2016 in Review

 

Happy New Year, everyone! In 2016, I read a total of 65 books, which is about 59 less than I read in 2015. Out of those books, the majority of them were paranormal romance and about 34 were published in 2016 (that’s more than the 22 new releases I read in 2015).

Where what I read came from in 2016:

• Bought and read immediately: 28 books
• ARC: 14 books
• Library: 10 books
• TBR Pile: 6 books
• Borrowed: 7 books

Genres Read:

• Paranormal Romance: 20
• Manga/Comic/Graphic Novel: 14
• Young Adult: 6
• Mystery/Thriller: 6
• Fantasy/Urban Fantasy: 6
• Horror: 4
• Erotica: 3
• Sci-Fi: 2
• Non-Fiction: 2
• Literary Fiction: 1
• Classic Literature: 1

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Top 10 Tuesday: Trick or Treat

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie. So, let’s go trick-or-treating! Is it the book or movie adaptation that’s the treat?

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Practical Magic

Book: Trick – I hated this book with a passion.

Movie: Treat – The movie is so different from the book that if you named it something else, you’d never really guess there was a connection between the two. This is a fun flick about two witches who kill a dude and try to cover it up. It’s lighthearted… I promise.

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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Book: Treat – I absolutely loved this book as a kid. One of my goals is to eventually go back and read the entire series, since I’ve only read this one.

Movie: Trick – Here’s an unpopular opinion, I don’t like the movie “Wizard of Oz”. While I appreciate it as a pivotal piece of film history, I cringe at the thought of having to watch it. Might be because I was forced to see it so many times as a kid.

Is social media for your blog worth it?

One of my rare Instagram attempts.

If you’ve ever been to a blogging workshop, I’m sure you’ve inevitably heard someone in the crowd ask, “What social media sites should I use?”. The answer seems to always be, “Whichever ones you enjoy using.” If you’re like me, that pretty much means none of them. So, what do you do?

The obvious answer is to ignore the ones you don’t like. However, there seems to be this impression that in order to be a successful blogger you need to be a power user on every popular social media platform. I don’t believe this is true. In fact, I would argue that attempting to be on every platform is stretching yourself too thin. It makes blogging exhausting when you feel the need to maintain active accounts for your blog on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Google+, GoodReads, Pinterest, etc. and you increase your risk of burning out.

Review: The Hike by Drew Magary

The Hike
Author: Drew Magary
Published: August 2016
Genre: Horror/Fantasy
Series: N/A
Rating: C

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In the mood for something trippy? Then “The Hike” is for you. Ben is on a work trip when he decides to take a short hike while waiting for a meeting. When he sees two men wearing the skinned-off faces of Rottweilers dragging a dead body in the woods, he makes a run for it. Pursued by the killers, Ben quickly finds himself stumbling down an unfamiliar path where things like talking crabs, cannibalistic giants and a humongous cricket wait for him.

The best way to describe “The Hike” is as a series of crazy nonsensical events. While the constant barrage of weirdness coming at Ben was exactly what I had been looking for, it stopped working for me around the mid-point. Mostly because “The Hike” seems to be trying to make a point about anger or depression through an “Alice in Wonderland” style story, which doesn’t come across very well.

Top 10 Tuesday: Favorite Creature Features

I wasn’t really feeling this week’s Top 10 Tuesday topic, which is literary characters you’d name a pet after. So, I’m going rogue this week. Since we’re getting closer to Halloween, I’m doing my top 10 favorite creature features. As I’m sure you’ll notice from the movies listed below, I have a thing for campy horror.

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Alien
Year: 1979
Creature: Alien

From IMDb: After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as distress call, their landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious lifeform. Continuing their journey back to Earth with the attacked crew having recovered and the critter deceased, they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.

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Dracula
Year: 1931
Creature: Vampires

From IMDb: The ancient vampire Count Dracula arrives in England and begins to prey upon the virtuous young Mina.

Read it or Ditch it: Watchmen

“Read it or Ditch it” is a new weekly feature I’ll be doing each Monday on the blog. The goal is to force myself into making a decision regarding some titles on my TBR pile. Each week I’ll select a book that has sat unread on my shelves for longer than a year and ask the question “Read it or Ditch it?”. If I still want to read it, then by posting it here I’m claiming that I’ll read it by the end of the year. If I’m no longer interested in the book, then this is a send off to the title since I’ll either be donating or selling it.

At the end of the year, I’ll do a round-up post to see how I did. If there are any titles that I said I’d read, but still didn’t, then I’ll either donate or sell those. Hopefully, doing this will help me reach my goal of only 100 books sitting unread on my TBR pile by the end of 2016.

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Watchmen
Author: Alan Moore
Published: 1987
Genre: Graphic Novel
Length of Time on TBR Pile: About 11 years
Read it or Ditch it?: Ditch it

ARC Review: Archangel’s Heart by Nalini Singh

Archangel’s Heart
Author: Nalini Singh
Release Date: November 1, 2016
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Guild Hunter #9
Rating: C

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Elena and Raphael are back again as the focus of another Guild Hunter book. This time the pair is called away from New York for a meeting with the Cadre. When they arrive, Elena is shocked to hear that she resembles someone who used to live in the area. Thinking there may be a connection to her mother’s past laying in the city, Elena investigates with the help of fellow angel Aodhan.

I mentioned in my review of “Archangel’s Legion” that Raphael and Elena’s books are usually game changers in the Guild Hunter series. Well… I was wrong. “Archangel’s Heart” was a filler book. We do have some fairly big revelations about Elena’s family, but I wasn’t on board with the direction of that storyline.

Top 10 Tuesday: Books I Read Because of Recommendations

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is top 10 books I read because of recommendations.

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Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Genre: Young Adult, Sci-Fi
Series: Lunar Chronicles #1

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

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The Dancing Floor by Barbara Michaels
Genre: Gothic Mystery
Series: N/A

For years, Heather Tradescant had dreamed of the journey she and her father would take to England–a pilgrimage to the great gardens of history. Now that her father is dead, Heather is determined to fulfill his dreams. Unfortunately, her request to see the fabled 17th-century garden of Troytan House is denied by the owner. Though unwelcome, she braves the walls of briars and reaches the Victorian manor house beyond. She senses a strange mission of evil lurking, tainting the manor’s peaceful beauty. Only then does Heather begin to wonder whether it is only stories of long-vanished witchcraft that haunt Troytan House or whether there is some more modern horror, hearer at hand, and far, far more dangerous. Continuing in the classic tradition she established with such acclaimed novels of suspense as Stitches in Time, Vanish with the Rose, and House of Stone, New York Times bestselling author Barbara Michaels has penned a chilling tale that will keep you reading until the last page.

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Review: Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Horrorstör
Author: Grady Hendrix
Published: 2014
Genre: Horror
Series: N/A
Rating: A-

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You don’t have to wait long for creepy things to start happening in “Horrorstör”. Employees of Orsk, a knock-off IKEA, have been dealing with weird things since the store opened. Staff keep getting lost on the floor, are receiving text messages that say “help” from blocked numbers and the furniture is trashed while the store is closed. Amy, a disenchanted employee, can care less about all this. Her main goal is to fly under manager Basil’s radar until her transfer comes in. When corporate sets a date for a team of evaluators to visit, Basil panics. He’s desperate to figure out who is vandalizing the store before corporate’s arrival. So, he bribes Amy into staying overnight with him to catch the culprit. As the night deepens, Amy begins to realize they’re trapped inside the building with a malevolent entity bent on “reconditioning” them.

Seeing as I’ve definitely gotten lost in the twisting labyrinth of an IKEA store before, I loved the idea of a haunted knock-off version. Orsk’s similar windowless floor layout is what made it such a great setting for a ghost story. It was easily believable that the characters would have such a hard time escaping the store, especially in the dark with things hunting them.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Starlit Wood

“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine. It’s an opportunity to spotlight upcoming releases I’m eagerly anticipating.

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The Starlit Wood
Author: Various Authors
Release Date: October 18, 2016
Genre: Fantasy, Anthology