Looking back at 2014...

I read quite a bit in 2014 (see my list here) but it wasn't a good blogging year as I was too busy/lazy or just plain not motivated to blog.

I also found that my current guilty pleasure is reading books written in Chinese, as opposed to, YA which was my easy read before. I can't seem to get into YA much nowadays. Just over half of the books I read were in Chinese last year...

There were a few fun reads that got 4 stars, but then nothing really jumped out. If you ask me now what my favorite book was in 2014? Without looking at my own list, I couldn't tell you. If I really have to pick one, I guess The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion as I still remember the characters/plot a bit...

For 2015, I think I want to stick with books that inspire me, regardless of genre... would welcome any suggestions! Though I am such a mood reader so who knows where my mood would take me?

As for blogging... we'll see... maybe I just do 6-words review. Shouldn't be too hard right?! Or it may even be harder...

But I definitely want to keep reading, that's for sure.



All reviews and posts are copyrighted by Christa @ Mental Foodie. Please do not use or reprint them without written permission.

Book Read in 2015

Will be updated throughout the year.

What I'd read in the past years: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008. (Reviews started in 2010)


Fiction:

1. The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan 
2. Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern
3. A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy
4. First Frost (Waverley Family #2) by Sarah Addison Allen
5. The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward
6. Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde
7. The Bridges of Madison County by  Robert James Waller
8. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
9. Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance, #4) by Jeffery Deaver
10. Daniel isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach
11. God-Shaped Hole by Tiffanie DeBartolo
12. Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum
13. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
14. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
15. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
16. Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova
17. Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
18. Aftermath Lounge by Margaret McMullan
19. Tilt by Elizabeth Burns
20. Two Across by Jeff Bartsch

Non-Fiction:

1. The Secret (The Secret #1) by Rhonda Byrne
2. The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
3. Color Your Style by David Zyla
4. Chicago Portraits by Chicago Tribune Staff (Author), Michael Zajakowski (Introduction), Rick Kogan (Foreword)
5. The Magic (The Secret #3) by Rhonda Byrne
6. The Late Starters Orchestra by Ari L. Goldman
7. Mastering Atmosphere & Mood in Watercolor: The Critical Ingredients That Turn Paintings Into Art by Joseph Zbukvic
8. Watercolor Painting With Passion! by Alvaro Castagnet
9. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo, Cathy Hirano
10. The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson
11. My Brief History by Stephen Hawking
12. The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida
13. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
14. 好風好水‧陽宅開運(1) ISBN:9579263574│林鬱│陳怡魁大師/講述 胡不歸
15. 好風好水‧陽宅開運(3) ISBN:9579263590│林鬱│陳怡魁│
16. 真理的故事 The story of the truth  CH 294.35 SU1Z (Buddhism in graphic novel)
17. 人間奇談 Strange remark on the world (Buddhism in graphic novel)
18. 給愛一條活路 by 吳淡如
19. 開啟前世密碼 by 游乾桂
20. 抓住你要的幸福 by 吳若權
21. Ling shu suaen ming fa CH 133.3 J56L
22. 慈濟月刊:映象真情 by 陳玫君, 顏霖沼

Did Not Finish (Fiction):

1. 
   

Did Not Finish (Non-Fiction):

1. 
   

All reviews and posts are copyrighted by Christa @ Mental Foodie. Please do not use or reprint them without written permission.

The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century by Claire Prentice

The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century by Claire Prentice

I don't know anything about Coney Island, or the Igorrotes - "a group of “headhunting, dog-eating savages” from the Philippines, who were transported to New York in 1905 to appear as “human exhibits” alongside the freaks and curiosities at Coney Island’s Luna Park."

But I was curious to learn more about amusement parks after reading Joyland by Stephen King. Of course, this book was more about the Igorrotes, than amusement parks... you could tell the author did a lot of research on the topic, and that it wasn't easy to piece everything together.

Overall it wasn't a bad read - maybe a little bit long as I really just wanted to find out what happened to the Igorrotes but there was quite a bit of history in between. I also appreciated that the author did a wrap up of what's happened to the different characters in the end. The story also make me think about the "cultural" tours I'd enjoyed - visiting the Amish village or the Native Canadian Indians village... is it right to visit these sights?



This is part of the TLC tour - check out the other tour stops!

Claire Prentice’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, October 13th: Sophisticated Dorkiness

Monday, October 13th: Booksie’s Blog

Tuesday, October 14th: Kahakai Kitchen

Tuesday, October 14th: Time 2 Read

Wednesday, October 15th: Patricia’s Wisdom

Monday, October 20th: Wordsmithonia

Tuesday, October 21st: Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Wednesday, October 22nd: She Treads Softly

Thursday, October 23rd: 50 Book Project

Thursday, October 23rd:  Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Friday, October 24th:  Dwell in Possibility

Monday, October 27th: BookNAround

Monday, October 27th:  Mental Foodie

Tuesday, October 28th:  girlichef

Tuesday, October 28th:  Lisa’s Yarns

Wednesday, October 29th: A Bookish Affair

TBD: Padre Steve

Note - A free advanced copy of the book was given in exchange of an unbiased review as part of the TLC tour.



All reviews and posts are copyrighted by Christa @ Mental Foodie. Please do not use or reprint them without written permission.

Updates

Wow I haven't updated in forever.

I have been reading (you can see my 2014 list here). I'd been busy with work and family still, and this year my guilty pleasure had been novels written in Chinese (as opposed to YA in the past), mostly by the same author who wrote about relationships. I don't know if there is any point in doing reviews of them since her books aren't translated.

Most of the English books were just average. There were some fun reads, but none of them made me felt like shouting "GO READ THIS NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" so I didn't feel motivated to blog.

So I am wondering what I should do with my blog... only blog when I found something that falls into the "recommend to everyone" category? Just blog random thoughts? Is there anyone who is even interested in reading my boring random thoughts - I don't even have a twitter account because well, my life isn't that interest to update every 2 minutes.

Any "GO READ THIS NOW" books you've come across lately?! I'm so out of the whole new books world...



All reviews and posts are copyrighted by Christa @ Mental Foodie. Please do not use or reprint them without written permission.

Book Review - The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Not something I'd have picked up by myself (title and cover both aren't very... pick-worthy... ) but thanks to other bloggers, I'm glad I read this :)

I bet pretty much all of you would enjoy reading this charming story - it's about an independent bookstore owner (A.J. Fikry) and his family and friends... and people who love to read! There are quite a few references to other books and authors in the book, including Jeffery Deaver lol :)

I thought the ending was a little quiet, but I suppose it is fitting to A.J.'s personality. I thought I'd get a bit more emotional when reading this, but I didn't.

3.75 Stars but bumped to 4 Stars because it leaves an impression, more so than other novels I'd read this year.

Some quotes -

You're a good reader, and you'll probably see it coming. (Is a twist less satisfying if you know it's coming? Is a twist that you can't predict symptomatic of bad construction? These are things to consider when writing.) (p160)

We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. (p249)

We are not quite novels... We are not quite short stories... In the end, we are collected works.. He has read enough to know there are no collections where each story is perfect. Some hits. Some misses. If you're lucky, a standout. And in the end, people only really remember the standouts anyway, and they don't remember those for very long. (p249)





Note - The book was borrowed from the library.



All reviews and posts are copyrighted by Christa @ Mental Foodie. Please do not use or reprint them without written permission.

Book Review - The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme #11) by Jeffery Deaver

The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme #11) by Jeffery Deaver

Readers who had been following this blog probably knows that Jeffery Deaver is one of my favorite authors in the murder/mystery genre, especially with his Lincoln Rhyme series. The Bone Collector is probably his best known novel, and this is a sequel of sort (well it's not really a continuation of the story, but references were made quite a bit).

I was going to re-read The Bone Collector (even if I hardly re-read) but the library copy came before I had a chance to. I hardly remember what happened... but that's okay.

This is more like a 3.75 Stars book but I'd bump it up to 4 because this is better than the other recent Deaver efforts. There probably isn't as much character development as I'd have liked, but most of the characters are like old friends anyway, so I appreciate Deaver didn't make too many redundant introductions; though it still has enough details for those who hadn't read the series before. I did enjoy reading this - with lots of twists and turns that I didn't see coming. At least something fun to read when I don't have to use my brain too much :)


Note - The book was borrowed from the library.



All reviews and posts are copyrighted by Christa @ Mental Foodie. Please do not use or reprint them without written permission.

Book Review - The Manufactured Identity (Manufactured Identity #1) by Heath Sommer

The Manufactured Identity (Manufactured Identity #1) by Heath Sommer

This book was highly recommended by a fellow blogger, Tea Time with Marce, so I had pretty high expectation! Maybe because of that, this book fell short... I like the plot twists (I was able to guess one twist, but not the subplot twist, so that was a good surprise) but I felt there wasn't a lot of character development so I wasn't attached to any characters. Nor did I feel much emotion about any of the characters.

Not sure if I would continue to the next book or not - I read the brief description, and it seems like 2 characters from the first book - whom I didn't think were really the main protagonists - would be the focus of the series. Tell me if I should read #2?

3 Stars


Note - I won a free copy of this book.



All reviews and posts are copyrighted by Christa @ Mental Foodie. Please do not use or reprint them without written permission.