Reading, Writing, and Me

I made the decision this year that I wasn't going to review every nonfiction book I read like I do with fiction. The reviews just don't come us naturally to me, and it's usually more trouble than its worth to figure out how to adjust my review formula to the nature of nonfiction. This year, I did replace a lot of my podcast consumption with nonfiction audiobooks, though, so I read a staggering number of them, and I thought it would be fun to make this list to give a bit of insight into the other half of my reading life.  The books suggested on this list are the ones I remember enjoying most. While I did leave ratings for them in my spreadsheet, without my detailed reviews to look back on, this list required a lot of reaching back in my memory. I have a few I actually reviewed on the blog that I will link on their titles. Otherwise, I'll share the official Goodreads summaries. These were engaging, fun to listen to, and had me wanting to play the audiobook any time I was

The Bee Sting  by Paul Murray Overview: The Barnes family is full of secrets. It might not seem that way on the surface as they appear to be a quintessential, small town, Irish family – husband, wife, daughter, son. But that sheen of normality is challenged as the 2008 recession settles in for the long haul and the family business's downturn brings to life issues that had long been stuffed down. With every family member not quite trusting the others, there is an intense web to unravel to reunite the Barnes family again. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 This is a multi-POV book, so you get to know each family member quite well. There's a slow drip of their complexity as the book opens with each of the children narrating a large chunk. You get to know them and the rules of the town and the realities of their parents through their eyes. It's interesting to start with the stories of the past that were sanitized and filtered down to them and then slowly, through the rest of the book, fi

It's not quite the end of the year, but it's getting close, which means that we're well into list season. While I'm hoping to get a few more books in before the end of the year, I figured I'd put this list out early in case you need last minute gift ideas for the people in your life. Your local bookstore is a great place to pick up gifts when you're out of the shipping window!  I've done way more reading this year than I have in recent memory (almost the whole time I've been tracking my reading) While more details on that will be in my stats post in about a week, I'm currently working on finishing my 120th book of the year, which is wild to think about considering I haven't made it to 50 books in recent years. That's given me plenty of books to assemble this list from (which might be why this isn't a true list of ten), and there are still a few books I can't believe didn't make it as I'm editing this post. There were so many g