#RevolutionaryWarReads in 2026

I mentioned earlier this month that I am planning to read at least thirteen books about or set during the American Revolution this year, one for each of the original thirteen colonies.  That feels like a really fun way to celebrate our nation's 250th birthday all year long!

Several people have asked if I would share my list of books I plan to read, and so I am doing exactly that in this post.  I will also be posting about this from time to time on my Instagram account and using the hashtag #RevolutionaryWarReads when I do.

I made one change from the plans I originally set forth in graphic you see above because I discovered that one of the books I planned to read (A Heart Adrift by Laura Frantz) actually takes place in the 1750s, not the 1770s.  I'm reading that right now anyway, and really enjoying it!  But it won't count toward my challenge.

Here are the books I currently plan to read:

Fiction

1. The Lady and the Loyalist by Stephanie McRae (Heart of the Revolution, book 1)

2. The Hero and the Patriot by Stephanie McRae (Heart of the Revolution, book 2)

3. Heart of the Revolution book 3 by Stephanie McRae (releases later this year)

4. Or Give Me Death by Ann Rinaldi

5. Spark of the Revolution by Megan Soja (Harbor of Spies, book 1)

6. Secrets of the Revolution by Megan Soja (Harbor of Spies, book 2)

7. Scars of the Revolution by Megan Soja (Harbor of Spies, book 3)

8. Harbor of Spies book 4 by Megan Soja (releases later this year)

Non-Fiction

9. The Greatest Lawyer That Ever Lived: Patrick Henry at the Bar of History by George Morrow

10. Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution by Eric Jay Dolin

11. Strange and Obscure Stories of the Revolutionary War by Tim Rowland

12. The Swamp Fox, Francis Marion by Noel Gerson

13. Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose

I already own copies of all of these, except for those two unreleased books, so this will also be a good exercise in reading things off my TBR shelves!

Are you planning to read some books about the American Revolution in 2026?  Have you read any of these?  Let me know!

Reading Goals Behind and Ahead

I like goals.  Even when I don't reach them.  Last January, I set a few reading goals for the year, and I finally have a few minutes to look over how that all worked out.

I wanted to read 55 books.  I read 68!  Huzzah!

I wanted to read at least 12 classics for my fourth Classics Club list.  I read 15!  Sweet!

I also wanted to read at least 12 books about people who are substantially different from myself.  And I read 16!  Yay!

I also chose 25 books I wanted to read in 2025, some of them rereads and some new reads.  I read 7 of them.  Epic fail.  Didn't even read 1/3 of them.  Sigh.  Oh well.

Now, time for my 2026 reading goals!

I want to read 13 books about or set during the American Revolution in 2026 to mark our nation's 250th birthday.  I'm listing them under #RevolutionaryWarReads on Instagram, if you are curious.  I hope to do a post just about that pretty soon.

Once again, I aim to read at least 12 classics and 12 diverse books.

And I'm setting my overall goal at 55 again because I know that will keep me reading but not daunt me.

Have you shared any reading plans or goals for 2026?  If so, drop me a link in the comments so I can see what you're planning!

Reading Goals Past and Future

I've got a bit of time this evening, so I'm ready at last to look over my reading goals from 2024, and set some for 2025.

I set myself the goal of reading 55 books in 2024, and I read 68, so hooray!  I didn't just meet, I exceeded that goal!

I wanted to read 48 books off my shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.  I failed.  I did read 41 books that I owned this year, but only 28 of them counted for that challenge because their rules insist they have to be books you owned before the beginning of the year.  Oh well.

I joined the #DisneyOriginsBookClub2024 on Instagram again this year, but I quit after the first couple of months because I simply had less reading time this year!  A lot of that is due to my younger daughter's ballet lessons now overlapping with my older daughter's gymnastics lessons, so I spend a lot of time driving between those instead of sitting and reading while I wait/watch.

Also, I don't have a photo here to illustrate this, but I participated in the #JaneAustenDeepDive2024 reading group on Instagram this year.  I read all six of the annotated editions of Jane Austen's major works (edited by David M. Shapard -- one review still to come) and had a wonderful time learning about Austen's works and world.  But those annotated editions are not light reading!!!  They soaked up a lot of my reading time.

I wanted to read twelve books for my fourth Classics Club list.  I read ten, so didn't really hit that goal.

I wanted to read twelve books about people substantially different for myself.  The image here only shows eleven, but I realized after I took these photos that I left two books off, so I actually read thirteen for that list! 

Back in 2023, I decided to read all of the Sackett books by Louis L'Amour over the course of 2023 and 2024.  I read the Sackett short stories included in War Party and End of the Drive at the very end of December, thereby completing that goal!  You can read my reviews of all the full Sackett novels under the label My Years with the Sacketts.

I absolutely loved the Sackett books.  I've become a firm L'Amour fan over the past two years, and I am particularly fond of Tell Sackett, though I very much like quite a few of the other Sacketts too.

Now for my 2025 goals!

Once again, I want to read at least 55 books.  That's slightly more than one a week, and even when I have "low" reading years, I can still manage that, so I like that goal.  Achievable, but not inconsiderable.

I am NOT setting myself a goal of numbers of books to read from my TBR shelves for the first time in years.  I will read what I read.  My house will be full of books.  I like that life.  Time to stop obsessing over how many books I own and haven't read yet -- I think keeping a careful count of them for the past few years has actually made me buy MORE books, oddly enough.

Once again, I want to read twelve books for my fourth Classics Club list, and I aim to read twelve books about people who are substantially different from myself in some way.

And I have a new challenge for myself this year!  I'm joining Andy at @places_and_books in picking #25for25 -- 25 specific books I want to read this year.  From my list above, 8 are rereads and 17 are books I haven't read before.  I like that mix.  

How about you?  Have you set yourself some bookish or reading goals for this year?  Share a link if you've blogged about them!

"Autumn Chills" by Agatha Christie

Over the past few years, HarperCollins has put out four seasonal collections of Agatha Christie short stories.  I've collected them all up, and I decided to try to read them all over the coming months, each during the season where they take place.  I began with Autumn Chills because I wanted to read it for the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram.  I didn't finish it before November, so it didn't count for that challenge, but that's okay!  I had a lot of fun reading one of these short mysteries every couple of days.

And then this review sat in my drafts for a month.  Because my life has just been so blasted busy!  That means I don't actually remember which stories were my favorites anymore, except that I wholeheartedly loved "The Case of the Rich Woman."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for murder, mild innuendo here and there, and I think maybe a couple instances of mild cussing?

This was my 28th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge and my 33rd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"The Annotated Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen (Annotated and Edited by David M. Shapar)

You know what?  I really liked Mansfield Park this time through :-o  The first time I read it, maybe 15 years ago or so, I found it terribly dull.  The second time I read it, about ten years ago, I found Fanny annoying.  But this time, I thought Fanny was a lovely character, and I wasn't bored a bit!

I think that was partly because of the annotations -- as always, I learned a LOT from those.  But it was also because I read this as part of the #JaneAustenDeepDive2024 group buddy read on Instagram.  Discussing the book with other readers really helped me settle my own opinions about the characters, and especially about the romance between Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram.  I've never had much patience with Edmund before, because he seems so ridiculously unable to see the truth about either Fanny or Mary Crawford (or many other people around him), but this time, I could see how that is not necessarily a character flaw -- he sees the good in people and disregards the rest, which doesn't make him dumb.  It just makes him kind of endearingly naïve.  While Fanny did sometimes displease me a little with how she tends to do the reverse and see bad things in people while ignoring their better points, I didn't find her completely annoying this time.  In fact, I enjoyed the book!  Yay!  Total win.

Particularly Good Bits:

Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply (p. 428).

"Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how.  It is a part of an Englishman's constitution.  His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them every where, one is intimate with him by instinct" (p. 606).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for the text for some discussions of adultery, and PG-13 for the annotations for some franker (but still tasteful) discussions of sexual matters. 

This has been my 29th book read and reviewed for my 4th Classics Club list.

"The Annotated Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen (Annotated and Edited by David M. Shapard)

I'm halfway through my ongoing quest to read all these annotated Austen editions!  The #JaneAustenDeepDive reading group on Instagram has been a continual delight, and the two-months-per-book pace has been perfect for me to read these detailed and informative editions.  

I think I learned more from The Annotated Northanger Abbey than from the Pride and Prejudice or the Sense and Sensibility, largely because this one explained alllllll the allusions to popular novels that Austen makes throughout the book.  One day, I will read some of the books she talks about, just to more fully understand this one.

Northanger Abbey remains tied with Pride and Prejudice as my second-favorite Jane Austen.  Up next for our group read-along is Mansfield Park, which is my least-favorite Austen.  I'm hoping that reading the annotated edition will help me appreciate it better.

If you don't know, this book is about a young woman who loves to read Gothic romance books, that era's version of romantic suspense, basically.  She travels to a resort town with some friends of her family, where she makes new friends and forms an attachment with a charming man with a great sense of humor.  But she lets her imagination start to run away from her sometimes, and has to learn to differentiate between fact and fiction.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some mild bad language in the text, and PG-13 for the annotations, which talk about sexual mores and attitudes at the time.

"The Annotated Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen (Annotated and Edited by David M. Shapard)

This is the second time I've read The Annotated Sense and Sensibility, which pairs Jane Austen's classic novel with extensive notes and commentaries by David M. Shapard.  I used this edition back in 2021 when I led a read-along here for S&S, and I very much enjoyed learning from it.  So, when I decided to join the #JaneAustenDeepDive2024 reading group on Instagram, I decided I wanted to read all of these annotated editions.  We're taking two months to read each book, and really having a great time discussing things very thoroughly.  

That slower pace is ideal for these annotated editions because they really do take a lot longer to read -- there are thousands of notes in here explaining everything from naming conventions to social niceties to the differences between a carriage and a barouche, to what kinds of food would be common in that era for different classes.  Because history fascinates me, I absolutely loved reading this edition, even for the second time!

However, reading a thoroughly annotated book like this is a very different experience from reading the novel on its own.  I can't fully immerse myself in the story because, every paragraph or two, I have to stop reading the novel to read an explanatory note.  So, because I love history, I found it very enjoyable, but enjoyable in a different way from simply losing myself in the story.

That means that I would not recommend reading this annotated edition if it is your first time reading Sense and Sensibility.  But if you have read it before, and you want to understand the society and world and times that the story takes place in and was written in, then it can be very wonderful.

I know this review is mostly about the annotations, not the story itself.  Briefly, this is the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne, whose father dies at the beginning of the book, and they and their mother and younger sister must move away from their home and live in a much smaller and poorer way than they are used to.  Both Elinor and Marianne fall in love, but their different temperaments and personalities, and the very different nature of the men they fall in love with, means that they have very different experiences in love.  The whole book is a meditation on whether or not it's wiser to let your heart by ruled by your head, or let your head be ruled by your heart -- or whether it might be wisest to balance the two.  It's a good book, but not a high favorite of mine.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for the text and PG-13 for the annotations, which talk about subjects such as unwed pregnancy in a much more frank way than the text does.  Nothing salacious, and no bad language, but not necessarily something I would hand to a young teen, either.

This has been my 23rd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

Announcing the #CozyWinterChristianFictionChallenge + Giveaway

I am co-hosting a reading challenge for the next six weeks!  Through March 1, fellow Christian author Laurie Sibley and I are challenging readers to brighten the winter days by reading some Christian fiction.  We have announced this challenge on Instagram (my kick-off post is here), but you don't have to be on IG to participate!  Bloggers are welcome too.

Want to join?  It's easy!  Copy that bingo board for your own use.  Cross off the things you do between now and March 1.  You are welcome to combine prompts if you wish -- for example, you could read a Christian fiction book published before 2000 that is part of a series, and cross off two squares.  You could read a Christian fiction book by a new-to-you author that a friend recommended, and cross off two squares.  You could reread a favorite Christian fiction book while snuggled up under a cozy blanket with a cup of hot tea while it snows outside, and cross off four squares!  

The books you read for the challenge should be Christian fiction, since this is specifically a Christian fiction challenge.  However, you can decide for yourself if that means the books are labeled "Christian fiction" by the publishers or if they are simply written by an author who professes to be a Christian.  For example, even though The Lord of the Rings is not explicitly Christian fiction, J. R. R. Tolkien was a Christian, and his writing is imbued with Christian themes and truths even though he does not mention Jesus Christ or the Bible in the books.  

As you cross things off, you can also use those as entries for the giveaway!  Every square crossed off counts for one entry, and has a corresponding entry button in the giveaway widget.  Every bingo you make (four crossed off in a row, horizontal or vertical or diagonal) counts for an extra four entries via the giveaway widget.  

And, if you want a few extra entries, you can get those by subscribing to our author newsletters!  You can sign up for mine here, and for Laurie Sibley's here.  If you do subscribe to either/both of those, don't forget to enter that into the giveaway widget to get your entries!

For your convenience, here is the giveaway widget:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You can also access that widget by visiting this link.

Feel free to share this with friends!  The more, the merrier :-)

"Of Fire and Ash" by Gillian Bronte Adams

Of Fire and Ash is my teenage daughter's favorite book right now.  She's eagerly awaiting the next book in the series, Of Sea and Smoke, which launches in just under two months.  And she wants to dress as the main character from this one, Ceredwin, for Halloween this year.  So, when Gillian Bronte Adams announced a read-along of this book on Instagram, I decided to participate because I knew it would make my daughter really happy if I read it.  And, it did!  She had such a great time discussing it with me as we read -- she reread it during the read-along too.

I can see why my daughter loves this book.  Ceredwin is a fierce, opinionated young woman and a mighty warrior.  The book has nonstop excitement, lots of fighting and angst, and not really any romance.  There are funny characters, sad characters, and lots of very brave characters.  Also, some dastardly villains.  If I had read this before she did, I might have asked her to wait a couple years before reading it, as there are some torture scenes that I might have thought were a little more than she could handle, though she doesn't seem to be bothered by them at all, as it turns out.

But this was not really a book I enjoyed.  I appreciated many aspects of it, yes.  The characters were excellent, and they were why I kept reading, because I wanted to find out what happened to them.  But I did not like the pacing of the story -- I actually set the book aside many times because of the pacing.  There are three different stories happening simultaneously, each with its own main character, and the book would spend a couple of chapters with one character in their storyline, then hop abruptly to another right when I was getting invested in what was happening.  Often, I would just put the book down and go do something else because the cord of my interest had been severed.

Also, the pacing suffered from something I have noticed in a few other modern books lately:  lack of rest for the readers.  When you have an adventure tale, in particular, every time you have a big high point of action, your audience needs some rest after it, just like your characters.  Think about The Lord of the Rings, how after being chased by Black Riders, the hobbits and audience get to rest in Bree.  Then, after the attack at Weathertop, we get rest in Rivendell.  After the ordeal in Moria, we rest in Lothlorien.  And so it goes, throughout the whole saga -- the audience gets to catch their breath along with the characters.  If you don't let them rest, they will set your story aside to find rest away from it -- but there seems to be this thinking in today's writers that you have to keep throwing exciting stuff at your readers constantly or they will lose interest.  Trouble is, they will also get overwhelmed and lose interest because of that.

In this particular book, many times when the characters got to rest after a battle or skirmish or fight with a monster, the book yanked readers away and tossed them into another big fight scene in a different storyline, and that got very tiring.

Now, would I recommend this book?  If you like swords-and-sorcery kinds of high fantasy, absolutely.  The writing, aside from the pacing, was stellar.  The story and characters were definitely engaging.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for violence, torture, scary situations, death, branding, angst, emotional pain, and monsters.  No cussing and no smut.

This is my 48th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Murder on Black Swan Lane" by Andrea Penrose

These days, I almost never read a book without having read someone's review of it that made me go, "I want to read that!" Or without it being by an author I enjoy.  So this was kind of a treat, in that way, because I really knew nothing about it except that an Instagram friend thought I would like it.  When I ordered a book box from her Etsy shop, this is the book she chose for me, knowing I love mysteries and historical fiction.  And she was right!  I really, really enjoyed this book!  In fact, I just put a hold on the next book in the series at my library.

Murder on Black Swan Lane has two main characters: Charlotte Sloane and the Earl of Wrexford.  They take turns being the POV character throughout the book.  Charlotte is a widow, and she is secretly a very popular and famous political cartoonist whose satirical artwork is the talk of Regency-era London.  When one of her pieces accuses Wrexford of committing a brutal murder, it brings him to her door, demanding either a retraction of some sort.  They eventually join forces, albeit unwillingly, and work to bring the actual murderer to justice.

The whole book is thoroughly enjoyable, especially if you enjoy lots of Regency slang and fashion and other period-correct details, plus a dastardly plot to untangle, but without delving into sordidity.  (Do you like that word?  I just coined it.)  Although there are some ugly murders, and some violence toward children, the book does not devolve into grisly, preferring to remain grimy but not gruesome.  I look forward to continuing the series, and I'm happy to discover there are five more books in the series out already, with another due out this fall.  I do love a good series, and I hope this one continues in the same vein!

Particularly Good Bits:

Hope, however, was a two-edged sword, a dangerous weapon in careless hands (p. 277).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for murders, violence to children, lots of danger and peril, and a sprinkling of cuss words.  No smut, but some mention of things like mistresses and ladies of the evening.

This is my 25th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

Reading Goals -- Completed and Begun

Somehow, it's already January 11 and I haven't written any wrap-up posts for my 2022 reading OR declared what my plans for this year are.  Oops!  Time to rectify that.  

First, let's look at my goals from last year.

Overall Goal

I kept my reading goal at 55 last year.  That's just over one book a week, and I know I generally read at least that many.  In 2022, I read 103 books!  

My Year with Irene Kelly

I decided I wanted to reread the four Irene Kelly mysteries by Jan Burke that I had read previously, and then read the rest of the series too.  And I succeeded!  Well, basically.  I did not read the final book because it revolved around the disturbing serial killer from an earlier book that I had absolutely loathed.  In fact, I disliked that earlier book so much, I didn't even review it on my blog.  I decided I just didn't need to read more about that icky character, so I stopped with book ten.  But I still consider that challenge completed because I chose not to read the last book, I didn't just run out of time or oomph.

You can read my reviews for those books right here.

#TheUnreadShelfProject2022

My goal for last year was to get my unread book collection down under 500 books.  I started out with 512 books, I read 65 books from my TBR shelves... and I ended up with 499 unread books.  So, the good news is, I DID get down under 500 books, but the bad news is that I only barely managed that.  I really need to stay away from used bookstores, heh.

The Disney Origins Book Club

I joined a year-long challenge on Instagram to read books that Disney movies have been based on.  I wanted to participate in at least six months, and I managed seven, so yay!  Those seven were:

• "The Snow Queen" and "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen
• The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
• Bed-Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton
• Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
• "Beauty and the Beast" and "Cinderella" collected by Andrew Lang
• Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers
• Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

Diverse Reading

I set myself the goal of reading at least 12 books by or about people with a different ethnicity, culture, or background from my own.  And I succeeded!  I reviewed most of them here, and you can read those reviews here.

A few fun stats:

103 books read, total 

29 rereads 

2 nonfiction 

12 diverse reads 

8 manga

7 read aloud to my kids 

1 audiobook

Now for my 2023 reading goals!

Overall Goal

I'm keeping this at 55.  It's manageable, and I get a big kick out of surpassing it.

Diverse Reading

Once again, I want to read at least 12 books by or about people who are significantly different from myself somehow.

Classics Club

I want to read at least 12 books from my fourth Classics Club list.

#TheUnreadShelfProject2023

My goal this year is to get my unread book count down to 450.  This is ambitious, but I like challenges.

My Years with the Sacketts

I have spent a few years collecting up all the Louis L'Amour books about the Sackett family, and I have them all now!  There are nineteen books in all, so I don't expect to read them all in 2023 -- instead, my goal is to read ten this year and nine next year.  I plan to read them in chronological order, not in publication order.  Or, at least, in the chronological order I found online -- I guess some people disagree about what order they go in, so I'll just do my best.

Do you set reading goals?  Do you share them?  If so, leave a link and I'll check them out!

"The Christmas Hirelings" by M. E. Braddon

This sweet little novella is like the epitome of Victorian Christmas fiction: filled with the knowledge that life can be fleeting and people can be cruel... but they don't need to be.

An aging aristocrat, his good friend, and his niece are all set to spend a very boring Christmas together at the aristocrat's country manor.  Then his friend suggests they "hire" some children to liven up their festivities, and after some consideration, they decide to do exactly this.  The friend departs for a while and returns with three siblings who are genteel, enthusiastic, and intelligent, and who fill the manor house with all the joy and brightness it was missing.

The smallest child is precocious in both intellect and attitude, and she captures the aristocrat's attention and eventually claims his heart (in a grandfatherly sort of way, never fear)... and then calamity strikes.  And, because this is Victorian literature, you can never be too sure that everything will turn out fine because some Victorian authors will just randomly kill off children just to make you cry, so I finished the last couple chapters of this novella with a lot of trepidation.  But I liked it a lot, by the very end.

Particularly Good Bits:

"Christmas can hardly be made too much of where there are children in question."

"They are small, but they are people."

Each of the children discovered a glittering new coin, and in Moppet's portion there were two sixpences.  The stout and serious butler helping the pudding on the carving-table by the light of a single candle was suspected of treasonable practices.

"People who are unhappy don't like anything.  Unhappiness is disliking."

"My life was barren, but it was peaceful.  What more did I want?"

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Clean and innocent and sweet.

I read this as part of the #DickensDecember2022 group challenge on Instagram, and it's also my first book read for the Literary Christmas Reading Challenge this year.  It's also my sixth book read for my fourth Classics Club list AND my 56th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.  Whew!

"Bloodlines" by Jan Burke (again)

Did it take me two weeks to read this book?  Yes, it did.  But not because I wasn't enjoying it or couldn't get into it.  I spent two weeks on Bloodlines because I was savoring it.  I didn't want to rush through it, I wanted to soak in it.  And I did, and it was wonderful.

This is the first Irene Kelly book I ever read, back in 2012, and the one that made me want to read the whole series.  Now, ten years later, I'm finally able to fulfill that desire.  I had started reading the rest of the series, beginning with the first book, after I first read Bloodlines (which is book 9), but the library rudely ditched the series before I'd gotten past book 3.  So, I've slowly been collecting up the series whenever I would find copies at used book stores and thrift stores, etc.  I got the last couple on AbeBooks at the end of last year and set off on my quest to read the whole series in 2022, which I'm calling My Year with Irene Kelly.

A big part of why I love this book is that it starts in 1958, picks up in 1978, then concludes in 2000.  Murders and crimes from the past keep spawning trouble over the decades, and the plotting here is breathtaking.  

But the real reason that I loved it even more this second time through than I did the first time... was that I know who these characters are, now.  And getting to see Irene Kelly's mentor O'Connor active and on the page, both as a kid and an adult... it's so amazing.  You see, O'Connor dies at the very beginning of the first Irene Kelly book.  Like, in the first chapter, IIRC.  And Irene is always referring to him, missing him, thinking about him, and so on.  Which makes the first two-thirds of this book extra, extra good this time.  

None of this rambling tells you what the book is about, though, does it?  Well, it involves kidnapping, murder, long-buried secrets, family, friendship, mentorship, and grave robbing.  It sprawls.  It weaves.  It surprises.  I love it.  I keep trying to sum up the mystery without spoiling it, but I can't seem to manage it, sorry.

I have two books left in the series to read.  And I'm a little worried they won't live up to Bloodlines because I love it so, so much.  But, then again, they might be just as wonderful!  Won't know until I try them.

Particularly Good Bits:

Missing, he thought, meant exactly that -- gone like a piece of you, carved right out of you, missing from you (p. 145).

There is a distance between "should forgive" and "have forgiven" that is sometimes hard to cross (p. 462).

I stared out the window of the Lucky Dragon, watching a steady stream of downtown workers, panhandlers, shoppers, and others walk by.  Each one a little bundle of troubles on legs, determined to make it through the day (p. 569).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: R for violence, language, and off-page sex.

Reading Goals Behind and Ahead

I always set a few reading goals for myself for the year, just to help me focus my reading a bit.  Since we're saying goodbye to 2021 and hello to 2022, it's time to see how I did with my goals for the past year, then talk about my goals for the coming year.  

(All photos are mine from my Instagram account.)

2021 Goals

Overall Goal

I set myself the goal of reading 55 books in 2021.  I read 110.  WHAT?!?!  That is more books than I've read in one year in my entire adult life.  Including the four years after college but before kids.  I think it's because, every week, my older daughter takes 90-minute gymnastics lessons, my younger daughter takes 30-minute swimming lessons,  and my son takes 1-hour fencing lessons.  Those are nice, regular chunks of time for me to spend with a book.

My Year with Harry Potter

I wanted to reread all seven original Harry Potter books in one year, and I did it!  And it was fantastically fun.

(No question who my favorite HP character is, huh?)

#TheUnreadShelfChallenge2021

I set myself the goal of reading 24 books off my physical TBR shelves.  When I hit that goal, I doubled it to 48.  My final numbers: 62 read, 65 unshelved... but also 112 new unread books acquired, so my total number of unread books went from 527 to 512.  Which is progress, but not huge progress.  Still, better than a stick in the eye.

Diverse Reads

I'm working on reading more books by and about people from different cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds, and abilities than my own, and I've challenged myself to read 12 such books a year.  That's roughly one a month, though it doesn't always shake out exactly that way. It keeps me mindful of reading about people who are different from me in some way.  I read 15 diverse books in 2021, so I definitely succeeded there.

(These candles are from Northanger Soapworks.)

Sense and Sensibility Read-along

I lead a chapter-by-chapter read-along of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen here on my blog beginning in March and ending in May.  It was incredibly fun!  I'd missed leading read-alongs, even though they're pretty time-consuming, and I may try leading another this summer.  If you've got suggestions/wishes for that, let me know in the comments.

Overall, I am really happy with my 2021 reading!  I would like to have made better progress clearing out unread books... but the fault is in my buying more books, not in my reading, and I did hit my goals, so yay!

(All set to begin new reading adventures!)

2022 Goals

Overall Goal

I'm keeping this at 55 this year.  You never know, I may get weirdly busy or something.  That's a little more than one a week, so I like it.

(Um, yes, I love bookish candles.)

My Year with Irene Kelly

I started reading the Irene Kelly series by Jan Burke back in 2012.  I started with book nine by accident, then went back and read the first three... and then, well, book four was never in at my library branch, and I never remembered to put it on hold so I could get it from any of the other branches.  And then the library got rid of the whole series a few years later.  So I've been hunting them down at used book stores for years, and I finally gave up and got the rest from AbeBooks.  Which means I have all eleven of them now, and I'm going to read the whole series in the correct order.  Four will be rereads, but seven will count for my Unread Shelf Project, so that's a nice intersection of challenges.

#TheUnreadShelfChallenge2022

My new goal this year is simply to get myself under 500 unread books on my shelves, and then stay there.  Regardless of how many books I read.

(My bullet journal gives me a reason to buy stickers.)

Disney Origins Bookclub

Some Instagram friends are hosting a year-long buddy read project of lots of things that Disney movies are based on.  Check out #DisneyOriginsBookclub to learn more.  I won't be participating every month, but I want to do at least six of the reads.

Diverse Reads

Once again, I intend to try to read 12 books by and/or about people from ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds different from my own.

(The couch in our library, where I often curl up with a book.)

Here are some fun statistics:

110 books read, total

35 rereads

11 nonfiction

15 diverse reads

6 read aloud to my kids

6 audiobooks

1 e-book

How about you?  Got any bookish goals or hopes or dreams or plans?

"Christmas at Thompson Hall and Other Christmas Stories" by Anthony Trollope

I got this book because the first story, "A Christmas at Thompson Hall," was one of the selections for the  #DickensDecember2021 reading group this year.  And I went ahead and read the whole thing because... Christmas!  I'm not sure that I've read anything by Trollope before, but I really want to read something else of his now because he has a very engaging and conversational style, and I like that.

Anyway, here's what I thought of each story in this collection:

+ "Christmas at Thompson Hall" was hilarious.  I was laughing and laughing aloud over this story.  So much so that my kids asked me what was so funny, so I tried to summarize it, but it's so ridiculously complicated that I only confused them.  They'll just have to read it themselves.  It all revolves around a woman who is dragging her husband back home to England to have Christmas with her family.  And then he catches a cold, and she tries to get mustard to make a mustard plaster for him, and Victorian hijinks ensue.  I really don't want to explain more than that because it would spoil the fun for anyone who hasn't read it yet, but wants to.

+ "Christmas Day at Kirkby Cottage" was kind of a let-down after the bouncing fun of the previous story. Young lovers have an argument about the importance of Christmas and then make up.

+ "The Mistletoe Bough" is about a girl who thinks she shouldn't marry the man she loves because she thinks she's being a better person by denying herself happiness.  If that sounds like a downer to you, well, that's because it is.  It ends happily, at least.

+ "The Two Generals" was interesting because I haven't read any other stories about the American Civil War written by an Englishman.  His perspective of what people on either side of the conflict might be thinking was very interesting, and pretty even-handed.  The story is about two brothers from Kentucky who each become generals during the war... but one in the Union Army and one in the Confederate.  And they both love the same girl.  And they both sneak home for Christmas, and conflict ensues.

+ "Not If I Know It" revolves around a verbal misunderstanding between two friends, one of whom takes terrible offense to the way the other answers a request.  They spend Christmas glaring and grumbling, and it's just kind of a grumpy story all around.

So, clearly, "Christmas at Thompson Hall" was my favorite, and I really liked "The Two Generals" too, but I doubt I'll reread the other three stories.  Still, the first was so funny that I'll keep my copy just to reread it for laughs some future Christmas.

(Mine from my Instagram account)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Clean and unobjectionable stories.  But you may never look at mustard pots the same way again, or handkerchiefs, or hotel corridors.

This is my 33rd book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list and my 50th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021!!!