My Year in Blogmoir

Blogmoir: 

01.22.2022 New Year, New Intentions

03.30.2022 Message for My Peeps

09.14.2022 Virgo's Groove

09.21.2022 Fall Blog Break

Many Merry Blessings in the New Year❣️

  

Top 5 Nonfiction of 2022

1. Will by Will Smith

2. Walking in My Joy: In These Streets by Jenifer Lewis

3. Scenes from My Life: A Memoir by Michael K. Williams

4. Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker

5. Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat by Patricia Williams

*Re-Read of a Favorite: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Top 10 Fiction of 2022

1. Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe

2. Recitatif by Toni Morrison

3. One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

4. The 6:20 Man by David Baldacci

5. All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle

6. If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin

7. Never Meant to Meet You by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans

8. What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez

9. Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover

10. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover  

Top 3 Short Stories of 2022

1. Again by J.L. Seegars

2. My Dear Friend Janet by Keke Palmer with Jasmine Guillory

3. My Evil Mother by Margaret Atwood

Top 5 Series of 2022

1. Things We Never Got Over (Knockemout #1) by Lucy Score

2. Family of Liars (We Were Liars #2) by E. Lockhart

3. Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30) by James Patterson 

4. By the Book (Meant to Be #2) by Jasmine Guillory 

5. To Catch a Raven (Women Who Dare #3) by Beverly Jenkins

DNF & NRN of 2022

Bookhearts, you are familiar with my 50-Page Rule. The purpose of this annual DNF (did not finish) and NRN (not right now) post is to share my reason(s) in an effort to help books find its intended audience. May these books find a new home where they will be finished and enjoyed.

1. An Honest Lie by Tarryn Fisher ~ Please not another Then & Now when unnecessary.
2. Chevy in the Hole by Kelsey Ronan ~ Love Detroit mentions but not enough to finish; disjointed.
3. Embers on the Wind by Lisa Williamson Rosenberg ~ I was here for Underground Railroad but not séances, spirits, "high yellow" girls, "midnight black" ancestors and the Obelisk. 
4. Finding Me by Viola Davis ~ Unpopular opinion that it's disjointed. Will try again someday.
5. Fly Away by Kristin Hannah ~ Skimmed because in a coma the whole book?!
6. Half-Blown Rose by Leesa Cross-Smith ~ Beautiful prose but story falls flat and slow-paced.
7. Happy is on Hiatus by A.C. Arthur ~ Snoozer.
8. Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese ~ To be a retelling of Scarlet Letter, the focus is on everything and everybody but Nathaniel Hawthorne.
9. Hide by Tracy Clark ~ Slow motion for meh.
10. How to Be a Boss B*tch by Christine Quinn ~ The bitch is bitchier in book form.
11. Jackal by Erin E. Adams ~ Missing Black girls is important but this long roundabout is too slow.
12. Maame by Jessica George ~ Teetering on woe-is-me thin line. Unexpected content.
13. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult ~ Fittylem characters.
14. On Rotation ~ Turned off from language ("ass" overused, "dark-skinned nappy-headed ho"). 
15. Restore Me by J.L. Seegars ~ Not sure what it is but this ain't it.
16. The Accidental Pinup by Danielle Jackson ~ Great body positivity message but forced romance.
17. The Bluebonnet Battle by Carolyn Brown ~ Southern charm is there but overdoing funeral talk.
18. The Homewreckers by Mary Kay Andrews ~ Serious yawning.
19. The Three of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams ~ Where is the punctuation? Impossible to read.
20. The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth ~ Too slow of a slow burn.
21. This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel ~ Alternating from past to present with no chapter heading.
22. Upgrade by Blake Crouch ~ Jargon took me out. (Diffusely metastatic, pyknodyostosis, Paget's...)
23. Violeta by Isabel Allende ~ History Lesson vs. Historical Fiction; pandemic all over again.
24. Wahala by Nikki May ~ I've met them all now and nope.
25. Where Wild Peaches Grow by Cade Bentley ~ Slow as thick syrup.
26. Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? ~ Will try again when I have the patience to read heavy dialect.
27. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi ~ Struggled to get far as 11%.

Top 10 First Lines of 2022

1. "I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm. And I lost about a year of my life and much of the comfort and security I had not valued until it was gone." ~ Kindred by Octavia E. Butler 

2. "Sometimes you recognize a tool only after it starts working for you. And sometimes, it turns out, the smallest of tools can help us to sort through the largest of feelings." ~ The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama

3.  "I was the one who found Daddy dead, crammed in the little space where my old bike's training wheels turned rusted." ~ What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris

4. "It's like being awakened from a dream, a real-feeling dream where you didn't know you were sleeping. Like being pulled from a thick, muddy river bottom into cold, clear water. Thought last I checked, rivers don't have candles, and this place is full of them. Voices murmur around me: a prayer I've never heard." ~ Embers on the Wind by Lisa Williamson Rosenberg

5. "There's this dream I've been having about my mother that scares the holy night out of me, and each time I wake from it I'm afraid to open my eyes and face the world that awaits, the fractured world that used to make sense, but now seems disjointed—islands of possibility that float by—like a thousand puzzle pieces that just don't fit together anymore." Solo by Kwame Alexander with Mary Rand Hess

6. "My granddaddy is the only black man I've ever met who was never broke a day in his life." ~ Rabbit by Patricia "Ms. Pat" Williams

7. "Am I strong enough?" ~ Wahala by Nikki May

8. "A year never passes without me thinking of them." ~ Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

9. "The Book of Psalms is amazing. It helps us know and understand God, it teaches us how to worship Him, it instructs us in wisdom, it encourages us, and it offers practical advice for our everyday life." ~ Daily Devotions from Psalms by Joyce Meyer 

10. "I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked into Cafe Rev, but it sure as hell wasn't a picture of myself behind the register under the cheery headline 'Do Not Serve.'"  ~ Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score