2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge discussion

Trying for 30 again this year. Starting off with my fourth Jodi Picoult Handle with Care.
I will post my thoughts on each book I finish throughout the year.

1. Handle with Care
Another thought provoking book from Jodi Picoult. This book is a meticulously researched story about a little girl with brittle bone disease and a wrongful birth law suit.
I enjoyed the book despite finding the mother being frustratingly unlikable at times.

Good luck with your reading challenge

2. The Land Before Avocado
A book about Australian society in the late 60s and early 70s. You really have to agree with the author that pretty much everything (apart from music) has changed for the better in the last half century. You can only shake your head at some of the appalling sexism and racism that was just accepted as normal,

3. The Meltdown
Started reading the wimpy kid books to my daughter when she was small. She's 15 now and it has become something of a Christmas tradition in our household to get the latest in the series. As usual plenty of laughs from Greg Heffley and co.

4. Coffee With Dickens
A small book about an imaginary conversation with Dickens's ghost.
The author plays it pretty safe with the facts of Dickens life. I would have liked a bit of speculation on his relationship with Ellen Ternan and the intended ending of Edwin Drood.

5. At Home with Muhammad Ali: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Forgiveness
A memoir written by Ali's daughter. I found it an interesting, if slightly repetitive, insight into the great fighter from a daughter who clearly adored her father.

6. Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales
A collection of short stories from Stephen King. It was nice to get another Dark Tower story. I liked most of the stories, the one in the interrogation room with the shady South Americans wasn't to my taste.

7. The Dark Half
A Stephen King I got from the library written in 1989. I thought the character of George Stark made a great villain, but I found Thad a tad dull and it took me some time to finish.

8. Spirits of the Ghan
Loved this book. I had previously read Elianne by the same author and enjoyed it, so I decided to try this one. Nunn weaves a captivating story with well researched elements of aboriginal culture, modern rail construction, art history and colonial days.

9. Sing You Home
Another Jodi Picoult. I enjoy her books. This one was a little different in that it was obvious where the author's sympathies lay.

10. The Sacrifice
I struggled with this book. The story was fairly interesting, but I thought the mother was so frustratingly annoying that I found it hard to enjoy.

11. Sleeping Beauties

A collaboration between Stephen King and his son Owen. Not a bad story, but clocking in at over 700 pages i think a little more editing my have moved things along a bit quicker.

12. The Truth Hurts

A book from Aussie Rules legend Wayne Carey. More about his off field woes than his on field exploits. A lot of his problems seem to have occurred due to his upbringing.

13. Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
I always wanted to read a book by Hunter S. Thompson and this is my first. Obviously dated as the events in the book occurred over half a century ago. I think Hunter gives the Angels a fair hearing.

14. End of Watch

Th end of the Mr Mercedes trilogy. King moves the story of Brady Hartsfield back to familiar supernatural ground. Just an okay read, not one of his best.