Author: cherylmahoney
I'm a book review blogger and writer. I have published four novels, The Wanderers; The Storyteller and Her Sisters; and The People the Fairies Forget; and The Lioness and the Spellspinners. All can be found on Amazon as an ebook and paperback. In my day job, I'm a Marketing Specialist. Find me on Twitter (@MarvelousTales) and GoodReads (MarvelousTales).
2019 Reading Round-Up
It’s the beginning of 2020, so that means it time to look back at the best, the worst and the sometimes weird of my 2019 reading. I always enjoy looking back and invariably discovering I read more really good books than I think. January books seem very, very long ago, and I like the reminder.
1) Best of…
I’ve been splitting my “Best of” books for the past several years, so that I can highlight the ones that were best in very specific ways.
1A) Best Premise: Every Day by David Levithan – I was so intrigued by the concept of a lead character who enters a new body every day, and I really enjoyed how it was explored in this first book. The rest of the trilogy was more mixed, but I still found that premise so fascinating.
1B) Best World Building: Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery – It might be odd to give this one to a book that isn’t sci fi or fantasy; it’s also the only re-read on the list, but I just loved the way Montgomery described the world of Lantern Hill and the people there.
1C) Best Romance: I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn – This was an adorable, delightful romance with a young adult couple who used words and were honest about their feelings. Also, I never particularly liked mochi, the Japanese dessert, until I read this book and she made it sound so good!
1D) Best Hero(ines): Heroine Complex and Heroine Worship by Sarah Kuhn – Sarah Kuhn is clearly my new star author, because I also thoroughly enjoyed her superheroine series. Besides Evie and Aveda as awesome lead characters, they’re surrounded by a whole lot of other cool women doing interesting things. I loved that. Continue reading “2019 Reading Round-Up”
2019 Reading Challenges: Final Results
Happy 2020! The start of a new year means looking back at 2019’s reading, to see how I did on my reading challenges. I read a total 105 books this year, similar to last year, lower than some of my previous, far more reading-extensive years. Let’s see where those books fell in my reading challenge categories…
Nonfiction Reading Challenge
Host: Doing Dewey
Goal: 12 Nonfiction Books/At least one book for each “century” of the Dewey Decimal system
I completed my goals for this challenge by last October, but I continued reading a handful of nonfiction books in the last quarter of the year. I far exceeded my goal number, so apparently my total reading is down compared to earlier years, but nonfiction is up.
- We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee (590.73)
- Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb (158.1)
- Through Lover’s Lane by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly (813.52)
- Packing for Mars by Mary Roach (571.09)
- Dear Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence (028.9)
- Love for Imperfect Things by Haemin Sunim (294.35)
- The Creative Life by Julia Cameron (818.54)
- Do Nothing by Siroj Sorajjakool (299.51)
- The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (153.35)
- It’s Better Than It Looks by Gregg Easterbrook (306.09)
- Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin
- A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton (387.73)
- Growing Up Again by Mary Tyler Moore (362.19)
- The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy (428.00)
- 30 Before 30 by Marina Shifrin (650.10)
- Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin (974.7)
- Alone Time by Stephanie Rosenbloom (910.40)
- I’ll Have What She’s Having by Rebecca Harrington (791.43)
- Quit Like a Millionaire by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung
- Living a Life That Matters by Harold S. Kushner (296.36)
- There Are No Grown-ups by Pamela Druckerman (305.24)
- Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman (155.23)
- Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain by Elaine Fox (155.2)
- Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky (647.94)
- I Know Just What You Mean by Ellen Goodman and Patricia O’Brien (158.25)
- Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle by David Stashower (823.8)
- What Was I Thinking? 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories edited by Barbara Davilman and Liz Dubelman (306.70)
- The Dharma of the Princess Bride by Ethan Nichtern (791.43)
Friday Face-Off: Sparkles Abound
It’s time again for the Friday Face-Off meme, created by Books by Proxy, with weekly topics hosted by Lynn’s Book Blog. The idea is to put up different covers for one book, and select a favorite.
This week’s theme is: the festive season – a cover that is glittery or sparkling
With a prompt like that, I can’t resist sharing the covers from two of my recent releases! Sparkles actually form a key part of the plot in The Servants and the Beast, as part of the fairy’s curse is an accumulation of sparkles gradually filling the Beast’s castle. They even had to close one wing because it was so filled with sparkles!
Here’s the audiobook cover – which was just out this week!
Servants is a collaboratively-written novella with four other writers, but one continuous story. We collaborated again recently to write After the Sparkles Settled, a Christmas epilogue to the story, also out this past week. I designed the cover, modeled after the original, though less sparkly…
These were very fun stories to write, so it’s fun to have a chance to share the sparkly covers!
Tales of the Marvelous 