From a high of 39 books in 2012 I have fallen to a paltry 8 books in 2022. This is especially bad since I am in a book-club that meets monthly so at minimum I should have read 12 books. This is the least amount of reading I have done in many, many years. I have got to get my reading mojo back.
Part of my problem this year is that none of the books I read excited me. On a rating scale of 1-5 stars I did not rate any of the books higher than 3 stars.
3 Stars
The best of the meh books for me this year was Deacon King Kong by James McBride. The beginning of this one bore me to tears but then it did pick up and hold my interest better. Overall, I didn’t find it funny the way many readers did. I found the slapstick silly and distracting from the storyline.
Other 3 stars I read this year were ok but not fantastic. They were:
The Mid-Wife’s Confession by Diane Chamberlain
Royal Holiday (The Wedding Date, #4) by Jasmine Guillory. The was a very light, cute and quick romance novel. Not my usual type of book but it was entertaining.
2 Stars
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson was a book I was fully expecting to enjoy. It was garnering critical acclaim and as a Jamaican who grew up around black cake I thought I might have some emotional connection to the book. Nope! I was bored. The book dragged on and every issue the author could think of somehow found its way into the book. Most people I know who read it liked it, so I recognize that my opinion is very much in the minority.
Other 2 star books:
If you Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen. This one was truly awful. An interesting true crime story that was butchered by this horrible book.
The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom. This was my first and definitely my last Albom book. Thankfully, this book wasn’t long so that I could at least finish it in time for my bookclub meeting.
The Woman Beyond the Attic: The V.C. Andrews Story by Andrew Neiderman. As a teenager I adored books written by V.C. Andrews. I still remember the emotional reaction I had to the book “Heaven”. When she passed away and a ghost writer was introduced the quality of the stories fell dramatically and I stopped reading. I wish I had decided not to pick up this book written by that same ghost writer. I did learn a few things about her life that I did not know but this book just felt like yet another opportunity to make some money off of the name of the very talented writer who died way too soon.
1 Star
28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand elicited a rare 1-star rating from me. I even wonder if maybe I was harsh, but I truly did not like this book. The characters were flat, shallow, and unlikable. The story spanned 30 years, yet no one grew or evolved in that time? This was a romance novel in theory, yet I found nothing romantic about the premise. I truly could not wait for this book to end.
2023 Reading Challenge
I miss reading so I am committing to being better at it than I was this year. My goals are:
Read each book-club book.
Participate in my family book-club as well as my neighborhood book-club.
Revisit some the books I did not finish this year and try to complete them.
I am challenging myself to read 24 books in 2023!
Whew! May the force be with me.
