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The Ds!

...well, sort of.

I do have three more C books on the list. One doesn't come out until June, one doesn't come out until next year, and one wasn't available at my library. Since my husband and I are moving to a new state in 12 days, checking out new books is just going to have to wait.

Which means the Ds are on hold, too. I grabbed a handful of books from a used bookstore to keep me busy in the meantime, but until we're settled on the other side of this move (aka, have a new address that will allow us to get library cards), this challenge will have to wait.

Unless I can find any of the D books online. That's a possibility. I'll keep you posted!

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Cloud

In the last few years, I heard Dr. Henry Cloud referenced a lot. Specifically, his book Boundaries. I decided to read it (plus we had a copy that my parents gave us) and it was, quite simply, life-changing. I immediately understood why certain things in my life were the way they were and set about working on boundaries. I also made my husband read the book, then I made a friend read the book, and I imagine I'll pass it around to many other people before my time is done.

Everyone should read it, really...along with The Five Love Languages and The War of Art, but that's for another post.

Anyway, we told my in-laws about the book and they immediately said, "Oh, we didn't read Boundaries, but we did read his book Boundaries in Marriage." Since my husband and I weren't aware that Dr. Cloud had more boundaries books published, and since I'm conveniently on the Cs for this book challenge anyway, I got to it.

It took me longer to read Boundaries in Marriage because it didn't have as much new information as Boundaries. In fact, a lot of the marriage version is recapping the first book. That's okay, though. It still had a lot of good information, even if it wasn't as life-changing as Boundaries. I'd recommend it for any married couple, though perhaps not as strongly as I'd recommend Boundaries for anyone, you know, alive.

I'll probably check out some of Dr. Cloud's other books someday!

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Cruze

I work as a Dave Ramsey financial coach and Financial Peace University teacher, but I hadn't heard of him until I was already an adult. My Dad went through FPU with me when I was about 20. Back then, the videos were already starting to get old. Case in point, in one of the lessons, Dave Ramsey's daughter, Rachel, did a little schpeal. She was a teenager at the time.

As Ramsey Solutions grew, Rachel's role became more prominent. She became one of the Ramsey personalities and has her own podcast shows now. I didn't explore her stuff too much at first. In my head, she was still Dave's teenage daughter (although she's not much older than I am, actually). However, as I went deeper into the Ramsey universe (ha!) it was impossible not to notice Rachel since she is one of the more prominent figures with the company now.

Her name is now Rachel Cruze. As I've listened to the show over the years, I've really come to respect her a lot. She doesn't just regurgitate information that Dave comes up with. Rachel is absolutely her own person and brings a lot of insight into personal finance, especially how money relates to marriage. She wrote a book years ago called Know Yourself, Know Your Money. I hadn't read any of her books, but that one comes up a lot in the personal finance world, so I finally checked it out.

About four chapters in, I had to stop and start taking notes because there were so many things I wanted to talk to my husband about. It was awesome! She brought up many things that I'd never considered but probably should have. There were also a lot of points that I probably know about my husband and myself, but we've never necessarily discussed, specifically. I did finish the book (and I have a page of notes for "things to talk to my husband about"). Luckily, I'm married to a generous man, so we're going to listen to the audiobook together on our next road trip so we can go over all the things I want to discuss with him. I can't wait!

The second half of the book was pretty much just a recap of the Baby Steps, which is what Dave Ramsey is known for, so I didn't get as much out of that. However, I'd still recommend the book for married couples new to discussing finance together.

Thanks, Rachel!

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Choo

I like reading Asian literature sometimes because my siblings lived in Asia for several years. I thought The Ghost Bride, by Yangsze Choo, sounded interesting because it revolves heavily around a not-common part of Asian culture: ghost marriages. The concept is that a living person is "married" to someone who is no longer living as a way of appeasing the spirit of the dead soul.

This is not at all popular, and it was never a huge practice to begin with. You'd have to really dig to find a real-life example of a ghost marriage. However, the whole spirits affecting the living/ancestral guilt/etc. is very common in Asia and while my siblings lived there I saw a lot of this. That's why I wanted to read the book.

I'd give it a solid middling grade. The story was engaging and the writing was good. I struggled a little because there wasn't much resolution. The ending felt like a little bit of a cop out and I was left with more questions than answers. However, the book was clearly not set up for a sequel. So, I guess I just won't get the answers.

Anyway, if you're interested in Asian culture and you like fantasy novels, you should check this out. If your interests tend to default elsewhere, you can skip it.

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Cunningham

Michael Cunningham was recently featured in Writer's Digest. The only thing I knew about him prior to reading the article was that he was a Pulitzer Prize winner.

The article discussed his latest novel, Day. It's a story about a family and how their lives changed after the COVID-19 pandemic. The first portion of the story is told on April 5, 2019. The second is April 5, 2020, and the third is of course April 5, 2021. I've been wanting to get into "lockdown literature" (not actually what it's called, just what I call it in my head) for a while. It's a whole new subgenre that is only just now starting to make appearances on bookshelves.

Anyway, I started with Day.

The struggle I have with most realistic fiction I read is how sad it is. It seems like, in my experience, the conflict in these stories comes from characters who are dissatisfied with their lives. I refuse to believe that's how people "just are." I refuse to believe that people get married and always, inevitably, regret it later. I refuse to believe that people secretly hate one another, always, all the time.

I know there are a lot of sad stories out there. I have a few of my own. And I'll be the first to admit that I love to read a good tragedy. But when realistic fiction feels like nothing more than one long, depressing complaint, I struggle.

In his defense, I'll say that Michael Cunningham is a great writer. I think he did a good job with his characterizations. It just wasn't the story for me.

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Coben

I thought Tell No One, by Harlan Coben, sounded very interesting when I first came across the description. It's about a man who lost his wife eight years prior, only to receive a message that might be from her. He thought she was dead, but now he's wondering if she really is.

It was a pretty quick read. To tell you the truth, though, I was disappointed in it. I tend not to read crime novels because I find them very hard to believe, and this was no exception. Coben's a great writer--I was totally engaged the whole time--but I just didn't like the story. Which I feel bad about, because I respect the book as something he put a lot of work into, and it honestly wasn't dreadful. It just wasn't for me.

I'm surprising myself with how many books on my Want to Read list end up being crime books. Maybe I need a more sophisticated screening process, haha!

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Cashore

Kristin Cashore wrote Fire and Graceling, which are two of my favorite books in the whole world. I've read them each half a dozen times and I fully expect to read them both a dozen more. I've read nearly everything she's published, so I took the opportunity of this book challenge to tackle the one I hadn't read, which is Jane, Unlimited.

I had some trepidation because no one seems to really explain what the book is about. It's described as a "genre-defying novel" and the synopsis on the back of the book is super vague. Since it's Cashore I trusted that it would be well-written (it was), but it's hard to jump into a novel without knowing a thing about the plot.

Anyway, it took me a while to get into this book. The exposition was fine but slightly hard to believe, which made me think it might become a fantasy novel or a science fiction novel.

What actually happened is this:

A girl is invited by her rich friend to go to the rich friend's family estate for a while. She meets the residents of the house and the servants and forms impressions of people.

Easy enough to follow, sure. Except you get partway into this exposition and then the book basically switches to a Choose Your Own Adventure novel (and you know how I feel about those).

The main character (Jane) is faced with a choice partway through the beginning. The book then branches into five different options for the story based on which choice she makes. One of the options makes the story feel like a realistic fiction novel, one is closer to horror, one is a crime drama, one is science fiction, and one is fantasy.

As such, I can see why it's called a genre-defying novel.

My struggle was that none of the five plots had any resolution, really, except the last one I guess. They were all very distinct, which was great, but every time a new plot rolled over it was hard to keep track of who knew what.

So, while I do think it was well-written and Cashore is still one of my favorite writers, I don't see myself reading this one again.

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Crowley

Last week I read Words in Deep Blue, by Cath Crowley. I don't recall where I first learned of this book.

It's set in Australia (I'm pretty sure, anyway) and it's about two friends. One of them falls in love with the other and has to wait for the friend to 1. realize it and 2. reciprocate or not. Very basic, but sweet.

I was surprised at how much I liked it, actually. I really loved Crowley's writing style--I want to check out more of her books. I read Words in Deep Blue quickly because it was so engaging (and I had to get it back to the library), but several times, I considered putting it on my Books to Buy list. I want to read it again and see if it holds up a second time. If it does, I'm buying it!

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The Cs

We're moving through this challenge about at the pace I expected, though honestly it feels unbearably slow to me. That could be because it takes me longer to read new books, and this time around...well, they're all new books!

Anyway, we're done with the Bs and on to the Cs. We have a pretty diverse collection for the Cs, including at least one nonfiction book, three realistic fiction books, a book that includes writing about the 2020 shutdown, and two young adult novels. Should be fun!

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Byrne

My older sister recommended The Gatekeeper, by James Byrne, to me. I'm not sure where she first learned of it because it's part crime novel and part conspiracy novel, which is not her usual style at all.

However, she started reading it and thought it was written in such a way that was both engaging and hilarious, so she recommended it to her husband and then to me. I also do not normally read crime novels, but she knows me pretty well and knows that I enjoy good writing, so it seemed a safe bet.

Totally correct. It was very funny and entertaining. It wasn't really "laugh-out-loud-until-your-sides-hurt" funny, but there's a degree of sarcasm and deadpan dialogue that really adds a lot to the story. I'd be shocked if James Byrne doesn't become more popular in the next year or two given how well he wrote this debut novel.

I'm not sure I'll read any subsequent novels in this series because the first one was pretty self-contained and I can only take so much conspiracy at a time, but I'd absolutely read this again in the future. Thanks, sis!

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Black

I'm a big fan of Holly Black.

It's ironic, because I wasn't at first. I tried twice to read her first novel, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, and both times I just couldn't get into it. I sort of wrote her off for a while after that.

Fast-forward a few years. I was babysitting and the kids wanted to watch "The Spiderwick Chronicles." It was a super cute movie and I learned it was based on a collection of books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. I read them and thought they were pretty fun.

I then stumbled upon White Cat, which I still own (and, at the time, I didn't realize it was written by Holly Black because the edition I have just says "Black" for the author on the cover). I loved it. I realized that Black wrote more than just fairy stories and decided to check out some of her other works.

So far, with the exception of her original trilogy, I've liked everything of hers I've read. When Book of Night came out in 2022 I really wanted to read it because it's her first adult fiction novel (everything else she's written has been for children or teens). Now, sometimes authors go crazy with switching audiences ("I'm not writing for 10-year-olds anymore? Cool, I'll put a sexual reference or scene in every chapter!") and that drives me crazy. I'm always a little nervous when an author goes from one age group to another in their writing. Most of the time it works, but you just never know.

Anyway, I was halfway through my prior book challenge in 2022 so I didn't grab Book of Night when it came out. Since we're on the Bs, I started it last week.

And promptly stopped about eight chapters in.

It's not what you think, though: the book is great. I can see a lot of potential, and it's an interesting concept (about shadow manipulators and how that changes people's personalities). But I realized, those few chapters in, that I was likely to get hooked on the book and then be devastated when I had to wait another year or two for the sequel to come out.

Black really sucks you in to her stories, so honestly, I think I'm better off to wait until the whole series is out (no idea how many books she's planning) before I get started. That way, I don't have the agony of waiting in between books.

Yeah. I'm a coward.

And impatient.

So this book stays on the Want to Read list for a while!

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Bauermeister

I know nothing about Erica Bauermeister, except that she's beautiful (at least, her author photo is stunning) and I can't recall where I first heard of The Scent Keeper. It caught my attention because I love books that focus on a sense or the senses. I admit that I'm biased, but I do think I focus more on the five senses than most people. I don't know if that's because I'm a writer or for another reason. But I love to try and piece together someone's story from the way they smell, what kind of foods they like, how touchy they are, what they listen to, what their favorite colors are. It's like a game, sometimes.

I think about the senses in my own life, too. Sometimes when it's dark I like to just sit quietly and think about what I hear. I often close my eyes when I'm trying a new food. My family jokes that I eat so slowly because I'm savoring, but I honestly am. I like that food has different textures and tastes.

And smells! Don't get me started on scents.

Anyway, that's why I thought The Scent Keeper sounded worth reading. It's about a girl who lives on an island with her father. He keeps scents in glass bottles in their cabin and a few times a year, pulls out a machine that can create scents.

I wasn't sure if this book was going to be a fantasy novel or not--you never know--but I wanted to know where the machine came from, and why the girl lived with her father in a cabin, and what kinds of scents he kept for them.

The book was not what I expected. It was so much better. I wouldn't call it a happy read, per se, but I love the way Erica Bauermeister wrote this. I loved the story, and its ending. There were terrible moments and there were wonderful moments, and I felt it was everything a story ought to be: engaging, relatable, beautiful. As soon as I finished it, I wanted to read it again. For the first time in a long time, a book made it onto my Books to Buy list.

I can't wait to read it a second time!

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Benjamin

The only thing I know about Chloe Benjamin is that she wrote a book called The Immortalists. It was featured in a magazine I read and I thought it sounded interesting, which is why I read the novel this week.

The book tells the story of four siblings. As children, they go see a fortune-teller who reveals the day they will each die. The four kids keep the dates to themselves. The novel itself is about how the information they each received changed their lives and caused them to live the way they did.

For example (spoiler alert), one of the siblings is told that he will die very young. Fine, he decides. Then he'll live hard and fast. He does, and as such, he does die young. The question is, did he die young because that's what the fortune-teller said, or was it because he lived hard and fast and thusly was in a situation to die sooner than other people?

We'll never know, but this is the question asked throughout the book. It's broken into four parts, one for each of the siblings.

I enjoyed two of them. One of them just made me sad. One of them had so much adult content that I almost didn't make it through. But overall, the book itself was sweet and was really, when it comes down to it, about family.

I'd probably read this again years from now, but it's not a book I'm going to buy. Still, I appreciated the story and thought Chloe did a great job not having all four siblings sound the same.

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Berendt

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt, is a pretty famous book. This was Berendt's first book. It had an initial printing of 25,000 copies but stayed on the New York Times Best-Seller list for 216 weeks. To this day, it's still one of the longest-standing NYT best-sellers.

Two years after the book came out, the city of Savannah had a 46% increase in tourism. Twenty years later, the tourism escalated to $2.2 billion in revenue.

The cover, which is an image of the Bird Girl statue, immediately became so iconic after the book's publication that the statue had to be moved to a museum in order to preserve the cemetery where it was originally located.

Beyond the financial and pop culture legacies of the book, it had a big impact on the literary world as well. This is often credited as being the first non-fiction novel--terms that are generally at odds, since "novels" are usually fiction by default.

Obviously, I had to read it.

It's called a non-fiction novel because the story is almost completely true. This is a factual retelling of Jim William's story. He was the first man in Georgia to be tried for the same murder four times. He also is connected to Mercer House, which he owned, which is a famous place in Savannah. In fact, they filmed scenes of Glory there (which is also covered in the book, since it happened while the Jim Williams trials were going on).

The reason it's considered a non-fiction novel is because Berendt created a narrator who's telling the story as though he actually saw the events. Some of that is true, because Berendt did truly speak with many of the real-life characters featured. He just wasn't as present as the narrator in the story. As such, though it's a very true tale, it's written like a novel. Thus, you get a non-fiction novel.

It took me longer to read than I expected. The first half is mostly exposition and backstory. In order to understand the trials, and the people involved, you do have to have an understanding of Savannah culture and society. The first half of the book read, to me, almost like a travel piece or a textbook on Savannah. It wasn't that it wasn't interesting, but it was very dry, so I struggled to wade through that.

The second half went much faster. The trials actually didn't take up that much of the story, but I appreciated how in-depth Berendt went with all of the events surrounding the trial.

I doubt I'd read this again, but honestly, it was fantastic. Highly recommend for anyone interested in history, learning about the culture in Georgia, or who enjoys a crime story.

The book was so instantly popular that a movie was made very shortly after the book came out. I haven't seen it, but I want to. The fun thing is that many of the characters actually played themselves!

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Bulgakov

Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita as a satirical dark comedy that uses supernatural elements to basically comment on the Soviet Union's atheism. A summary, borrowed from the internet:

The devil, manifested as Professor Woland, challenges the Soviet citizens' beliefs toward religion and condemns their behavior throughout the book.

It's very famous as a satire (and as one of the best novels of the 20th century--it's been on several "best of" lists). I wanted to read it because I'd heard of it a few times throughout graduate school and just never got around to reading it myself.

It's an interesting novel because, to be honest, I'm not totally sure why it's called The Master and Margarita. The Master is one of the central characters, and so is Margarita, but we don't even meet them until halfway through the book.

As far as the satire goes, I did love the writing. It was definitely funny and I appreciate the way Bulgakov was clearly trying to make people think hard about what they believe and why. All told, I might read this again someday. Probably not for decades, but someday.

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Brandes

My older sister recommended Fawkes, by Nadine Brandes, which was conveniently timed to work out since I'm on the Bs anyway.

The book is a fantasy retelling of the Gunpowder Plot. It's partly historical fiction and partly fantasy (there's magic in this world), and Brandes did a good job blending the genres.

The book confused me a little at first. I actually looked it up to see if it was self-published, because many of the writing elements didn't work with the story. For example, this is set in the 1600s, but the language used doesn't match. I don't think they described things as "totally awesome" in the 1600s :)

Brandes certainly did her research before writing this book. She kept character names accurate with the real Gunpowder Plot and maintained several parts of the Plot itself. I do appreciate how well she kept the historical facts correct (well, as correct as they could be while incorporating fantasy). I was worried she'd remove Guy Fawkes's death, but she kept it and even kept the story of it true (the fact that he fell off the executioner's ladder before he could be killed). The magical system that she built was also interesting to me.

Ultimately, the book was allegorical for religious conflict, and sometimes it was a little more on the nose than I prefer an allegory to be. Still, it was entertaining!

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"I used to read it to my boys when their granny died. I don't know if you've read it. You probably have." Elsa shakes her head and holds the book tightly. "No," she lies. Because she's polite enough to know that if someone gives you a book, you owe that person the pretense that you haven't read it.

~My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, page 212