A week was spent on The Mists of Avalon which I really enjoyed, narrated by Davina Porter who did the entire Outlander series and is one of my favorite narrators.

Rebecca Roanhorse's Star Wars novel Resistance Reborn was pretty good. I find the Star Wars books to be hit or miss but this one was one of the better in the genre I have read. Narrated by Marc Thompson, as are many of the Star Wars books.

Currently I am reading Elmore Leonard's City Primeval and it is read by the late great Frank Muller.

I just started Ken Follett's new one, Circle of Days. I like his historical fiction novels like the Kingsbridge series more than his thrillers. This is the 27th book by Ken Follett I have read, I don't think I have missed any.

You bet, but it must be a real stinker if I DNF it. Usually I give a book I finished but didn't like 1 or 2 stars and move on. I am pretty good at picking books that I will like from the get-go, but I do like to branch out sometimes and read different genres and sometimes, because I don't read the reviews or book jacket material before diving in, it is a dud. If I like a book well enough to continue a series but it wasn't my favorite I will rate 3 stars. Unless I am truly hating the book and it is really long or something I don't DNF, but it has happened before.

I understand that most people are short on time or patience though, requiring more judicious selection (by reading reviews and getting recommendations) or just giving up if the book isn't good enough. That is ok, there is not a wrong way to read.

@FitMary202 - I agree life is too short - or at least the portion of it I can allocate to reading is. That said, when I'm thinking of giving up on a book, I put it on hold for a while especially if it sounded like something I would like. I'm a temperamental reader sometimes. I figure maybe it's not the book or the writing, but just I'm not in the frame of mind for it at the current time. I'll set it aside and see if I come back to it later. Mostly I do this because every once in a while, I come across a book that halfway through I'm thinking why am I reading this, but the ending makes it feel like it was worthwhile.

Never Flinch by Stephen King finally came in at the library for me. I have to finish 8 hours of Arm of the Sphinx (The Books of Babel 2) by Josiah Bancroft before I start the latest Holly Gibney novel.

The Stephen King Holly Gibney book Never Flinch was good, I rated it 4 stars. I have to pick another one, I found A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles was on two of the Goodreads challenge badges so if I read that one I would get both, so I checked it out from the library, but have not started it yet.

Well, I finally made it through Babel - R.F Kuang. I had trouble with at parts, and other parts were really great. Finally, I decided to give it 4 stars. It was really an interesting story - I think too many foot notes made it feel like an economics or history textbook at time.

Going with something lighter next - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid. This is on one of the GoodReads challenges and had been in MT. TBR for some time.

I have read 27 of my 28 book goal on GoodReads Challenge. Since there are still 2 months in the year I hope to finish 30 books - That's how many I read on last year's challenge.

@Catfish_Fan - I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on A Gentleman in Moscow - it's been in Mt TBR for a while now.

I gave A Gentleman in Moscow 4 stars. It is not the typical book style I generally read, but I considered it in the genre with which it is, and it was pretty good. Not much happens, it is the life of a guy imprisoned in a hotel, but some books are not action/adventure or sword and sorcery. I barely got it finished in October. It did count on Goodreads as two badges for the challenge.

I have quite the book hangover and will start something new tomorrow. I am thinking V.E. Schwab's 2025 novel Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, but it is kind of long too (A Gentleman… came in at 18 hours on audio and Bury Our Bones… is slightly longer). I am not intimidated by the length, but it is not something I feel like starting until tomorrow.

Doh, I didn't check my Amazon Kindle book Wishlist today and I just did, I had 5 new temporary price drops to $2 or $3. Saturday (3am Amazon time) is November so there will be a new batch of Monthly Deals to look at too. Mount TBR keeps getting larger.

I have a friend who doesn't have a huge pile of books yet to be read, either on seven bookshelves or 1000 "low priced" kindle books in a kindle cloud library. She checks out books from libraries or buys a full priced book as she reads them. How odd. Or, is Tsundoku really the odd concept? I have read articles that purport that surrounding yourself with unread books is healthier or better for you in some manner (but I can attest that it is not better for my wallet).

@marlalynns6304 - that a very thoughtful friend, and it is always nice to share books with friends. That's what this little group is about - that and sharing thoughts on tea.

@Catfish_Fan - thanks for the info on A Gentleman in Moscow - it was the book I bought my stepfather just before he passed away. My mom gave it back to me afterwards. He and I used to swap books back and forth. So this one sits in my TBR as I get emotional still just looking at it.

@FitMary202 - LOL! I think if there was such a group - they may be lost somewhere in a mountain of books. Let us know about Stay True - I hadn't heard about it so I just Googled it - maybe it's one of those books you don't get the entire gist of until the very end.

I didn't know what Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab was about at all before I started it, as I don't read any reviews or even look at the Goodreads page to see before I dive in. I like the author and that was good enough. It turns out to be a horror about vampires, kind reminds me of Anne Rice (who I loved) but not quite as good. I'm not very close to done with it (60% complete) and it will take me a couple more days.

Thanks for the update on Bury Our Bone in the Midnight Soil @Catfish_Fan. I have seen it on a couple of lists lately and was wondering about it. It would be hard to top Anne Rice when it comes to vampires. I loved her books as well. Will be interested in what you thought overall once you are finished with it.

I really enjoy Jeff Shaara so you've motivated me to add Blaze of Glory to Mt. TBR. Not that I needed additions, but thanks, @Catfish_Fan ! Good luck with your buyer too!

🤣🤣🤣You had me at Tsundoku, but "no shelf control" is next level!!

It occurred to me, as I am working on the Goodreads challenge, reading a mediocre "short" book (P. Djeli Clark's Ring Shout), that I have a lot better books on Mt. TBR than this and I am reading it simply to get a badge. In fact, my Mt. TBR is basically infinity big, there are literally 10,000 books on it (not all that I own, mind you, but books I wish I could read) but that I could never read if I lived to be 150 years old. I wouldn't have chosen this one except the list of books for this badge was astonishingly small compared to the number of books there are in the world. And it occurs to me that the publisher must be paying Amazon/Goodreads a small fortune to promote this book into that extremely small curated list to get us badges, artificially creating buzz around the book, spiking the number of readers artificially by getting people to read something they are actually paying Amazon/Goodreads to get us to read.

For memoires (a genre I wouldn't normally choose to read) I chose All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson. I rated it for what it was, and it wasn't a bad book for what it was so I didn't ding the rating, even though I am not a black homosexual male and didn't have a lot of interest in the topic being discussed. I had already read some memoires this year that were not on the list, or some that were but don't count because they were "previously read". I don't have anything against black homosexuals at all, it just wasn't that interesting to me (I read it also because it is a popularly banned book by libraries and I wanted to see why). At least it was short.

The Kindle challenge in the Kindle App is different, as it has you read a select book from a large list in a particular genre which is similar, but the list is very large and encompasses many different interests. The hardest badge on that one for me to complete was the Color badge which required me to complete a Graphic Novel (which I chose from the Kindle Unlimited collection). Most of the badges involve reading on your kindle on a particular date or dates, or a number of days total (so it discriminates against the physical book reading population). The challenge seems less monetized? I have said before that it is way too easy for me to complete though.

I don't know if I will pay any attention to the Goodreads challenge after this one. I am almost complete with it so I will finish this one, I think. I don't have a problem choosing books I genuinely enjoy from my Mt. TBR without being pushed to read something being a paid promotional/advertisement through this challenge.