What are you reading?

As the regulars around here may have noticed, I love to read. I love to take some quiet time in the mornings when everything is still and lie in bed with a good book. In the winter months in particular, there is no better way to start my day.

In 2013 I signed up for a challenge to read 50 books over the course of the year and enthusiastically dove in head first. However, let it be known that I am also a huge procrastinator. The reading challenge came into perfect alignment with my procrastination and I used reading as my number one procrastination device. (I also have an extremely competitive nature. Oy.)

I told myself, "How can reading be bad?" Well, there's a limit and I found that as I neared the end of the year, there were things I wished I had made time for over reading. I stopped the challenge in December with just three books to go.

This lead to my paltry reading of 14 books in 2014. I told myself that I could start a book on Friday, but had to be finished by Sunday so as not to get in the way of my work. This worked for a while, but I hit a string of disappointing books midway through the year and my reading of books dropped away almost completely.

Well, I'm ready to approach 2015 with a better attitude. I don't plan on fifty books this year, but I think I can find a healthier balance. I have a better handle on my daily work routine and habits and feel confident in my ability to stem procrastination. But I find myself a bit out of the book loop and am looking for titles to try. What have you been reading? What do you recommend?

I continue to keep my reading list here on the blog. Won't you follow along?

Book Business Tuesday: Recommendations

As you might remember, I am participating in the Fifty-Fifty challenge to read fifty books and watch fifty movies this year. I'm nine books and eleven movies in and thought I'd take this Book Business Tuesday to share with you some recommendations from my recent reads.

Two of these are from last year's reading list, but that doesn't really matter, does it? Now, I'm no great book reviewer, so I won't bore you with some sad attempt at it. There are plenty of those over at Amazon. I will just give you a brief overview and tell you I loved these books. Do with that info, what you will …

 Mr. Penumbra' 24-Hour Bookstore
by Robin Sloan

For all you book and bookstore lovers out there. A fun, fast story about the intersection and overlap of old knowledge and new technology filled with musty bookstores and literary intrigue. It even has geeky graphic design type nerd references. Charming.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home 

by Carol Rifka Brunt

I won't lie: I picked this one up for the gorgeous cover. It was done by the ultimate book designer to my mind: Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich. Perfection. So then to have to story live up to this great design — and then some — was such a nice surprise. Wonderful character development of two lonely people who find each other through the most unlikely of circumstances.

The Widower's Tale

by Julia Glass

And speaking of character development, no one does it better than Julia Glass. Ever since Three Junes, (still my favorite of her books) I have been a devoted Glass fan. She has a way of weaving together multi-generational family sagas like no other. 

The Cookbook Collector

by Allegra Goodman

It's funny—this one brings us full circle back to the first. It, too, brings together the worlds of new technology and old knowledge bookstores but in quite a different fashion. A story of two sisters a bit list in the world and the ways in which they get found and find themselves.

And there you have, from a true fiction junkie.