I read Playing Big because I’d read Tara’s blog on and off over the years and I really wanted to see what the book was about. Playing big in general is not something that seemed to call to me so I wasn’t sure I would like the book.

But I loved it.

Especially Chapter 2 which spoke to me strongly enough that it made me read the whole book in one go. That particular visualization exercise has still stayed with me and made the whole thing very worthwhile.

I read J because it was long listed for the Man Booker prize.

This was probably one of the toughest novels to get through for me. I read it over weeks and weeks. It felt like it was dragging on forever and I just couldn’t get through it.

I can’t even tell you what made the book so hard to finish or even read at all. And in the end, I am not sure I liked it. It was really depressing.

I’ve never read Jacobson before so I don’t know if this is typical for him but now I am not tempted to read more of him.

I read I’ll Give you the Sun because my friend Evelyn recommended it. And can i just say: It was the best book I read in 2014. It was wonderful. So different. So lovely. So beautiful. So heart wrenching and touching and well told.

I loved every single minute of it.

It’s different. It’s young adult with magical realism. If that’s not your cup of tea, you won’t like it. But if you’re even slightly on the fence, I recommend you give it a try. It’s really really wonderful.

I read The Magicians after it sat on my list for years. I always thought I’d like it but apparently I had no idea what the plot really was. This story is sort of like Harry Potter for grown ups. But I think it’s not as good.

It’s longer than it needs to be and gets tedious at parts. There are a lot of characters and it’s hard to keep track of all the plot points. Maybe it didn’t help that I listened to it and didn’t read, but I’ve listened to a lot of books this year and didn’t have this problem before.

I’m on the fence about reading the other two. Especially since I hear number two is not that great.

I listened to Ready Player One because I’d heard the audiobook was awesome. And it was. It was awesome.

As someone who’s been in computer-land for a long time, but not a huge gamer, I still really enjoyed this nerdy, awesome story. I liked how it all came together. I liked all the little nerdy bits. I liked Will Wheaton’s reading.

If you’re into computers, computer games, at all, you will love this one.

I read The Testing Series just for fun when I was on vacation. I read all of them in a row and was interested the whole time. It was, of course, similar to other novels I read but I still found it interesting and fun. I can’t remember much of it now, which speaks to how durable the story is but I didn’t feel like it was a waste of time, at the time.

It’s sort of sad when that’s the best I can say about a book. But don’t let me deter you if this is your type of book. Clearly I liked it well enough to read all three.