Top Ten Tuesday - Books that will Make You Cry

Every Tuesday the ladies over at The Broke and the Bookish host a book related Top 10 theme. 

 

This week’s Top 10 topic is Book that will make you cry  Books make me cry so frequently that I barely notice anymore.  So this is a surprisingly difficult topic for me.  I tried to mix in a few funny books that will elicit laughter tears.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells – I vividly remember bawling through this one.

Comeback by Claire and Mia Fontaine

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris – Laughed so hard I cried.  And so did everyone else in the car

The Last Summer by Ann Brashares

 

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

The Bean Trees/Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

 

Superfudge by Judy Bloom – Read this to a little kid.  Their laughter will be contagious and you’ll laugh/cry.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson – I don’t remember for sure, but I don’t think I actually cried.  I had that feeling like I wanted to cry and couldn’t get the tears out.  It’s worse.  But a great book.

What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin

What Nora Knew
Linda Yellin
320 pgs, Jan 2014
Netgalley 

Summary from Goodreads

Molly Hallberg is a thirty-nine-year-old divorced writer living in New York City who wants her own column, a Wikipedia entry, and to never end up in her family’s Long Island upholstery business. For the past four years Molly’s been on staff for an online magazine, covering all the wacky assignments. She’s snuck vibrators through security scanners, speed-dated undercover, danced with the Rockettes, and posed nude for a Soho art studio.

Fearless in everything except love, Molly is now dating a forty-four-year old chiropractor. He’s comfortable, but safe. When Molly is assigned to write a piece about New York City romance in the style of Nora Ephron, she flunks out big-time. She can’t recognize romance. And she can’t recognize the one man who can go one-on-one with her, the one man who gets her. But with wit, charm, whip-smart humor, and Nora Ephron’s romantic comedies, Molly learns to open her heart and suppress her cynicism in this bright, achingly funny novel.
 
My Thoughts

Have you ever read a book that felt like it just missed being really good and at the same time was REALLY flawed? That’s how I felt about What Nora Knew. I’ll start with what I liked. First of all I liked the main character, Molly Hallberg. She was interesting and funny and I was engaged in what happened to her. Second, I laughed out loud at a lot of conversations and situations. The author did an excellent job of letting you view the situations.

Unfortunately, the bad outweighed the good. The author has a really bad habit of info-dumping. New character equals full page description of said character - very Jane Austen except without the benefit of quaint 19^th century English. I liked Molly’s friends from description, but it was a case of tell instead of show. While Yellin’s descriptive ability was a positive during certain funny scenario it hampered other areas of the novel. I have way too clear of a picture of the ping-pong table in her parents basement when it has absolutely no importance anywhere in the story. Detailed description can be awesome but the author needs to really consider what the reader needs/whats to know.

I DID NOT like the male lead. I’m not the girl who thinks all literary characters need to be likeable. I’m a big fan of unlike-able realistic interesting characters, but I’m a little pickier in a romantic comedy. I realized about 75 pages from the end that I didn’t want the MC to end up with the guy. I was never able to let go of the reasons Molly didn’t originally like him cause they were good reasons. Obviously that’s just my opinion, but in a rom-com if you don’t want the heroine to end up with the romantic lead it’s probably not a winner.

My Rating

Enjoyability (2.5 out of 5 stars)
Relationships (2 out of 5 stars)
Writing (2.5 out of 5 stars)  

This book will stay with me… not very long. I read it a couple weeks ago and had to consult my notes to remember enough to write the review.

Bout of Books–Progress report

I hope all my reading days are this over-achieving.

Monday

Hours spent reading – 3.25 (My goal was 1.5)

Pages read – 354 (That’s a puffy Netgalley 354 – final printing will probably be less)

Books finished – 1

What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin

The good news is that the book definitely had plenty of material to write about in a review.  Unfortunately I didn’t like it.

Bout of Books

 Bout of Books is a week long, very relaxed Read-a-thon that runs from Monday, January 6th through Sunday, January 12th.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 6th and runs through Sunday, January 12th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 9.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

After a little deliberation I decided it would be a great way to kick off the year and get started on a couple of my reading/blogging goals for 2014.

So this is my “Yes I’m participating” and “My Goals” post all rolled into one.

Time Devoted to Reading

• 1.5 hours daily Monday through Friday and 6 total hours over the weekend.

My Goals

• Get my Netgalley reading list down to a reasonable number.  Right now it’s at 8 and I’d like to get it down to 3 or fewer.

Books to Read

• The Runaway Wife by Rowan Coleman
• Tin Star by Cecil Castellucci
• What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin
• Sekret by Lindsay Smith
• Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris by Jenny Colgan
• Don’t Even Think About It by Sarah Mylnowski
• Swimming at Night by Lucy Clarke
• The Last Clinic by Gary Gusick

2014 Goals–Reading, Blogging, and a few random

I’m not even going to check my 2013 goals – I know some I didn’t come close on and won’t repeat and others will be up here again.

Reading
1) Read 1-2 books a week from a variety of genres.

Reading 1-2 books/week is actually pretty simple.  The harder part of this goal is to expand from Contemporary YA, New Adult, and Contemporary Adult.

2) Do not grow my list of books owned and unread.

Currently between physical books and ebooks, I own 110 books I have not read (including Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis that I picked up on Amazon this morning for $1.99).  At the end of this year that number can’t be any higher and I’d love to get it into double digits.  *This list doesn’t include Netgalleys

3) Read a few longer/harder books.

This kind of goes with both the goals above, but my list of “owned/unread” books tends to grow because I buy more serious books that I really want to read, but am rarely in the mood for like And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini.  I’ve also got 3 books by Norman Mailer.

Blogging
1) Post 1 review/week. 

This shouldn’t be that hard.  I just need to write reviews before I forget the bookish details.

2) Write down key thoughts about a book before starting a new one.

And maybe a few key quotes.

3) Get my Netgalley list under control and keep it at 1-2 books unread.

Other
1) Drop 10 pounds (I’m female and I can’t help it)
2) Start jogging again
3) Retrain Gizmo – My puppy’s manners have gotten a bit rough lately.

Top Thirteen Tuesday–Favorite reads of 2013

 

I’m back for Top Ten Tuesday with my favorite reads of 2013.  I couldn’t narrow it down to 10 so in honor of the year I picked thirteen.

Thanks again to The Broke and The Bookish for Hosting Top 10 Tuesdays.

My top 13 in the order I read them.

2013 Reading Summary

I know a lot of book bloggers do little recaps at the end of each month and I always think it’s a great idea, but never quite get it done.  Instead I’m doing a year in review summary for all of 2013.  While analyzing the data I have come to a couple embarrassing conclusions about myself, but I’ll get to those later.  First off the raw numbers.

Books read: 86*

Books reviewed: 26

Pages read: 29,402*

Fiction: 82

Nonfiction: 6

Books in a Series: 38 or 23 (depending on if you count companion novels)

New to me Authors: 44

Female Authors: 56**

Male Authors: 8**

Adult: 41

Young Adult: 45

Books completed for Back to the Classics Challenge: 2 (plan of 6)

Books read for TBR Pile Challenge: 7 (plan of 12)

*Includes 3 books that I DNF and have officially decided I never will.  Does not include about 5 that I did not finish but haven’t given up on.

**Doesn’t count authors twice if I read more than one of their books this year.

The most embarrassing statistic up there (at least to me) is the Female to Male author ratio and it’s actually worse that it appears.  I’ve read books by 56 women and 8 men, but when you count multiple books by the same author it becomes 76 books by women and 10 books by men.

As anyone who follows my blog is probably aware I had a job change this year that put a damper on my reading habits for a while during the adjustment period.  Can you see the adjustment period?

I think this makes it much clearer (I tend to post reviews out about 6 weeks)

I’m quite proud that my Adult to YA ratio was so close to even (although I may have counted New Adult books as Adult and I’m not quite sure on that one).
Here’s a lovely chart that breaks down what I read by genre

Does anyone else have the same issue with author ratio that I do?  Any other interesting discoveries about personal reading habits that surprised you?