Must Reads 2016

Last year, in an attempt to avoid having to pick my favorite books from the year for one of the "Best of" things, I created the Must Read shelf. Basically, I don't want to have to pick! Thusly and therefore, throughout the year, I have added books as I read them that I think are really worth reading or recommending for some reason. (Ignore the fact that I came up with categories and best of books for a series of twitter posts. No one asked you to point out my inconsistencies and no one likes a smarty pants.)

For 2015, there were enough books across both YA and non-YA categories for two separate posts. This year, though, most of the books I thought were Must Reads were YA and there were only about 20 in total. I actually may have read mostly YA this year, to be honest. But let's not quibble over facts! What did I say about being a smarty pants!? 

Because I tend to do reviews as often as possible for books that I really like, many of these have full reviews floating around this blog somewhere. Even for those without full review posts, I probably did a related outbox post so feel free to look around if you want to see what I had to say about these gems.

 Without further ado, here are the 2016 Must Reads!!

As Told by Tina - Why I’m Not Doing the Goodreads Challenge In 2017 (Guest Post)

Hi! My name is Tina and I blog over at As Told By Tina. First, I would like to thank Kenya for having me on her blog today.

Today, I am going to talk to you about why I’m not doing the goodreads challenge for 2017 and how I plan on tracking my reading in 2017.

I’ve thought hard and long about what my goal should be for 2017 when it comes to the goodreads challenge. For the past two years my goal has been 150 and both years I didn’t make it. I was reading really short books in order to attempt to make my goal and most of the time this lead to me being in a reading slump. It also made me feel like a lot of pressure to meet my number. It was taking time away from my family because I was so focused on trying to reach this reading goal I set for myself.

Reading Challenges - Update for Short Challenges

Here's a post of all the Reading Challenges I'm doing for 2016. This current post is just an update on the ones that have a time limit. 

Tower Teams IV: Tower Teams is OVER! A winner was crowned yesterday (1/24/2016).  For those who don't know, The Tower Teams challenges are hosted/ organized through Novel Books and Reading Challenges group on Goodreads. The goal is for a team to get to 25,000 points, gathered by reading books that fit in certain categories or criteria.

Our team came in 4th for most improved, whatever that means, and 14th (which was the middle) for the overall point score. It was a lot of fun and super challenging to keep up with all the activity in the group. The challenge is full of mini-challenges and Book of the Month participation. It was crazy. I had originally volunteered as team co-captain but had to step down because I had no idea what was going on. 

Because there were so many categories and you get points based on the number of pages you read, regardless, I just focused on reading the books I wanted to read and they almost always counted towards something. This must have been an okay strategy, because I basically came in second within the group. We had one chick we was a rock star. For example, I read 46 books as part of the challenge (tied with two other teammates). The Super Star read 75 books. I also read the second highest number of pages and got the second highest number of total points. It was a totally fun reading group and I might participate in another one.

14n4 - This is the Facebook Challenge group that I "run." It's a challenge to read 14 books in 4 months. January is the third month, so February is the last month to finish all the categories. I've got 4 books to go to complete the challenge I think, because I FAILED to read the book club book that would have counted as my Memoir book. I also have left: a book with Fall or Winter in the title and a microhistory. I refuse to read that one about Salt. I CANNOT!

Book Review: The Diviners by Libba Bray

This book was published in 2012 but it kind of feels like one of those "classic" books, already. Why, though? I think that it's because it has been on so many different must read lists and it gives you them sense that everyone has read this already. Maybe it's just my own fear of missing out... but, anywhooo...  

The Goodreads Summary:

Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult.

Evie worries he’ll discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.

As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps. A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds. A chorus girl named Theta is running from her past. A student named Jericho hides a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened.

My Thoughts:
I guess my first thought was about how fricking big this beast of a book is. But I got over that because of how annoying the main character is. Evie is a flapper in the 20's. She's a member of the primary counter- culture for young women in her time and she faces it head on, drinking, smoking, showing a little too much leg, and basically sassing every adult who's responsible for her.

I'm all for that but she's inconsiderate of her friends and puts people in danger too often. I'm too old to think that's cool, I think. Her friends know she's selfish but also know that she's got a heart of gold, or she thinks she does, anyway. We know pretty quickly that Evie is able to read people's secrets from their regular every day objects. She's too reckless to learn from her mistakes and keep her trap shut about this superpower, like other people are able to.

Many of the other characters have some kind of supernatural ability and almost all of them have gotten into some kind of trouble as a result. This is a world where magic exists, but people really don't talk about it. Something big is brewing that is pulling "magical" people to New York. Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's a coincidence that all these people end up in the same city and begin to cross paths. This book is obviously the setup for a much bigger story. There are more characters than you need, more repetition than is necessary, and really about 300 pages too many for this not to be leading somewhere. There's really A LOT going on in this book: religious cults, murder, cyborgs, occultism, grave robbery, and speakeasies. There's a mystical murder mystery happening while we are introduced to and have flashbacks for almost completely unrelated characters. For example, if you take out all scenes with Theta and Memphis (and fam) who seem like main characters, you wouldn't miss any of the main story line. While my favorite characters in the story so far really have very little to do with this book, I'm looking forward to spending more time with them in the novels to come. The Diviners must be getting together for something, right? Maybe the murder mystery thing was just the "monster of the episode." 

Don't get my wrong. I enjoyed this book. It's nestled firmly between a 3.75 and a 4.25 stars out of the usual 5 point scale. The characters are diverse with interesting back-stories. I like the tone of the book and the fun '20s lingo. The pace was good, even when tangential. The emotional experience of the book is spot on and you definitely get the heebie jeebies at all the right spots. There are two potential love triangles that have utter disdain and complete anticipation for, not to mention the inter-racial relationship that is sure to cause more tension. The whole political (with both racial and sexual bits), religious, sexual, and roaring 1920's backdrop is actually a strong point of the book. Importantly, these elements are part of the story and don't feel contrived as book-selling fodder. 

The sequel, Lair of Dreams, dropped in August 2015 so I'll probably read that soon. Goodreads ratings suggest the story continues strong. But I've kind of had enough of Evie for right this minute.

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My Reading Challenges for 2016

Book challenges are kind of a new thing for me. I'm not totally sure how I feel about them, yet, but I know that they do help me read a book or two outside of my usual go-to genres. I guess that's important? Of course, I tend to join book challenges that fit with my usual go-to genres but let us pretend that I'm making sense, shall we. It does work, sometimes. I never would have read the Stiff micro-history if it wasn't for the Read Harder Challenge this year. That turned out to be one of my top books of the year. YAY, book challenges! 

For 2015, I didn't really have a Reading Challenge plan at the beginning of the year. For 2016, I've decided to pick a few things ahead of time. We will see how it goes. I'm pretty good at doing that thing where you sign up for everything but then get too bogged down to really do anything. I also don't want reading to start feeling like a chore. If it starts to be a pain in the butt, then I will totally just abandon ship on the whole idea. 

My Must Reads 2015 - Adult Edition

Basically, I've given up on trying to pick my favorite 10 books. It seems like an overwhelming task. I think it would be easier for me to pick my favorite 10 people. So, I decided to go a bit of a different way with it. I have a Must Reads shelf on Goodreads. I shelve books as Must reads when I love them, obviously, but if it was just that, it would be a complete overlap with my 5-star books, right? Must reads are also books that I think are good books for recommending to people, avid readers and light readers alike. Of course, there may still be some "specialty" interests to consider or avoid when making recommendations, but whatever. These are the Adult books I added to my Must Read shelf in 2015 (including the last week of December in 2014).

I'd like to go on record to say that I am often annoyed by the YA/ Non-YA split even when I agree it's completely appropriate, and I have split up my posts just to make things easier on myself. There are a couple of books below that might be considered YA based on the main character being young and the action or whatever. However, something about the book makes me think it's better for older audiences. Queen of the Tearling is an example.

I'd say A Tale for the Time Being, A Replacement Life, Stiff, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Kindred, and We are All Completely Beside Ourselves are the books that have stayed with me the most and I've continued to talk about and recommend them in different situations and with lots of different people. 

I mentioned some of these books mentioned in mini-review and/or Outbox posts, rather than in reviews of their own, which I've only really been doing for the last two months. But here are links to the ones that I did review posts for:

• The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
• The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley  
• The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman  
• Mr. Penumbra's 24- Hour Book Store 

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