December 2018 Reading List

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December 2018 Reading List
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November was a great month to catch up on some reading and book reviews. I am still behind on total books to read but one schedule with Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge. I am not sure how December will turn out. I am taking some extra days off but I also have a book launch. My book, Read to Succeed, will be coming out on the 11th of December. I am so excited to see it released. Currently, I am spending time at Lost Recording Studio recording an audio version.

I am almost done reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. What an impressive figure!  How is your reading going? Come and check out my reading list and read along with me this December.

December looks like it will be a fun month for reading. In order to meet my goal of 60 books, I will have to read 10 books this month. I think it is possible because with the four I am listing below, I am in the middle of three others. Throw in a holiday, and I think I can do it. A number of these books satisfy Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge categories. There are a couple of biographies and fiction.

Here is what is on my reading list for December 2018:

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

As part of the Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge, I was asked to hunt out a book that won an award in 2018. This book won the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award and it looked like an interesting topic.

Via Amazon:

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work.

A riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming is currently the #1 best selling book on Amazon. In addition to that, I chose this book because it is also one of the required categories for the Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge. I have been asked to read a book by an author of a different race, ethnicity, or religion than your own. I will toss in different gender for luck.

Via Amazon:

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Huck Finn initially fit into one of the categories necessary to meet the Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge.  I was asked to read a banned book. Instead, I selected the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck but I also wanted to reread the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Via Amazon:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective). It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism./em>

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I had never read Frankenstein. Since we are celebrating the 200th year of its publication, I thought it was time.

Via Amazon:

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about the young student of science Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley’s name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823. Shelley had travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim which is just 17 km (10 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments. Later, she travelled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)—where much of the story takes place—and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made; her dream later evolved into the story within the novel.

That’s it for this month — I want to hear what good books YOU’VE read lately! Please share in the comments below.

I encourage you to check out these reading lists in case you missed them: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November. There was a lot of good reading.

My Reviews for This Reading List

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December 2018 Reading List
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