Mr. Burke's Reading List

Back at the beginning of the year, I saw a challenge to set a goal of reading 60 books in a year. I laughed it right off. Sorry, but as much as I like to read, I don't often get the chance. My two prime slots from reading are commuting by train and falling asleep, the latter being particularly hazardous with hardcovers and ebooks. For the first half of the year (and most of the fall), I commuted by car, losing almost 2 hours round trip daily. So I found some other Challenges which I list in this this post . I considered them something to shoot for, and maybe to influence my choices in this past year, but calling them goals? I ruled that right out. Sorry, I'm in it for the fun. Putting a goal in front of it makes it a little more work. The journey is more important the finish line right? (With my eyesight, and age, I'll never win Indy, so yeah.) (By the way, ignore the hashtag. It was already there, so I wasn't making a new one.) In the first batch, I can say I caught

Vampire Academy , Richelle Mead, 2007 Okay, for starters: There are two types of Vampires: the Moroi , who are living, breeding vampires, and the Strigoi , who are your more traditional evil vampires. There are also Dhampirs , which are the offspring of Vampires with humans or dhampirs. Dhampirs are mules, unable to reproduce on their own, so they owe their existence to the Moroi. If you search online, you'll find that these are creatures from Romanian folklore, which is a plus for me. Mead takes something existing, which I'm at all familiar with, and makes it her own. The Moroi aren't your typical vampires. Besides having families, and vampirism being hereditary, they also go to church every week, even if just to learn about St. Vladmir, the patron of the academy. One of the characters is even named Christian, which seems odd at first blush. This book is the last in a pile of books I won, which included How to Be a Zombie , A Great and Terrible Beauty , and Cat