Shutter by Ramona Emerson
Payback's a Witch by Lana HarperAmazon has started the Epic Summer Challenge. It started July 1, 2022 and runs through September 30, 2022.
Some prompts are the same as the Spring Challenge, but here they are for the Summer Challenge:
Days Read:
✔ Bronze Reader - Unlock this
achievement when you read for any 15 days during the Epic Summer Challenge.
Reading days don't have to be consecutive to count. Earned July 17, 2022
✔ Silver
Reader - Unlock this achievement when you read for any 40 days during
the Spring Challenge. Reading days don't have to be consecutive to
count. Earned August 10, 2022
✔ Gold Reader - Unlock this achievement when you read for any 75 days during the Spring Challenge. Reading days don't have to be consecutive to count. September 14, 2022
Books Read:
✔ Bookish - Unlock this achievement when you complete a Kindle books during the Epic Summer Challenge. Earned July 11, 2022
✔ Bookworm - Unlock this achievement when you complete two Kindle books during the Epic Summer Challenge. Earned July 18, 2022
✔ Bibliophile - Unlock this achievement when you complete three Kindle books during the Epic Summer Challenge. Earned August 2, 2022
Streaks: This is a new category for Summer. These were previously under the Days Read category.
✔ Head Start - I'm not quite sure what the prompt was for this, but I earned it already. Earned July 2, 2022
✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔ Perfect
Week - Unlock this achievement when you read each day for a full week
Sunday through Saturday. Tip: You can level up this achievement if you
read multiple perfect weeks during the Spring Challenge. Earned July 17, 2022, July 24, 2022, July 31, 2022, August 6, 2022
✔ Perfect Month - Unlock this achievement when you read each day for a full month. Tip: You can level up this achievement if you
read multiple perfect months during the Spring Challenge. Earned September 1, 2022
Mystery:
StarCraft: Evolution by Timothy Zahn
Nightwork by Nora Roberts
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The first time I read this story I was in 7th grade and it was an abridged version in our text books at school. It was the first time I got home from school excited about something I read. Reading comprehension was always a challenge for me as a kid. Books were just words on a page and I would be so focused on the words, by the time I got to the end of the book, I had forgotten what I had read in the beginning. Needless to say, connections I was supposed to make while reading certain books/stories never really happened. In fact, I did not actually find my way to reading for pleasure (and enjoy it) until I was an adult in college and got my first Kindle (a Kindle 2, to be exact).
This read through was the first time I have read this book as an adult. It's still as insanely depressing as the first time I read it, but the message is very different. In 7th grade, my take away was: ignorance is bliss. This was a very oversimplified way to describe it. Later in life during a sociology class, we were talking about people from a lower status obtaining a wealth and having that wealth taken from them. After having that taste of wealth and going back to the previous status is difficult for them. They have had a taste of what could be and what is now out of their reach. While this conversation ensued, what hit me was that this is what 7th grade me thought about Flowers for Algernon. It's better to not have a taste of the better and not know what you're missing than to experience it and know you'll never taste it again; hence, ignorance is bliss.
There was a movie made in 1968 called Charly based on this book. I don't recall how I got my hands on it, but I did. It made me more depressed than the book did, but it was good.
The older and (not so) wiser me now knows what the real message is. It's a commentary on how people with disabilities are treated. While the ideas the 7th grade me's ideas still stand, it goes much deeper than that (as I now know).
This book has haunted me almost all of my life (after the first reading). I'm glad I finally read it in its entirety.
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Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir