landline | morethanabookreview

DSCN2898 — Partial stack of 2015 books read. Most books not shown were borrowed from the library.

This past year was a record setting year for books and pages read. Since I started this blog mid-year, I thought it best to list all the books read in 2015 in one places. Odds are good this will become an annual list.

My goal for 2015 was 45 books, turns out I only got around to reading 24. Here’s to a better 2016 challenge (Goal of 40 books)!

Alphabetically listed, past post links provided in bold:
The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 2; Revelations by J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr. (Illustrator)
Ape House by Sara Gruen review
The Bone Season (The Bone Season #1) by Samantha Shannon
Champion (Legend #3) by Marie Lu
Counting By 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan review
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
If I Stay (If I Stay #1) by Gayle Forman
The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
Landline by Rainbow Rowell review
Legend (Legend #1) by Marie Lu
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
by Marie Kondō, Cathy Hirano (Translator) review
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
The Martian by Andy Weir
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Mime Order (The Bone Season #2) by Samantha Shannon
The Mine (Northwest Passage #1) by John A. Heldt
The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan
Prodigy (Legend #2) by Marie Lu
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline review
The Sacred Mirror: Evangelicalism, Honor, and Identity in the Deep South, 1790-1860
by Robert Elder review
Serena by Ron Rash
Where She Went (If I Stay #2) by Gayle Forman
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz #1) by L. Frank Baum, W.W. Denslow (Illustrations)
The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers

Highlights from 2015:
Here’s the short list of books that I didn’t get to review officially, but are well worth a read. I loved The Husband’s Secret. Middlesex is a well deserved Pulitzer Prize winning book that provides a beautiful story about a hermaphrodite. The Bone Season and The Mime Order are from my favorite series right now by Samanatha Shannon. The Third installment is due out this fall. The Martian and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand were fun and entertaining reads that are well worth the time. Landline is by another one of my favorite authors, Rainbow Rowell, she is a great writer and I compare her style and cadence to that of John Green’s. Serena was made into a movie starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawerence that apparently went straight to DVD. The book was a bit of a thriller and did not go the way I thought it would! Don’t let the netflix description of the movie fool you, the book’s main theme is not the loss of a child.

I read The Wizard of Oz out loud to my kindergartner. This was a lot of fun and became a theme recently for us. We’ve watched the movie and our local theater did a production of it that he and I went on a special date to see! Not to mention, our neighboring town used to host an annual Wizard of Oz festival that was world renowned.

If you have question about any of the other books listed, send me a message or ask in the comments! All of these books can be found on Amazon and many can be found at your local public library.

Since I started this book journal in the middle of the year, there are about 16 books I’ve already read that won’t get the full morethanabookreview.com treatment. Some of these titles include books by my favorite authors and also one of my new favorite books! Landline is one of those books, written by one of my current favorite authors, Rainbow Rowell. While it may not include all of my first reactions, it stuck with me enough to be able to write this reflection.

Landline by Rainbow Rowell (Publication July 8, 2014)
Finished reading January 2015

Brief synopsis:
Landline is a story about a marriage in trouble. Georgie McCool and her husband, Neale, have been together since college. Georgie puts in long hours writing a sitcom while Neale cares for their two daughters. As the pressure of her career continues to impact her family life, Georgie is faced with some difficult decisions when Neale leaves at Christmas to visit his family and takes the girls along. The plot line is further complicated by the fact that Georgie’s work partner is her long-time college friend, Seth. Much of the story centers on a seemingly magical, bright yellow landline phone that allows Georgia to communicate with the past.

Why this book and why January 2015:
Landline was my first book of 2015. I was on a bit of a Rainbow Rowell kick after reading Attachments, Eleanor & Park, and Fangirl. This was the last Rowell book I had to read and I was very eager to do so. Rainbow’s book Attachments is one of the first books I recommend to any of my girlfriends that ask. That book had me laughing so hard I was crying a mere three pages in! As I mentioned in my About Page, Rainbow Rowell is one of my current favorite authors.

The time frame of the story is around Christmas, the fact that I was reading it just after the holidays was entirely coincidental, however being surrounded by snow, family, the looming date of going back to work, did very much help me relate to Georgie in ways that reading this book during the summer would have made different.

At one point in this book, Georgie sees snow for the first time. Growing up in the Midwestern United States, I found it a bit mind boggling that another American had never experienced snow before! I’m sure there are lots of people in the United States that have never touched snow, I just had never even consider the fact. This part of the book was a lot of fun to read as Rainbow Rowell described what her character experienced when she touched snow, leaving an imprint of her hand and being amazed by it. Which makes me wonder, what is something that you, reading this right now, have never experienced that others might be surprised by? Leave a comment using the link at the top of this post to share.

One of the reasons I enjoy Rainbow Rowell’s writing so much, is that her characters are realistic. She lets us inside the minds of these characters and what we find is a “normal” person, not some highly dramatized version of a person facing a difficult life situation. Georgie McCool’s, thoughts and feelings about her family, husband, career, friendships, and marriage are relatable and believable.

Recommended reading for:
Landline is a perfect read for young adult or grown adult. If you are looking for a book that provides another perspective on the difficulties of navigating a marriage, this is a book worth reading. The relationships among the female characters in the book remind me of my relationship with my mom and sister in different ways. A great book overall that I don’t think you will be disappointed with reading.