On Our Winter Reading List [The 2020 Edition] #AMonthofFaves

For 2020, we’re hosting 3 reading challenges where you have to read books according to a theme – and we’re all in! Half of the fun is selecting the books to read, and here’s some of what we’ve clocked so far – 5 books on our Winter Reading List.

✰ TANYA ✰

Miracle Creek, Angie Kim

For January’s Monthly Keyword Challenge – for the keyword “Water” I chose a book on Sarah’s Book Shelves Best Books of 2019.

In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident. A powerful showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Chapter by chapter, we shift alliances and gather evidence: Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe?

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1), Martha Wells

February’s Monthly Motif Reading Challenge is Seeing Red – Read a book with the word ‘red’ in the title OR a book with a red-ish cover. Kim has been raving about the Murderbot series, so I’m going to read All Systems Red, the first in the Murderbot series.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid – a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

Milkman, Anna Burns

For March’s Monthly Book Award Reading Challenge, I’m finally going to read the winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (presented on March 14, 2019).

In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumors start to swell, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous.

~ KIM ~

Like Tanya, I’ve been busy planning out all my reads to correspond with the reading challenges we’re hosting and working on getting my tracking spreadsheet put together. Super excited to see that she’s going to give Murderbot a try! So far, I’ve only figured out a handful of what I want to read. But here’s a look…

Daisy Jones and the Six, Taylor Reid Jenkins

I used an Audible credit to get this and said multiple times that I was going to start it next… and then never did. Well, now is the perfect time! One of the prompts for January’s Monthly Keyword Challenge is “Six“.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ‘n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, Bernd Heinrich

I picked this one up from the library last year but never had time to get to it. I promised myself I’d check it out again soon. With JANUARY’S Monthly Motif Reading Challenge prompt being “Winter Wonderland”, I decided this was perfect.

From award-winning writer and biologist Bernd Heinrich, an intimate, accessible and eloquent illumination of animal survival in Winter. Examining everything from food sources in the extremely barren winter landscape to the chemical composition that allows certain creatures to survive, Heinrich’s Winter World awakens the largely undiscovered mysteries by which nature sustains herself through the harsh, cruel exigencies of winters.

For our Monthly Book Award Reading Challenge,, I’m just not sure yet. There are quite a few Audie Award winners that have peaked my interest, but March is a long way off- so I’m not sure I want to commit just yet. As for January, not much is grabbing me so far. We’ll see.

Selecting which books to read is sometimes as much fun as reading the books themselves! How do you pick the books you want to read? Have you read or heard of any of the books we mentioned above?  If you’re participating in #AMonthofFaves [The 2019 Edition] link up to your blog post (or Instagram picture) below.