I need to read a minimum of 17 books per month to reach my goal of 200 books. *Sigh* Okay then let's do this! Twenty books placed on the list to ensure I hit 17. I won't know if any book works for a prompt for the BR Read Harder challenge until I read it, so none are being assigned to that challenge in the beginning of the month.

1. Courting Trouble by Deeanne Gist

          - 2020 Reading Assignment Challenge (Professor Author Luv)

2. Anchor in the Storm (Waves of Freedom #2) by Sarah Sundin

         - 2020 Reading Assignment Challenge (Professor Genre)

         - Finish That Series Already 

3. The Astronauts Wives Club by Lily Koppel

         - IRL book club pick

         - 2020 Library Love Challenge

4. Why We March: Signs of Protest and Hope/Voices from the Women's March

          - 2020 Library Love Challenge

5. The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race by Jesmyn Ward

          - 2020 Library Love Challenge

6. This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins

         - From the 24 Festive Tasks game, this is what the dreidel chose for me to read as my first book of 2020

        - COYER

7. An Extraordinary Union (The Loyal League #1) by Alyssa Cole

         - Finish That Series

8. Breathless (Old West #2) by Beverly Jenkins

          - Finish That Series

9. The Darkness Knows (Vi and Charles Mystery #1) by Cheryl Honigford

         - COYER

10. Appetites and Vices (The Truitts #1) by Felicia Grossman

            - COYER

11. Her Perfect Partner (Matched to Perfection #1) by Priscilla Oliveras

          - COYER

12. Copycat Killing (Magical Cats Mystery #3) by Sofie Kelly

          - COYER

13. The Scandalous Suffragette by Elizabeth Redgold

           - COYER

14. Tycoon (The Knickerbocker Club #0.5) by Joanna Shupe

          - COYER

          - Finish That Series Already

15. Year One (The Chronicles of the One #1) by Nora Roberts

         - COYER

16. Smooth Talking Cowboy (Gold Valley #1) by Maisey Yates

          - COYER

17. Opposites Attract (Nerds of Paradise #1) by Merry Farmer

18. The Preacher's Promise (Home to Milford College #1) by Piper Huguley

          - COYER

19. That Healing Touch (Cutter's Creek #1) by Kit Morgan

        - COYER

20. Once Upon a Wedding: A Fiction from the Heart Second Chances Anthology by Various Authors

     - To dip in between books

The Guild - Felicia Day

Teeheehee! Here are the collected Guild comics to-date, including two previously unpublished stories. It was great to spend more time with these characters - strongly recommended to all fans of the show!

For those who don't know what The Guild is, a quick explanation: Felicia Day created a serial drama about some obsessive on-line video gamers with the help of friends and a shoe-string budget and put it on youtube. It was very funny and a big success, particularly in the gaming community. I recommend it to all; I've never played a MMORPG and I loved it. If you don't know what a MMOPRG is, well, I don't think that matters. It just matters that these characters are funny. Find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjNskyuROPM

First review of 2020 is four stars! Good start, at least!

The consequences of giving a pig a pancake to eat. It is messy but the pig fixes that.

Enjoyable story where children can follow a response. There is logic there but mostly enjoyable illustrations for them to follow as they follow pig through the pages.

*bookish series created by Moonlight Reader

Recently went through and updated my Planning to Read shelf here on BL and my Want to Read shelf on GR. This includes both my physical and digital books; it also includes a few books I plan to read from the library.

My TBR's number is *Drum Roll* 299.

UGH. Double UGH. Triple UGH.

So for one, I am putting myself on a no spend quarter. No more impulse buys because a blogger like the book or everyone is raving about this new author. Also, NO MORE FREEBIES FROM THE NOOK STORE - not even to find a book to fit a prompt for a challenge/game. This also means staying away from physical book stores and library sales for awhile.

For two, I am going back to TBR Thursdays.* When I made these posts I realized I much more in control of the TBR pile I had and liked seeing the books read versus what was added. I am in the beginning stages of building my reading goals for next year and want a clear view of where I am starting and how I am (or not) progressing; TBR Thursdays are my tools. 

Print additions

1. Lab Girl by Hope Jahern (for book club/gifted)

NOOK additions

2. Dalliances & Devotion (The Truitts #2) by Felicia Grossman (historical romance set during the Gilded Age)

3. Short-Straw Bride (Archer Brothers #1) by Karen Witemeyer (historical romance set in the west) - I checked my libraries' catalog and OverDrive and no dice

Kindle additions

Nothing

Library Borrows

Physical:

4. Well, That Escalated Quickly by Franchesca Ramsey

5. A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes

6. Vendetta in Death by J.D. Robb

Digital:

Nothing

NOOK read

Nothing

Kindle read

Nothing

Library Returns

Nothing

*Total TBR #: 299

and I have to admit I'm still feeling a torn about how I feel about this story. I think it's admirable that the author tackled the subject matter that she did and yes, this was a longer than usual story, but, I think it needed to be in order to appropriately deal with the issues. At just over 9 hours it was by no means the longest audio book that I've encountered and overall I didn't find my attention wandering so definitely points in the books favor.

There were aspects of the story that I struggled with and I think that at least some of this is a case of geographical issues. I'm from Canada so I'm really not well versed in the differences in laws and guidelines followed by agencies in the US but in my part of the world Logan would never...I repeat never have been allowed to run a class for victims of domestic violence as he was in this story...regardless of whether it happened one time or a dozen he abused his wife and 'anger management issues' does not excuse it. If anything it increases the odds of the abuse being repeated.

Yet at the same time I felt badly for Logan...he's a character who is very much a product of his environment and sadly had he been raised in a different environment than he was it's very possible that for one thing the abuse might never have happened and two...Logan wouldn't have been raised in an environment that fostered homophobia and in his own way Logan's behavior was motivated by homophobic ideals but thankfully he was also able to re-evaluate his ideals and see them for what they were.

I also had an issue with Trudy, Logan's counselor...truthfully more often than not I felt like she was pushing her agenda more so than helping Logan to deal with his problems and work through his issues and while he was in counselling because it was court mandated I never seemed to reach that point where it felt like Logan was beginning to understand that he did have issues that he needed help dealing with and that things were shifting from a must do situation in Logan's mind to a situation of 'I need this and it's helping me'. Logan's relationship with Trudy never held the positive or constructive sense that a patient/counselor relationship should hold. Logan consistently conveyed a sense of resentment when it came to Trudy with his anger at having to attend the sessions and at Trudy's 'intrusive' questioning of how he felt about things and for less tangible reasons I found that I wasn't overly impressed with Trudy and quite honestly if I'd been Logan I'm not sure that I wouldn't have asked for a change of counselor... overall this relationship just didn't work for me.

While some things didn't work for me there were also things that worked such as how much Logan wanted to be able to see his daughters again and ultimately his realization of how his behavior could impact his daughter's ideas of how a relationship should be. The picture we are given of how much Logan's children meant to him was for me a really big redeeming quality in his favor along with his realization that irregardless of how he felt about his wife, he wasn't the only one who deserved better...so did she.

Nick's relationship with his mother and how things between he and his father were portrayed along with this the part of the story what really worked the best for me was the relationship development between Nick and Logan. Overall, I was comfortable with how things played out between them and that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows made for a very realistic relationship between these two men and yes, I have to admit it 'thank the writing gods it wasn't insta-love, it seems like a number of the books that I've read lately have been based on this and it was just really nice to read a story where it took some time and effort for the MCs to get to know each other, like each other and have that become something deeper with a stronger bond. I'm not saying there's no such thing as love-at-first-sight but sometimes the things that are real and worth having also take time and effort and that's what it felt was happening in this story.

Just one more thing to mention before I chase move on to the next story and that's the narrator for this one...it was Jeff Gelder and while Mr. Gelder isn't a new to me narrator this is somewhere around the 8th of his audio book narrations that I've listened to and while I've enjoyed them all this one for me was definitely one of the better ones and he truly did an awesome job with the narration. I don't doubt that I'll listen to this one again in future.

And here I am at the end of things and finally feeling like I can give this a rating that I'm comfortable with so I'm going to go back up and give this 4 stars because when I compare this to other stories that I've given 3.5 stars to for me it's really a bit better than that so we're going with 4 well thought upon stars.