Goodreads Monday is hosted by Budget Tales Book Blog. “Goodreads Monday allows you to post about what books are on your “to read” lists, the progress you have made on your current books and reading challenge, and any other Goodreads news!”

Books I Finished In the Past Week:

The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Gentle Ways to Stop Bedtime Battles and Improve Your Child’s Sleep by Elizabeth Pantley

Guaranteed to help parents reclaim sweet dreams for their entire family New from the bestselling author of the classic baby sleep guide! Getting babies to sleep through the night is one thing; getting willful toddlers and energetic preschoolers to sleep is another problem altogether. Written to help sleep-deprived parents of children ages one to five, The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers offers loving solutions to help this active age-group get the rest they–and their parents–so desperately need. A follow-up to Elizabeth Pantley’s megahit The No-Cry Sleep Solution , this breakthrough guide is written in Pantley’s trademark gentle, child-centered style. Parents will discover a wellspring of positive approaches to help their children get to bed, stay in bed, and sleep all night, without having to resort to punishments or other negative and ineffective measures. The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers tackles many common nighttime obstacles.

Doc Doc Zeus: A Novel of White Coat Crime by Thomas Keech

Still mourning the baby she gave away a year before – and feeling rejected by the same church people who had so cheerfully arranged that adoption – sixteen-year-old Diane seems to find a supportive friend in her gynecologist, Dr. Zeus. Diane is intelligent and bold but often leaps before she looks, and now she questions why he has to examine her so often, and why he prescribes her so many drugs. The state medical board also has suspicions about Dr. Zeus, but the official inquiry inches forward very slowly as its new investigator stumbles over his own hang-ups.

See my review of this book here.

Books I am Currently Reading:

If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … WHERE IS EVERYBODY? by Stephen Webb

Given the fact that there are perhaps 400 billion stars in our Galaxy alone, and perhaps
400 billion galaxies in the Universe, it stands to reason that somewhere out there, in the
14-billion-year-old cosmos, there is or once was a civilization at least as advanced as our
own. The sheer enormity of the numbers almost demands that we accept the truth of this
hypothesis. Why, then, have we encountered no evidence, no messages, no artifacts of
these extraterrestrials? 
In this second, significantly revised and expanded edition of his widely popular book,
Webb discusses in detail the (for now!) 75 most cogent and intriguing solutions to
Fermi’s famous paradox: If the numbers strongly point to the existence of extraterrestrial
civilizations, why have we found no evidence of them?

Progress: page 176 of 434. (Jan 6, 155, Jan 15, 164, Jan 29, 171 )

Death’s End by Cixin Liu

With The Three-Body Problem, English-speaking readers got their first chance to read China’s most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. The Three-Body Problem was released to great acclaim, including coverage in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and reading list picks by Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. It also won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, making it the first translated novel to win a major SF award.

Now, this epic trilogy concludes with Death’s End. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early twenty-first century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?

Progress: page 328 of 724

In A Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner

Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994) has earned a reputation as one of the finest horror writers of the modern era, but his work has been out of print and nearly unobtainable for many years. His seminal volume In a Lonely Place collects eight of his best tales, including “In the Pines,” a classic ghost story evocatively set in the Tennessee woods, “Beyond Any Measure,” an original take on the vampire story, “River of Night’s Dreaming,” a surreal and nightmarish masterpiece inspired by The King in Yellow, and the author’s most famous tale, “Sticks,” a disturbing story thought by many to have been the basis for The Blair Witch Project.
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This new edition includes all the stories from the original 1983 edition, plus an additional rare tale and the author’s afterword from the Scream/Press limited edition, and features a new introduction by Ramsey Campbell.

Progress: page 42 of 270

Chaos in Color: A Memoir of Childhood Trauma and Forgiveness by R. Layla Salek

From a young age, Layla Salek has experienced some people as colors—her mother brown, her father green, her husband rainbow. As she notes, sometimes, when words fail, colors speak.

Chaos in Color is the captivating story of Layla’s journey from childhood to adulthood with a mother who suffered from untreated bipolar disorder. Each chapter paints a vivid, heartbreaking picture of the abuse, neglect, and trauma that she experienced as she grew up at the mercy of her mother’s bipolar swings, an incompetent mental health system, and the strangers with whom she was often left. But dissipating those times of darkness were moments of love, joy, and happiness that she felt while being cared for by others in her life. These moments inspired her to start her own family, complete a doctorate in psychology, and work with children with mental illness and severe behavior disorders.

Layla’s story traces how personal and familial trauma is carried into adulthood and how it can be released through forgiveness. This honest, provocative memoir offers a relatable account for others who have experienced similar trauma, as well as hope for healing and a future full of light.

Progress: Audiobook 81%

How to Market a Book: Overperform in a Crowded Market by Ricardo Fayet

Writing a book is hard. Marketing it can be even harder.

Marketing a book in 2021 can seem like a full-time job, what with the crazy number of things authors seem to be expected to do: social media, blog tours, advertising, price promotions, mailing lists, giveaways, you name it.

But here’s a little secret: you don’t need to do all those things to successfully set your book on the path to success. What you need is a solid plan to find the one or two tactics that will work, and start to drive sales… in a minimum amount of time. And that’s exactly what you’ll find in this book.

Instead of drowning you in information or inundating you with hundreds of different tactics and strategies that eventually prove fruitless, this book will guide you through a step-by-step framework to find the ones that actually work for you and your book, so that you can start marketing more efficiently.

In particular, you’ll learn:

• How to change your mindset and sell more books with less effort.;
• How to write books that guarantee a lasting, profitable career;
• How to get Amazon’s Kindle Store to market your book for you;
• How to get thousands of readers into your mailing list before you even release the book;
• How to propel your book to the top of the charts at launch; and
• How to automate your marketing so that you can spend less time marketing and more time writing,

After helping over 150,000 authors crack the marketing code through a popular weekly newsletter, Reedsy’s Co-founder Ricardo Fayet is sharing everything he’s learned over the past few years in this beginner-friendly, jargon-free guide to book marketing.

Progress: Kindle Book 9%

Book I Will Read:

Title: Something Blue

Author: Emily Giffin

Published: 2005

Pages: 338

Genres: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary

Goodreads Synopsis: Following the smash-hit Something Borrowed comes story of betrayal, redemption, and forgiveness

Darcy Rhone has always been able to rely on a few things: Her beauty and charm. Her fiance, Dex. Her lifelong best friend, Rachel. She never needed anything else. Or so she thinks until Dex calls off their dream wedding and she uncovers the ultimate betrayal. Blaming everyone but herself, Darcy flees to London and attempts to re-create her glamorous life on a new continent. But to her dismay, she discovers that her tried-and-true tricks no longer apply—and that her luck has finally expired. It is only then that she can begin her journey toward redemption, forgiveness, and true love.