Books I'm Reading - Writing Challenge, Day 8

This wouldn't be my blog if I didn't reference books at least every once in a while...

Anyone who's known me for a long time knows I used to read all the time...like, on the level of never leaving the house without at least one book and usually having a back up in case I finished that first book.  Yes, I am/was a complete nerd.  But as adult life has taken over, I haven't had that much time to read.  There were a couple of years within the past five that I don't think I read at all...kinda sad for someone who read as much as I used to.

So, last year I read a little bit more.  I got back into it a little bit, but not enough to really make a habit of it.

This year, I set a goal on Goodreads' 2018 Reading Challenge to read twenty books.  As of the beginning of my writing challenge, I had only finished three.  Since starting to write again, I've also started to read more, and in the past week, I've finished two books out of five that I had been reading.


The two that I've finished were:

"Unbreakable" by Sara Ella
This series was one that took me by surprise.  I hadn't heard of it before, but I found "Unblemished" in the book section at Ollie's and thought it sounded like a fun, easy read.  It was so worth it, and when I finished the first book, I immediately got on my Kindle and bought the second book of the trilogy, "Unraveling," and pre-ordered the last book, "Unbreakable."  "Unbreakable" honestly took me a while to get into.  Some things that happened at the end of "Unraveling"/start of "Unbreakable" really almost ruined it for me.  It was an event that the whole third book hinged on, but it just made it so hard to keep my attention because I hated what had happened to the characters.  Once I picked  it up again this past week, I struggled through that section, and sure enough, even though it threw me off, it got better.  I wasn't able to put it down again, and I finished it last night.

"Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls" by Lauren Graham
This was one I had downloaded a sample of an audiobook for but hadn't really gotten into it because I'd never "read" an audiobook before...this was my first.  And I must say, I'm glad it was my first, because listening to Lauren Graham relate her own sort of autobiography was extremely entertaining.  I got weird looks from Darryl a couple times because I'd be listening to the book while crocheting and end up laughing out loud....seemingly at nothing.  Oops. lol


So that leaves a few that I've picked up and started but haven't finished, and I'm probably going to continue to work on these until they're done:

"Shinnston Tornado: Eyewitness Accounts of Nature on the War Path" by John Finlayson
This is one that I've been picking up off and on and reading a little bit at a time for the past year.  It's interesting, but it's also a little weirdly emotional for me because it's about a tornado that went though my grandpa's parents' farm in 1944 when he was about 12.  He and his parents holed up in their house in a room that butted up against the hillside and waited it out.  When it was over, most of their house was gone.  A lot of the farm was destroyed.  Chickens were alive but had had their feathers stripped by the wind, and the livestock somehow were okay.  (He told me recently that one of the biggest blessings when all had been evaluated was that their car had been in town being serviced; otherwise it would have been destroyed too!)  They got very lucky.  A lot of people didn't, and reading about the devastation and destruction that happened all around them is honestly pretty eerie.  It's sad to think about what those people went through, but it makes me so so thankful that my grandpa's family got out the way they did.

Note:  They ended up building a new house across the road from where that one was, and that's where he still lives today.  He, my grandma, dad, and uncle moved back into that house after his mother passed away.  The judge who owned/lived in Adaland Mansion, right up the road, let them live there while they rebuilt their home after the tornado.

"The Foxfire Book" by Eliot Wigginton
I've had books 1-5 for years but never read them.  I decided a couple of weeks ago to try to start them, and they're pretty interesting as far as I've read into the first book.

"Charmed and Enchanted" by Nora Roberts
I liked reading Nora Roberts' books when I was in high school, and I found this one used for like $0.50 at a little store in Darryl's hometown, so I grabbed it while we were there on Fourth of July this year.  It's actually two books in one.  I've finished reading "Charmed" and started "Enchanted".  This is another easy read, so I might have it finished by next week - we'll see.


To follow along with what I'm currently reading, check out the widget to the left of the blog (if you're reading on a computer) to see my Goodreads "Currently Reading" shelf!

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