The TBR 25 in '25 & Mt. TBR Challenges -- MY WRAP UP POST

 

THE TBR 25 IN '25 CHALLENGE

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

My Wrap Up Post

I did two TBR challenges in 2025, the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge that I hosted and the Mt. TBR Challenge hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block. Both aim to clear books off TBR shelves. Any book in your possession as of January 1, 2025, counts as TBR. 

I finished the 25 books I picked for the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge earlier this year. I really buckled down and got 24 of them finished by June. The last one, Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, took my longer because it was dry and dense. I didn't finish that one until the end of September and I started it in March. 

For the Mt. TBR Challenge, I finished an additional 112 books off my TBR shelves, for a total of 137 TBR books. I signed up at the Mt. Everest level to read 100 books off my TBR shelves and exceeded that goal. Inspired to try harder, I signed up for the Mr. Olympus level in 2026, with the goal of reading 150 TBR books. Wish me luck!

THE TBR 25 IN '25 CHALLENGE

• One Man’s San Francisco by Herb Cain

• French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David

• The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell 

• Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster 

• Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

• Careless in Red by Elizabeth George

• Q.’s Legacy by Helene Hanff

• Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith

• Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith

• Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch 

• Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay

• The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

• The Widow on Dwyer Court by Lisa Kusel

• The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev

• Lost & Found: Public Theology in the Secular Age by Michael A. Milton 

• Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell

• Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

• Dragon’s Teeth by Upton Sinclair 

• The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen by Nigel Slater 

• The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

• A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

• Zabar's: A Family Story, with Recipes by Lori Zabar

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

The TBR 25 in '25 Challenge dovetailed nicely with the Mt TBR Challenge Bev at My Reader's Block hosts every year. This year, I signed up for the "Mt. Everest" Level to read a total of 100 books off my TBR shelves in 2025.

I climbed even higher! In addition to the 25 books I read for the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge, I read 112 books off my TBR shelves, for a total of 137 TBR books. That's a record for me.

MY MT. TBR BOOKS

Here are the additional 112 TBR books I read in 2025, in the order I read them. 

• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

• The Venetian Affair by Helen MacInnes

• Dragon's Teeth by Sinclair Lewis

• Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan

• The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

• The Bean Book: 100 Recipes for Cooking with All Kinds of Beans, from the Rancho Gordo Kitchen by Steve Sando

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

• Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake

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

• With Thanks and Appreciation: Thoughts, Sentiments, Tokens and Traditions of the Past by Pat Ross

• Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

• The Templars' Last Secret by Martin Walker

• A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

• This Body of Death by Elizabeth George

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• Sun Bird by Lindsay Moore

• Writing Notes with a Personal Touch by Daria Price Bowman

• Love Quotations: A Collection of Romantic Pictures and the Best Love Quotes, compiled by Helen Exley

• The Secret Place by Tana French

• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon

• Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 84, Winter 2024

• Bamboo Farmer Wisdom: 101 Inspirational Thoughts by Greg Bell

• I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats by Francesco Marciuliano 

• Lonely Planet Hidden Libraries: The World’s Most Unusual Book Depositories by DC Helmuth

• Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today by Christina Hoff Sommers

• Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George

• Literary Feasts: Inspired Eating from Classic Fiction by Sean Brand

• Penmarric by Susan Howatch

• The Trespasser by Tana French

• What Shall I Say? A Guide To Letter Writing For Ladies by Mrs. Humphreys

• The Snare of the Hunter by Helen MacInnes

• A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George

• The St. Trinian's Story *and the Pick of the Searle Cartoons, edited by Kaye Webb

• The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh

• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

• The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle

• Cimarron Rose by James Lee Burke

• Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir by Ina Garten

• A New Lease of Death by Ruth Rendell

• A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene

• The New Artisans: Handmade Designs for Contemporary Living by Olivier Dupon

• The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis

• Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter

• Transcription by Kate Atkinson

• Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki 

• Double Blind by Edward St. Aubyn

• Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher

• The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan

• Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life by Daniel Klein

• The Ice Saints by Frank Tuohy

• Emma by Jane Austen

• Agent in Place by Helen MacInnes

• Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

• Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes

• Helena by Evelyn Waugh

• The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry

• Wolf to the Slaughter by Ruth Rendell

• The Best Man to Die by Ruth Rendell

• I Like it Here by Kingsley Amis

• Old Bones by Aaron Elkins

• Thus was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell

• The Bookman's Wake by John Dunning

• A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr

• Jazz Funeral by Julie Smith

• August Folly by Angela Thirkell

• Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

• The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

• No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym

• A Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell

• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

• The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien

• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

• Something Old, Something New: Classic Recipes Revised by Tamar Adler

• Murder Being Once Done by Ruth Rendell

• Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

• Zorba the Greek by  Kazantzakis

• No More Dying Then by Ruth Rendell

• Indian Summer by William Dean Howells

• The Luck of the Bodkins by P. G. Wodehouse

• Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark

• The Fisher King by Anthony Powell

• The Light of Day by Graham Swift

• The Anti-minimalist House by Massimo Listri

• Some Lie and Some Die by Ruth Rendell

• The Lonely Girl by Edna O'Brien

• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

• Shake Hands Forever by Ruth Rendell

• The Complete Stories by Evelyn Waugh

• Ivanov by Anton Chekhov

• Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford

• A Sleeping Life by Ruth Rendell

• Brazil by John Updike

• Falstaff by Rober Nye

• Persuasion by Jane Austen

• Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

• L'Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home by David Lebovitz

• The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch

• The Seagull by Anton Chekhov

• The Devil's Advocate by Morris West

• Girls in Their Married Bliss by Edna O'Brien

• The British Baking Book: The History of British Baking, Savory and Sweet by Regula Ysewijn

• Rabbit Remembered by John Updike

• My Life as a Man by Philip Roth

• The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe

• A Thousand Feasts by Nigel Sleter

• Cat Stories by James Herriot

• Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

• The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

• Tempest Tost by Robertson Davies

• A Christmas Treasury of Yuletide Stories and Poems, edited by James Charlton and Barbara Gilson

• Leaven of Malice by Robertson Davies

September 2025 Reading Wrap Up -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

September 2025 Monthly Wrap Up 

I read a lot in September because I was stressed out about work. When I get really busy with work, I don't read much. But when I have time to finish all my work but am stressed out about it, I read a lot to take my mind off my jitters. Do you know what I mean?

Here is the list of the 21 books I read in September, in the order they appear in the stack in the picture. Have you read any of these?

PICTURED  

French Country Cooking by Elizabeth David. David is like an English Julia Child and this book is probably her most famous. It's a classic, but took me forever to read because it is so dense. 500 pages with only a handful of pen and ink illustrations, mostly for chapter headings, and the ingredients incorporated into the text instead of listed at the beginning. I'm glad I read it but don't think I'll cook much from it. This was the last book in my TBR 25 in '25 stack. Woo hoo!

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. I remember the movie playing on tv when I was a kid so I've had it in my head to read for decades and the book has been on my shelf for years. It was an exuberant, bittersweet story and I'm glad I read it, but it isn't a favorite. It counts as my Greece book for the 2025 European Reading Challenge. 

Miss Mole by E.H. Young. I read this one for Spinster September and loved it. The title character has a subversive sense of humor and it was a lot more fun than I anticipated. I'd like to find and read more "Furrowed Middlebrow" books from Dean Street Press. 

No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym, another spinster book. Her books have such a Jane Austen vibe. I love them.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. This one is really popular and the author won the Nobel Prize for literature, but it was not for me. I didn't like the idea of a crime spree with no consequences. I read it the week after Charlie Kirk was killed so a story about killing people you don’t agree with didn’t feel good. Even if you throw in the John Wick-like motive. Still, it counts as a Poland book for the ERC. 

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I had to read something by the ur-spinster for Spinster September! Alos, I'm rereading her six main novels to celebrate the semiquincentennial of her birth. Only one left!

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. I loved this book when I read it in 1992, right after I finished law school. The story of two couples who become best friends shortly after grad school hit me hard as I was starting down that same path. I reread it last month, this time as an audiobook. This time around, the story hit me from the other side, now that I am about the same age as the two couples at the end of their time as friends. It's such a wonderful novel.

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff. I read this because of the title and am glad I did. It was a wonderful, bittersweet family story about so much more than their annual vacation at the beach.

A Guilty Thing Surprised, Murder Being Once Done, and No More Dying Then by Ruth Rendell are books 5, 6, and 7 in her Inspector Wexford series. I am really enjoying my tear through this series. Wexford is such an interesting character!

Something Old, Something New: Classic Recipes Revisited by Tamar Adler. Adler wrote The Everlasting Meal, one of my favorite food books. This cookbook interprets older recipes for contemporary home cooks. It is excellent and the perfect antidote to Elizabeth David. Unlike the David book, I will cook with this one.

The Elements by John Boyne is labeled a novel but is really an omnibus edition of four previously published novellas (with far superior covers), Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. All are quick reads and they kept me entertained, but such unlikeable characters! I had the same problem with the one other Boyne book I read, A Ladder to the Sky. It's the same problem I had with Drive Your Plow. I like the bad guys to get their just desserts.

English Country House Style: Traditions, Secrets, and Unwritten Rules by Milo and Katy Campbell. I am trying to get back to reading my coffee table books and have a whole collection of books about English country houses and decorating. This one was fabulous.

NOT PICTURED

The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien is a gem, even if I forgot to put it in the picture. The Country Girls is the first novel in the trilogy of the same name. I look forward to reading the other two.

Art, Love, and Other Miracles by Kiki Astor was a fun romance book set in Mexico City. I added it to the kindle app on my phone, which I rarely use, but like to have in case of emergency. I was traveling a lot in September, so had many opportunities to read a few pages here and there while waiting around.

A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman won the International Booker Prize in 2017. I read this one with my ears. An Israeli friend recommended it and it is very good.

A Chateau Under Siege by Martin Walker is book 16 in his Bruno, Chief of Police series. I love the series but the stories are starting to blur in my mind. Martin has created a huge cast of supporting characters and getting them all crammed into every story means the stories are going to be similar. It's not like Bruno goes off by himself and solves a mystery in Thailand or something. He's there in his French village, with his two ex-lovers, assorted friends, the same co-workers, and a gaggle of neighbors. Only two more books to go, at least before he writes another one.

What were your September favorites?

My Reviews of Three Food Memoirs -- WEEKEND COOKING

WEEKEND COOKING

My Reviews of Three Food Memoirs

Food-centric memoirs are a favorite subgenre of mine. I recently read three of them back-to-back, which felt like gluttony even to me. That doesn’t mean I am not looking forward to the next one to pop up on my TBR shelf!

Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir by Ina Garten

My sister gave me Be Ready When the Luck Happens for Christmas, knowing I would enjoy it as much as she did. She was spot on. I loved everything about it. Well, I wish it had more recipes – there are only a handful – but that just gives me the excuse to try Ina Garten's cookbooks.

My reaction surprised me a bit. I really didn't know anything about Ina Garten before I read this new memoir. I knew she is famous, had a business called The Barefoot Contessa, and posted a pandemic video of a giant cosmo cocktail that went viral. But I never watched her on tv and don't have any of her cookbooks. I was curious, though and I love reading about food people, so I looked forward to reading it. It didn't disappoint. What an interesting life!

The book starts with Garten’s childhood, which was not all that nice. Her parents were not supportive. In fact, they were psychologically, and sometimes physically, abusive. Now, as a woman in her 70s who’s clearly had plenty of counseling, she has distance from this background and can reflect on the wisdom she gained from it. Most of the book is about her marriage to Jeffrey and her career. Theirs is a long and successful marriage, but it had rough patches early on, even a lengthy separation. The support Jeffrey gave her, and her difficult childhood, are touchstones for Garten and she returns to both throughout the book.

My favorite thing about the book was learning about her career. She was working for the White House Office of Management and Budget, writing nuclear policy, and bored out of her socks, when she up and decided to buy The Barefoot Contessa food shop in the Hamptons. After 18 years, she wanted to do something new, so turned her hand to writing cookbooks. That led to TV shows, magazine columns, and other ventures. As a woman who started and ran my own business for the last 12 years, Garten’s risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit appeal to me enormously. I loved hearing about her professional growth and need for new business challenges. She is inspiring.

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

Unfortunately, I did not care for the second food memoir I read nearly as much as I loved Ina Garten’s book. A Homemade Life has been sitting on my TBR shelf for a while now, so I included it in my stack of books for the TBR 25 in ’25 Challenge. I’m glad I read it, and even more glad to get it off my shelf. But it wasn’t for me. I might be too old for it.

Molly Wizenberg is a self-taught chef (like Garten) who started a food blog called Orangette back in 2004. The blog led to this book, a 2009 memoir (with recipes) of her life from childhood to her wedding in 2008. That description appealed to me and is what made me buy the book in the first place. But the execution didn’t live up to my expectations.

It's not that the book or the recipes are bad. Wizenberg writes well and generally knows how to tell a good story. It’s just that she didn’t strike me as someone who really likes food or knows much about cooking. For example, she described wanting to make (up) a cake with apricots and honey baked into the top. But she put the apricots filled with honey on top of the cake batter before it went into the oven and was surprised that the apricots sunk! Even my husband knows that if you want fruit on the top of the cake, you put it in the bottom of the pan. Flip over, fruit on top. It’s not a mystery.

As for not really liking food, I’m sure she does – she made it her life. But she had an odd relationship with food and no clear philosophy about food and cooking. Like, does she view cooking as a private pleasure for herself and family? Or does she prefer cooking as a form of hospitality and entertainment? Does she like basic recipes, traditional cooking, festive meals? She never frames her approach to food. The book has bits of all those things, in no particular order. For instance, it sounds like she was a vegetarian for a while, so many (too many in my opinion) of the recipes are for baked goods and salad. But then she’s roasting chickens and making meatballs, with no explanation for why she switched. Her boyfriend/husband was a vegetarian and the master of making dinner out of a few scraps of things. That might have been interesting to experience, but not so much to read about. For example, I really don’t believe that a “salad” made by piling arugula and fresh figs on a chopping board with a hunk of “hard cheese” and – yes – chocolate shavings would be good. And no, I don’t need to try it myself. I’ll pass, like I wish I had passed on the book.

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

The third of my food memoirs was Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl’s first memoir. I’ve read all her other nonfiction and one of her novels, so I know about how Reichl went from writing restaurant reviews in Los Angeles to be the restaurant reviewer at the New York Times and then Editor of Gourmet magazine until it shut down in 2009. This book is about her life before she became a restaurant reviewer.

Like Garten, Reichl had a difficult childhood. Her parents were loving, but her mother was bipolar. Reichl describes what it was like growing up in the chaotic environment her mother’s illness created, how that experience shaped her, and how (also like Garten) it led in part to her early marriage.

Knowing from her other books how her career took off later, this one was interesting, but not riveting like it was to read about her later life. But Reichl’s origin story is still worth reading, if only for the anecdotes about living in a commune in Berkley and cooking at a cooperatively owned restaurant. I enjoyed it very much, the story and the recipes, but it didn't knock my socks off like her later books did. I am sure I would have reacted differently had I read it first.


NOTES

Weekend Cooking is a weekly blog event hosted by Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader. Beth Fish Reads started the event in 2009 and bloggers have been sharing book and food related posts ever since.

My sister gave me the book book of Be Ready When the Luck Happens and I love it because it has a ton of photographs. But I decided to read the text with my ears because Garten reads the audiobook herself. I really like it when authors narrate their own nonfiction books. You get a better sense of the tone the author wanted to convey. 

The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev -- BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW

The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev, translated by Antonina W. Bouis

The Lady of the Mine is not an easy read, but it is a powerful one. Set in 2014 when Russia invaded eastern Ukraine, it is the tragic story of a Ukrainian mining village that suffered invaders throughout the 20th Century. There is an abandoned mine shaft in the village filled with the bodies of war victims dating back to the Russian Revolution. More recently, the Nazis executed thousands of Jews and and threw the bodies down the mine during World War II. As much as the Russians would like to expose the crimes of the Nazis, they keep the mine quiet because exposing the Nazis would also expose crimes committed by the Russians during their civil war and by Soviets later. 

That is the grisly backdrop to the 2014 story. When the Russians return to the village, the current conflict revives past miseries, especially when a passenger plan is shot down over the village. 

The book is told from multiple points of view, including a young soldier in the Russian occupying forces, a young woman with generational ties to the mine and people of the village, the former manager of the mine under prior Soviet occupation, and the original mine engineer, speaking from the grave because he is one of the bodies buried in the mine. Because the story is told by so many people and skips around in time, I had a hard time engaging with the book. I had to remind myself who the different narrators were and what their connection was to the historical events in the village. I also missed some of the many references to people, places, and events that are unfamiliar to non-European readers. 

Although I struggled with these aspects of the book, I ended up admiring it very much. It made me think about how dark times in history repeat themselves and the role of ordinary individuals in tumultuous times. Now that Ukraine is again fighting off the Russians, The Lady of the Mine is a particularly moving and significant story.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

The mystical laundress at the center of this novel is obsessed with purity. Her task is formidable as she stands guard over a sealed shaft at a Ukrainian coal mine that hides terrible truths. The bodies of dead Jews lying in its depths seem to attract still more present-day crimes. Acclaimed Russian author Sergei Lebedev portrays a ghostly realm riven by lust and fear just as the Kremlin invades the same part of Ukraine occupied by the Wehrmacht in World War II. Then corpses rain from the sky when a jetliner is shot down overhead, scattering luxury goods along with the mortal remains. Eerie coincidences and gruesome discoveries fill this riveting exploration of an uncanny place where the geography exudes violence, and where the sins of the past are never all that in the past. Lebedev, who has won international praise for his soul-searching prose and unflinching examination of history’s evils, shines light on the fault line where Nazism met Soviet communism, evolving into the new fascism of today’s Russia.

NOTES

The Lady of the Mine was one of my TBR 25 in '25 books and counts as my Ukraine book for the 2025 European Reading Challenge. I got my copy in a LibraryThing Early Reviewer giveaway. 

 

January 2025 Wrap Up -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

January 2025 Wrap Up

How did your reading year start? Thanks to a lull in my law work while I wait for a ruling from the Court of Appeals, I had more time than usual to read. I finished 15 books in January and hope to maintain that pace through the year.

Are there any on my January list that you’ve enjoyed or would like to read? 

GROUP READS

I participated in several group and buddy reads on Instagram, which I enjoyed very much. 

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh with a group working our way through all his novels, one every other month. Scoop was a reread for me and I appreciated the satire much more this second time around than when I first read it about 20 years ago. 

The Venetian Affair by Helen MacInnes was the first book for a MacInnes readalong project I organized on Bookstagram. Our next is The Salzburg Connection in March. If you are on Instagram and want to join us, DM me there @gilioncdumas. I'll add you to the group. 

Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster. This wraps up the Du Maurier Deep Dive project I participated in for the past three or so years. We read all du Maurier's fiction and then finished with reading a biography of our choice. I thought Forster's was excellent. 

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Because this is the 250th anniversary of Austen's birth, I want to reread her six major novels. I joined a bookstagram group doing the same so we can chat about them as we go. 

IRISH AUTHORS

II joined an Instagram chat group focusing on reading books by Irish authors this year. I don't know how intensely I will participate because I have a lot of books and reading goals for the year, but it it did help me read a few books that have lingered on my TBR shelves for a while. 

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien knocked my socks off. It was definitely the highlight of the month and a book that will linger with me for a long time. Read my review here. 

Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan. This was my first go at one of his books. I thought it was interesting, but it didn’t wow me. I thought he packed things into this family story (a black husband, a lesbian affair, and more) to be intentionally provocative. And the pacing was so uneven, I was distracted by trying to sort the timeline.  

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods engendered lively discussion in my IRL book club. Overall, the group enjoyed the historical fiction side of it, with its braided narrative switching between the 1920s and present day. But the magical realism caught most of us by surprised and didn't go over well. 

The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell. This retelling of events during the 1857 Indian Rebellion won the 1973 Booker Prize. The events and the writing are serious, but the absurdities of the colonial class system also gave Farrell opportunity to poke fun.

JUST BECAUSE

Dragon’s Teeth by Upton Sinclair, the 1943 Pulitzer Prize winner and one of my Classics Club II picks. This was way more engaging than I anticipated and felt very current. 

The Bean Book: 100 Recipes for Cooking with All Kinds of Beans, from the Rancho Gordo Kitchen by Steve Sando. My husband gave me this for Christmas because I could eat beans every day. It is a fantastic cookbook and I've already made a few things from it that were delicious. 

Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch is the final book in her “Starbridge” series of Church of England novels that take place in the mid-20th Century. Now I plan to move on to the "St. Benet Trilogy" set in a London parish in the later part of the century.

AUDIOBOOKS (NOT PICTURED)

Slough House by Mick Herron. This is the seventh book in his Slow Horses series. I'm racing through all of them. So far, there are eight novels and four novellas. A new novel comes out this September. 

The Patriarch by Martin Walker, the eighth novel in his Bruno, Chief of Police, series set in a French village. This is another series I love and am trying to complete, but it will take me longer because there are 18 novels and several novellas and short stories.  

We Solve Murders by Richard Osmond, the first in a new series. It was hard for me to switch from Thursday Murder Club to this new group of characters, but I'm sure it will grow on me.

Sleeping Giants by Rene Denfeld, a thriller set in Oregon. This is my IRL book club's pick for our next get together. The story, inspired by true events, really grabbed me.

TBR 25 IN ‘25 & THE EUROPEAN READING CHALLENGE

Six of the books I read in January were from my TBR 25 in '25 list. These were the Waugh, Forster, Woods, Farrell, Sinclair, and Howatch. I wanted to start strong with that particular stack of books so they don't make me feel rushed later in the year.  

I traveled some for the European Reading Challenge, but not with any native speakers. I visited the UK, Italy, Ireland, Bosnia, and France. But none of the books I read were in translation and I have a goal to read more books by authors who do not write in English.  

There's still plenty of time to join both challenges if you want to. Click through to the main TBR 25 in '25 page and main European Reading Challenge page for details and to sign up. 

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

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

While still a young man, John Courteney Boot had, as his publisher proclaimed, "achieved an assured and enviable position in contemporary letters."

-- from Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.  

Not, on its face, the most humorous opening lines for what is one of the funniest books I've ever read. The laughs start when the wrong Boot -- William, not John -- gets sent by London's sensationalist newspaper, the Daily Beast, to cover an impending revolution in a (fictional) African nation. William Boot, far from having an enviable position as a contemporary author, lives a quiet life in the country and writes a weekly nature column for the Beast. And yes, the current online Daily Beast got its name from Waugh's book. 

Scoop is a first-rate satire of newspaper journalism and a contender to be my favorite of Evelyn Waugh's comic novels, right up there with Decline and Fall. I read it again in January as part of a Waugh readalong group on bookstagram and loved it even more than when I read it the first time. 

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 Scoop:

Mrs Earl Russell Jackson padded in stockinged feet across the bare boards of the lounge looking for a sizeable cigar-end, found one, screwed it into her pipe, and settled down in the office rocking-chair to read her bible. Outside--and, in one or two places, inside--the rain fell in torrents.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner party tip from Mrs. Algernon Stitch, Lord Copper feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia.

So begins Scoop, Waugh's exuberant comedy of mistaken identity and brilliantly irreverent satire of the hectic pursuit of hot news.

The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell 

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

Anyone who has never before visited Krishnapur, and who approaches from the east, is likely to think he has reached the end of his journey a few miles sooner than he expected.

-- from The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell.

Farrell won the 1973 Booker Prize for The Siege of Krishnapur, a novel based on historical events. In telling the tale of one of the battles during India's 1857 Great Mutiny, Farrell critiques colonialism and examines the beginning of the end of the British Empire. 

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 The Siege of Krishnapur:

Yet it was the Collector himself who was responsible for this fortnightly torment since it was he who had founded the Society. He had done so partly because he was a believer in the ennobling powers of literature, and partly because he was sorry for the ladies of the Cantonment who had, particularly during the hot season, so little to occupy them.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

India, 1857--the year of the Great Mutiny, when Muslim soldiers turned in bloody rebellion on their British overlords. This time of convulsion is the subject of J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, widely considered one of the finest British novels of the last fifty years.

Farrell's story is set in an isolated Victorian outpost on the subcontinent. Rumors of strife filter in from afar, and yet the members of the colonial community remain confident of their military and, above all, moral superiority. But when they find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their dominion--at once brutal, blundering, and wistful--is soon revealed.

My Sign Up Post -- TBR 25 IN '25 & MT. TBR CHALLENGES

 

THE TBR 25 IN '25 CHALLENGE

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

My Sign Up Post

This is my sign up post for the TBR 25 in '25 and Mt. TBR Challenges. If you want to join me in the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page, here. Bev at My Reader's Block hosts the Mt. TBR Challenge. You can find the details for that one here. 

The number of unread books on my shelves is staggering. I long ago stopped referring to "my TBR shelf" because there are many shelves of unread books in my house. I prefer to think to it as a "library" and may never get to all of them. But I mean to try. 

Last year, I read the 24 books I picked for the TBR 24 in '24 Challenge, plus another 70 books for the Mt. TBR Challenge, for a total of 94 books read from my TBR library. I hope to reach at least 100 this year. 

You do not have to pick your TBR 25 in '25 book ahead of time. You can. Or you can pick them as you go. Or you can pick and then change your mind. The only "rule" is that the books have to have been on your shelf before January 1, 2025. 

Here are my TBR 25 in '25 picks, in alphabetical order by author. I'll read them in any old order:

• One Man’s San Francisco by Herb Cain

• French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David

• The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell FINISHED

• Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster NOW

• Biter Orange by Claire Fuller

• Careless in Red by Elizabeth George

• Q.’s Legacy by Helene Hanff

• Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith

• Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith

• Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch FINISHED

• Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay

• The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

• The Widow on Dwyer Court by Lisa Kusel

• The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev

• Lost & Found: Public Theology in the Secular Age by Michael A. Milton NOW

• Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell

• Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

• Dragon’s Teeth by Upton Sinclair FINISHED

• The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen by Nigel Slater NOW

• The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

• A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

• Zabar's: A Family Story, with Recipes by Lori Zabar

There was no rhyme or rhythm to how I picked these. A few, like the Herb Cain book, have languished on my shelves for too long. Others came to me more recently, but with the understanding that I would read them right away, which I haven't. Some are for group reads on Instagram, like Imitation of Christ and the du Maurier biography. A few won prizes and I'm trying to read all the winners, like the Charlotte Jay book that won the very first Edgar Award for best mystery in 1954.

I got this post up so late that I've already read several of these. I wanted to start strong in January so I have momentum to read these and then move on to my Mt. TBR books. 

I don't know which books I'll read for that one yet. But I signed up for the Mt. Everest level to read a total of 100 books off my shelves. That means I need 75 in addition tot he 25 listed above. I'm ready to climb!

 

The TBR 25 in '25 Challenge -- WRAP UP PAGE

 

WRAP UP PAGE

FOR THE TBR 25 IN '25 CHALLENGE

January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025

THIS IS THE PAGE TO LINK YOUR WRAP UP POSTS

TO LINK A REVIEW, GO TO THIS PAGE

TO SIGN UP FOR THE CHALLENGE, GO TO THE MAIN CHALLENGE PAGE OR CLICK THE CHALLENGE BUTTON ABOVE

LINK YOUR WRAP UP POSTS HERE

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WRAP UP LINKS

If you complete the challenge, please link some kind of wrap up post in the Linky box above. That way, I know who finished the challenge. If you just update your original post and do not do a wrap up post separate from your sign up post that's fine! Please still add the link to the updated post in the box above.

If you have trouble adding your link, leave it in a comment and I will add it or email me your link at gilion (at) dumasandvaughn (dot) com and I will add it for you. Please put your name and the name of the your blog or your social media handle and the platform in the comment or email so I can find you. Thanks!

REVIEWS

If you review a book for the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge, please add the link to your review on the review page. Please link to your review post, not the main page of your blog or social media account.

You do not have to have a blog to participate in this challenge. If you review books on Instagram, goodreads, or some other social media, use the link from your social media review post in the Linky box on the review page. Please link to the review, not your profile page. If you have questions about how to find the URL for a social media review post, leave a comment, email me at gilion (at) dumasandvaughn (dot) com, or DM me on Instagram @gilioncdumas.

The TBR 25 in '25 Challenge -- REVIEW PAGE

 

REVIEW PAGE

FOR THE TBR 25 IN '25 CHALLENGE

January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025

THIS IS THE PAGE TO LIST YOUR REVIEWS

IF YOU HAVE FINISHED, WRAP UP POSTS GO ON THIS PAGE

TO SIGN UP, GO TO THE MAIN CHALLENGE PAGE OR CLICK THE BUTTON ABOVE

LINK YOUR REVIEWS HERE

Please put your name and/or the name of your blog or social media handle and the name of the book you reviewed. (EX: Rose City Reader, War & Peace or @gilioncdumas, Pride & Prejudice.) Please link to your review post and not your blog home page or main social media profile page.

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LINKS

If you review a book for the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge, please add the link to your review in the Linky box above. Please link to your review post, not the main page of your blog or social media account.

You do not have to have a blog to participate in this challenge. If you review books on Instagram, goodreads, or some other social media, use the link from your social media review post in the Linky box above. Please link to the review, not your profile page. If you have questions about how to find the URL for a social media review post, leave a comment, email me at gilion (at) dumasandvaughn (dot) com, or DM me on Instagram @gilioncdumas.

If you have trouble adding your link, leave it in a comment and I will add it or email me your link at gilion (at) dumasandvaughn (dot) com and I will add it for you. Please put your name and the name of the book you reviewed in the comment or email. Thanks!

BOOKS AND REVIEWS

You do not have to review books to complete the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge.

The only point of the challenge is to clear 25 books off your TBR shelf in 2025. You can pick all of them them ahead of time, some of them, or none of them. If you pick them, you can change your mind later and switch books. The only "rule" is that you must own the book before January 1, 2025.

Your TBR shelf can include a virtual shelf of ebooks or audiobooks, as long as you owned them prior to January 1, 2025. It does not include library books.

This is supposed to be fun!

WRAP UP

If you complete the challenge, please link some kind of wrap up post on the wrap up page. That way, I know who finished the challenge. If you just update your original post and do not do a wrap up post separate from your sign up post that's fine too! But please still add the link to the updated post on the wrap up page.