2025 Reading Challenge discussion

Things to know about me:

How I Rank Books:
--My ranking is based on the idea that I have enjoyed many books that were ranked 3.0-4.0 on Good Reads. And those books must have received a number of ratings at the 3.0 mark to end up where they were on the ratings. So 3 to me feels like receiving a C on your paper in school It was considered an average rating but hopefully the majority of your class received an A or B on the assignment.

1: Whomever agreed to publish this book should be fired
2: Terrible in my opinion, but others might like it. But if they ask me about it I'll be honest.
3: I am glad I finished it. It was fine for the genre it is in.
4: I enjoyed it. It did what it was supposed to do. I will recommend to a friend as a good solid book.
5: Love. Will happily recommend to my others. Doesn't need to be life changing just has to excel at making me feel all the things that that a book in that genre is supposed to make me feel. If the e-book goes on sale I will buy it if I don't already own it.

Challenges:
I like the prompt challenges but don't want to be so caught up in the prompts that I get bogged down. I hope to use the prompts to help me finally get to books on my list that I might have otherwise forgotten about but it has to balance out with books I want to read. I like prompts that encourage me to broaden my horizons. So once I join a challenge I will determine what is my personal goal for that challenge depending on how interesting I find the prompts.

Main Challenge: Read 70 books
My Post: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
(5-6 per month)
Series Challenge Main Page: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
My Post: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Prompt Challenge Goals:
•Around the Year in Books: 52/52
•Book Riot: 18/24 Prompts

Lastly.
I am going to create lists of my own personal goals below but I am not going to set a time frame on them. They are just different ways I might decide to focus my reading and helps me organize my thoughts.

My Personal To Read Lists (limiting to 5 per focus, will refresh yearly):

Books Previously Read by My In Person Book Club:
1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
2. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
3. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
4. Sing, Unburied, Sing
5. There There

Series I Want to Continue:
Serial Reader Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
1. Again, Rachel
2. Ruin & Rising
3. A Court of Silver Flames (Updated)
4. Two for the Dough
5. Iron Flame

Books Longest on My TBR List:
1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
2. The Art of Falling
3. The Kite Runner
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns
5. Their Noble Lordships (I will either find it super interesting or quit super fast I feel like)

Classics ( a book accepted as being exemplary or particularly noteworthy):
1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
2. The Kite Runner
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns (seeing it on some lists, not all so I think it will last long term so I'm grouping it here as well)
4. Half of a Yellow Sun
5. Invitation to a Beheading

Books I Started but for Whatever Reason Didn't Finish but Want to:
1. Slavery By Another Name
2. Piranesi
3. Kraken
4. Insomniac City
5. Invitation to a Beheading

Authors I only have 1 more of:
1. JR Moehringer - Sutton
2. Jonny Sun - Good-Bye Again

Books I want to read that have won awards where I expect to enjoy reading the winning book (not trying to be fancy here):

Women's Prize for Fiction:
1. Half of a Yellow Sun
2. Demon Copperhead
3. Piranesi
4. The Power
5. Small Island

Good Reads Fiction Winners
1. Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow
2. Beautiful World, Where Are You
3. Truly Madly Guilty
4. Landline
5. And the Mountains Echoed

NBCCA - Fiction
1. The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
2. Americanah
3. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
4. A Visit from the Goon Squad
5. Gilead

I like your organization. Throughout your schedule of reading are you challenging yourself for how many you’d like to read by X amount of time?

Kristen wrote: "I like your organization. Throughout your schedule of reading are you challenging yourself for how many you’d like to read by X amount of time?"

Thanks Kristen!

Not for these. They act as reminders to fit them in when I can. It often depends on the time of year as to how well I hit on these goals but they are personal goals but not ones I want to force myself to work on if I'm not in the mood. It still helps give me focus.

2024 Challenges:

Around the Year in 52 Books Group: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
Goal: 52/52
My Tracking Post: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge:
2024 has a strong focus on juvenile literature and has some topics with narrow choices so my current goal will be to hit 18/24 topics
My Tracking Post:

2024 In Person Book Club
✅January: Lessons in Chemistry
--Freebie as I read in 2023
✅February: Let Us Descend
✅March: Yellowface
✅April: Chain-Gang All-Stars
✅May: Calling for a Blanket Dance
June: Bunny
July: Sing Her Name
August: Trust
September: This is How You Lose the Time War
October: The Last Ranger
November: Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
December: Sula

January Plan
✅1) The Last Jew of Treblinka
2) Again, Rachel
✅3) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
4) Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America
✅5) Ruin and Rising
6) The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City

Actual:
1) Ruin and Rising
-I am still new to this genre but I really enjoyed this series. Was not planning to read the second and third book so close together but very happy I did. Excited to read more books by this author. Not sure I would give it a full 5 stars but I feel like it deserves to be more than just a simple 4 on Good Reads too.
2) Space Invaders
-A beautifully written, heartbreak of a book written by a Chilean author. It was the perfect little book to help me change gears. It has been on my list of to read for a bit and was perfect for today.
3) The Last Jew of Treblinka
-Should be required reading. Its short. He made it digestable. Something more drawn out might have been too much to take on. To imagine surviving to tell the tale. Amazing. We owe it to him and those that didn't make it out of Treblinka to bear witness to his testimony. Impressive.
4) A Dutiful Boy
-Loved this story. It really is a wonderful story about self discovery. Finding mentors in unexpected places. Finding family when you think you are most alone. Finding that the people we love can disappoint but then also exceed our expectations. How what we think might destroy us can build us back better than imagined. Life shouldn't have to be this hard but if its going to be then let it develop like this one did. No one was perfect but no one was lost.
5) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
-A meaningful and honest coming of age story that smartly attempts to also document Brooklyn at the turn of the 20th century. It provides a smart perspective on this life while also providing compassion and understanding so characters which allows it to avoid cliche. Love and will definitely be on the re-read shelf.
6) Ms Ice Sandwich
Still thinking about this one. It was super cute and enjoyable but still contemplating.
7) The Impossible Fortress
A fun little nostalgia trip. By the end I was skimming a bit as its not my type but I enjoyed the story and all the call backs to 1987.
8) There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job
Still thinking.
9) The Talented Ribkins
Love Johnny. Love Eloise.
10) Maeve Fly
This is typically a genre I avoid but I was feeling angsty the day I bought this book and it fit right on target for that feeling. But since this is not my normal genre there were times I was wondering wtf typically right after it had lulled me into a complacency, paying attention to the silly and the camp of it, that made me feel like they weren't really going to go that far and then for me, it went pretty randomly far. I enjoyed it, I'm pretty sure, but also wtf.

February Plan
✅1) Let Us Descend
✅2) She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman
☑️3) Someone Knows My Name
4) Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors into a Family - I have attempted this book twice now and its just too sacchrine. I enjoy sweet tea. I like sugar in my tea. Cozy is good. This is like a pixie stick. I couldn't do it.
✅5) Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
6) There There

Actual:
1) She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman
Good, quick, interesting, and informational. I mean I did know she was a bad a$$ but this helped show that. It also made me disappointed in the suffragettes that didn't respect the needs of those that helped them.
2) Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
I knew with how short these books were that I would do them together. They are easy to get through but also eye opening if you had never heard this story in particular before. We want to think well of our first president and his wife, but this definitely throws mud on the portrait of perfection. He was an American President but alsot a Virginia Landowner and its important to remember both things. It also helps explain why some of the laws that came into being to help slave owners maintain their "property" thanks to Washington's own interests. Its information we should know in trying to understand the full picture of this place we live and men we have revered.
3) The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Seemed to fit the theme and I have had it in ebook for so long. It was good, well written, and did discuss her life in slavery and her religious pursuits but not as much her activism which did surprise me a bit. But still very good and informational.
4) Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
A book of prose/poetry whatever its called. Its not my normal genre but I love the way she writes. So perfectly emotional. In reading it I felt simulataneously more and less alone. It brought out into the lamp light feelings that aren't typically acknowledged because it was safe to say I wasn't the only one that felt them.
5) Let Us Descend
Beautiful, emotional, gorgeous. The author was so picky about the words she used. Ensuring that what she said exactly said what she meant and that each one carried a little extra meaning. Like Dante and Ulysses before her Annis went on a journey but it wasn't her ego and her prior crimes that doomed her. It was the will of others and the smothering world it created that made freedom so impossible to find.

March
✅1) Yellowface
✅2) How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse
✅3) Someone Knows My Name (pushed back from February)
4) The World Doesn't Require You
5) There There (Pushed back from February)

Actual:
1) How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse
Fun read that feels like a steam punk, scifi, YA fantasy novel. Don't expect too much and you will love it.
2) Someone Knows My Name
A really good read that tells the story of a girl captured and enslaved in her home in Africa and follows her across the sea, through her time in South Carolina, New York, Nova Scotia, back to Africa and finally to London. It is a long intense journey that helps the history of that time come to life. Strong story. So glad I read this.
3) Yellowface
Very well written. Fantastic way to approach the subject. The book is very approachable which I think is important considering its target. Having seen some of the reviews of Poppy Wars I can imagine where some of this comes from. The way the main character rationalizes and then gas lights herself is impressive and yet realistic. I also love it being first person from the villain's perspective as it makes the introspection easier and introspection is the purpose. The popularity of this book is important but also ironic in how many people will read it and ridicule Juniper without asking themselves when they themselves have been a June. But hopefully even for them it will raise awareness and add a pause before they let their inner Junes influence their behavior. The only thing I'm still not clear on is, do her mother and sister live under rocks?
4) A Court of Thorns and Roses
So after Someone Knows My Name and Yellowface I started to try and read There There. I will read it but the prologue stopped me. I needed a break from the heavy stuff so I came back to this series. I had tried it before but did not buy into a series where Tamlin is the romance interest. I have since learned it doesn't last long so I did it again and enjoyed it much more. I will be ready for the next book during my next break. Its a fun romantasy.
4) Ethan Frome
This has been on my list awhile and I was so close to finishing off my short books it felt like I needed to do it. Superbly written. I wanted to keep reading. I had always thought it was a story of murder so didn't expect it to go the way it did. I like that it ended the way it did. It is a story about long inescapable winter. Get out while you can and there is no easy way out. I don't know that I truly get it but I appreciate it...

April
✅1) Chain-Gang All-Stars
2) A Brief History of Time
3) There There (pushed back)
4) Strange Weather in Tokyo
5) The Housekeeper and the Professor

Actual:
1) Chain-Gang All-Stars
This turned out to be my only full read, start to finish in April that I will count. I sort of did In a Dark, Dark Wood but was only half paying attention to the audiobook by half way through so not counting it. Chain-Gang All Stars was good. At times it was a bit pointed and obvious. But for someone who wants to read non-fiction but enjoys fiction, this oddly hit both notes while being what felt like a realistic dystopia. I enjoyed this. I enjoyed the writing, the story, and if Loretta Thurwar was not inspired by Viola Davis in Woman King then I would be shocked, because I pictured her the entire time.
Otherwise I started a few books but got started on Zelda and life was busy so didn't finish any others.

May
✅1) Calling for a Blanket Dance
✅2) Convenience Store Woman
✅3) Strange Weather in Tokyo
✅4) The Housekeeper and the Professor
✅5) A Court of Wings and Ruin

Actual:
1) A Court of Mist and Fury
It wasn't planned. But I needed something lighter. So fun. So enjoyable. Was worth getting through the misery of believing she would actually fall for the boringness that is Tamlin in order to get her to the Night Court. So exactly what I needed.
2) Convenience Store Woman
Yes, for real yes. So quick, simple, and necessary.
3) Strange Weather in Tokyo
I'm going to let it sit and simmer for a bit. But I liked it I think overall.
4) The Housekeeper and the Professor
I love this book. The sentiment. The intelligence. So unique. Wonderfully written and translated. Definitely one I will return to again.
5) A Court of Wings and Ruin
So much fun! And doesn't feel nearly as guilty as Twilight.
6) Calling for a Blanket Dance
I really liked it. Enjoyed it. Learned from it. Felt from it. Quick read. Audiobook was kind of eh but written book was really good. I think I would give it 4.25 starts if I could.
7) A Court of Frost and Starlight
So cute and fun. Super fast read. A fun little visit to Velaris.
8) There There
Devastating. Painful.
9) A ​Court of Silver Flames
Love this book. Sometimes it definitely felt like a fantasy mixed with a book with high school characters in a high school womens sports team as the focus but as long as you roll with it and never ask it to be more than it is, then its wonderful and fun.
10) Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
Ended up with more time on Monday then expected and otherwise just such a good, easy read. Love Trevor and love his inviting us into his history.

June Plan

✅1) Bunny
2) The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
✅3) Tourist Season
4) Empire of the Summer Moon

Actual:
1) Tourist Season
Silly, weird, bizarre and at the end had a point more worth thinking about than expected. Definitely of the error it was written but enjoyable. Esp as an audiobook.
2) Bunny
This year is the year of WTF reads. This was a wtf just happened. But I actually liked it more than expected. And the more I look back the more I think I really did like it in all its oddity but also moments of beauty. I can't really say much because spoilers would be too easy but definitely a book I would not have finished if not for book club but by the time I was done I was really glad I did.

July Plan
Okay go my mood and my goals are in different places right now. So everything got switched from plan vs actual.

1) Sing Her Name
2) This Tender Land
3) The Ocean at the End of the Lane
4) The Same Sky
5) Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us
6) Gold Started it and was not impressed, checked reviews and the things that were annoying me annoyed others and no one said finishing it was worth it so DNF'd.

Actual:
1) City of Bones
2) City of Ashes
3) City of Glass
-- I wasn't feeling very focused so this fit where I was very well. It was actually nice to see a Young Adult character (Clary) in this space written so that they felt like a Young Adult and not like a 20 something we are pretending is only 16.
4) Angels - Loving this series more the second time through. Re-read the first two books back in December now getting back to it and it really feels like what I want to read right now. Love the Walsh family. Marian Keyes does well mixing real issues with quality "chick-lit" so I never feel guilty reading these books that are underestimated.
5) Sing Her Name - Good ideas but nothing developed enough. Would have quit early if this wasn't for my bookclub. Might have worked better if main character had been younger.

doing great keep it up!

August Plan

Honestly feeling scatted so I have ideas. Not so much plans right now...
Sort of think I might get caught up on Walsh Family. But have a roadtrip and so might do Malibu Rising. Sort of want something calming but also want things interesting. I just don't know.

Actual:
1) Anybody Out There? - I love this book. Heart breaking in a good way.
2) The Mystery of Mercy Close - Loved this so much better this time through. Last time my brain wanted to focus on the mystery part but this time I was able to focus on the true story of Helen's journey.
3) Again, Rachel - Loved this book so absolutely much. A great continuation of the story. A reminder that Happy Endings aren't the end of the story and they aren't a place to just sit back and consider life done or to believe the fight for a Happy Ending is over.
4) Under the Whispering Door - Prefer it over The House in the Cerulean Sea. Super cute. Emotional. Enjoyed all the characters and the idea it was all built on.

September Plan

1. This Is How You Lose the Time War
2. Disappearing Earth
4. The Light Between Oceans
5. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Actual:
1) My Favorite Mistake - I really can't believe how much I love Narky Joey now. So good.
2) Ready Player One - Perfect for a long car ride.

October Plan

1. The Last Ranger
2. The Paris Hours
3. Ninth House

November Plan

1. Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
2. The Outsiders
3. Dog on It