Melissa > Recent Status Updates

When my Kindle asked me to enter a number for a 2025 reading challenge, I didn't realize that meant *this* reading challenge, here on Goodreads. I put 15, estimating I'd read that many books on Kindle, give or take, now that I've shifted back to reading mostly print editions. I certainly wasn't projecting 15 for the whole year!

I've just done a big dollop of updating here, being very sloppy about dates started & finished. I'm not as compelled as I once was to keep my Goodreads lists in tiptop shape. I read fewer books this year, if you're counting by number of tomes—but I suspect if you were to tally pages, I'd come out about even with years past. Lusciously slow reads of long, deep, rich works of art. A delicious chapter of my reading life

Lots of reading for the Brave Writer Podcast this year. Just finished Tia Levings's incredible memoir (interviewing her this month) and am beginning Leslie Martino's The Joy of Slow for an August interview.

Meanwhile, my long-term readaloud of The Odyssey with Huck & Rilla chugs along. We are enjoying Emily Wilson's translation to pieces. Lots of delicious slow reads this year, with the teens & with online cohorts.

I love the last week of the year—wrapping up my reading year, finishing half-read books or choosing to abandon them for a fresh start. I'm heading into 2024 with only two in-progress books: War & Peace and Wolf Hall, both part of year-long group read-alongs with Simon Haisell at Footnotes & Tangents on Substack.

https://footnotesandtangents.substack...