2016 Reading Challenge: A book I've owned but never read

Derek and I went to Jamaica for a friend's wedding in January.  I brought three books with me for the long plane rides, figuring I'd want some variety in my entertainment: a book I've owned but never read, a book I've read before, and a book I can read in a day.  Well, on the flight there, I ended up crocheting the whole time (I needed a cute little phone cozy to match my dress for the wedding!), and on the way home I was so exhausted and half-sick that I slept the whole way.  I read about 10 pages of the first book on my list, but I didn't have the energy to keep my eyes open.

When we got back, I admit I procrastinated with reading for a while.  But now I'm already almost halfway done with my first book of the challenge!

The book I chose is one of only two or three books that I own and have never read.  My Mom got it for me who knows when - she used to work at Borders and would come home with books all the time.  (In her words, she was like an alcoholic working at a liquor store.  In my words, she was the worst kind of -holic because she brought her habit home to her kids.) :)

Haunting Experiences: Encounters with the Otherworldly by Michelle Belanger is proving to be a great book to ease myself back in to reading.  One of the reasons that I've put it off so much in recent years is because I used to binge an entire book in a day - we're talking books like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a full 734 pages which were not intended to be read in just one day.  But Haunting Experiences is a collection of short stories, each of which are only about 10-15 pages long, so it's very easy for me to read a chapter or two and put it down.  No cliffhangers keeping me sucked in and making me forget about cooking dinner!

The book is supposedly all true.  Ms. Belanger is a psychic and she has had many experiences with hauntings - ghosts, negative energies, poltergeists, etc.  As much as I've always been a firm believer in faeries and certain kinds of magic, I just have a hard time with the word "psychic."  I can't help but to associate the word with the type of person who was at my high school graduation party, who told me such shocking things as "many big changes are coming" and "big things are headed your way."  Wow!  These things were in my future the night I graduated high school?!

Anyway, whether you believe that the stories are true or not, it's an entertaining book.  Sometimes I feel like Lucy Ricardo when she is so engrossed in reading The Mockingbird Mystery that she accidentally eats her cold cream, and then gets such a scare when Ricky calls to her that she throws her book out the window!  The stories are just scary enough to keep me turning the page without being so scary that I can't sleep at night.  But, because each story is only 10-15 pages long, the suspense never builds up so long that I forget to do anything important!

I'm very happy with my first selection for the 2016 reading challenge.  And I can't wait for my next eleven books!