Moreno Garcia. Silvia- Certain Dark Things
Kantra, Virginia- Meg & Jo
Joy, David- When These Mountains Burn
I haven't read a book for the Goodreads challenge this month. I was trying to do 2 a month. One good thing is that my Y book for the alphabet challenge is also a Goodreads book. Another is that I have read so much out of my comfort zone this year that I can now spot books on my TBR that I am never going to read, and I'm just deleting them, so I am still accomplishing my goal of shortening that list.
I can wrap up this challenge for the year, and I'm glad that I did it. I have a new appreciation for my TBR- partly because I also re-worked it while moving it to StoryGraph. So, now I'm tagging almost every book that I add to StoryGraph. (I know that SG will import your data, but I wanted to review my list. I've probably deleted 30 books or so, and tagged so many to make them easier to find.)
Another challenge that I didn't finish and don't feel bad about is my "stretch" challenge. I wanted to push myself to read some of the harder or more intimidating books that I've always meant to read. I THOUGHT THAT THE PLAGUE WOULD BE OVER BY SPRING 2021 WHEN I SET THIS GOAL. I read Great Expectations and Paradise Lost and part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and stopped trying. I will come back to this when the news isn't sapping my will to live, should we come to live in such a time again.
OK, now onto the last Goodreads books that I read this year.
Certain Dark Things- I read this and wrote about it in October (Scary Stories). I wasn't bowled over buy it.
Meg & Jo- This was fine. It was a good book to have on the bedside table to read late at night because I knew that nothing very bad would happen. It's an update of the Little Women story, but the later part, when they're grown up. There's a sequel that focuses on Beth and Amy, but I kind of doubt I'll read it. I couldn't really understand the decision to make Jo a food blogger and Bhaer a chef.
When These Mountains Burn- This is like two books in one. There's a crime story about drugs, and the story about a mountain town that's being worn down by time, addiction, and outsiders' money. That's all very simplified. It's interesting, and I'm not usually interested in crime fiction. There are many characters, and it switches from chapter to chapter, but I never had trouble keeping up with it. The main character is likeable, so that makes reading about some of the more unsavory characters more palatable. I'd like to read another book by this author.