Book Update!

I have been on a major reading kick for the past couple of weeks.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I go in and out of periods where I read a ton and don't read much.  My goal is 50 books a year, but sometimes I don't read for a couple of weeks or even a month, and other times I seem to just devour books.  Danny is finally old enough that sometimes on the weekends when they're both home and they're playing I can actually pick up a book for a few minutes, which is awesome. 

Right now, I am at 13 books out of 50 towards my goal - that puts me 6 books ahead!  Now, 3 of those were Walking Dead compendiums which are pretty quick, so I will probably try to read enough books this year that I don't really count those towards my 50 - or count 3-4 of them as one book.  Even without those, it puts me 3 books ahead and I'm halfway through one and about a quarter of the way through two others.  Here's what I've been reading lately!

I recently finished The Midwife's Confession by Diane Chamberlain.  This one has been on my Nook for a while and after I finished the last Kristin Hannah book, I decided to finally read this one.  Since it was on my e-reader, I didn't really  have a description and wasn't sure what the plot would be. I really enjoyed this one.  It is in the same vein as Jodi Piccoult and Kristin Hannah - a story about women characters with lots of drama and heartache and some twists in the plot.  There were a couple that I totally didn't see coming, although the very end of the book I did sort of figure out before I got there.  If you like those other two authors, I'd definitely recommend this one.  I looked at some other Diane Chamberlain books after finishing it, but not many of them caught my attention with their descriptions like this one did.  I finished this book in 3 days because I really wanted to know what would happen!

Before The Midwife's Confession, I read Night Road by Kristin Hannah.  My first time reading Krisin Hannah was for book club last monght, and I knew immediately that I would read a bunch more of her books.  She reminds me some of Jodi Piccoult, but all of her stories are really based around female characters and relationships.  I really liked this book.  It had a couple of twists, but mostly it was just a story about what happens when bad things happen to good people and how we can reconcile it when our loves for different people start to clash. 

Earlier this year I read Feed and Deadline by Mira Grant.  I am into zombies, vampires and werewolves, and I was into them before this whole Twilight craziness.  I had Feed on my 'to read' list for a while and I finally picked it up.  Holy cow!  I knew as soon as I finished it that it would be on my top 5 list for 2012.  One of the things I loved about it was that even though it takes place in a crazy world after a zombie uprising, the story centers around three journalists covering a senator's bid for the Republican nomination for President.  A zombie book with politics?  So interesting!  I thought the story was well told and I really liked the main character, Georgia Mason, in this. 

Now, here are the books I'm reading now.

I just started Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen.  I read her book Every Last One last year and was blown away by it.  After reading it, I put this one on my list.  It centers around a woman who is running away from her abusive husband with her 10 year old son.  Domestic Violence is an issue I'm really interested in, so it seemed like a good fit.  I'm only about 25 pages into it, and it hasn't totally captured me yet, but I bet it will soon.

For my book club for March, we're reading Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin.  I'm about halfway through it, and devoured the first half in one day after picking it up to force myself to get started.  I chose this one, but I realized later that I have another book on my 'to read' list called What Alice Forgot, which is the one I'd actually meant to suggest.  So even though I wanted to read this one too, I was kind of kicking myself.  I'm glad now though, this one will definitely make for good conversation at our next meeting.  It is a fictional book based in historic fact about Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the girl who Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland was based/written for.  If you're a big fan of Alice in Wonderland, I'd warn that this book may change your perceptions, and throughout the first half I've found myself unsettled several times.  I've gotten to the point where Alice is in her early 20s and I am eager to see where her relationship with Carrol ends up.

I am usually listening to an audiobook, I drive 20 minutes each way when I go to town, so I keep one on my phone to listen to in the car.  I have also been listening to it when I go for walks to distract myself from how much I hate exercising.  Right now I'm listening to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  I am only about 25% of the way through it.  I read the first two books in the series in 2010 and for some reason never finished the trilogy.  I am not as captured by it as I was by the first two books.  I am wondering if there's going to be a mystery in this one or if it's just going to center around Lisbeth Salander's trial or whatever.  I am also annoyed at the author for naming two prominent characters Niedermann and Niemenin.  WTH?  It's hard enough to keep track of everyone in the book without this confusion!  I'm interested to see where the story goes, but I think it'll be a while before I'm done with this one. 

What are you reading?