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Day 8 – Why I Love This Book

Posted in 31 Days, Books, Cozy, Getting It Together, Mental Health, Resolutions, tagged , , , , on October 8, 2026| 1 Comment »

I love How To Keep a House While Drowning. The subtitle is “a gentle approach to cleaning and organizing,” and that’s just what I need. I am not motivated by what I should do or someone else’s standard. Frankly, I’m not even motivated by my own standards. 

I am motivated by grace and understanding and generosity, and this book is an abundance of those things.

In the first few pages, Davis starts in with this wisdom: “You don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.” Many of my struggles with keeping house are based on my suspicion that I somehow owe my apartment something. But really? I am there because of my needs (to have shelter) and desires (to be cozy af). Therefore, it makes much more sense to approach it in ways that serve this purpose.

When I approach housework as a way of honoring my needs, my perspective shifts. What would make Future Me happy or help her relax? That is why I clean. That is why I declutter. Not to impress some possible guests but to please myself.

Davis also addresses the binary status of done or not done. The point of housework isn’t to mark something as “done.” Now, initially, this offended me to my very core. You know I love marking things off a checklist. But the point of keeping house isn’t to finish, but to keep it functional. If my expectation is that something is finished, I will get frustrated the next time I have to do it again. But if I change my mindset to functionality, the whole process softens into something more sustainable.

The third thing I love about this book is the statement, “Self-care was never meant to be a replacement for community care.” There’s a whole lovely section on this, but one of my takeaways is the reminder that we still need each other. I can do the best I can with every resource and ounce of energy I have and still not finish all the things. It’s not just OK to help each other; it’s critical.

Anyway, this is easily one of my top five favorite books on keeping house. Highly recommend, especially if shame and unreasonable expectations tend to immobilize you. This book will help.

I’m writing about keeing house for 31 days. You can browse the topic list here!

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September 2026 TBR

Posted in Books, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, Seasons, tagged , , , on September 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »

I know it’s still hot outside, but September is always when something noticeably changes in the air (even if it’s not the temperature). School is already underway, and students are settling into their schedules. We are starting to make hopeful plans that may involve the outdoors as soon as the weather gets itself together. This is the beginning of peak cozy season. 

This is also the season when the reading plans I made at the start of the year begin to derail a little/even more than they have already. 

At this point, I have usually finished at least one reading challenge already, and I’m feeling smug about that. So the rest of them? Good luck to them. I will still try (ish) and probably finish at least one or two more, especially if I experience a hyperfocus period or two, but I stop making real promises to any of them in the fall. This month, I’ll probably read books planned for some of the prompts listed on previous TBRs. And the books I have listed below are likely to fit into at least one unfinished prompt, so that counts. But the intense drive I had months ago to pick the very best books that will fit each of the prompts? That’s pretty much gone at this point.

For fall, I tend to focus on themes.

In addition to my cozy and book club selections, this month’s theme is mystery. I’ve got a few series I’m working through or re-reading, so I’ll probably continue those, and I’ve listed a couple extra down below. 

[Disclaimer – I am a Bookshop.org affiliate – I get a cut of the sales from most of the links below.]

Book Clubs

Cozy/Library Returns

Part of my cozy curriculum this month is reducing the number of books I have checked out of the library. I will not tell you how many I have checked out. Suffice it to say that you would not be wrong to judge me for it, so go ahead. By the end of the month, I want to return at least half of them, which will result in a respectable number of checkouts

Mystery Month

I’m planning to read the next book in the Three Pines, Thursday Murder Club, and some other series on my list. I’m also looking at tackling these in the upcoming weeks:

This plan may seem ambitious, but there’s method to the madness. I did the math on my overall reading goal (i.e., 200 books total) for this year last night. To meet the goal by December 31, I need to finish a book a day, minus 26 days. 

So…23-24 a month?

That’s fine. Everything’s fine. Totally doable. 

I mean, if I don’t meet it, I don’t meet it. That is, in fact, fine. I also get more relaxed (some might call it “reasonable,” but that feels like negative energy to me) about my overall goal as the year progresses.

What are you reading these days?

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August 2026 TBR

Posted in Books, Cozy, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, Work, tagged , , , , on August 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »

August remains the busiest month at work at UNT after switching departments. In advising, we are finishing up orientation and helping students navigate difficulties as classes begin. I’m just delighted to be doing it all indoors and in our own building.

This August brings some exciting milestones in my reading year. I am so, so close to finishing my Libro.fm challenge. I think I can do it this month.

Without further ado…here are the books!

[Ok, a little further ado – a disclaimer. I am a Bookshop.org affiliate – I get a cut of the sales from most of the links below.]

Book Clubs

Cozy

Libro.fm

The end is in sight, and I’m pumped and up to the task! *Rocky theme song playing triumphantly in background* I got so excited when I started making this list in late July that I have already finished a couple of these books. 

  • A Thousand Feasts by Nigel Slater (narrated by Nigel Slater) – Listen to a genre you’ve never tried on audio before. As I have tried almost every genre I read on audio before, it was a challenge to find one to fit this prompt. So I had to go very specific. I can honestly say I’ve never read a foodie memoir written in short essay/vignette form and narrated by the author on audio before, and I am looking forward to it!
  • The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang (narrated by Emily Woo Zeller) – Listen to an audiobook by an author of Asian and/or Pacific Island descent. I liked this book, and the audio was…okay. I’m not sure I’m invested enough to commit to the series, though, and if I do, I’ll probably read the hard copy. The character development is good; I would expect no less from R.F. Kuang.
  • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (narrated by Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland, and Owen Teale) – Listen to an audiobook by an Indigenous author
  • Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar (narrated by Arian Moayed) – Listen to an audiobook by a South West Asian and/or North African author 
  • Off Menu by Amy Rosen (narrated by Emma Johnson) – Listen to an audiobook from an independent press. The main character is not a great person or friend; her only saving grace is that her parents aren’t great at giving sound advice or being supportive beyond their own agenda, so clearly she’s modeling their bad examples and I can give her a little grace for that (although…if one has the means to do so…and she does…therapy is a thing that adults can do to fill in the inevitable gaps left by their raising and *gestures broadly at the world*…I’m just saying…). Also, the romance trope in this book is one of my least favorites. Both of those things could be chalked up to personal preference (i.e., not necessarily making the book “bad” but just “not for me”). The reason I gave it a low rating, though, was that the writer also dealt with several heavy topics way too lightly – almost flippantly. I suppose it could be argued that the flippancy was due to the (selfish, toxically positive) main character’s voice, but it landed as an excuse not to address the heaviness of the situations in the writing itself. It’s unusual for me to give a 2-star review (I usually just don’t finish if I’m getting so little out of it, but the book was short and checked a box on the challenge), but that was all the enthusiasm I could muster for this book.
  • Plan or join an audiobook outing (third time’s the charm) – I have struggled with this prompt, so I finally just googled “audiobook outing near me” and came across a book club at a local yarn store. As I understand it, they start an audiobook together at their meeting that they listen to while crafting, and they are tasked with finishing the audiobook by the next meeting. So I think I’m going to give it a try. If that doesn’t pan out, I’m just going to take a drive while listening to Flashlight by Susan Choi (narrated by Eunice Wong), and call it a day.

Anti Brain Rot

52 Book Club 

  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley – Set in the Arctic or Antarctic
  • Life After Life by Kate Atkinson – Spans a decade or more
  • Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar (narrated by Arian Moayed) – Award-winning book from last year
  • Theo of Golden by Allen Levi – Includes a handwritten interior font
  • Maame by Jessica George – Domestic fiction

Overeducated Women With Cats

Popsugar

  • The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang (narrated by Emily Woo Zeller) – A book with “pop” or “sugar” in the title
  • Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid – A book about women astronauts

Read Your Bookshelf

  • Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao – water word (in title or on cover)

I hope you have a wonderful August, full of your favorite things.

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July 2026 TBR

Posted in Books, Fun, Home, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, Seasons, tagged , , on July 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »

If I were to become suddenly and inexplicably wealthy, a house with a pool might be one of my top five purchases. That’s really the only way to deal with Texas summers.

Other than the oppression of the outdoors, July looks pretty promising. There are some fun things on the horizon – i.e., a couple of live music shows I’m going to, a reading retreat, a few other fun bookish events, and maybe a trip to the farm.

And, of course, rampant reading. After a minor slump, I’ve been finishing books left and right. Hopefully, that will continue this month with the help of these reads.

[Disclaimer – I am a Bookshop.org affiliate – I get a cut of the sales from most of the links below.]

Book Clubs

Anti Brain Rot

Popsugar

  • The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen – A book with “Pop” or “Sugar” in the title
  • The Bright Side Running Club by Josie Lloyd – A book with a character who runs a marathon (I think? Or she just starts running? We will see.)
  • Yes, Yes, Cherries by Mary Otis – A book with any type of fruit on the cover or in the title

52 Book Club

  • In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson – Author’s first and last name start with the same letter
  • Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix – Literary device: personification (maybe – can’t find spoilers to confirm)
  • Shark Heart by Emily Habeck – Inspired by the top-grossing movie the year you were born (Jaws, because of course it was)

Libro.fm

Nowhere

Overeducated Women With Cats

  • Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas – A book set in a fully invented world

Bad Bitch Book Club

Read Your Bookshelf 

I hope your July is full of joy and pleasant surprises!

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Friday Five – Dreaming of a Reading Retreat

Posted in Books, Friday Five, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »

I’m yearning for a reading retreat. I typically have at least one good reading night (i.e., no meetings or out-of-the-house plans, time specifically set aside on the calendar to read/journal) a week. But I’m talking an intentional day or two that is meticulously planned with all the laundry/regular weekend chores done, prepared foods and snacks, a list of specific books I want to tackle, and no other plans (unless they’re bookish ones – I will, on occasion, allow a book club meeting or bookish event some space on the retreat schedule). 

I have one scheduled this month with an online book group, and I would like to attend a social one at some point. A social retreat where we have breakfast together, read all day, and then come back together for dinner to discuss how our days went is pretty much my ideal vacation. But my current favorites are the ones I plan for just me.

One of my goals for the year is to have a personal book retreat in a hotel with room service. All the fun and relaxation of a personal retreat with none of the prep work (other than budgeting for it and booking the hotel). I’m looking forward to that.

When I feel this yearning, bookish pieces stick out to me even more than usual. 

  • Modern Mrs. Darcy’s Summer Reading Guide is coming out on May 15! If I were to make a list of my top ten reads each year, at least half of them would be books I learned about from the MMD team. The highlights usually get posted as a blog post later (the Minimalist List), but if you want the full guide experience and you’re not a member of the book club or Patreon, there’s a small charge. WORTH IT. I love that the theme for this summer is “reading retreat” and that the guide is going to offer tips for planning a good one. The unboxing is also a fun evening to gush about new books with bookish internet friends.
  • Are you upset about the state of the world? Feeling overwhelmed? Anxious? Finding it difficult to sleep? “Have you tried reading a book about sexy dragons?” It really takes the edge off.
  • I love Roxane Gay’s Emerging Writers series, and I especially love this one – No More Siestitas.
  • I knew journaling was helpful, and neuroscience agrees!
  • Scandinavia (or the Nordic region in general) is seriously wooing me. Denmark with its hygge, Iceland with its Christmas cat and Jólabókaflód. And now Norway has entered the ring with an Easter tradition called påskekrim where you hole up and read crime fiction. WHAT. I feel like we would really benefit from having reading holidays. *slow blink* Country goals.

I hope you get to hole up and read (or do whatever you consider fun/relaxing) for a little while this weekend. Have a good one, friends!

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Reading Habits – A Question

Posted in Beauty, Books, Fandom, Joy, tagged , , on March 31, 2026| 2 Comments »

I was going to address a question I got about my reading life with my April TBR tomorrow. Then I started writing, and it was longer than an intro to an already long post should be. So it gets its own post!

Question – How much do you actually remember of what you read? 

If I’m recalling the conversation where this question was asked correctly (heh, irony), it came from someone who thinks they don’t read a lot. They read about a book a month (which is a lot, relatively speaking, as many people don’t read at all), and they really delve into it. That is, they read it slowly and also end up reading articles and listening to podcasts or watching interviews about the book, the topic, and/or the author. They join the fandoms of their favorite series and dabble in their own fanfic with their favorite characters. They go all in.

And that’s fantastic. I love that so much. What a thorough, beautiful way to approach reading!

I don’t do this with most of the books I read, but I typically have at least one deep dive going on at a time (e.g., my current hyperfocus babies are organ/music theory and Heated Rivalry). My brain does love a rabbit hole, and focusing on a book/series or a theme and reading/researching it so thoroughly definitely scratches that itch. 

However, while this approach often helps with my memory, the main factor that determines how well I remember a book is simply how much I connect to it, regardless of the length of time it takes me to read it.

The books I really love (i.e., rate 4.25 and above on StoryGraph) – I remember vividly. I remember how it made me feel, where I was/what was going on in the world when I first read it (because I am likely to re-read it), what I loved about the characters and specifically why I disliked some of them, some obscure plot details, and maybe even a direct quote or two. I will be absolutely insufferable (or delightful, depending on whether you’re a person who likes joy at all) any time this book comes up in conversation. Which will be often, if I have anything to do with it.

Most of the rest? I remember generally – basic plot, favorite character(s), intersecting themes, etc. Enough to chat about it at book club, especially if I read it within a few months of discussion time. After that, I will need to google a character list and a brief synopsis before I can contribute effectively to the discussion beyond, “I really liked it” or “This scene was funny.”

And there are about a handful of books I finish every year that, even only a few months later, I could not tell you what they were about to save my life. But that’s rare. Most of the time, if a book is that lackluster to me, I don’t finish it and thus don’t count it toward my total list for the year. The exceptions to this rule are usually things I’m reading for book club that I would probably not have even started otherwise. I’ve noticed that as I get older, I’m more likely to slide a book over to the DNF pile (but not the official, public one on Goodreads…I have feelings about this) if it doesn’t hold my interest. I feel like this leaves more room in the library of the old mind palace for the books that do.

How about you? Are you an intentional deep-dive reader, a multiple-books-at-a-time chaos reader, or something in between?

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February 2026 TBR

Posted in Books, Cozy, Mental Health, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, tagged , on February 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Happy February, friends! As long as January felt, I didn’t quite read as much as I’d hoped. Too much doomscrolling. So I’m going to put a healthy limit on that and carve out some specific time in February for reading. Here are some of the things I hope to dive into.

Book Clubs

Cozy

I am approaching this year’s theme a little differently than I have in the past. Inspired by the curriculum portion of the Anti Brain Rot Reading Challenge, I’ve put together a monthly curriculum for it. I haven’t decided if I’m going to post each month’s lesson plan separately, but just in case I don’t, here are my cozy nonfiction and fiction choices for February.

Series

Reading Challenges

  • Anti Brain Rot 
    • Little Organ Book by Flor Peeters and Pedal Mastery by Joyce Jones – Part of my organ curriculum that will span the rest of the semester (and, I imagine, further after that as I improve my organ-playing skills)
    • Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson – A memoir/biography
    • The Reformatory by Tananarive Due – A horror book
  • Bad Bitch Book Club
    • If This Is Love, I’ll Take Spaghetti by Ellen Conford – A book that has been on your shelf the longest. I thought it would be the Hank the Cowdog series, but I’m pretty sure I owned this one first. I still have the copy I bought from the Scholastic Book Fair!
    • Difficult Women by Roxane Gay – A book you meant to read in 2020
    • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones – A book from President Obama’s summer reading list (2025, but it didn’t specify a year)
  • Book Riot Read Harder
  • Nowhere Book Bingo
  • PopSugar
    • Fangs by Sarah Andersen – A book in a different format than your usual: physical, audio, eBook – I usually have one of each format going at any given time, so I took a little license with this prompt and chose a book that’s mostly illustrations
  • Tournament of Books
  • Read Your Bookshelf
    • A Quiet Life by Ethan Joella – Three or more objects on the cover
  • Alphabet Challenge
    • A Quiet Life by Ethan Joella – J (I know I had a J from last month, but I’ve decided to go only by author’s last name and books I own)
    • Difficult Women by Roxane Gay – G
    • Mate by Ali Hazelwood – H
  • Libro.fm
  • 52 Book Club
    • Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green – A Goodreads recommendation for you
    • Mate by Ali Hazelwood – Publisher starting with the letter B
    • The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas – A diacritical mark on the cover

I hope you get a lot of reading time this month, too!

Disclosure – As a Bookshop.org affiliate, I get a cut of any purchase made with most of the links above.

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January 2026 TBR

Posted in Books, Bookshops, Cozy, Music, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, Work, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2026| 2 Comments »

Happy January, friends! As you can deduce from the picture, I’m utilizing my library card a lot these days. Trying to reorganize the shelves to make room for the books I own is a whole cozy project and one of the first on my list to tackle this year. Anything I can do to slow the inflow of new books that need to find a space will help.

To be clear, I’m not…not buying books. Don’t be absurd. Just not buying as many.

Anyway, here are the reading plans this month. I’ve finished a few from this list already, but I’m looking forward to the rest!

Book Clubs

  • The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter – I listened to this one on the way to and from the farm at Christmas. So good! Although the male voice on the audio gets low and hard to hear at points. That added some stress I didn’t need in holiday traffic. Delightful otherwise, though.
  • The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi – This is for the second meeting of the fantasy book club at a local bookshop that has just announced they’re CLOSING!!! Sad times! I guess we’ll see tomorrow what the plan is going forward, if there is one.
  • Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee 
  • Constellations of Care by Cindy Barukh Milstein 
  • This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone 
  • I may not be able to attend the Rise & Shine book club this month. The theme is “something old,” so I would love to gush over Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, which is one of my faves. Of course, it falls on the one Saturday this month I have to work. And of course, March’s meeting (when the theme is “something funny” – I love funny things and would love to get all those recs!) does, too. UGH.

Series

I’m a sucker for series. I devoured most of the Rebel Blue Ranch series (next up is the enemies-to-lovers one – one of my favorite tropes!) and the Dream Harbor series last month, and the series tab is the largest by far on my TBR. This format is excellent for character development, which is one of my main requirements for really enjoying a book. This year, I’ll be diving into new series as well as re-reading some favorites. I loved Catherine Newman’s Sandwich, so I’m hyped about the follow-up. One of my book clubs is reading The Long Goodbye later this year, so I’m finally starting the Philip Marlow mysteries!  I’m re-reading Inspector Gamache this year, and I quit a few pages into the latest Thursday Murder Club because I forgot some things from previous books that I know would make it more enjoyable, so I’m re-reading those as well. Here are the ones that I’m planning for January.

Reading Challenges

So many reading challenges! My, aren’t we ambitious? I’m going back to fitting books into multiple challenges, and I’m trying to fit as many of my book club selections into them as well, so you’ll see quite a few repeats. Here goes nothing.

Anti Brain Rot Challenge

Another facet of the Anti Brain Rot Challenge is giving yourself deep-dive studies (and designing their corresponding curricula) throughout the year. I have three planned for the year, and the first is going to be learning to play the organ. I already play the piano, so it’s mostly a matter of incorporating the feet. I think. We’ll see. I’m working through an online basics course and brushing up on theory right now, but I imagine there will be several books I add to the syllabus before the end of the “semester.”

Popsugar

52 Book Club

Libro.fm

  • Christmas Days by Jeannette Winterson – Listen to an audiobook read by the author

OWC (Overeducated Women With Cats)

  • The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler – A book that starts a series
  • Endling by Maria Reva – A book long-listed for an award (Booker Prize)
  • Enchantment by Katherine May – A nonfiction book about science or nature

BBBC (Bad Bitch Book Club)

  • This Winter by Alice Oseman – A book with a red cover (which is not the cover of the book that popped up on bookshop.org – but here is its red cover, which is super cute)

Alphabet Challenge

The goal of this one is, in this year of ‘26, to read books where either the title or the author’s name begins with each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. To add a little more spice to the challenge, I’m also going to limit it to books I own.

Read Your Bookshelf

January’s prompt is pretty easy – title includes an article. So any “a,” “an,” or “the.” Look at The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich, fulfilling all sorts of different prompts this month!

Book Riot Read Harder

Tournament of Books

I don’t know how much I’ll participate in this one. The start date of the tournament is March 6, and it seems like it would be more fun if I had read all of them by then (and even in my woozy, ambitious New Years state of mind I know that’s not going to happen). But maybe I’ll start with these and see how it goes.

So there we are, starting off the new year with a bang! And by bang, I do mean lots of cozy nights of reading. 

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The Bookshops of 2025

Posted in Books, Bookshops, Fun, Resolutions, Revolution, tagged , , , on December 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I cut most of my ties with Amazon last year. I still occasionally have to order something at work from them, and every time I tried to export my Goodreads data to StoryGraph, it crashed it, so I’m still trying to figure out how to make that work without losing that information. But I canceled Audible and Prime, and to celebrate, I wanted to spend 2025 focusing my book shopping on indie bookshops. Since this was the year I turned 50, the goal I set was to buy 50 books from independently owned bookstores. 

That’s a lot of books. Even for me. Yet I prevailed. 

I already knew 24 of them were in the bag, because I get a book a month from each of my subscriptions from Nowhere Bookshop in San Antonio. I had hoped this year to actually visit them in person (and also to see my friend Hope) but then Dad got sick, my reliable car became not so reliable, etc. The final straw that told me this year was not the time was when the weekend I wanted to go the most was the same weekend as UNT Fall Preview. Of course, it was. So I settled for supporting them from afar. But I think 2026 is our year, Nowhere! I can feel it!

Part of my plan was to also hit several of my favorite bookstores I’ve visited before on the way to or from San Antonio:

But while I still ordered a few books from Deep Vellum, actually visiting these places didn’t happen either. 

I also had plans to go to Neighbor Books in McKinney, a relatively new bookshop in their cute downtown area that looks amazing online. But we went on a Monday, and I didn’t think to check if the bookstore would be open then. It wasn’t. Womp, womp.

So where did I go? I’m so glad you asked.

  • The Plot Twist Book Bar – Denton’s romance shop where I rounded out a fairytale retelling series and my Rebel Blue Ranch collection
  • Patchouli Joe’s – a popular Denton indie where I bought several books on my birthday and then ended up later in the year joining their new fantasy book club. 
  • Magic City – took my new car for its first road trip up to Tulsa to see Travis Baldree read from his new book Brigands and Breadknives and then proceeded to buy several more books.
  • Green Feather – a little side quest in Norman on my way home from Magic City. I will definitely be going back, because it was fantastic and also there are other Norman bookshops I want to visit. It’s close enough it could probably even be a day trip.
  • The Larry McMurtry Literary Center (formerly known as Booked Up) – While I missed wandering the whole labyrinth of the building, I still found a couple of treasures and got to talk to one of the folks in charge about what they’re doing with the space. 

With a little re-routing of my original plan, it was still a successful year supporting small businesses and bookish projects. And I got a lot of really great books out of the deal, too!

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2025 Resolved – Reading and Writing

Posted in Books, Denton, NaNoWriMo, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, Writing, tagged , , , , on December 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Here we are, in the final, feral week of 2025. A week for doing whatever I want (I mean, more so than usual). A week of no morning alarms. A week of drinking a disturbing amount of great coffee and eating an excessive amount of cheese. A week of hyper-focused cleaning (I hope) and uninterrupted hours of reading (I guarantee). 

A week to reflect. To accept. To transition. And to begin.

During the first half of the week, I’m going to be posting about my 2025 resolutions and how they went. Then, in the second half of the week, you’ll hear about the unhinged volume of my ambitions for 2026. 

I did pretty well this year overall. There was only one goal I made for my year that I didn’t reach – writing 50,000 words. Remember when I could write 50,000 words in just a month? Good times. That is not a reasonable expectation these days, but I thought for sure I could reach that benchmark in a whole year. I did do quite a bit of writing, though, and I submitted my work to more places than in the previous five years combined, so that’s something. 

This first post is, of course, about books. 

My goals were simple(ish):

  • Read 180 books
  • Read broadly across all the genres on my TBR
  • Follow/finish a few reading challenges

I surpassed my reading goal of 180 books. My Goodreads and StoryGraph counts don’t match, but I didn’t feel the need to skim through and see which ones got missed. There were probably a few missed on both. If a book showed up in a search on either one, it got counted in some way. By the end of today, my Goodreads count will be 186, and my StoryGraph will be 181, and I expect there will be even more by the time the new year rolls in. 

I stopped keeping track of my genres at some point this fall, but the numbers were pretty well spread out, so I am satisfied with how that effort played out. I definitely read something from each category at least twice.

Finally, the reading challenges. I thought that by only counting a book toward one of the challenges I participated in, it would make them a little more difficult to finish, and…it sure did! I looked back through my unfinished prompts this afternoon, and I definitely would have finished two more if I had counted books on multiple challenges. So I’m going back to that next year. Because a prompt met is a prompt met (also because with the number of challenges I’m participating in next year, I would have to almost double my overall reading goal to finish them otherwise). But hey – I officially finished one!

For the last few days of the year, I’m reading through some cozy romance and fantasy books, as well as some books I’ve had checked out at the library for a while. Another new practice I want to put in place going forward is keeping the number of books I have checked out below 20. There’s just no reason to have more than that out at a time, even as much as I read. I get why it happens. It’s usually one of two things. Either I get excited about an author and put everything the library has that they’ve written on hold, or I put things on hold that are on my monthly TBR and then they don’t become available until after the month has passed and I have moved on. So I end up stockpiling a lot of things I wanted (and still want) to read. I’m officially entering my more liberal use of the “for later” function and less hoarding era. You’re welcome, fellow readers of Denton.

I finally met that 180 goal I’ve had for three years in a row, and even better, I’ve gotten to talk nerdy with a lot of other readers through book clubs and events. I think I’m happy with my reading choices this year. 

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