book so much. I hate the way it jumps around both with the characters & the timeline.

 

[willowsnn3]

Halfway through The Night Circus. I'm having trouble understanding why people love this book so much. I hate the way it jumps around both with the characters & the timeline.

I felt the same way.

 

[threeboysmom]

Finished #11 out of 30

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

Did not really care for this book, but probably because I don't care for the whole crime detective genre in the first place. I picked it up on a whim at the library because I was having trouble finding any of the books on my "to read" list.

By the time I got to the end, I didn't even care "who did it" - I just wanted to finish... so I confess, I skimmed the last 20 pages, lol.

Onto Six Years by Harlan Coban. I've been looking forward to reading this - finally my wait for a copy of this book is over!

 

[WowLookAtThat]

Book #30 Spirited Away by Cindy Miles

 

[willowsnn3]

Goal 72

#24 Fear Nothing by Lisa Gardner

From the jacket:
"My sister is Shana Day, a notorious murderer who first killed at fourteen. Incarcerated for 30 years, she has now murdered more people while in prison than she did as a free woman.
Our father was Harry Day, an infamous serial killer who buried young women beneath the floor of our home. He has been dead for forty years. Except the Rose Killer knows things about my father he shouldn't. My sister claims she can help catch him. I think just because I can't feel pain doesn't mean my family can't hurt me."

Lisa Gardner doesn't disappoint! One of my favorite authors.

 

[Glynis]

Goal - 70 books

Book #11 - "Wait Till Next Year" by Doris Kearns Goodwin

From Goodreads: Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.

We meet the people who most influenced Goodwin's early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound: and her father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges. Most important, Goodwin describes with eloquence how the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn in 1957, and the death of her mother soon after, marked both the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood.

My review: I LOVED THIS BOOK! I thought it was a wonderful look at a nostalgic time period! I was a bit nervous to read this book, as I struggled with another of hers, but this was engaging, and fun to read! I loved picturing her in my mind, listening to the baseball games, and recording in a notebook all the plays so she could act out the game for her father when he came home from work! This was simply a feel good book. Highly recommend this one!

Next up The Maze Runner