2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge discussion

Managed to hit 65 in 2024, so I want to try to repeat that goal again in 2025. I'll also have some mini goals for myself:

Read 15 non-fiction: 17/15
Read 5 biographies: 4/5
Read 15 books from my physical TBR pile: 20/15
Read 30 books by female authors: 48/30
Read 20 books by authors of color: 17/20
Read 5 classics: 4/5

Total read: 63/65

Finished The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Entertain the End - both were good reads, and it was really nice to finish off a re-read of a childhood favorite.

Finished Cinder, which my neighbor's daughter asked me to read. Pretty good, though a bit predictable (not in a bad way). I'll likely try and read the rest of the series too. Eventually.

Finished Heavenly Tyrant which was not my favorite sequel, but good enough that I'd likely read a third (if it's ONLY a trilogy, because dang it I don't need another long series to haunt my TBR....)

Finished Cross Roads, which has been languishing on my TBR shelf for many, many years.

Finished Scarlet, which I think did a good job of not falling prey to the second book slump.

Listened to Crying in H Mart, which was really good for my soul, to be honest.

Did not enjoy Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living all that much, if I'm honest. Which doesn't bode well for me as I have like... 3 more of her books on my TBR...

Finished Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law and continued to remember why I so enjoy Mary Roach's writing.

Really enjoyed Fat Loss Habits: The No Bullsh*t Guide to Losing Weight and would recommend it.

Finished The Prince Who Loved Me by my friend, Abigail Sharpe. Great end to the trilogy :D

I rather enjoyed The Last Bloodcarver, which I grabbed from my local library on a whim.

My SO and I read Perfect Wedding and were laughing a lot throughout it.

Finding Baba Yaga was interesting.

Gardening for Abundance: Your Guide to Cultivating a Bountiful Veggie Garden and a Happier Life may not have taught me much in the way of new knowledge, but I enjoyed how it was laid out and the obvious joy with which he wrote it. :)

Wasn't expecting to finish The Canopy Keepers today, but ended up tearing through the last bit over lunch because I didn't want to stop.

Picked up and promptly tore through Spellbound while my SO napped this weekend. :) Enjoying re-reading this series.

Finished Cress

Not Here to Be Liked was pretty cute, if a bit predictable.

Enjoyed a re-read of The Calling (Sweep, No. 7) by Cate Tiernan.

Finished Almost Surely Dead - I wanted to like this more than I did. The premise was great, but I absolutely hated the snippets of "podcast transcript" because it read as forced and unbelievable. I'm also still really torn on the blending of thriller and supernatural stuff. I think I personally just prefer them as two separate genres.

Really loved The Grief of Stones.

Finished Changeling, so another one off my TBR pile!

Enjoyed listening to Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America, which had been recommended by a friend.

Finished Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents, which was another recommendation by a friend and provided a lot of good insight and ideas for how to work on my relationships.

Definitely would recommend Early Riser - grateful to have been gifted it as part of a book exchange.

Finished I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working.

Finished Strife

Hi Echo! I see you've been making good progress on your goal. Hope you've been reading a lot of amazing books along the way! Happy reading!

JennH wrote: "Hi Echo! I see you've been making good progress on your goal. Hope you've been reading a lot of amazing books along the way! Happy reading!"

Aww thanks, Jenn! I have been enjoying a lot of the books this year so far. Only one or two that really fell flat. I actually just finished Verity, which my neighbor had loaned me. I liked it without the epilogue, which isn't surprising as I usually don't like epilogues for some reason.

Finished both The Three Musketeers and Seeker over the weekend.

Echo wrote: "JennH wrote: "Hi Echo! I see you've been making good progress on your goal. Hope you've been reading a lot of amazing books along the way! Happy reading!"

Aww thanks, Jenn! I have been enjoying a ..."

That's actually pretty good, isn't it? Only 1 or 2 not so great books out of 30 or so. So glad that you're enjoying so many of your books!

I understand about not liking epilogues. There's something about them just telling instead of showing which takes away from the story sometimes.

Finished Origins.

Finished Eclipse

Finished Pride and Prejudice and really enjoyed it

Finished both Legends & Lattes and Reckoning over the weekend, and enjoyed both. Legends & Lattes was just as good as I heard it was. Looking forward to reading more from him.

Finished Full Circle and then found out there's actually another book in the series??? So I found a used copy that should be here later this month. :)

Finished Off With Their Heads, which was definitely different than I expected, but in a good way!

Finished Night's Child, which I somehow missed all the years ago when I first read this series.

Enjoyed The Good Samaritan, which I had picked up as a kindle first read a while back. Just the right amount of twistiness in my opinion, and I liked the ending.

Hope you've been continuing your streak of enjoying most of your books, Echo!

Finished off Carmen and Grace for work's book club - Not a book I would have picked up on my own, but a book I definitely enjoyed.

I also finished Eerie Basin: A Short Story, which was a free bonus read from Amazon. Definitely creepy, getting me in the mood for Halloween!

My partner had picked up Your Best Financial Life: Save Smart Now for the Future You Want to see if he wanted to include it in his reading group, and thought I might enjoy it too.

Apparently I never posted when I finished Remarkably Bright Creatures, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I just completed The Music of Bees, which was also quite good.

Finished Woven in Moonlight and I'm definitely looking forward to reading the sequel.

Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama was pretty good - not exactly what I was expecting, but definitely educational.

Did a reread of a childhood favorite: A Wizard's Dozen: Stories of the Fantastic

I really enjoyed Truthwitch, which has been sitting on my shelf for YEARS after I got it in a book exchange and kept putting off reading it. Now I can't wait to get started on the next in the series.

Leslie F*cking Jones was SO GOOD. Especially as an audibook read by her. I laughed, I cried, it was F*CKING AMAZING

Listening to Changing Planes while working my way through airports was a strange coincidence, but I do enjoy a good series of short stories that are threaded together like this.