A few of us at work participated in a reading challenge last year. I did not complete it! I was only a few books short but still. This year we are doing another one and made it a bit shorter. I am determined to finish this year and have already completed three of the twelve books!    

The Color Master: Stories by Aimee Bender was chosen under the category “Author with Same Name” and honestly, I didn’t have a ton of choices. BUT! I had read her novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake  (a young girl can taste the emotions of the cook through the food of theirs she eats, which sounds strange but I assure you it was a great story) last year and really enjoyed it so I was happy to pick up a short story collection. I really enjoyed the stories, even though the first few were a bit dark and I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish the collection though!

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne was one I picked up randomly as I’d seen it on a few best read lists. I hadn’t read anything by Boyne previously. I really enjoyed this story, that was told from three points of view although all about the same person, Maurice Swift. If that makes sense! I used this one to fulfill the category, “Takes Place in a City or Town You’d Like to Visit” and it covers a few places because the characters travel quite a bit. Amsterdam, London and New York just to name a few! 

Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez takes place in the Getsemani neighborhood in Cartagena, Colombia where I will soon be visiting! And this happened to fill the “Author of a Different Nationality or Ethnicity” category as Garcia Marquez is Colombian and I am…well…not! I have read a handful of Garcia Marquez’s books and have enjoyed them all. Love in the Time of Cholera is on my re-read list -it is one of my all time favorites.