I recognize that it’s almost February of 2016, but I never returned to my 2015 reading challenge to explain which books I finished or how I did. I didn’t actually read all of the books that I had hoped to read, which was a disappointment, but I ended up juggling a lot* of other things by the end of the year and reading for pleasure took a bit of a back burner. Still, I enjoyed a lot of the books I did read and discovered that free books on Kindle really are a hit or miss situation.

Here are the rest of the books that I read last year:

• The Lake by AnnaLisa Grant (meh)
• Jumper by Stephen Gould (read as surprisingly modern)
• A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
• A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
• A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin (didn’t quite finish this in 2015…it was long!)
• The God Engines by John Scalzi
• Ash by Jason Brant
• The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction by Dinty Moore (no, not the stew)
• Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present by Lex Williford
• The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present by Phillip Lopate
• Darkangel by Christine Pope
• Twin Souls by K.A. Poe
• The Girl by Lola St.Vil (I don’t understand why YA heroines must have oddly colored eyes, be socially awkward/unconventionally attractive, and yet MUST attract the attention of a brooding love interest who is “so clearly far above them.” Why do these tropes continue to exist?!)
• Rest for the Wicked by Cate Dean
• Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson (SO GOOD!!)
• Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip (a reread from several years ago but still as good as I remembered)
• Drowning Mermaids by Nadia Scrieva
• Wolves by C. Gockel (This was one of the few free Kindle books that I thought was both unique and entertaining.)
• This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley (highly recommend)
• Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern (highly recommend)

As you can see, there is a mish mash of many different genres and a bunch of textbooks that I read for my program. A lot of these books were free on Kindle and most of those free ones weren’t really worth my time, but I feel ok not having paid to read them.

I’ve challenged myself on Goodreads again this year, but I’m cutting back the amount of books by five to see if I can actually achieve this goal. So far, I’ve finished a couple of books and am in the process of reading several others at the same time. If you have any ideas of what I ought to read this year, feel free to leave suggestions in the comments! I am especially interested in expanding my reading list to include more writers of color.

Cheers,

*By “a lot” I mean the following: thesis courses, ongoing illness, pregnancy, full teaching workload plus extra tasks, language lessons, and daily living.