My 2013 goal of 150 books and Kindle bargains for today

In January I set myself a goal to read 150 books. Really ambitious, right? Especially considering I have a job (I'm lucky, I get to work from home), two children (one with special needs), a home, a husband (he should come further up on the list, and he does in my heart, but there are somethings that don't care what I love, they just want what they want. Like my job, and my house, and kids . . .), activities, homework, working out, and this wonderful blog. But somehow, this year, I have read almost 107 books (I will finish number 107 today), which leaves me 8% behind where I should be to reach my goal (thank you Goodreads for setting up that wonderful counter to keep me on track, I say with disdain dripping from my voice).

107 isn't bad. Some may say I cheated to get to this point; I listened to books, I read a few Kindle Singles, which counted on Goodreads as a book. I would love to only read, but I have to make a living and get my kids to where they need to be and make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do. And I do have a social life, so I sometimes talk to people when I should be reading (GASP!!).  I sometimes drink wine instead of read, or watch a movie, or just hang with the family. But I do read a lot of those times, too. Because reading is a wonderful way to get through a swim meet, or a swim practice, or a family movie that you just cannot watch (any Barbie movie, for instance) but you want to seem like you're watching.

So, I keep plugging along. And I try to fill you in on the books I enjoyed on my journey, and some that I hated, and some that I haven't read that I want to read. I'm trying to fill you in on the bargains, but sometimes life gets in the way.

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Amazon Kindle Deals 

For $1.99, Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson looks really good. Miss Buncle is looking for money, and writing a novel seems to be the best way. But she has no material. So she takes stories from her friends and neighbors and uses them to write a novel under a pseudonym. The small village of Silverstream is in a uproar, and so is Miss Buncle when the village people start sharing experiences with their fictional counterparts. I just scooped it up; you should, too!


$1.99, Joyce Carol Oates is sometimes wonderful, sometimes really out there (I just finished Zombie), but I always find reading her worthwhile, The Tattooed Girl is about a reclusive novelist who is forced to take an assistant, this book treads on anti-Semitism, sensuality, "our excepted limits of desire." Sounds good.



$3.99, Carved in Darkness is the story of a Melissa, a teenaged girl, abducted, tortured, and repeatedly raped for 83 days, and the woman she becomes, trying to put the darkness behind her.  As an adult, she changes her name to Sabrina, gets a new face, and becomes a homicide detective. But when someone from her past finds her and claims that his sister was killed by Sabrina's abductor, she is drawn back into a world she has tried desperately to forget.


$3.79. This one looks really good and very Halloween-y. Hemlock Grove is the story of a Pennsylvania town and the old family that runs it. Their fortune was built on steel, but they now are turning to new industries, namely biotech. When a body of a young girl is found, all eyes turn to the White Tower, the biotech facility which fosters rumors of unethical biological experiments. "An exhilarating reinvention of the gothic novel, inspired by the iconic characters of our greatest myths and nightmares."