February 8 2018

January Reads

Here are the books I read or listened to in January 2018. Check back for more lists of books about once a month.

These are the codes for how I read each book:
(A) = Audio Book
(E) = Ebook
(P) = Paper Book
1 to 5 *s rating system

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1) Stronger by Jeff Bauman (A) ****

2) Reach by Andy Molinsky, Ph.D. (A) ***

3) The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau (A) ***

4) Written in Stone [Books by the Bay Mystery #4] by Ellery Adams (A) ****

5) Poisoned Prose [Books by the Bay Mystery #5] by Ellery Adams (A) ****

6) Lethal Letters [Books by the Bay Mystery #6] by Ellery Adams (A) ****

7) Writing All Wrongs [Books by the Bay Mystery #7] by Ellery Adams (A) ****

8) Killer Characters [Books by the Bay Mystery #8] by Ellery Adams (A) ****

9) The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life by Chris Guillebeau (A) ****

10) Confidence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (A) ***

11) The Case for Hope by Lee Strobel (A) *****

12) God Speaks Your Love Language: How to Feel and Reflect God’s Love by Gary Chapman (A) *****

13) The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How to Fix It by W. Chris Winter (A) ****

14) If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence, and Spirit by Brenda Ueland (A) ***

15) The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau (A) ****

16) Love in Every Stitch: Stories of Knitting and Healing by Lee Gant (A) ****

17) Selected Shorts: For Better and For Worse (Selected Shorts) by Symphony Space, Shahrnush Parsipur, Luis Alberto Urrea (Goodreads Author), Ethan Canin, Sherman Alexie, Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen E. Bender, Kamran Talattof (Narrator), Jocelyn Sharlet (Narrator), Robert Sean Leonard (Narrator), Harold Gould (Narrator), Keir Dullea (Narrator), Joanna Gleason (Narrator), Joanne Woodward (Narrator) (A) ***

18) The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks (A) *****

All of these books were checked out from my local library and downloaded as audiobooks to my phone. I can listen to them in my car while driving to and from work or on errands. I listened to them while getting dressed in the morning, eating my breakfast, and packing my lunch. If I am home alone, I am usually listening to a book while doing other things such as folding laundry and crocheting hats for charity. I was shocked by how much more reading I could get done by listening to the books instead of reading them either electronically or in the actual paper form.

As you might imagine, buying all of these books would be quite expensive, especially as quickly as I go through books. This is only one of the many reasons I LOVE my local library. I did read from paper books or eBooks, but those were the ones I carried along to read in restaurants while we waited to be seated or for our food to arrive. They are not on the list because I have yet to finish them. I find that I really enjoy listening to books. Maybe it helps me remember the times when I sat on or near my mother while she read from storybooks to me as a child? Who knows?

Why the library you ask? Well, other than the obvious money saving aspect of it, there is the fact that I have no intention of reading books more than once with a few exceptions, so I don’t feel the need to own them. If I own a book, I must find a place for it in our house and must on occasion dust it and all the others along with it. Life is too short to read the same books twice, so it is certainly too short to spend time dusting books or finding room for them. That is time I could better spend reading more books!

What is your preferred format? Do you read certain books in one format or another? What determines which format you choose?

I like to see what the front cover looks like, so you can see all of them below.

I actually read the first 3 books in this series in December 2017. This is a great series that I found when looking for writing books and I actually read the Writing All Wrongs book first and loved it so much I started the series and read it (listened to it) all the way through. I had apparently read the first book in the series years ago and never got around to getting the rest from the library.

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January 22 2018

Book Review: Do I Ever

This book has a refreshing assortment of believable realistic characters in numerous comedic situations. Drew and Andi Stevens, although both Christians, are on the brink of divorce and struggling over custody of a tuxedo cat named Tuck.

When good friends, Jonathon and Heather Hunt, who are also on the verge of divorce, come for a week-long visit to break it to their friends in person, everyone suddenly becomes an amateur actor or actress in order to keep their friends from knowing the true state of their marriages. Antics ensue due to these theater-worthy performances. Throw in Andi’s beautiful young assistant, BJ Diaz, who happens to be in love with Drew and also his best friend and there is no end to the complications. Discussions held in bathrooms, sneaking around to avoid the nosy neighbor and many other antics make this a fun read.

If you are looking for a clean, Christian book to read, this one is a great choice.

If you are interested in buying this book, please consider using the affiliate link below. It won’t cost you more and I might make a few cents because you did.

I was given a copy of this ebook by the author in exchange for posting an honest review. (Review also posted on Amazon.)

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January 19 2018

Intentional (Five Minute Friday)

It is not intentional when I stay up a tad too late most nights. In fact, I tell myself almost daily that I will get to bed early or at least at a decent time. But I find so many things to occupy my time and it just flies by and before I know it I look up and it is midnight or even later. I usually berate myself for the fact that I just cannot seem to get my sleep or the lack thereof under control. I also promise myself that tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I WILL get to bed early.

It’s not that I don’t want to sleep. I just want to do the other things I am doing more. What am I doing you ask, when I should be sleeping? Oh, lots of things. Tonight I was listening to an audiobook on my phone, GOD Speaks Your LOVE Language by Gary Chapman. It is great! I never thought of my relationship with God that way. I read the 5 Love Languages book years ago and even got hubby to take a quiz so we could figure out that we spoke different love languages. I’m not sure if it helped him much, it’s hard to tell with men, but it did help me to understand him a little better. The book I am listening to has me thinking about love languages and how God might use them to express his love to us. Some nights my brain is spinning and it just won’t settle down so I can sleep. So many thoughts to think!

Sometimes I am up late working on the blog or writing up a post. Tonight I just had to look to see what the Five Minute Friday word prompt was for the week. Making the graphic to use in the post was intentional. What I didn’t intend to do was actually sit down to write the post before going to bed. I just wanted to know what the word was so I could think about it overnight and while I work tomorrow and then sit down to write my five minutes when I got home tomorrow evening. Well…the best-laid plans…I think I should have waited to make the graphic until I saw where this word would lead me. I intended to talk about tea, but that will have to wait for another day. My squirrel brain went down a different path before I could stop it. Oh well, enjoy the graphic anyway. I think it turned out kind of cute.

I highly recommend both of these books. The links above and below for the books are affiliate links which means if you happen to purchase anything using one of the links, I might a very small commission at no additional cost to you. You can also just check them out of your local library, which is free and also highly recommended.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Intentional
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience.
Please see this site’s Policy & Disclosure Page for more info.

 

December 14 2017

Book Review: The Man from the Train The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery

I found this book quite by accident while searching online for an audiobook to listen to on my phone using the OverDrive app. I find that I get many more books read this way because I can take advantage of driving times and other times when I could never read a traditional paper book or even an ebook such as when I am packing my lunch, cleaning the kitchen, or even making a meal. I was a little disinclined to listen to it because it was so long, but let me tell you it goes by so fast. Since I listened to most of the book at either 1.6 or 1.8 speed, it likely cut the time to listen to it down significantly.

As someone who has long enjoyed watching shows like Numb3rs, CSI, Criminal Minds and Cold Case shows this was right up my alley. I really enjoyed how the authors explained that the technology at the time did not help them to catch the guy. In fact, the lack of technology made it appallingly easy for him to get away with murdering loads of people. The murders covered in this book took place between 1898 and 1912. Fingerprints were just becoming important and communication between the various law enforcement departments was practically non-existent. Blood was only able to be matched by type, so not terribly helpful. I really appreciated that the authors explained to me, as the reader, why certain things were done or not done. Toward the end of the book, when they finally explain how they found out who did it and how they were sure it was the right person, I felt completely comfortable with their explanation and found it believable. It was fascinating hearing how they uncovered one of the deadliest serial killers in the country over one hundred years after the fact. This means they solved numerous cold cases in the process of all their research. Unfortunately, his reach was even deadlier than he might have realized because a few innocent people were punished and put to death for crimes they didn’t commit and a few more were lynched and died because they were thought guilty of crimes “The Man from the Train” committed.

Reading this book did make me appreciate just how far crime-solving technology has come in the last hundred years or so and help me to understand that something like this would most likely not be able to go on for so long in this day and age.

It amazed me how thoroughly they were able to research crimes from over one hundred years ago. They explained things so well I understood the logic behind where they looked and why they kept looking for more crimes before the ones they were finding. I would love to see this book turned into a movie, mini-series, or TV series.

If you are looking for a good book to read or listen to, I highly recommend choosing The Man from the Train.

The Man from the Train The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery
Bill James – Author
Rachel McCarthy James – Author
John Bedford Lloyd – Narrator
Release date: September 19, 2017

If you are interested in buying this book, please consider using the affiliate link below. It won’t cost you more and I might make a few cents because you did.

The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery

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November 23 2017

Book Review: Life-Changing Miracles

I was very excited to be able to read and review this book. The cover and title grabbed me from the start. I am always a sucker for hearing stories of how God works in other people’s lives.

I didn’t mean to start reading it yet. But somehow I just couldn’t stop myself. Just one story, to see what it’s like. So I opened the book telling myself I wasn’t going to read the stories yet, just the front matter and maybe the introduction. Then as I finished reading the introduction, my eyes quickly glanced at the right-hand page and spotted the title of the first story, Truck Driver Betty by Patti Ann Thompson.

You don’t have time to start reading now, there are other things you need to be doing now I told myself in the stern voice often used to get children to do as they are told without argument. I know that voice, but it doesn’t affect me, it is, after all, my voice. So I flipped through to see how long the first story was because I really wanted to read about the truck driver named Betty. Only 6 pages and the first and last weren’t quite full pages, more like two-thirds pages, it would be a fast read. Just to see what it is like, the cover is so inviting, and it does promise Life-Changing right there in the title. One story wouldn’t hurt.

So I quickly lost myself in the story about the truck driver named Betty. When it ended I realized my eyes we full of unshed tears. It was beautiful. As much as I wanted to read more, I knew I would put it away and get back to the other tasks awaiting my attention all while saying a quick prayer of thanks for that first story being such a good one. I just know that book will get read almost without me knowing I’m reading over the next few days. I appreciate the fact that the stories are short and easy to read in small bites of time. Sometimes small bites are all we can grab to read in, so this book is already a winner to me.

A few hours later, I realized I had accidentally picked up the book and read five more stories. They were all good, but none affected me quite like the first one. There are only 37 stories in the book and somehow on the very day, the book landed in my mailbox I had read 46 of the 235 pages in the book. Now I am wondering if maybe I need to ration the stories to make them last longer because you only get one chance for a first read. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

I hid the book away as I got ready to go on a trip with my husband wanting to save these stories to read on the plane or in the airport. I read several more stories one after the other. They are such quick easy reads that you can’t read just one at a time.

I especially read the one called Taking Away the Desire by Carol Nash Smith with interest. Her story was about alcohol addiction but I wondered as I read if this might help me keep from overeating and thus lose some of the excess weight I seem to always carry with me. As I finished reading this one it was like someone had read my mind. The next story is My Weight Destination by Michelle J. Welcome. As I eagerly read that story, I found myself wishing I too would hear God speak to me as many of the stories talk about.

It didn’t take me long to finish this book after I allowed myself to continue reading it. It was a great book to take along on our trip. Perfect for reading in the airport and on the plane. This book was a very enjoyable read. I especially appreciated the short length of the chapters/stories as this made them very easy to pick up and read one or two at a time. If you are looking for an uplifting book to read, I would highly recommend it.

If you are interested in buying this book, please consider using the affiliate link below. It won’t cost you more and I might make a few cents because you did.

Life-Changing Miracles: Real-Life Stories of Unforgettable Encounters With God

I was sent this book by the publisher to review. I will always give honest reviews on my blog. My opinion cannot be bought.

(This book arrived in my mailbox Saturday, 9/30/17)

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