This past Thursday we saw the last of what the Ghost of Christmas Past had to show us.
Christmas Past! Long past? No, Ebeneezer! Your past! This is your life, Ebeneezer Scrooge, and it kind of hurts.
If you missed the last installment, you can find it here.
We begin the Ghost of Christmas Present this evening around 9 pm East Coast time. Please join Kate on Periscope or on the app. We look forward to seeing you and being haunted by a new ghost!
I’m finally ready to move on from The Lunar Chronicles. I think this is the perfect follow up.
We are big fans of Rick Riordan here at Stacks so we or at least I am since Kate has yet to finish Blood of Olympus (and I will continue to publically shame her until she does, out of love of course). We saw that USA TODAY published the cover to the first book of Rick’s new series The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle. The series is a small spoiler as to what happens to a certain God at the end of the last series but then again, if you know your Greek Mythology then you know that Apollo has a history of pissing off Zeus and that he gets turned into a human. The most exciting part of all of this is that it returns us to Percy Jackson’s world and another trip to Camp Half-Blood. Rick may explore other mythologies like Egyptian in the Kane Chronicles and Norse in his latest Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard but he always seems to come back to Greek mythology and Percy. USA TODAY not only revealed the cover but also publish a short excerpt and it’s pretty clear that Apollo is in for a world of hurt. After ten books from demi-gods point of view, it’s going to be fun to read from a God’s point of view, even if it is one turned human.
Who else is excited to read about Apollo’s adventures? Or who is more excited about more Percy and the gang? Is it May yet?
Beth completed her Book Challenge in mid November. One of the things that is fun about challenges like a book challenge is to stretch yourself. Last year I challenge myself to forty books but I read fifty-three. This year I decided to go for fifty.
I am currently four books behind.
And, now I’m wondering if it’s cheating to pick short books or easy books. I think it might be cheating. But, I’ve got the new Rick Riordan and Carry On by Rainbow Rowell in my queue. I am so excited to read them both (even though I’m not their target audience and are below my reading level)! Of course, if I finished the books on my “currently reading” shelf, I’d be caught up. (One of them is a audiobook and it’s only 4 hours long. That’s 4 sessions at the gym, so I should be able to knock that one out quick…if I make it back to the gym.)
Are you doing a reading challenge this year? How close are you to finishing? How do you catch up when you fall behind?
Full disclosure. Eric Gapstur is a good friend to Kate and I so we are please as punched that his comic Wyatt got picked up by GoComics.com. If you are a fan of superheroes and Calvin and Hobbes then you are going to love Wyatt, his sister Adeline, their father and grandmother. So check it out every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and every other Sunday. Trust us, you will love it.
Source: Wyatt Comic Strip, December 07, 2015 on GoComics.com
The Ghost of Christmas Past arrives! In Tuesday’s installment Scrooge journeys to the past to be reminded of Christmases long forgotten.
If you missed this installment, you can find it here.
And, you can catch tonight’s installment, the last of the Ghost of Christmas past here or on the periscope app!
I started reading this a few years ago and then I stopped for some reason. I recently picked it back up. Its the story of a skateboard obsessed teen with a young mother is messes up and ends up a teen parent himself. In usual Hornby fashion the narrator has an obsession that shapes the narrative and pushes it forward. 16 year old Sam’s obsession with Tony Hawk provides a framework inside which Sam’s life comes together and then spins out of control. Tony Hawk’s memoir apparently has advice for every occasion in it, if Sam is to be believed.
This is an interesting exploration of teen pregnancy that had many likable characters. It was also a pretty quick read. It’s not Hornby’s best work but it was still pretty interesting.
Saturday we continued our reading of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens on periscope. We met Marley’s ghost and had a harrowing little chat about unfinished business. To find out what happens next join us tonight around 9 pm on periscope for the next installment.
You can find the previous installments here if you would like to catch up.
For some crazy reason I thought this was seriously a non-fiction book. It’s not. It builds off of facts of the real case about Elizabeth Short and it adds in a noir-style detective story. Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard are warrants detectives in the LAPD and former boxers. They have a pretty good thing going on as warrants detectives. They’re in with the higher ups and in their spare time they go on re-po jobs and make some extra cash. But, then Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, is found murdered and mutilated in a field on their beat and their story because focused on finding Short’s killer. As they dig deeper into the case, their own secrets start to come out and their professional and personal lives begin to crash. Can they solve Short’s murders? Can they save their own careers?
This was a dark novel but it was well written and I enjoyed it. If you’re interested in period pieces set in the 1940s, detective stories or sensationalized murders, you may want to check this one out.
I checked this book out from the Buffalo and Erie County Public Libraries
Now on to Cress. If you have been following along. You can read my thoughts about my second readings on Cinder and Scarlet there and there. Again *Spoilers*
One more book to go. I probably won’t have as many thoughts about Winter since I did just recently finished it but that doesn’t mean I’m any less excited about it.
2 Women, So Many Books 