If you’ve been following our blog, you probably already know that I made a New Year’s Resolution to read 50 books this year.  And if you didn’t already know that, then you can read about it here.

One month has passed and I needed to read at least five books by the end of it.  Well, I’m going to go ahead and pat myself on the back because I ended up reading eight books by January 28. Since I had decided to make my progress on this reading resolution public, I thought I’d tell you guys about what I’ve read and also what my favorites were.

Here’s the list:

1. My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: 40 New Fairy Tales edited by Kate Bernheimer

2. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (I talked about this book a little bit in my first New Year’s resolutions post.)

3. Penny Dreadful by Laurel Snyder

4. Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris (read my take on that here)

5. The Woman Who Wouldn’t by Gene Wilder (yes, that Gene Wilder, you know, Willy Wonka from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

6. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

7. My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

8. Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin (read Ellen’s take on this book here)

I must admit that it was pretty hard to choose a favorite out of what I read last month since I read a few different genres–fiction, humor, and children’s literature.  So I have a tie.  And the winners are…We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Penny Dreadful.  They’re all quite different from each other, but I finished both We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Penny Dreadful in one day.  I couldn’t put either of them down.  Shirley Jackson’s novel was perfectly constructed and delightfully twisted while Laurel Snyder’s Penny Dreadful was precious and heartwarming. And as for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, well, it’s just hard to beat Murakami in my book.

I hope your own New Year’s resolutions are coming along nicely.  Please do let me know if you have any suggestions for my reading quest. I would love to hear from you (in fact most of this month’s books were suggestions from my fellow Lemurians).  -Kaycie

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