This will be the fourth year that I've shared with my readers the books I read/listened to the prior year and my (humble) opinion of them. This was my first year belonging to a book club, too! I thought this might mean that I'd read less books; as it turned out, though, I read/listened to two more this year than I did last year. And, truthfully, I could have ended up with more but I read or listened to a few that were extremely long. In addition to reading several selections that I never would have picked up on my own (due to book club), I discovered one new series that was extremely engaging (even Mr. B got into it).
I've been (somewhat) keeping track/reviewing the books on the Good Reads site; hopefully, this will mean it won't take me quite as long as it normally does to finish this particular Blog series!
As a reminder, here is my rating system. Interestingly enough, I did not rate any book 5 stars this year. Am I getting picky? There were a few that were close, though.
Mrs. B’s Rating System
*****Absolutely Fantastic; one that I looked forward to reading and found every opportunity to do so. Was almost depressed when I finished it; I think most people I know would enjoy it.
****Really Good; but might have had some sort of disappointment to it (flat ending or cliché), or, the topic might not be universally appealing, that kept it from being Absolutely Fantastic.
***Interesting Enough; a good “vacation read” but not something I’d go out of my way to recommend; sometimes a “What was all the fuss about?” book will get this rating.
**Ho Hum; nothing great, nothing bad. Yawn.
*Throw it Away; made me want to scream and throw it across the room, it was that awful; one of those books that you get mad at yourself for wasting your time reading it when there are so many other books out there to read.
The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standford * This was our final book club selection for the year. Briefly, it is a non-fictional account of how Charles Dickens came to write "A Christmas Carol". We had quite an interesting discussion on this particular book because we appeared to be fairly evenly split on liking it and hating it. Since I wrote a review on Good Reads, I'll include it here:
I really did not care for this book as a whole, although I did find bits and pieces of it fairly interesting. I think my main problem was the writer's style. The flow of the books seemed disorganized to me and I kept getting bogged down in details that were not that important (so why did he include all of these details is what I want to know?) I've read some Dickens and, based on that and what others in my book club were saying about the book, the author did not capture Dickens personality. In fact, he (Dickens) did not come across very well at all.So, I'd have to say the primary reason I didn't like the book was due to the way it was written. Also, I was thinking this was going to be a light holiday fluff read and it was not. It took me far too long to muddle through it.
Mrs. B
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