Pop Sugar Reading Challenge

The Circle by Dave Eggers fulfilled the “Book with no chapters/unusual chapter headings/unconventionally numbered chapters ” for the PopSugar 2019 Reading Challenge. The novel has no chapters. It is one long set of text, broken up by single blank lines. I listened to the audio and was not aware of the non-chapters. The book was stream of conscious. And it scared the crap out of me. Social media and the high level of connectivity are making the world a tiny place. People can find their ancestry, old high school flames, and that neighbor who wronged them years ago. The amount of data out there is mind-blowing. In the wrong hands, that information is an opportunity for many evil deeds. The premise of the story is basically Facebook goes cancerous and spreads—invades—into every single aspect of people ’s lives. The Circle (the company) dictates everything that can be known, should be. Using capital to exploit this notion, they seek to spread the Circle to every section of a ...

The Magicians by Lev Grossman fulfilled the “Book Set on College or University Campus” category for the PopSugar 2019 Reading Challenge. The novel takes place in a magical college somewhere in the wilds of upstate New York. Untamed places like Poughkeepsie and Wappingers Falls. The Magicians is a well-written story with gorgeous details, an interesting premise, and dynamic characters. I must preface the blog entry with this statement because the novel made me stabby. Really stabby. What would you get if you combined the worlds of C. S. Lewis and J. K. Rowling? The best story ever right? Full of fantastic settings, adventures, conflicts, and happy endings, right? Apparently, Mr. Grossman didn ’t think so. Instead, he pulls these series together, mushes them into a single book. (Each of those has seven titles, but you need not remind you of that.) Then Mr. Grossman has few adventures, boring long stretches of inactivity, and the darkest depressing main character ever ...

What I Did for Love by Susan Elizabeth Phillips fulfilled the “Book with the Word Love in the Title” category of the PopSugar 2019 Reading Challenge. As a romance author and reader, I had so many choices for this one. I wish I’d chosen better. Okay, that was mean. I usually love SEP ’s books and read them in a day or two. She’s always one of my go-to authors for a light, funny, great novel. What I Did for Love is not one of her best. The premise threw me off. The book is set in Hollywood, all the drama and tabloids. SEP highlights all the fake behavior, schmoozing, and cut-throat antics. Not my favorite topics but she does it well without overstating for making the reader feel stupid. Her world-building is amazing and the reader never questions the universe. But the story was an “enemies to lovers” tale and I just couldn’t swallow some of it. A few things took the story from a five star to four. One was the hero. The others were deep point of view and missed cues. Sp...

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde fulfills the “Book with a Plant in the Title or on the Cover ” for the PopSugar 2019 Reading Challenge. Technically, there are trees on the cover of my copy. That ’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I will admit this one is a bit of a cheat. I ’m running out of time for 2019 and I still have eight books to go. Some of my last choices are HUGE books or super-tough reads. I could have stuck with the upper forty of the challenge, ignoring the Advanced Reading. But I only have three left. I read The Fourth Bear in the spring and thought since it had those nice trees that it could count. I put down Born in Fire and Hot Shot (my two other choices for the category) and wrote this up. Jasper Fforde is brilliant. No two ways about it. If you ’ve read the Thursday Next series, you understand my point. The Fourth Bear is the second book in the Nursery Crimes series. Much like Thursday Next, our hero Jack Sprat (yes, that Jack Sprat) is a detec...

Survival Quest by Vasily Mahanenko fulfilled the “LitRPG Book” from the PopSugar 2019 Reading Challenge. LitRPG is a new genre for me. I read Ready Player One last year because it mentioned Zork . (Yes, I’m that old.) I enjoyed the novel, but Survival Quest blew me away. Let me qualify the blog post. I ’m an old-school gamer. Not D&D, Minecraft, World of Warcraft or consoles like PlayStation. I’m super old-school. I cut my teeth on Adventure , a text-based adventure game where there were no hints. You had to navigate that maze of little passages all alike with no help. I graduated to Zork, King’s Quest, Legend of Zelda , and Final Fantasy . I like a good role-playing game and Survival Quest hit that button. The story combines science fiction and fantasy in a well-thought-out scenario. We start in a sci-fi world of virtual reality and overcrowded prisons. Our main character, Daniel Mahan, commits a crime. In his dystopic future, the government tosses criminals into a vi...