2025 Reading Challenge discussion
ARCHIVE 2022
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Echo is reading 60!
Good luck with your big goal of 60 Echo and all your little adventures along the way.
First book of the year completed! Fangirl was recommended to me by a friend and it was a pretty good read. Next up is The Brilliant Death.
Completed The Brilliant Death, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Not sure what will be next up. Need to switch over to Libby from Overdrive.
Just devoured I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Finished Lord of the Flies and I have to say I did not like it at all! Next up will be The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level which has been on my TBR pile for a long time.
Ugh, finished The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level but I absolutely hated it. I can't recall who recommended it but sheesh what a joke. I almost didn't continue after the doctor made it clear he thinks Fibromyalgia is psychosomatic. Next up will be a palate cleanse in the form of Rivers of London.
Finished Drop The Rock: Removing Character Defects - Steps Six and Seven with my OA sponsor and it was excellent. Had some great shares/examples for really working the 6th and 7th steps.
Completed Rivers of London, which was most excellent and has me excited to continue in the series. Also started in on Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight because we're doing a course at work on it. :)
Decided to pick up Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History given the attention it's getting currently. Very difficult subject matter but handled in a very real way.
Listened to most of Moon Over Soho on a long drive and then finished it over the weekend. Another great read. This is a fun series for sure.
Read His Majesty's Dragon and absolutely loved it. Great recommendation from my local library. Next up will be a re-read of a childhood favorite.
Finished So You Want to Be a Wizard which I enjoyed. I had forgotten exactly what all occurred in the first book, so it felt fresh. :)
Finished Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, which was another hard but important read.
Finished off Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight which was a great perspective.
Finished Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach. Usually I love her stuff, and this has the same sort of wit that I like in her writing, but the subject matter just didn't do it for me like Stiff or Gulp.
My SO has been on a plays kick and after hearing him lose it laughing I had to read Noises Off after he finished it and it was absolutely brilliant.
Read Valor's Choice, which isn't something I would usually pick up, but I did enjoy it. Especially with the one fight paralleling the battle of Rorke's Drift.
Finished The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother which was a really interesting slice of life biography.
I really wanted to like Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914 but it was just too disjointed for me. I appreciated that it included a large number of first hand accounts, but it was just too hard to keep track of who was who. I also felt like several sections just went on for too long.
Ended up reading Boeing-Boeing: A Farce in Two Acts when I was having trouble getting to sleep. Pretty good, but Don't Dress for Dinner was funnier in my opinion.
Decided to reread The Butterfly Garden and was very pleased that it's still as good as I recall. I don't think I'm going to read the others in the series, however, as they just don't catch my eye in the same way, but maybe someday they will.
Read through Good Night Ladies which started out fairly funny and farce like, but then tapers out to a rather abrupt and comparatively dull ending.
Finished Drop the Rock--The Ripple Effect: Using Step 10 to Work Steps 6 and 7 Every Day with my sponsor for Overeaters Anonymous and it was really quite good. I liked a lot of the personal stories and the analogies used. I'm also about 50% done with The Last Lecture.
Finally finished up The Dragonbone Chair, which ended up being quite good even though I wasn't sure I actually would finish it at the start. Very slow build.
Y'all, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism was so so so good. Highly recommend it!
Finished up The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which is worth one read, but also a little disappointing given the premise and my expectations? Maybe I bought into the hype too much?
Echo wrote: "Finished So You Want to Be a Wizard which I enjoyed. I had forgotten exactly what all occurred in the first book, so it felt fresh. :)"Oh my gosh, I haven't come across anyone else who remembers this series!! I read it when I was young and have been debating picking it up to reread now that I'm an adult. I'm glad I saw your note about it, I think I'll try to get a copy this year :)
╟ ♫ Tima ♪ ╣ ♥ wrote: "Echo wrote: "Finished So You Want to Be a Wizard which I enjoyed. I had forgotten exactly what all occurred in the first book, so it felt fresh. :)"Oh my gosh, I haven't come across..."
Definitely! It held up well despite my age! I want to keep re-reading the series before I pass it off to my nephew and nieces.
Finished off Seeker of Magic and can't in good faith recommend it. It was just ok, and there were some points where I really wanted to put it down.
Picked up and read through Apology: Of Socrates to the Jury by Xenophon for my A-Z authors challenge. Also picked up the next book in the Rivers of London series (I'm on Broken Homes)
Finished Running with Scissors which was a heck of a wild ride. Now reading Moonshine and Magnolias and listening to The Kite Runner.
Finished The Kite Runner, which was quite good. Not sure what I will listen to next, have some books on hold with the library, so we'll see what comes in.
I really enjoyed Moonshine and Magnolias, even though I don't normally go for romances. I even want to read the sequels because I liked the characters so much.
Foxglove Summer was very good; had me laughing out loud several times, and I really enjoyed the plot of this one.
Picked up I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, which was very educational. Also started Smoke & Summons, which I've so far been enjoying quite a bit (liking the world building in particular).
Finished up Get Good with Money: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole, which was an incredibly well laid out book to help navigate finances. Next up I'm starting Clever Girl Finance: Ditch Debt, Save Money and Build Real Wealth.
Finished off Clever Girl Finance: Ditch Debt, Save Money and Build Real Wealth, and now starting in on Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping by and Get Your Financial Life Together
2025 Reading Challenge
Books mentioned in this topic
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (other topics)We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story (other topics)
Things Fall Apart (other topics)
Finding Me (other topics)
Felix Ever After (other topics)
More...
Read 15 non-fiction: 24/15
Read 5 biographies: 7/5
Read 20 books by female authors: 27/20
Read 20 books by authors of color: 21/20
Read 5 of the books from my TBR Pile: 8/5
Read 5 classics: 5/5
Total: 65/60