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Christa’s Year In Books

Christa’s 2025 Year in Books

Take a look at Christa’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.

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Jan Sikes

898 books | 900 friends

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140,432 books | 43 friends

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732 books | 2,320 friends

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Christine Hatfield

24,215 books | 2,078 friends

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869 books | 135 friends

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206 books | 3,654 friends

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2026 Reading Challenge

2026

READING

CHALLENGE

Christa has read 119 books of her goal of 100!

119%

Christa Banister

Goodreads Author

Born

in Madison, Wisconsin, The United States

January 02

Website

http://www.christabanister.com

Genre

Fiction, Contemporary

Influences

Ashley Poston, Dev Sonali, Nora Ephron, Nick Hornby

Member Since

November 2007

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/chicnovelist

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While growing up in a no-stoplight town in a land of perpetual winter in northwest Wisconsin, books were author Christa Banister’s constant companion during hundreds of freezing days spent indoors.

Reading was Christa’s window to a world she was dying to explore. She didn’t travel much until after college, so those frequent trips to the library took on special meaning because it allowed her to escape to the English countryside. The bustling streets of New York City. Or the far-flung islands in Greece.

Surrounding by a veritable sea of books, Christa had an important epiphany as a pre-teen re-reading Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. When she figured out that Judy’s job—her actual paying gig—involved making up stories for a living While growing up in a no-stoplight town in a land of perpetual winter in northwest Wisconsin, books were author Christa Banister’s constant companion during hundreds of freezing days spent indoors.

Reading was Christa’s window to a world she was dying to explore. She didn’t travel much until after college, so those frequent trips to the library took on special meaning because it allowed her to escape to the English countryside. The bustling streets of New York City. Or the far-flung islands in Greece.

Surrounding by a veritable sea of books, Christa had an important epiphany as a pre-teen re-reading Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. When she figured out that Judy’s job—her actual paying gig—involved making up stories for a living (!!!), well, Christa knew that’s what she wanted to do.

Christa majored in journalism at North Central University in Minneapolis and worked as a reporter at a medium-sized newspaper an hour away during her junior year. After covering a couple of horrific events she couldn’t unsee, she realized that being His Girl Friday wasn’t in the cards. After graduation, she moved to Nashville where she wrote about singers because no one would ever mistake her for having musical talent.

Nashville is where Christa’s professional writing career took off. She wrote about music and books for a number of print and online publications. One of the best writing gigs she snagged involved reviewing movies for 15 years. Good, bad, really bad, and everything in between, she screened 60-70 films a year and acquired a PhD in the Marvel/DC universe. Celebrity profiles were also a favorite part of her job.

As much as Christa loved her work in the entertainment industry, writing a novel was never far from her mind. When one of her editors passed along a contact at a publishing house he wrote for in Colorado Springs, she pitched what became her first novel, Around the World in 80 Dates. A year later, Blessed Are the Meddlers followed, a modern take on Jane Austen’s Emma.

As her print clients dwindled with the changing of the guard and many online outlets no longer wanted to pay for content, her beat changed in 2018. The bulk of her freelance work centers around mental health, addiction, and recovery these days, which has been incredibly rewarding.

When Christa wasn’t ticking assignments off her to-do list, she wrote The Honorary Italians. The idea sparked by stirring a homemade Bolognese sauce with a complete stranger at a pasta-making class in St. Paul, she says she never had more fun writing and researching anything in my life.

“It’s the book I always wanted to write,” she says.

Christa is represented by Mark Gottlieb at Trident Media Group.

She and her husband Will ditched the snow for the blazing heat in DFW and love to travel, watch old movies, cheer for their respective NFL teams, and are always on the lookout for a new restaurant, bookstore, or watching their favorite bands when they come to town.
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Combine Editions
Christa Banister’s books

Average rating: 3.3 · 250 ratings · 47 reviews · 3 distinct works

	Around the World in 80 Dates: Confessions of a Christian Serial Dater (Sydney Alexander Series, Book 1) 3.22 avg rating — 203 ratings — published 2007 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blessed are the Meddlers (Sydney Alexander Series, Book 2) 3.62 avg rating — 45 ratings — published 2008 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hungry: An Ultra-Vertical Devotional Adventure really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2003 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

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Christa Banister's Blog

A Magical Ode to Words + Flowers

Ashley Poston has always managed to masterfully weave in magical realism with her contemporary storytelling.

Her latest, the utterly delightful The Someday Garden, is no exception. It’s also a fitting placeholder as Poston is stepping away and trying something new genre-wise for future novels.

While The Someday Garden is definitely not a beach read as it tackles the not-so-easy-breezy topic of worki

Christa is Currently Reading

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Food Person

by Adam D. Roberts (Goodreads Author)

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