Have You Hugged A Book Today?- The Conclusion of 2016

I know this is incredibly late, but we’re going to take this opportunity to make a two-parter out of it! So you’ll definitely get your money’s worth today, folks!

First things first, let’s catch you up on what I’ve been doing since last we spoke!

Here’s the link to my star rating breakdown if anyone needs a refresher. It’s also up in the header 🙂

• What I’m currently reading (in order of Date Started)
  1. Miles in Love (Vorkosigan Omnibus #6) by Lois McMaster Bujold– I’ve gotten into a Civil Campaign! So much is happening and I’m freaking out! This is so good, I might die from the suspense of EVERYTHING!
  2. Audrey Hepburn: An Elegant Spirit by Sean Hepburn Ferrer– I still haven’t finished this. I have no excuse. Sorry. Maybe in 2017?

• Books I’ve Finished 
  1. The Winter Soldier, Vol 1: The Man on the Wall by Ales Kot- Four Stars
  2. Original Sin: Thor & Loki: The Tenth Realm by Al Ewing- Four Stars
  3. Author 2.0 Blueprint by Joanna Penn- Four Stars
  4. Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal- Four Stars
  5. Dictate Your Book by Monica Leonelle- Five Stars
  6. The Dispatcher by John Scalzi- Five Stars
  7. Odd Interlude (Odd Thomas #4) by Dean Koontz- Four Stars
  8. The Clockwork Scarab (Stoker and Holmes #1) by Colleen Gleeson- Four Stars

Fog’s Book Of The Month

The Dark Tower by Stephen King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow. Okay, I have a lot of feelings about this book, not all of them were good (as you can tell, if you kept up with my comments as I was reading), but overall, the ending of this book made up for any flaws in the storytelling. The ending… I had to stop reading and drive in silence for a long time, just to digest it. ‘Ka is a wheel’ was an overarching theme throughout the series, but I never really understood the significance until I read the end. The true end, not the feel-good, make-you-cry, first ending. And Mr. King was correct, I could have just left the book with that first ending and been perfectly content. I considered it, actually. But I’m ultimately glad I didn’t though. Quite frankly, most of the Stephen King endings I’ve read have left a lot to be desired (I’m looking at YOU “Under The Dome”), but I think I know what happened now. He used up all his good ending mojo on this book. That’s what it has to be 🙂

Anyway, it was a great end to a pretty good series, and I’m glad I got them all read this year! 🙂

View all my reviews

Okay, now that we have all that out of the way, it’s the end of the year! That means, it’s time to take a look back at what I’ve accomplished this year and outline what I plan to accomplish in the new year! Here we go!

 

Despite Goodreads’ passive-aggressive irony, I feel really good about this year! I finished  The Dark Tower series, and managed to  surpass my goal of reading 50 books in 2016! All in all, it’s been a good year, and I look forward to great things in 2017.

My goals for the upcoming year include:

• Read 55 books– I’ve stuck to 50 books for the past two years, and pretty easily surpassed that goal. Time to edge it up a little I think, especially with my new access to audiobooks, thanks to Audible. 55 books is a reasonable stretch. Right?
• Read the first eight books of the Dresden Files series– This is my new series to read in 2017! According to my research, there’s fifteen books currently published (not including all the little in-between books, which I’m currently planning to ignore) and one due for release in 2017, but I’m only going to try to finish the first eight. As my series goals have generally been seven books to a series, I think this fits nicely with my goal to stretch myself a bit. The premise of these books (a modern wizard PI solves paranormal crimes) appeals to me greatly and I’ve heard wonderful things about James Marsters as a narrator. I’m really looking forward to what’s coming up!

And that’s my year! I’ll have a new Challenge up on Goodreads in the new year, and you can check out my to-read list to get an idea of what I might read in the year ahead (fair warning: the list needs to be reorganized, badly. I plan to get on that soon, but it will still give you a pretty good idea of what I have coming up).

See you guys in 2017! 😀