With two months left to go, here’s where I stand on the challenge. While I do need to make sure I’m choosing books that fit into categories, I am sitting at a pretty good place. Without further ado, here’s my challenge update for the end of October.
1. A Productivity Book – Stop Living on Autopilot by Antonio Neves – completed, UnF*ck Yourself by Gary John Bishop – completed
2. Book Becoming Movie in 2021 – The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz – completed
3. Goodreads Winner in 2020 – The Midnight Library – by Matt Haig – completed
4. Biography
5. About a Pressing Social Issue – The Garden of Burning Sand by Corban Addison – completed, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover – completed
6. A Book About Books – The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson – completed
7. Set in the 1920s – The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell – completed
8. An Author Who Uses Initials – The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab – completed
9. Poetry – New Poems by Rilke – completed
10. A 2020 Bestseller – Anxious People by Fredrik Backman – completed
11. Recommended by a Colleague
12. With a Number in the Title – Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut – completed. One Two Three by Laurie Frankel – completed
13. Bottom of Your To-Read List
14. Reread a Favorite Book
15. Own Voices Story – March by John Lewis – completed
16. Published in the 1800s
17. Local Author – Drifting by Steven Cross – completed
18. Longer Than 400 Pages – The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow – completed
19. A Book Turned Into a TV Series – Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty – completed
20. A Book That Makes You Think – Antkind by Charlie Kaufman – completed, Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi – completed
21. A WWII Story – The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott – completed
22. A Highly Anticipated Book – Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir- completed
23. Eye-Catching Cover – House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland – completed, The Nature of Witches by Rachel Griffin – completed
24. A Summer Read – The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary – completed, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal – completed
25. Coming of Age Story – Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – completed, The Facts of Life and Death by Belinda Bauer – completed
26. Bestselling Memoir – In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado– completed
27. Book Club Favorite – Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix – completed
28. A Book About Friendship – The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery – completed, How Lucky by Will Leitch – completed,Radiant: The Dancer, the Scientist, and a Friendship Forged in Light by Liz Heinecke – completed
29. An Audiobook – Walking With Ghosts: A Memoir by Gabriel Byrne – completed
30. Set in Australia – Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty – currently reading
31. By a Nobel Prize winner
32. About an Immigrant – Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende – completed
33. Time Travel Novel – Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi– completed
34. An Author You Love – The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell – completed
35. Childhood Favorite – Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume – completed
36. Classic Read in High School
37. Borrowed from the Library –Faye, Faraway by Helen Fisher – completed, Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson – completed, The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake – completed
38. Nonfiction New York Times Bestseller – A Promised Land by Barack Obama – completed
39. From an Indie Publisher – The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar – completed
40. Fantasy – The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox – completed
41. A Sequel – The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi – completed
42. Recommended by a Librarian
43. Psychological Thriller – In the Garden of Spite by Camilla Bruce – completed, The Comfort of Monsters by Willa C. Richards – completed, Verity by Colleen Hoover – completed
44. Oprah Winfrey Book Club Pick – The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris- completed
45. A Book About Technology – The Future is Yours by Dan Frey – completed
46. Title with Three Words – Home Before Dark by Riley Sager– completed
47. Debut Novel of Famous Author – The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie – completed
48. Genre You Don’t Usually Read – Code of the Hills: An Ozarks Mystery by Nancy Allen – completed
49. A Book Everyone Is Talking About – American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins – completed.
50. You Own But Haven’t Read
51. Borrowed from a Friend – The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty– completed
52. A 2021 New Release – The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner – completed
Total Books Read: 55. Total categories complete: 42. Books remaining to Read Toward Challenge: 10. In progress: 1
I read this super short book in an afternoon on audio while I cleaned my house. Which is, interestingly enough, something I often need someone screaming motivational phrases in my ear in order to accomplish. How very appropriate was this book, in that case. This is a very simple book. Gary John Bishop, a personal development expert from Glasgow, Scotland, takes off the kid gloves and offers readers a very no-nonsense in-your-face approach to fixing your shitty life. In saying that, he’s really telling you to fix your shitty attitude. Frankly, this is a lesson I need on a pretty much daily basis. 
No matter your taste in books, I could probably recommend a Mary Doria Russell book to you that you would love. 
Since I have not made much progress at all with hard copy books, I’m still working my way through Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty. It’s very engaging, and I wish I’d had more time to devote to it lately, especially since my library copy is due tomorrow. Eek. 
On audio, I have just started The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, a book I’ve been looking forward to picking up for a really long time, ever since I read Miller’s Circe, which I positively adored. I’m really enjoying both of these current reads so far. 
Last week I went to a similar event with Grady Hendrix. Both men were extremely pleasant, gracious, and quite funny despite writing some seriously disturbing stuff. I’m thrilled to have picked up copies of their books and gotten to chat with them a bit while they signed my copies. My review for Jones’ book should be up in the next week, as I’ve tacked it onto the end of my long list of reviews to write. 
What will I read next? 
I have just finished reading the audiobook version of Unf*ck Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life by Gary John Bishop. I will likely write a pretty short review of this one today. It wasn’t exaclty earth-shattering, but it was useful for its intended purpose and I think it was quite a big dose of reality that I needed this week. The other book I finished I will post a more detailed review of. 
It’s Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. To be honest, though a classic, I don’t find Twain as charming as I used to. Maybe it’s my current mood. Not sure, but I’m still going to finish it for the reading challenge. 
If you are a lover of historical fiction, commit the name Nathan Harris to memory, because you will be hearing from him again. Harris is an alumnus of the Michener Center for Writers out of The University of Texas at Austin. While there, Harris spent most of his time focusing on The Sweetness of Water. Let’s face it, novels of the Civil War are common, but only an expert wordsmith can create something so unique and refreshing in a genre flooded with content as to speak to every reader in a deeply personal way. This is surely one of these books. 
A Promised Land is the Presidential memoir of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. Obama was a positively historic President for the US, as he was the first black President to serve as commander in chief in a country whose history is seething with racial strife. His election was a momentous occasion for millions of Americans, and it was especially important for young people of color growing up in a country that previously felt like such a position was out of their reach. He was and still is an extremely polarizing figure, either adored or demonized depending upon which side of the political divide one falls. In reality, any human individual who has ever sat in the seat in which he sat contains flaws, and he is no different. No President has ever made perfect decisions, just as no other flesh and blood person has ever made perfect decisions. The difference is that the President makes decisions in front of the entire nation and the entire world and will be forever judged by those decisions. And will also have to deal with a whole lot of malarkey flung their way, which should just be ignored, as he deftly demonstrates in this book. 
Ten-year-old Ruby Trick lives in the small seaside village of Limeburn in Devon the United Kingdom. She adores her father, the unfortunate John Trick, an out of work and down on his luck lover of all things cowboy, and practically detests her mother, Alison, a woman we readers can quickly glean is much more complicated than Ruby imagines. A masked assailant begins to terrorize the women of Limeburn and his antics quickly turn deadly. When John takes Ruby along on his “posse” to track down the killer, Ruby finds herself facing potentially deadly consequences for herself and her family. 
A Librarian and Her Books 