What a long strange trip it's been!
We travelled to:
- Houston
- San Antonio
- Portland
- San Francisco
- Yosemite National Park
- Muir Woods
- Chicago
- Washington, DC
Favorite 5 books I read:
- Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and Birth of the FBI by David Grann
- Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Five best movies we saw in the theater:
- Logan Lucky
- Hidden Figures
- Wind River
- Logan
- Wonder Woman
This year, in my spare time, I enjoyed:
- being a wife and a doggie mommy!
- our vegetable garden
- setting up a craft room
- Paper Source crafting kits
- baking, especially making meringue cupcake frostings and trying my hand at cookie decorating
- playing brain games
- reading
Other highlights:
- celebrating our anniversary and receiving the sweetest gift
- seeing the solar eclipse
- The Women's March in January. And all of the phone calls and letters that followed.
- dressing up Zooey and taking her to the Farmer's Market
- decorating for Christmas
- collecting postmarks from places throughout the US
- delving deeper into yoga and dance
- reading in the hammock
- writing to my pen pal
- taking a government course
- seeing government seats flip blue
This is where I can track books for my 2018 Reading Challenge:
You can read in order or jump around, but keep this order in the plan, as we are using the numbers to find quickly a topic.
If
you can't complete the challenge, it's not a problem. If one topic is
really too much out of your comfort zone or too much difficult to
fulfill, you can use the Wild Card and read something else for this week (reader's choice or past suggestions).
1. A book with the letters A, T & Y in the title
2. A book from the first 10 books added to your To Be Read list
3. A book from the 2017 Goodreads Choice Awards (link)
4. 4 books linked by the 4 elements: Book #1 Earth (in title, cover, content, setting, author...)
5. A book about or inspired by real events: The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish (completed January 2018)
6. A book originally written in a language other than English
7. A gothic novel
8. An "own voices" book*
9. A book with a body part in the title (heart, bones, teeth, skin, blood, etc)
10. An author's debut book (their first book to be published)
11. A literary fiction
12. A book set in Africa or South America
13. A book with a plot centered around a secret (forbidden love, spies, secret societies, etc): Spies in the Family: An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship that Helped End the Cold War by Eva Dillon (completed January 2018)
14. 4 books linked by the 4 elements: Book #2 Fire: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (completed January 2018)
15. A book with an unique format/writing structure
16. A narrative nonfiction
17. A book you expect to make you laugh
18. A book with a location in the title
19. A book nominated for the Edgar Award or by a Grand master author (books & authors)
20. A book rated 5 stars by at least one of your friends
21. A book written in first person perspective
22. A book you have high expectations or hope for
23. A medical or legal thriller
24. A book with a map
25. A book with an antagonist/villain point of view
26. A book with a text only cover
27. A book about surviving a hardship (war, famine, major disasters, serious illness, etc)
28. 4 books linked by the 4 elements: Book #3 Water
29. A book with a "Clue" weapon on the cover or title (lead pipe, revolver, rope, candlestick, dagger, wrench)
30. A short book
31. A book set in a country you'd like to visit but have never been to
32. An alternate history book
33. A book connected (title, cover, content) to a word "born" in the same year as you (link)
34. A suggestion from the AtY 2018 polls, that didn't win but was polarizing or a close-call (link)
35. A book featuring a murder: The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn (completed February 2018)
36. A book published in the last 3 years (2016, 2017, 2018) by an author you haven't read before
37. A Women's Prize for Fiction winner or nominee (link1, link2)
38. A science book or a science fiction book
39. A book with a form of punctuation in the title
40. A book from Amazon's 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime list (link)
41. A book by an author with the same first and last initials
42. A book that takes place on, in, or underwater
43. A book with a title that is a whole sentence
44. A ghost story
45. A book that intimidates/ scares you
46. 4 books linked by the 4 elements: Book #4 Air
47. A book where the main character (or author) is of a different ethnic origin, religion, or sexual identity than your own: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (completed February 2018)
48. A book related to one of the 7 deadly sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth): Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarity (sin = wrath); completed January 2018
49. A book from one of the Goodreads Best Books of the Month lists (link)
50. A book with a warm atmosphere (centered on family, friendship, love or summer)
51. An award-winning short story or short story collection
52. A book published in 2018
*an
own voice novel is a book about marginalised protagonists (by ethnic
group, religion, sexual orientation, mental illness, etc) written by an
author who shares that same identity.
