Chicken Soup for the Soul
Best Guide 🧨 | #NewYearsEve
Chicken Soup for the Soul
Month: December 2022
Chicken Soup for the Soul
Starry Says – Episode #65 — 3 Out of 5 Isn’t Bad
Manuscript Word Count (MWC) – 74,545
2022 Reading Goal to Date – 124/100
Each December, I announce the Stellar Reading Challenges (SRC) for the upcoming year. With each batch of SRC, I learn something I want to do for the next year. As I know that any sort of reading challenge takes extra time for me to begin and end, my SRC start mid-January and end the following mid-January.
Towards the end of 2021, I determined I appreciate even more buffers than late starts. Heck, I still posted Starlight Book Reviews (SBR) through the end of February because I ran out of time in 2021. So, I decided to try SRC which only required up to ten books, with down time for part of January and all of December.
I think this served me well. I wrapped up the two 100 Years SRC earlier this week and completed the Local SRC last month. Click here to read more on the 2022 SRC. I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts on the 2022 SRC in the weeks to come.
I anticipate finishing the Sacred Text SRC tomorrow, New Year’s Eve. I also find myself eager to start reading the Bible again in a version to be announced in 2023. Once this happens, I will have finished four out of five of the SRC.
The only SRC that remains unfinished is the Foodie one. I did eat something from a book and reviewed it but I wanted to try out more eats. Someday, maybe I will.
All and all, this is to say, I think 5 SRC per year with ten “on months” suits me well, Gnomies… and I surpassed my Goodreads Reading Goal of 100 Books.
How do you feel about any reading challenge, SRC or otherwise?
Regardless, I thank all my Gnomies for continuing to read and follow me and I wish you a most stellar 2023!
Like Snow ❄️|#KindnessFriday
Marjolein Bastin
’23 Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC) – Intro #2 – Regional U.S.A. (RUSA) Tour
I continue to share more info regarding 2023 Stellar Reading Challenges (SRC) in these “Intro” posts. This post looks at the Regional U.S.A. (RUSA) Tour. These five regional divisions follow those set forth by National Geographic. Click here to view maps on their site. The Book Girls’ Guide inspired U.S. Territories Bonus Region. To see their Read Around the USA — 2023 States Reading Challenge, click here.
RUSA Tour SRC
Read 2 books set in each of the following United States Regions:
- West – Wyoming, Washington State, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, Idaho, Hawaii, Colorado, California, Alaska
- Southwest – Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona
- Midwest – Wisconsin, South Dakota, Ohio, North Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois
- Southeast – West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Maryland, Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Alabama
- Northeast – Vermont, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Delaware, Connecticut
Bonus: U.S. Territories – U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, American Samoa
This Challenge goes from January 15, 2023 – January 14, 2024 but you may start as soon as January 1, 2023.
- Books must be narrative literature — fiction or nonfiction.
- Books can be read in any format — print, electronic, audio, etc.
- At least a third of the book must take place in place to be counted.
- Up to three places can be counted per book.
- Picture books do NOT count.
- Books may also be counted towards the Local Tour and/or In Translation Journey SRC.
If you’re in, please use the following:
#GnomiesRegionalUSATour
You’re welcome to read books set in these places at any point but posts with recommendations will be shared during these months:
February & March – West
April & May – Southwest
June & July – Midwest
August & September – Southeast
October & November – Northeast
December – U.S. Territories (Bonus Place)
A Dreamer 🏔️
Motivational Life
Seeing the Story – Callie Khouri’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)
Seeing the Story/ Review of Book to Screen Adaptation
Released in 2002.
All screen adaptations will be referred to in the following format “Title (Date).”
4/5 Just a week ago, I posted my Starlight Book Review (SBR) of Rebecca Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, a book I read twenty years after I saw the screen adaptation which it inspired. While the film factored into my opinions while reading the book, I felt my memory of the Callie Khouri’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) movie somewhat faded enough to separate the two. Of course, I recently re-watched the film in planning for this post <smile>.
Click here to read my SBR of Rebecca Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
Click here to learn more about the Back in the Day SRC.
“Siddalee Walker (Sandra Bullock), a famous New York City playwright, is quoted in Time Magazine and infuriates her dramatic, Southern mother. A long-distant fight wages until her mother’s friends (and members of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) kidnap Siddalee and take her “home” to the South, where they hope to explain her mother’s history and to patch up the rift between mother and daughter.”—kzmckeown
I enjoyed watching Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002). I felt Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, and the rest of the cast made their respective characters and roles their own. Both the book and the film possessed the same flavor, somewhat of a neighbor to my own experience with the chief setting of Louisiana. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) stands quite well on its own but reading Wells’ book enriched my second viewing of the film. With that being said, my brain accepts that changes in adaptations must happen but my heart ached at these plot alterations. As to not spoil too much here, I only mention the one where Vivi’s Ya-Yas come up to New York City to “bring” Siddalee down to her hometown at the beginning of the film. So, for this and other switches in the plot, I knocked off a star in my rating.
Quotes come from description on IMDb and are featured on color blocks. Click here to access this webpage.
Into the Light 💡
Chicken Soup for the Soul
Starlight Book Review – Megan McCafferty’s The Mall
Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge – 1990s
Set in the Year 1991/ Published in 2020
Trigger Warning – sexual harassment/casual sex/ slut-shaming (occurs but not condoned by author)/ divorce/ cheating.
3.75/5 I realize I’m dating myself but the 1990s is the first decade I remember well. I lived and experienced them and my recall of the Nineties is clear and direct. So I knew I would likely be more critical of someone “getting it wrong.” When I discovered Megan McCafferty’s The Mall, a book set in 1991, I thought I might be able to set aside some of my sharp analysis as I’m more “familiar” with the latter part of the decade. So, I chose The Mall as my 1990s entry for the Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC).
Click here for more information on this SRC.
“New York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty returns to her roots with this YA coming of age story set in a New Jersey mall… The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after… But you know what they say about the best laid plans…Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall.”
I probably finished McCafferty’s The Mall in a week. While I knew of the various shopping mall mainstays – Cinnebon, Orange Julius, Hickory Farms, and watched “Beverly Hills 90210” in rerun on Saturday afternoons as a tween and teen, my 1990s were more Gloria Jean’s, Chick-Fil-A, and “Dawson’s Creek.” While a quick read, narrator Cassie Worthy took a little while to evoke sympathy from me. I found myself more interested in her former friend Drea’s story. I found The Mall an easy, quick read and I liked the treasure hunt, a deep dive into late Eighties/ early Nineties pop culture. Sometimes, Cassie seemed rather shallow. While not hard to understand the vocabulary, I recommend this book for more mature teens due to some of the content.
Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.
Helps 🎁| #GratiTuesday
Imperfectly Simple
More Richly ⭐️✨| #MotivationMonday
Chicken Soup for the Soul Hallway Heroes
Starry Night Elf 