Discussion Challenge: 20 Books for January

 

This may not surprise most of you who already read by blog regularly. Yes, I get a lot each month, so I was not surprised myself 🙂 Sorry, not trying to brag here 🙂

This was how my year in reading began for 2024.

I often try to listen to short audiobooks and read short e-books each month, and do so on the first days of each month, if possible. The shorter they are, the shorter time it takes to complete them and less extra time staring at screens. Exactly why I prefer physical books.

I don't want to have to name each book for each month, but I'd like to say that there are a few new authors I've read in the last month and year, something I may talk about more in another post.

February Bookish Bingo

 Here is the new card.

My Books:

1. This Wound is a World--Billy-Ray Belcourt (1 square): Audiobook
2. The Art of Costuming--Ruth E. Carter (4 squares): E-Book, Short Book, Puzzles/Games, Free Book
3. Behold the Dreamers--Imbolo Mbue (4 squares): Physical Book, Not in a Series, Book Club Read, Free Space
4. Watership Down--Richard Adams (4 squares): Shelf Love, Animals as Characters, In a Series, Multiple Realms/Dimensions
5. Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous--Suzanne Park (1 square): Book Boyfriend
6. Never Cry Werewolf--Heather Davis (4 squares): Library Book, Retelling, Demon/Monster, Curse
7. Red Queen--Victoria Aveyard (4 squares): Color in the Title, Royalty, Reluctant Heroine, Witch/Wizard
8. Death by Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake--Sarah Graves (1 square): Amateur Sleuth
9. Happy Place--Emily Henry (1 square): Pink on the Cover 
10. The Spanish Love Deception--Elena Armas (1 square): Spicy

 

25 squares completed on February 25

Groundhog Day Humor

Some new ones and some from last year.

2024 Book Blog Discussion Challenge

I'm going to do something new this year. I'd known about this blogging challenge for years, but never considered joining until now. I've have reading others' posts to get some ideas on how to do it.  Since I'm new to this, I will aim for the first level, going over if possible. The graphic below will be displayed on my posts. See the details below.

Welcome to the 2024 Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight! This challenge has been going on for nine years now, and we’re excited to keep discussing books with you!

So often, we book bloggers mean to post more discussions on our blogs, but we just don’t quite get around to it. Well, we wanted to give everyone a little motivation to keep the discussions going, plus give us a place to link up our discussions so that more people will see our precious words of wisdom (or … you know … our GIF-filled rants).

We hope you’ll join us for this challenge and pledge yourself to posting more discussions in this upcoming year. I promise we’ll have lots of fun talking together! We’ve found that the Discussion Challenge is its own little community

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Here’s All You Have to Do:

• Create a sign-up post announcing your intention to participate and link up below. There’s no need to say what your discussion posts will be about–just tell us you’re joining and let us know your goal. (Can be in an update post or a post with other challenges–you’re not required to make a completely separate sign-up post.)
• Please link back to both challenge hosts and include the challenge button in your sign-up posts. Feel free to also link back in your actual discussions (we appreciate it, so more people can find us!), but that’s not required.
• The challenge runs from January 1st until December 31st, 2023. Sign-ups will remain open through December 28th, 2023.So, you can basically sign up all year long. Come join us!
• Share it! The more people we get to participate in this, the more awesome discussions we can all be a part of and the more fun it will be! So, invite your friends to join us!
• On the 1st of every month, a link-up will go up on both Feed Your Fiction Addiction and It Starts at Midnight where you’ll leave your links for that month’s discussions. Every month, I’ll update the Discussion Challenge widget in the sidebar with the new post–so you’ll always know where to find the latest link-up!
• There will also be a big yearly giveaway–multiple winners for multiple things!–so do keep entering and checking back!
• Use the hashtag #LetsDiscuss2023 to share your progress and connect with other participants on Twitter.
• Have questions? Feel free to ask in the comments!

What Kinds of Discussions Can You Link Up?

Discussions can be about whatever you want as long as it’s relevant to books or book blogging! We’re pretty lax about what can be called a “discussion,” but here are some guidelines:

• We reserve the right to remove posts from the link-up at our discretion. Posts that we feel promote hate or denigrate others will be removed.
• Please don’t link up discussions about things that are completely off-topic, like travel or fashion, etc.
• Please don’t link up month-end wrap-ups (We have the Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up for that, and we’d love to have you join in!)—unless you have a very specific book-related discussion topic that you include in your wrap-up!
• Please don’t link up book reviews unless it’s more of a general discussion about a topic and you’re using a specific book as an example.
• Please don’t link up giveaways unless the post is mostly a discussion that just happens to have a giveaway attached (like if you were talking about the reasons you love audiobooks and you decide to do a giveaway of an audiobook at the end).
• Linking up Top Ten Tuesday posts or other meme posts are fine as long as there’s some actual discussion involved (not just a list of books). Same with tags—they’re fine, but we’d prefer if there’s some discussion involved of why you chose the books, not just a list of books that go with the tag topic.
• A post can be about you personally if it’s a get-to-know-you type post. (We love getting to know our fellow bloggers!)

Hopefully this doesn’t make us seem like the Discussion Police—we just want to try to keep the link-ups discussion-focused since there are already a lot of places to link up those other types of posts. (And remember that we always err on the side of being flexible.)  

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The Levels:

1-10 – Discussion Dabbler  ⬅️ My Goal
11-20 – Creative Conversationalist
21-30 – Chatty Kathy
31-40 – Terrifically Talkative
41+ – Gift of the Gab

Picture Prompt Book Bingo Challenge 2024

I was sure I was done signing up for challenges, but got tempted by this one. I had known about it since last month when I posted it to a Facebook group for collecting reading challenges (for which I am a moderator). But after seeing two other bloggers sign up for this one, I decided to give it a go. It seems really fun and easy. 

HOW DOES IT WORK?

If you’re new to the Picture Prompt Bingo – it’s a loosey goosey reading challenge in which you match books that you’ve read to one of the pictures on the bingo card. The key thing being that you can be as creative in your interpretation of the picture as you like.

For example, take the majestic snail in the top right corner: this could suggest to you a book that was a slow read, or a story about a character with no fixed abode; you may read something that has a snail on the cover, or the word ‘snail’ in the title; perhaps you’ll read a book about a small, overlooked lifeform or one with which communication doesn’t appear to be possible. As long as you’re happy with the connection you make between the book and the image, it’s all good.

1. A heeled shoe decorated with a bow: Bluebeard--Kurt Vonnegut
2. A microscope: Euphoria--Lily King
3. A partially unrolled scroll and a pen: Persian Letters--Montesquieu
4. A land snail: The Fiery Cross--Diana Gabaldon (Slow read--over 1400 pages)
5. An old Roman coin: The Clue of the Gold Coin--Helen Wells
6. A fern plant: Plants vs. Zombies Volume 1--Paul Tobin
7. A simple crown: Red Queen--Victoria Aveyard
8. An armillary sphere: Jade War--Fonda Lee
9. A seashell: The Summer Getaway--Susan Mallery
10. A cannon on a gun carriage: Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker--Jennifer Chiaverini
11. A harp (one of the big ones): XOXO--Axie Oh
12. Two hands making a shadow puppet dog: Never Cry Werewolf--Heather Davis
13. An old camera and tripod: Songs of Willow Frost--Jamie Ford
14. A dog (a very good doggo): Lone Wolf--Kathryn Lasky
15. A beehive (with four bees flying around it): World of Wonders--Aimee Nezhukumatathil
16. Fluffy cumulonimbus clouds: Thunderstruck--Erik Larson

Challenge completed on October 12

Diversify Your Reading 2024

It looked as if this one wasn't going to happen this year, as it ddi not appear on the website where it had been hosted. However, I just now found it on Instagram. A little late finding it, but I wanted to do it.

JAN: Summer Secrets--Jane Green

FEB: The Spanish Love Deception--Elena Armas

MARCH: Love is an Ex-Country--Randa Jarrar

APRIL: How to See--Thich Nhat Hanh

MAY: Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker--Jennifer Chiaverini

JUNE: Thunderstruck--Erik Larson

JULY: When We Believed in Mermaids--Barbara O'Neal   

AUG: Emily Windsnap and the Monster From the Deep--Liz Kessler

SEPT: The Music Shop--Rachel Joyce

OCT: Jade War--Fonda Lee

NOV: The Sentence--Louise Erdrich

DEC: Last Call--Elon Green

Challenge completed on December 7

My Year in Books

This year I found a different website, that like Goodreads, also gives you a year in books: myyearinbooks.com. I found it through this blog post. You just have to submit the link to your Goodreads profile/shelf and it'll gather all the info for you. Let's see what it can tell me about my 2023 reading year... 

jamie ghione's year in books

Welcome to your year in books, Jamie Ghione! What a year it's been, full of highs and lows and—of course—great books.

Now, let's dive into what you read this year!

You read 261 books in 2023, which adds up to 73,874 pages and about 125,586 minutes. Wow!

Your top genres/categories:

• You knew art mimics life (and life mimics art!)—you read 82 contemporary novels, all set in today's world with today's many challenges.

• You fell head over heels for romance, with 73 books read.

• Adolescence is a tumultuous, challenging time, and you welcomed that complexity through reading 48 young adult books.

Your top author this year was Debbie Macomber. You read 4 books by this author, making you in the top 5% of fans (maybe?). These books include:

• Dear Santa

• 50 Harbor Street (Cedar Cove)

• 1022 Evergreen Place (Cedar Cove, #10)

• 8 Sandpiper Way (Cedar Cove, #8)

As the seasons changed, so did your reading habits. Your biggest reading month was December, with 30 books. Way to go!

Looking back on the year, let's celebrate a few of your five star reads! These are just some of the books you loved this year:

What a year for books! If there was just one way to describe your taste in books this year, it would be eclectic.

I had a lot of short reads in December, including picture books. It's been  some time since I've given a five-star rating to a book. And I agree that my taste in books can be eclectic.