I cannot recall the last time a novel made me feel so.... stupid. I am really struggling with this one.

5 stars for Neil, as always.

@LapReader Oh my goodness! I had 100% forgotten about our #HocusPocusSwap and then look what somehow managed to arrive ON MY BIRTHDAY?!?! Double awesome!! I was so excited to see this! Thank you for all the wonderful goodies and spooky stories! I loooove ghosts 😁

P.S. I'm blaming Canada, as it appears the package landed in Toronto in late September. So, thank you Canadian postal service, for this serendipitous delay 😂

I'm trying, I really am, but maybe YA just isn't for me anymore. At 200 pages in, I'm thankful that this is a fast read and I have coffee, because boy are these characters dull.

#thegentlemansguidetoviceandvirtue #mackenzilee #thiskidisatool #ihopethesequelisbetter

Eh. The characters were good, and the concept fascinating, but then it went all political-thriller on me and I just wasn't into it anymore.

Final read of 2018 almost complete. I had a long hiatus, but hopefully am back in the swing of things for 2019.

My 2018 Reading Stats and Top 6:

52 books
45 authors
23 genres
41 Fiction, 11 Non-Fiction
23 audio, 23 paper, 6 e-books
25 by female, person of color, or LGBTQ+ authors
5 authors from non-English speaking countries
19,540 'pages' - 53 per day
Most read genre: Mystery (13 books)
Longest: The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1,796 p.)
Shortest: The Atrocities by Jeremy Shipp (105 p.)
Oldest: Treasure Island (pub. 1882)

What a crazy little volume! Wonderfully frightening read for a dreary Sunday afternoon. The gothic feel is reminiscent of a Susan Hill story, with just enough of the modern to feel relatable. Highly recommended.

Excellent pick, @Avanders, and the dark chocolate was wonderful :) #HGPBC #HorrorGoesPostalBookClub #TeamJaws

Luckily my spiders leave strategically placed holes in their webs for the selecting of spooky books to read this month.

@Avanders You are so sweet! Thanks for the wonderful goodies with my #HGPBC package! I am so excited for this dark chocolate while I dig in to this book, you have no idea 😂 #horrorgoespostalbookclub #teamjaws #omnomnom

Anyone else at #WorkdayRising in #LasVegas this week? I feel like I'm the only person here with a book in my hand, but you never can tell if someone's got an e-reader. Makes it difficult to find my people between sessions 😂

I must emphatically disagree with this being a curse. I am so down to get started whenever whoever is doing the cursing is available. Please.

http://www.epicreads.com/blog/fairy-tale-retellings-curse/

I've been reading multiple books concurrently for as long as I can remember, but I finally did it... I finally screwed up. I somehow managed to start two thriller/mystery/horror type books that both start out at a boys prep school and are told from the perspective of a new student attending on a scholarship. I made it far enough in that even if I set one aside, I am likely committed to being confused for at least the next five days. Dangit.

1. Yep
2. One out of probably every eight or so is non-fiction lately. I try for one per month.
3. Ha, well... I actually enjoy reading about hauntings and supernatural sciences, which I've been told a number of times is too close to fiction 😂 Otherwise, true crime is where it's at.
4. Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve. Books and analytics complete with charts? I was in heaven.
5. Tagged.
#HelloThursday @wanderinglynn

Still struggling pretty hard today, but managed to print up a copy of the free Google digitized version of this short story to accompany my #horrorgoespostalbookclub selection, A Head Full of Ghosts. Quite creepy if I may say so! #teamsjaws get ready for it! #hgpbc @Bookishgal71 @Avanders @bookish_wookish

I have a depression. Sometimes it is very small. Other times it is enormous. I struggle to do the things I enjoy or to take care of myself, and forcing myself to do those things I know I should often makes the hole deeper, wider. Today, even reading is so difficult that I become more upset each time I find my focus wandering from the page. This book came in the mail today, but I want to have a good experience with it, so best wait for another day.

"'I ken my ain business best,' says Dykes. 'If ye gar me gie ye a look, 'twill gie ye the creepin's while ye live; so git ye doun, Tom;'"

These stories are wonderful, but this Victorian Irish dialect is killing me.

The positivity we all need in our lives today. Especially with that B&N sale still happening.

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-you-should-stop-feeling-bad-about-all-t...

Just a portion of the super slick Excel doc I built in an effort to proactively increase the diversity of my reading. Now holds data back to 2012 and automatically updates when I add new titles. Woohoo I'm a nerd!

August wrap up!
8 books, 7 authors
5 by women
5 audiobooks, 2 paper, 1 e-book
Tagged book was my favorite - Liz is simply unbelievable.
#augustreads
Also built a complete analytics package this month for all the books I've read since 2010, complete with pretty charts, because I'm an analyst and that's what we do for fun when we're not reading as many books as possible. Cannot wait to put it to good use!

No photos from my #audiowalk tonight. I love fall, but it's getting dark too early!

I ended up not buying any of the 50% off titles, but I didn't come home empty handed. Hubby wandered around the store looking lost the whole time, so I let him pick the tote he thought I'd like best.

Ok. I'm headed out to B&N to shop the sale. If I'm not back in two hours... send search parties with tea and biscotti.

Google says there's traffic in the B&N parking lot. Gee, I wonder why 😂

Too cute little #fairygarden I stumbled upon on today's #audiowalk

Thank goodness, a thing to keep me motivated on my quest to get through a 60-book-high horror pile 😂 Is it October yet?!?! #Screamathon @4thhouseontheleft

#HorrorGoesPostalBookClub #TeamJaws These are my top 8! Any preferences? Absolutely nots? I like ghosts just a little bit. 👻👻👻 #HGPBC
@Bookishgal71 @Avanders @bookish_wookish

👻 A lesser-known animated film called Witch's Night Out. It's so awful. I love it.
👻 Tootsie rolls, but only the chocolate ones.
👻 I like ghost stories. Susan Hill's The Woman in Black takes the cake.
👻 Candles and lanterns and other such things used for spooky lighting.
👻 Yay!
👻 Double Yay!
👻 Can I have Book from Hocus Pocus? Does that count as a pet?

@JoScho

I found no fewer than 63 unread Fall TBR contenders on my shelves, all horror, suspense, true crime, supernatural, or murder mystery. Opting for the festive Halloween paper jar for selection, hubby selected Shadowland to start me off. Now I just need my boss to give me the next 3 months off paid.

Night-time #audiowalk with a new book. I adore old Hollywood scandals.

Restocked the neighborhood Little Free Library today from my shelf of finished books. And now that I feel I've done a good thing and cleaned out some space... I'd like to go book shopping, please.

I hate bailing on books. This bail will probably bother me for weeks. She totally lost me, however, even after an amazing first chapter, with the God chapter. I don't see why believing in a higher power is prerequisite to believing in myself, nor was this point clear in the description of the book. I felt a little duped by page 30. I'm sad, because I loved the writing style, but the philosophy is not for me.

Today's #audiowalk, the first in a while. I'm pooped, and finding my interest in the second half of this book waning. 😪

Guilty pleasures and kitty cuddles. If she'll let me open the book.

My shelves. Those 6 cubes? Yeah, those are the ones I've actually read. I need to stop going to the library for a while :(

Had to pull out a second bookmark for the 168 pages of sources and commentary so I can keep track of what's historical and what's fiction. Yikes.

I've never done a book club before... but this sounds delightful :) Sign me up! No international post though please, since it's my first time. #HorrorGoesPostalBookClub #HGPBC

 @TheReadingMermaid

I have been "reading" this book for about 14 years... longer than my son has been alive. It's not that it's not interesting, it's fascinating, it's just 1437 pages of intricate personal and political shenanigans that are so hard to absorb. I think it's time to finish it. There goes the rest of my August :)

What an excellent plot twist! I really enjoyed that there were characters who were endearing, those that annoyed me, those who were peripheral enough to not take up too much space but still played a role. Driscoll has a wonderful talent for developing the appropriate characters in the right ways to keep a story interesting, give it some plausible emotion, and distract her reader in the right places. Loved it!

I won my first Goodreads giveaway, which is also my first ARC! Woohoo! Of course now I feel the need to read it immediately. 😂

I made it to chapter four, and couldn't stand the thought of hearing the word 'said' even one more time.

I Am Watching You is a Crime Thriller. Go home, Goodreads Recommendations. You're drunk.

Unless Cow, Pig, and Duck brutally murder Mrs. Wishy-Washy and attempt to cover it up. Then sign me up.🐄🗡🐖🔧🦆💉⚰

Who knew that pirate stories were so exciting?!?

July stats:
9 finished - 5 paper/4 audio, 6 Fiction/3 Non
9 authors - 3 female, 1 POC
~3,151 pages, ~932,245 words
The tagged book was hands down my favorite.

This is my first time ever doing stats, and I'm simply in awe of how much more reading most of you accomplish than me. And that's with a whole week's vacation spent reading this month!

Me: "I need another book to read, I finished two today."
10 yo son: "I'll go get you one, what do you want?"
Me: "Oh I don't know, surprise me."
10 yo: "BRB."
10 yo, returning with book in hand: "This says murder, it has to be good."

Definitely my kid. And such a sweetheart. How have I never discovered this wonderful book selection method before?

Oh my gosh I absolutely did not see that coming! A riveting mystery with excellent characters that I did not figure out the ending to before the midpoint! Very excited for more from Cara Hunter.

A nice quick read, with a decent twist. I could have done without the romantic angle; it was just unnecessary.

This is Scarlett. She is angry that a) I gave her water in a bowl rather than a glass, and b) that my hands are occupied with coffee and books rather than pets. This is some serious reproach, you guys.

Home from vacation with no plans for the weekend but laundry. Both of my vacation books were terrible.... hoping this new one doesn't let me down.

Newest vacation experience: reading an award-winning Norwegian murder mystery set on the North Shore of Lake Superior while sitting on the North Shore of Lake Superior. I did not expect it to be so unnerving, but I also don't think I expected it to be quite so detailed as to mention the gas station I stopped at yesterday just down the road O_O