My Wrap Up Post -- 2025 EUROPEAN READING CHALLENGE

THE 2025 EUROPEAN READING CHALLENGE

My Wrap Up Post

This is my wrap up for the 2025 European Reading Challenge. To join the 2026 challenge (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page, here.

Even though 2025 was the 13th year I hosted the challenge, I haven't been very good about my own participation. In 2024, I even forgot to do a sign up post! I resolved to do better in 2025 and I did, a bit. I read more books set in European countries and I read more books in translation, but I was still no good at reviewing the books I read. Maybe 2026 will be the year I hit my stride.

I didn't pick any particular books for the challenge. Those in the photo were possibilities, but I didn't read any of them. Here are the counties I visited in the books I did pick, in the order I visited them:

• THE UK: Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. As always, I read many, many UK books, but this reread of an old favorite was the first UK book I read in 2025.

• IRELAND: Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan. I also read quite a few books set in Ireland or by Irish authors. This was the first I read in 2025, but it wasn't my favorite. 

• BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

• FRANCE: Maigret and the Spinster by Simenon, one of the translated books I read, by a Belgian author who wrote in French.

• RUSSIA: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, a translated classic.

• NORWAY: How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days by Kari Leibowitz

• UKRAINE: The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev, another book in translation. 

• HOLLAND: The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, also in translation. 

• AUSTRIA: The Salzberg Connection by Helen MacInnes

• CZECH REPUBLIC: The Snare of the Hunter by Helen MacInnes

• BULGARIA: A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

• GREECE: Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki, a translated NYRB Classic.

• POLAND: The Ice Saints by Frank Tuohy, 1964 winner of the James Tate Black Memorial Prize and an undercover gem. 

• GERMANY: Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, translated. 

• SWITZERLAND: Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes. Thank goodness for MacInnes -- she took me to several European countries. 

• DENMARK: The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry

• PORTUGAL: I Like it Here by Kingsley Amis

• ITALY: Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell

• FINLAND: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, author of the Moomin books, in translation. 

• BELGIUM: The British Baking Book: The History of British Baking, Savory and Sweet by Regula Ysewijn. A very British book but by a Belgian author who originally wrote the book in Dutch. 

In all, I visited 20 countries for the 2025 European Reading Challenge and read eight books in translation, both persona bests. Let's see how far I can go in 2026!

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

-- from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. This is one of the most famous opening lines of any book. I am so glad to finally experience it for myself, in context. 

Anna Karenina is one of those classics I have wanted to read forever, yet it languished on my TBR shelf. I finally read War and Peace a couple of years ago as a chapter-a-day slow read. I don't do well with the slow read idea. I'm more of a bolter. I don't like to eke out a book. So no slow read of Anna Karenina for me. I'm reading it straight through. It is one of my TBR 25 in '25 books and on my Classics Club II list. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Anna Karenina:

Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna Arkadyevna, but only very slightly, and she came now to her sister’s with some trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this fashionable Petersburg lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties - to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance.

One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s. The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin's estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom, the skating rink, a race course, a railway station. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving.