Reading 2024 Books 1-5

 Well, my reading of books has continued into 2024. My bucket list of books to read is slowly completed. Problem is I just keep adding more new books to the list faster than I am reading the ones already there. It appears to be a never ending task but I am enjoying the books I am reading.

My goal for 2024 is 36 books and here are the first five that I have read. I am on schedule according to Goodreads and have started using that site to help me keep track of what I want to read. Here is a quick summary of the five books and then I will give my thoughts and scores on each.

Summary

Five books read including three fiction and two non-fiction. I added two more fiction novels to the Bucket list and each author was my first book read by them. Two of the other books were by favorite authors and each book was the fourth book I have read by the author. 

The first nonfiction book was a library read...


I saw a good rating on Goodreads for this non-fiction book so I decided to get it out of the library. It was good and it was funny. The book was released in 2019. I give the book a 2.0 (Good) and enjoyed the drawings. The book has chapters like the following:
  1. How to Jump
  2. How to Throw a Pool Party
  3. How to Dig a Hole
  4. How to Play the Piano
  5. How to Make an Emergency Landing
There are a total of 28 chapters. As part of researching chapter 22 titled "How to Catch a Drone", the author reached out to professional tennis player Serena Williams to knock a drone out of the sky by hitting it with a tennis ball. Williams' husband Alexis piloted the drone, making it hover just over a tennis net, and Williams successfully batted it down on her third try. 

I see that he has two other books: What If? in 2014 and Thing Explainer in 2015.

The second book was...

I found this book on Goodreads and checked it out from Melbourne Library. I have read three other books by Cronin and this one was a great story. Read it in just 5 days; 538 pages. Released in 2023, it is classified as a dystopian fiction. The first three books I read by Cronin was a trilogy that ended up as a TV series. The three books, which I own,  were The Passage (also name of TV series), The Twelve, and The City of Mirrors. I give this book a 2.5 (Good to Great) because I felt it had some story problems. I love the concept but felt that it could have been done better. Side note: my copy of The City of Mirrors is signed by the author. It was some deal I had with Barnes & Noble.

The third book was the classic...

This became Book #64 on my bucket list. Most memorable is the movie with Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh. The book is very long but the author is a great writer. Scarlett O'Hara is quite the character. The Civil War and Georgia are featured as much as the characters. It was an Excellent (I give it a 4.0) book even if it took longer to read than the Civil War lasted. I thought I had seen the movie, but after reading the book, all 960 pages of it, either they cut a lot out or I slept through most of it. I own this softcover copy which was originally published in 1936.


The fourth book was simultaneously read with the previous...


I had read three previous books by this author in 2023. This was his newest non-fiction book, published in 2023, and I saw some good reviews so I bought my own copy at B&N. It was a great (I give it a 3.0) read about a forgotten story of a shipwreck, with mutiny and murder and maybe cannibalism. The other books I have read by Grann are The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, The Lost City of Z, and the Killers of the Flower Moon. The last two have been made into movies and "Killers" is nominated for 10 Oscars this year. The movie was released last year; the book was published in 2017.

The fifth book is truly a classic...


This became Book #65 on my bucket list. A classic detective story and I am so glad I read it. It took less than 2 days to finish it. I think I may read some more Agatha Christie in the future. I give this book a 3.5 (Great to Excellent). I had seen different versions of the movie so I knew what was going to happen, and regardless, it was still a book I could not put down. I think my interest is that it is presented very logical, from the standpoint of Detective Hercule Poirot, and logic is just math which I love. QED

I am currently reading a book but decided to write this post before I finished it. It will be book #6.

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