Struggling Through Winter Reading

So I'm trying to get through my Winter Reading Challenge book list.
Okay, that's a lie.
I WAS trying to get through it. Then I threw up my hands and went back to reading the stuff I like.

Don't get me wrong, some of those books are really good - Like the series by Libba Bray, which starts with "A Great and Terrible Beauty", which I read early in December. It's good. It's well written. Funny, even.
But those books are LONG! And then the love story started developing, but slowly, and so of course I skipped ahead to see what was up with that -
Long story short: I ended up skimming thru most of the second two books, and then I was horrified by the sad ending of the third.
SAD!
I do not read sad books! And given, there was still some happiness and hope going on, and it wasn't like, sad for all time, like some sad books, but still. I was not in the right mindset to be reading these things.
I loved Elantris. It's really good. I'm glad we're reading it for bookclub and I'm looking forward to getting someone's copy (because where mine is, I do not know. naturally) to re-read it.
Plum Lucky was hilarious, of course, and not long enough, of course.

The Other Boleyn Girl.....
Okay here's the thing with that. I really prefer to live my life ignoring the horrible and unimaginable plights of others. I don't want to live in a cloud of depression for the other people in this world whose lives are not as easy as my own.
The Boleyn girls did NOT have easy lives.
But it was well written, and it was good. (warning though; it's PG-13, if you were interested)

The past two weeks I've deviated from my list and read 3 Chick-lit books; two Pride & Prejudice inspired, and also "Confessions of a Shopaholic" which was awesome. (warning, bad language)

Darcy's Story I didn't really love, but Me and Mr. Darcy, I totally loved. (there's some language in that one too)

And isn't that a pretty painting? It's in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Lady reading in a Landscape" or something like that.