Show Us Your Books Link-Up: August 2016

I missed last month's link-up...got distracted from the whole "adjusting to work again" thing. So my list is a little longer than normal since it is actually covering two months. 

Fun fact- I managed to finish my diversity reading challenge (finally!), hit 30 books for the year which was my yearly goal, and read everything on my IRL TBR*!! 

I think I was worried about having "me" time to read after the baby so I did as much as possible while on leave, and it's awesome to have met my goals with so much time left in the year.

*really, I've read all the books that were collecting dust on my shelf as of January 1 2016. The books I've purchased this year are not included in this goal.

I'm going to try a different rating system...I've been using the 5 star system but it's starting to feel inadequate. So I'm going to try an "A, B, C" system this month and see how it feels.

As:

  

Monster by Walter Dean Myers 

The last book for my diversity reading challenge. Full review here, but basically you should go read right now.

  
An Epilogue to Innocence by Tim Baughman Jr. 
Full review here, but my friend wrote it and it's awesome and you should go get it ASAP.   

 

  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz #1) by L. Frank Baum 

The first big book I read Pumpkin. Loved it. 

 

 

  Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night, edited by James Patterson

 My second collection of short stories, after Tim's. Maybe I'm just getting older but this was awesome also even though for years I have purposefully avoided short stories. I didn't enjoy EVERY story, but some were very good and I only DNF one. Definitely recommend if you like thrillers/mysteries, there is something for everyone here.

 

Bs:

13 Little Blue Envelopes 

I follow Maureen Johnson on Twitter- I've "gotten to know her" from the Vlogbrothers as she is friends with John Green. This was super cute and a fun read while also being full of feeling. A great YA choice...I will probably continue the series but I'm not running out just yet.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison 

A good book about terrible things. It would have been an A except I felt like sometimes the story was painting with too broad a brush, so to speak- it was a family story but there was no true point until the very end. I had the audio version from Audible and the afterword from the author is incredibly important. It explains why she wrote it the way she did, which helped a bit, and also speaks about why it's important to write about terrible things and the burden of banned books.

 

Scars by Cheryl Rainfield
Another very good book about a terrible subject. It was compelling, and would have been an A if things hadn't suuuuuuuper sped up at the end.

Cs: 

 It's worth mentioning that Cs are average. These books were not bad, by any means. They just...weren't great.

  Corrie Ten Boom's Prison Letters

This was interesting. It's letters between family members who were imprisoned during the Holocaust. Their ability to praise and have faith during such a bleak time is impressive, and probably the thing that most stood out in the book. 

 

Take Me Home

I don't entirely remember how I got this book...I think it was given to me? I don't know. It was an okay read. Apparently part of a series- maybe if I had read the others first it would have been better, but the writing alone wasn't enough to really pull me in. 

 

Fifty Shades of They: Insights That Bring Life to Your Relationships by Ed Young 

This book was a standard Christian self-help: slightly repetitive, and leaned a lot on metaphors and cliches. At the end he does speak about Christ, and how he is the ultimate guidance which is important. Also he mentioned how Christ hung out with "sinners" and that we can be the right "they" for others, which I appreciate. Too often, especially with a book like this, it can seem as though we are supposed to live in our little Christian bubbles. 

 

 

What have you been reading? 

Link-up with Show Us Your Books and let us know!