Melissa > Recent Status Updates

I didn't keep up with logging books here in 2025, and after spending the past hour updating my list I'm still not convinced I got everything. But I think I came pretty close. Most of my year's reading fell into one of four categories:

• book research
• Frizzlit Book Club selections
• Brave Writer Dart books (for the literature guides I write)
• books written by podcast interview guests

Plus a few special gems.

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.