It's been a long time since I read a fictional book set in World War II. It's not that I've grown tired of the genre, I just feel like I've read some of the best the genre has put out. And yet, towards the end of 2016, I started to see a lot of people talking about Ruta Repetys novel Salt to the Sea. It's one one of the first books I've read in 2017 and I have to say it left me with completely mixed feelings.

For my bookclub GamersRead, this months pick was The Princess Diarist written by the late Carrie Fisher. I being the one in the group who doesn't have a deep affinity for Star Wars made The Princess Diarist a slightly different read then that of my comrades. Going in I knew almost nothing about Carrie Fisher other then she played Princess Leia and was also the mom in one of my favorite shows Catastrophe. 

I don't remember when I first heard about Malala. I don't remember hearing about her being shot by the Taliban or her pursuing education for all. I have a feeling the first time I had heard about Malala was her speech to the UN or when she was doing rounds of interviews with places like The Daily Show. Regardless I've had her book, I Am Malala, on my to-read list for a long time and am so glad that I started my 2017 reading endeavor with her amazing tale. 

For the last five years I've been continuing to push myself to read more and more. Although my tastes have changed my love for books continues to grow with each year. In 2013 I had a goal of 25 books, 2014 of 26, 2015 of 27, and now in 2016 I completed my goal of reading 28 books with only a couple of days to spare. 

Over the last couple of years I've become more and more enraptured with the theater. In fact one of the first musicals I saw that truly inspired and spoke to me was Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights (I didn't even realize Lin-Manuel Miranda was the creator of In the Heights until I read this book). We saw that musical on a whim and fell in love. After all the buzz surrounding Hamilton, I thought the best way to close out a tumultuous 2016 would be to read the book on how Hamilton was made. 

I heard about Sing for Your Life: A Story of Race, Music, and Family on a recent episode of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. But before that, I went to my first opera in Vienna to see a majestic performance of Carmen. From that experience, I've become enraptured with wanting to see more opera, so when I heard about this book about Ryan Speedo Green a rising opera singer from New York I went on Audible and picked up the audiobook.