Courtney Milan Challenge (100% completed - 3 months ahead of schedule!)

1. The Countess Conspiracy (Brothers Sinister #3) - 3 stars

2. The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4) - 5 stars

3. Talk Sweetly to Me (Brothers Sinister #4.5) - 3 stars

Non-Fiction Challenge (29/50; 58% completed)

4. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser - 3.5 stars

5. Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss - 5 stars

6. Easter 1916 by Charles Townshend - 3 stars

7. Troublemaker by Leah Remini - 4 stars

8. Bossypants by TIna Fey - 4 stars

9. Yes Please by Amy Poehler - 4.5 stars

10. 4,000 Years of Uppity Women by Vicki Leon - 2 stars

TBR Pile Down

11. Killer Run (Tourist Trap Mystery #5) by Lynn Cahoon - 3 stars

12. Murder on Wheels (Tourist Trap Mystery #6) by Lynn Cahoon - 3 stars

13. Tea Cups and Carnage (Tourist Trap Mystery #7) by Lynn Cahoon - 4.5 stars

14. At the Duke's Wedding (Anthology) by Various Authors - 3 stars

15. Killer Cupcakes (Lexy Baker Mysteries #1) by Leighann Dobbs - 1 star

16. Dying for Danish (Lexy Baker Mysteries #2) by Leighann Dobbs - 1 star

17. A Season for Love: Holiday Sparks/Mistletoe & Margaritas/Snowbound with the CEO by Shannon Stacey - .5 star for two stories, 3 stars to one story

18. Harlequin Holiday Collection by Various Authors - 4 stars to two stories, 1 star to one story, and 0 stars to one story

Reading Challenge: 108 out of 150 books (72% completed)

Events: 24in48 Readathon, COYER Challenge, DoD Library Summer Program

This was a better book than Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser simply because this book addresses not only fast food but the food found in the grocery stores. I thought I knew enough to read the nutrition labels and ingredient lists, but the salt chapter showed how sodium shows up in our food through different chemicals. In the end, the author stresses how important it is for consumers, above the food company executives and the government, to be educated enough about the food we buy and eat so that we can make the right choices. Definitely will be shopping with new perspective. 5 stars.

I'm really not sure about this one. First of all, I loved the title. Loved the song going with it, too. The story, though? Hm. Let me try to make explain it a little.

I'm a fan of flamboyant characters. Most of all because I hate how hard it is for these guys in real life to be their true selves. In the straight communtiy, they constantly have to put up with ridicule, cruelty and lack of understanding. I'm so sick and tired of people spouting crap about how these guys are so "fake", and they should stop trying to be a woman, and that "real men" would never wear make-up or do this or do that. T

he gay community really isn't that much better. The ignorance and cruelty coming from a lot of gay men and women when it comes to flamboyant guys is unbelievable. It amazes me in the worst way how ingnorant people can be who actually have to fight their own stigma all the time. And don't get me started on all the crap about how these guys destroy the image of the "regular, normal gay guy" and how nobody who is gay wants to be with a woman, but with a real man, and how these "queens" damage the image of gay people "LGBTQA+ activists" want to promote. The nice, regular gay man, who looks and acts and talks and lives like every other straight man does and therefore has to be accepted uncondictionally. At the same time they refuse to live by their own standards and treat someone who doesn't exactly fit THEIR promoted image with the same ignorance and cruelty everybody else does. Drives me up the wall every damn time. And stop calling these guys feminine all the time, damnit! They're not! They are guys with make-up, or nail polish, or lip gloss or whatever else! Nothing more, nothing less. If I stop wearing make-up and never paint my nails pink, does it make me a more "man-ly" woman? No? Then stop using the generalized BS to put someone you don't know or understand into neat little boxes! Himmel, Arsch und Zwirn, as my grandma would say. Sorry for the rant, just had to say it once.

So, back to the book. As I said, it's always nice for me to see a flamboyant character portrayed in a book, who doesn't "tune it down" because he can't and shouldn't have to, wether at home or when he is in public. On the other hand his struggles, everyday-problems and fights are portrayed very well. And I enjoyed the dance of the two MCs around each other quite a bit. One could argue that Lukas was too one-dimensional, just too good. But in the end, it worked somehow.

What made it difficult for me to read was the stream-of-consciousness-feeling of it all. You have to like it to really make it work, and it just isn't that great for me. Details, minutes like hours and weeks like seconds - it all comes together in a long description that is "one-sided" and more often than not leaves me with a tiny little bit of a "WTF"-face. And I wasn't quite comfortable with the ending. The marriage as a "fix" was hard for me to swallow. Of course they put it somewhat into perspective and I got the feeling that both guys knew that things wouldn't automatically be all rainbows and sunshine from there on. Still, it didn't sit right with me. The side characters in the end also were somewhat... overwhelming? I like diversity in my books, and creative "world building", but here I struggled a little bit with the last part of the story.

So, I really liked it, but I also had some problems with it and I don't feel comfortable with an exact rating. But I'd definitely recommend it. Just take it with a little bit of salt. Or sugar. Whatever floats your boat.

The Five-Star Reads:

How to Create the Perfect Wife - a wealthy lunatic obsessed with the educational theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau kidnaps two orphans from the Foundling Hospital to raise one of them to be his wife.  Hilarity ensues.

North and South - a novel by Mrs. Gaskell, and written at about the same time Dickens was also taking on industrialization, which she tackles here.

March - Geraldine Brooks tackles the American Civil War by looking at the absent father of the March girls in Little Women.

Salt, Sugar, Fat - you do not want to know how much of these substances the packaged food industry is stuffing into their products.  Really, you don't.  The science was fascinating, the ethics appalling.

Dominion - In a 1952 where Hitler won, Britain is fascist, and a power struggle is expected in Germany, where Hitler is believed to be dying.  Meanwhile in England, a man working for the Resistance at the Dominions Office has terrible choices to make.

Maddaddam - the final volume of Margaret Atwood's dystopian trilogy.

To Kill a Mockingbird - a reread.  I picked this up for the first time in about 30 years, and it held up beautifully.  I had forgotten how funny it was.

Honorable Mention:

The Revenant of Thraxton Hall (a paranormal historical mystery)

The Pericles Commission (a historical mystery set in ancient Athens)

Elizabeth of York (biography of Mrs. Henry VII)

Winter King (not quite a bio, not quite a study of the whole reign, but it's about Henry VII)

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (a Flavia de Luce, and a very strong one)

The Man in the High Castle (the book that made Philip K. Dick's reputation)

The Disappearing Spoon (the periodic table is fun)

The Age of Wonder (the Romantics discover science)

The Time-Traveler's Guide to Medieval England (the Elizabethan one is good, but this is better)

The Endurance (I should have read it in July, this book is so cold.)

Justice Hall (And several others in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, which are nearly as strong.)

And only a couple of real turkeys!  A very good year, all told.