New Year, New Attempt!

2023 Summary

16 books (at least that I remembered to log) Finished, One was an audiobook, and I also re-listened to the audio book of ready player one and did a second listen with my husband on a road trip of starter villain. So I guess Technically thats 18?

For some reason I’ve picked up Girls of Fate and Fury MANY times this year and just haven’t gotten as absorbed in it as the first two in the series. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When Rabbit Howls is really emotionally challenging to read descriptions of CSA, so I’ve put it on indefinite hold for now.

started #murdertrending right at the end of the year, so I guess I’m going to bring that and any outliers over to a new 2024 list!!

Status	Title	Author	Links	My Notes
Finished	Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits	Jason Pargin	B&N
Finished	John Dies at the End	Jason Pargin	B&N
Finished	Neon Gods (Dark Olympus #1)	Katee Robert	B&N
Finished	Talking As Fast As I Can	Lauren Graham	B&N
Started	Girls of Fate and Fury	Natasha Ngan	B&N
Finished	Wicked Beauty (Dark Olympus #3)	Katee Robert	B&N
Started	When Rabbit Howls	Truddi Chase	B&N
Finished	Critical Role: The Mighty Nein–The Nine Eyes of Lucien (AudioBook)	Madeleine Roux	B&N
Started	Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You	Jenara Nerenberg	B&N
Finished	Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins–Caleb Widogast	Multiple	B&N
Finished	Electric Idol (Dark Olympus #2)	Katee Robert	B&N
Finished	Radiant Sin (Dark Olympus #4)	Katee Robert	B&N
Finished	Cruel Seduction (Dark Olympus #5)	Katee Robert	B&N
Finished	The Kaiju Preservation Society	John Scalzi	B&N
Finished	Starter Villain (Audiobook)	John Scalzi (narrated by Wil Wheaton)	Amazon
Finished	Court of the Vampire Queen	Katee Robert	B&N
Started	The First to Die at the End	Adam Silvera	B&N
Finished	Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome	John Scalzi	B&N
Finished	The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo	Taylor Jenkins Reid	B&N
Finished	The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes	Suzanne Collins	B&N
Started	#murderfunding	Gretchen McNeil	B&N

My “I’m Not Read Yet!” (Top targets in no particular order for 2023)

Owned or Wishlisted	Title	Author
Owned	Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits	Jason Pargin
wishlisted 10/31/2023	Zoey is too drunk for this Dystopia	Jason Pargin
Wishlisted	John Dies at the End	Jason Pargin
Owned	This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It	Jason Pargin
Owned	What the Hell Did I Just Read: A Novel of Cosmic Horror	Jason Pargin
Wishlisted 10/3/2023	If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe: A John, Dave, and Amy Novel	Jason Pargin
Wishlisted 11/7/2023	Biblical	Rob Halford
Owned	The Silent Patient	Alex Michaelides
Wishlisted	Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman	Alan Rickman
Wishlisted	I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax	Scott Ian
Wishlisted	The Lives of Brian: A Memoir	Brian Johnson
Wishlisted	Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen	Al Jourgensen
Wishlisted	Dark Days: A Memoir	D. Randall Blythe
Owned	Critical Role: Vox Machina–Kith & Kin	Marieke Nijkamp
Owned	Critical Role: The Mighty Nein–The Nine Eyes of Lucien	Madeleine Roux
Owned	The Book of Form and Emptiness	Ruth Ozeki
Owned	The First to Die at the End	Adam Silvera
Owned	The ballad of songbirds and snakes	Suzanne Collins

I must have went into Barnes and Noble for something specific, but as per usual and regardless of whether I actually found what I was looking for, I added this book to my massive pile.

I came across this book in the LGBTQ+ Section. I’ve picked up a handful of books from this section lately, and have found the voices to be interesting, the content to be fresh, and the genre to run the entire gamut of my interests, from Fantasy and Science Fiction, to Romance, to Memoir and Biographical.

I believe on this trip was the first time I noticed the #booktok signs, and had to look up what this was. After this, I have a tendency to pay closer attention to the #booktok signs, since I feel that the wider social media audience has a better pulse than the reviewers, a la Rotten Tomatoes critic scores vs audience scores.

But I digress.

I picked up this book based on the cover, and the synopsis on the back sounded like something I would enjoy. I tucked it into my fun reads section of my “I’m not read yet!” shelf when I got back home. Since I pick up so many books at a time, and have a tendency to jump around, I completely forgot the synopsis summary, but recalled that I wanted to put it near the top of my reading list, so when I was looking for something to clear my brain from work training materials, I grabbed this and sat down.

The voice hooked me right away. Sometimes I will pick up a book and it will take me awhile to decide if it is something I’m going to binge or have to work at to finish. This is one of the books that from the first sentences, I was engaged and knew that this was going to be a binge. As a contrast, once I finished, I re-read the critic quotes on the back cover and noticed that it said “McQuiston’s writing reads like poetry. One Last Stop is meant to be savored slowly” (Helen Hoang, Author of The Kiss Quotient). I agree with most of Ms. Hoang’s assessment of the book, but savoring slowly was not in the cards.

Once I picked this book up, it was one of those that I found hard to put back down. Anytime I took a break from reading to do something as trivial as working, the book was calling to me to pick it back up and continue tearing through the pages and lose myself in this world.

McQuiston’s writing is highly accessible, striking a balance between descriptive prose and understandable dialogue. There are pop culture references that fit well into the story, without feeling like it is written for a certain generation that has to be familiar with the references. Descriptions just feel right, enough to bring the reader into the scene, the feeling, the moment, without overwhelming the reader with non-essential detail. The characters are relatable and feel real. They have rich full lives and explored backstories enough to bring them out of two dimensional territory, without overshadowing the main storyline.

As a (mostly) straight cis-gendered female raised in a generation before fluidity in gender and sexual orientation was mainstream, it was possible for me to connect with the characters easily. That is not to say that some may still be challenged to connect with characters in the book, but that would fall on the readers shoulders to be open to the fluidity of gender and sexual orientation. I would hope that we as a society would already be at the point where this would be a book that would be a best seller based on the story alone, regardless of the fact that the main character is a lesbian and other characters are every color of the LGBTQ+ rainbow. Alas, we may not be there yet, but this story certainly is a step in the right direction.

All in all, a well written and well rounded story that hit all the right beats. There’s a great primary storyline, real emotion and feeling, fantastically built tension (both story wise and sexually), tasteful and critical to story sexual encounters that feel authentic rather than dirty, and pacing that keeps the reader engaged through the entire book.

I have a lot more books to get through that haven’t been read yet, but I have a feeling this will be re-read before that pile is even dented.

Link to One Last Stop at Barnes and Noble

Postscript to 2022: So, It’s not terrible, I did read a few books, but not nearly as much as I was hoping. I also kept forgetting to track things, and forgot that I read a few. For posterity’s sake, I loved the girls of paper and fire series, and since I looked it up to log it, found the third one is now out, so I’m adding that to my shopping list. I also really dug the style of Zoey punches the future in the dick and didn’t realize that it was the second, so as of January 2023, I went and bought everything my local Barnes and Noble had available, and am reading the first in the series as a prequel. I will be starting a new post for 2023 momentarily (so I don’t forget again) and will add a much shorter list. All those books are still on my bookshelf, I’m just going to make a top 20 or so as my target, which will make little difference in the order I actually pick them up off my shelf!

Finish Date	Title	Author	Links	My Notes
1/17/2022	One Last Stop	Casey McQuiston	B&N	My Blog
Abandoned	Scrum: The art of doing twice the work in half the time	Jeff Sutherland, JJ Sutherland	B&N
Finished	They both die at the end	Adam Silvera	B&N
Finished	Storyteller	Dave Grohl	B&N
Finished	Zoey Punches the future in the dick	Jason Pargin	B&N
Finished	Girls of Paper and Fire	Natasha Ngan	B&N
Finished	Girls of Storm and Shadow	Natasha Ngan	B&N
Finished	Confess: The Autobiography	Rob Halford	B&N
Finished	The Invention of Sound	Chuck Palahniuk	B&N
Abandoned	Total Fucking Godhead	Corbin Reiff	B&N

My “I’m Not Read Yet!” Shelves (in loosely the order I plan to read them…)

1. Storyteller – Dave Grohl
2. The city we became – N. K. Jemisin
3. Total F*cking Godhead – Corbin Reiff
4. The Anatomy of Evil – Michael H Stone, MD
5. Quiet – Susan Cain
6. Huddle – Brooke Baldwin
7. Stranger in a strange land – Robert R. Heinlein
8. Goldilocks – Laura Lam
9. Acid Test – Tom Shroder
10. Life after live – Kate Atkinson
11. The summer we lost her – Tish Cohen
12. #murderfunding – Gretchen McNeil
13. #noescape – Gretchen McNeil
14. Girls of Storm and Shadow – Natasha Ngan
15. If I was your girl – Meredith Russo
16. The Silence – Tim Lebbon
17. Dark Lullaby – Polly Ho-Yen
18. The Orphan Witch – Paige Crutcher
19. We are all the same in the dark – Julia Heaberlin
20. Wilder Girls – Rory Power
21. Ordinary Girls – Jaquira Diaz
22. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
23. The tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris
24. Always look on the bright side of life – Eric Idle
25. The Tao of Bill Murray – Gavin Edwards
26. The Gift of Therapy – Irvin D. Yalom M.D.
27. Born standing up – Steve Martin
28. Quiet girls can run the world – Rebecca Holman
29. The end of eternity – Isaac Asimov
30. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
31. Permanent Record – Edward Snowden
32. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest – Ken Kessey
33. Fall – Neal Stephenson
34. A portrait of the artist as a young man and Dubliners – James Joyce
35. Talking as fast as I can – Lauren Graham
36. The meaning of Mariah Carey – Mariah Carey
37. Memoirs and Misinformation – Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon
38. can i say – Travis Barker
39. Riot Days – Maria Alyokhina
40. The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid
41. The light in Hidden Places – Sharon Cameron
42. Joyland – Stephen King
43. The girl who could move Sh*t with her mind – Jackson Ford
44. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
45. Gemini – Carol Cassella
46. Unmentionable – Therese Oneill
47. Gang leader for a day – Sudhir Venkatesh
48. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
49. Underboxx – Peter Maas
50. Inside – Michael G. Santos
51. Amerika – Franz Kafka
52. The Shining – Stephen King
53. Stonewall – Martin Duberman
54. Personal Kanban – Tonianne DeMaria Barry, Jim Benson
55. Little Panic – Amanda Stern
56. Play It As It Lays – Joan Didion
57. The Collected Schizophrenias – Wang
58. Nine Perfect Strangers – Liane Moriarty
59. Good Omens – Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
60. Range – David Epstein
61. The men on my couch – Dr. Brandy Engler
62. The DevOps Handbook

68 Books.

That is the number of books I just counted on my “I’m not read yet!” shelf. That doesn’t even count the books I have scattered around my house on endtables, shelves, in boxes, or in my car. That’s depressing and exciting at the same time.

There is this whole world of things that I purchased so that I could read them. To experience a story from a new perspective. To learn something. To be become a better version of myself.

And here the opportunity begins.

I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to write a little bit down about the things I read. To maybe remember it better, to understand it better, or just remind myself later of all of the things. So here we are.

My plan is to write whatever strikes me, while I’m reading, after I’ve finished, or just to note that I did read something.

In case you are curious, I’ve tried to categorize my bookshelves and currently have the following categories:

• I’m not read yet!
• Vampires
• Dystopia
• Learn Something New
• People’s Stories
• Poetic
• Classic
• College

I’ve only actually organized a portion, so these categories will likely grow. You will likely see me read and hopefully post a few words on some or all of the following types: futuristic, dystopian, fantasy, sci-fi, technical, business, autobiography/biography/memoir, psychology, and yes Romance…the sweet dirty smutty fun stuff.

So off we go!

Disclaimer: I did this before with a technical blog and posted a few times over nine years, with days or years between posts. So no promises are made at this point, as this is just for my own enjoyment.