Happy Birthday, Mom!

2026 Reading Challenge

As has become tradition, K and I are again taking up an annual Reading Challenge.  After my middling performance last year, here's hoping I can show some improvement in 2026 with these titles:

January: a book you meant to read last year
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

February: something everyone has read but you
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

March: a book with a possessive noun in the title
The Emperor's Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena, by Julia Blackburn

April: a book about marine life
Monsoon Seas: The Story of the Indian Ocean, by Alan Villiers

May: a book about botany or plant life
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv

June: a book about or by a singer
I, Me, Mine, by George Harrison

July: a book involving a road trip
How to Win a Grand Prix: Pit Lane to Podium - the Inside Track, by Bernie Collins

August: something received as a gift
The River is Waiting, by Wally Lamb

September: a classic school assignment you somehow escaped durin gyour school years
The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

October: a book about or describing survival skills, or in which they play a critical role
Ice Bears and Kotick: Rowing on Top of the World, by Peter Webb

November: a play
King Lear, by William Shakespeare

December: a Nordic or Scandinavian book
The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, by Anu Partanen

As has also become tradition, I am imposing some rules on myself: 

1. It has to be a book I already own.  My stash of ebooks has increased substantially of late, so I have a bigger "bookshelf" to peruse now;
2. It has to be a book I have not read yet (or at least haven't finished yet);
3. Though I can go out of order, some of the months are clearly themed (e.g., July, October), so I will try to read those books at least close to the month they are selected for; and
4. If I want to include a book I've already listed but didn't read, that's okay.

Wish me luck as I endeavor - yet again - to complete this relatively simple task!

2025 Reading Challenge Recap

Like it or not, another year has passed.  I have, as you may have noticed, made some headdway on my reading this year.  It wasn't necessarily all part of my 2025 Reading Challenge, but I did increase the number of books I read this year substantially over prior years.

But, specific to this year's challenge, here's how I did:

January: a book you first picked up because of the cover

My World, by Jonny Wilkinson

READ

February: a book about mental health
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain
NOT READ

March: a short story collection
In the Gloaming, by Alice Elliott Dark
READ

April: a book published in the year you were born
The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy
READ

May: a sequel
March, by Geraldine Brooks
NOT READ

June: something funny
Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, by Adam Kay
READ

July: a beach read
Murder on the Oceanic, by Edward Marston
READ

August: a re-read
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande
NOT READ

September: a book with "secret" in the title
The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B., by Sandra Gulland
READ

October: a book involving magic, witches, vampires, sorcery, or the like
Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien
NOT READ

November: something containing recipes
On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town, by Susan Herman Loomis
NOT READ

December: something told from the point of view of the villain or bad guy
The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox
NOT READ

So, what have we learned from this?  That I have very little reading discipline, I believe, is what we have learned.  Because I read more books than usual but still only got through half the books on my reading challenge.  Why?  Obviously because I elected to read other things instead.  Or, maybe what we have learned is that current Me is not a very good judge of what future Me is going to want to read.  

Regardless, I was a solid 50% this year, but that gives me no bonus credit for all my extra reading.  And remember, a couple of those items of extra reading were cleaning up books from prior years' Reading Challenges, so I really do think some credit is warranted for this and this. If we add those in, instead of 6 out of 12, I'm at 8 out of 14, which is a bump up to 57%.  So almost a passing grade at a lot of places!

Happy New Year!

Ready or not, here we go!

It's My Birthday!

Tangerine -- Take 2

Unfortunately, Tangerine was not really worth the wait to read. 

Alice and Lucy are college friends who, after some sort of traumatic incident which is too-often alluded to in the beginning of the book (eventually you do get the full explanation), cut ties and have not spoken since.  In the meantime, prim and proper Alice has married and moved with her husband to the hot, messy, confusing city of Tangier.  Lucy appears on Alice's doorstep one day, unannounced.  They dance around each other delicately at first, then less so, as the past comes back.

I love an unreliable narrator, and for a while I thought that's what Tangerine was going to give me.  I don't want to say too much about what it actually gave me because that will give away the ending.  I think what I can say without going too far is that the ending both seems inevitable and also is unsatisfying.

What the book provides in spades is a strong sense of place.  Morocco, and specifically Tangier, is a character - twisting streets, dark alleys, chaotic medinas, vendors shouting from souks.  It overflows with exoticism and confusion unlike any other city Alice and Lucy know.  I almost feel as though I've been there, like my trip a few years back wasn't cancelled after all.

But the story itself, just okay.

Merry Christmas to All!

It's Solstice Day!

Happy solstice day!  

Depending on whether you're in the northern or southern hemisphere, today marks either the shortest or longest day of the year for you.  For your entertainment, here are some fun facts about the solstices.

Movies -- A Recap -- Part XLVI -- Movies I Didn't Finish (or Wish I Hadn't)

S warned me about The Lighthouse, but there are a lot of movies that I enjoy which he does not.  I thought this might be the case for this film, but it turns out that it was not.  This is a slow, plodding, dull, overly indulgent film in which absolutely nothing happens.  At least not as far as I watched it; I didn't finish it.

 

Sightseers was not my bag.  The plot: a boyfriend and girlfriend head off on a road trip. In a fit of anger, the girlfriend kills the woman she caught kissing the boyfriend.  It gets worse from there. It's best redeeming quality is the cute dog.

I like Danny Glover, and Waffle Street was okay.  After the 2008 market crash, a former hedge fund manager, disgraced and looking for redemption, gets a job working the overnight shift at a chicken-and-waffles joint.  It's on this list because S and I started watching it; we got about halfway in, looked at each other, and said, "I think I've seen this before."  I think this is one of the curses of watching so many streaming movies.  When movies were in theaters and you made a point to go see them, there were advertising posters and trailers on TV, they were harder to forget.  This one, unfortunately, was sufficiently forgettable the first time that we had to start it again to know we had seen it already.

The Girl With All the Gifts started out promising, but it just turned into a weird zombie movie.  Unless you're a zombie-genre completist, skip it. 

Loads of smart TVs these days have some number of free channels, and when we were traveling recently we spent some time perusing the free channels at one of our hotels.  We picked a rom-com called No Postage Necessary, but it was so terrible and predictable that we abandoned the effort shortly after it began. 

I'm perpetually looking for a good murder mystery, but The Alpines wasn't one.  That's all I've got for you there.

What I Read -- The Exchange

I've been reading loads of mysteries lately trying to find something compelling (that wotd reviers love and editors hate), distracting, something I wanted to race to the end of.  I finally found it in that old stalwart, John Grisham.

I picked up a copy of The Exchange at one of those little free libraries. I had a couple of books to leave there, and grabbed this one in, well, in exchange (ha). 

A couple of things to be clear about.  First, this is not the "sequel" to the firm that it may at first seem like it will be.  It boasts the same main character, Mitch McDeere, supported by his ever-patient wife, Abby (now a cookbook editor and hostage negotiator), but the throughlines really end there.  Second, as that last sentence illustrates, the machinations that get us through the story, with Mitch's cookbook-editor-from-Kentucky wife as the centerpiece in $100-million-dollar hostage negotiations are simply ludicrous. 

But that's the magic of someone like Grisham.  The story can be a completely insane, unbelievable, never-gonna-happen disaster scenario, but the pages just keep turning, regardless of how completely bonkers it all is.  And that is what I have been looking for.