Quick Lit: March 2016

I don't often enjoy a reading lunch, but when I do it's
because of a very very addicting book series!! :)

My 2016 Goodreads goal is 36 books -- 3 books a month -- after not quite making that goal last year.

(This doesn't count the books I read to/with my kids -- I try to post a few times a month what my kids are reading too, click here to read those reviews)

I'm already at 16 books completed -- 6 just in this month -- and one of those was 800+ pages!! (though one was also less than 200 pages) We'll see if this accelerated pace continues...

Kite Fighters by Linda Sue Park

This was the March chapter book pick for our online family book club. Read more of that review here, along with thoughts about the picture book we chose and a look ahead at April's book that is also set in Korea. It's a culture I'm not at all familiar with, and while I'm not reading these books with my kids, I'm enjoying the lighter reading for myself!

A.D. 33 by Ted Dekker

Ted Dekker is one of those authors who writes some books that I love (Circle series) and some books that I hate (House). I read A.D. 30 a little over a year ago, and it was definitely a work that made me think. The titles of these books make me believe they will be historical fiction about Jesus -- which they are... kind of. Actually, they're more stories about [fictional] people who lived at that time, and Jesus is more of a secondary character who affects their story.

This book was a particularly good read in March, leading up to Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter. It IS a work of fiction, though Dekker does a great job of weaving in the Scriptural accounts of the events of that week (which surprisingly take up a small amount of pages).

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

This was my second Moriarty book (I read Big Little Lies in December), and I'm loving the unique-ness of her stories. They're crafted like no other author I've read before. The concept of this one is very thought-provoking: what if I were to lose my memory of the last 10 years and had to re-forge relationships? Would anything be different? Would I want my memory to return? Throughout the book I kept struggling with whether or not I wanted Alice's memory to come back! It seemed like things would change for the good if it didn't...

Moriarty's other titles don't seem to draw me quite as much as these two have. Should I keep going with others of hers?

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

This book came highly recommended, and was really appealing to me because I myself worked in a bookstore for 6 years and a library for 2. Unfortunately I only thought it was an okay book. It tells the story of about 15 years of a man's life as a bookseller on an island, and the people he encounters and the relationships he forges.

I've come to realize something about my reading that I've never really been able to put my finger on -- I prefer a story that's very plot-driven. I put down At Home in Mitford about a year ago for the same reason I didn't enjoy this one. Yes it's kind of fun getting to know the main character(s) and seeing how they interact with people... but if there's no big underlying plot and it's just a fictional biography of sorts, it's not for me. Now, I do often enjoy a true biography or memoir, but I read those from a non-fiction perspective.

Winter and Stars Above by Marissa Meyer

Did I really finish the entire Lunar Chronicles in just over 2 months?? Almost 3000 pages total between the 6 books, over 800 of which were just in Winter?? I haven't been so addicted to a long series since Harry Potter (which I only read for the first time two years ago).

Winter was a fascinating conclusion to the series, and I loved how each of the characters that had been introduced throughout the books played a role in the overall victory. I did read it on my Kindle -- thank goodness, that would have been a heavy book!

And since Stars Above is so new (February 2016 - yay, add a check on the MMD Reading Challenge!), I couldn't interloan it to my library, and it most likely won't be available to me as an ebook either until summer. Since I didn't want to wait, I searched my library co-op and found a library that had a copy on the shelf. One sunny afternoon my girls and I took a little road trip, and 40 minutes later I had the book in hand. :)

Stars Above was VERY satisfying. It's a collection of short stories, most of which are prequels looking back at the lives of the main characters long before they met each other. I had lots of warm fuzzies when it was over.

Linking up with Anne Bogel's April Quick Lit!

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