TBR List Update: May

                   

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2025. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In May 2025

Books read: 9

Books I decided NOT to finish: 1

Courageous Love: I'm glad this was written, for those many grandparents who are raising their grandkids and need support. I'm not going to read it cover to cover, though.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 33 (plus 4 checked out/in progress)

Best book of the month: The Briar Club

Full of social mores and political concerns from the 1950s and a strong ensemble cast that I was more or less able to keep sorted, this story had some predictable and some surprising twists before concluding its whodunit throughline.

Worst book of the month: [none]

All good experiences this month!

TBR List Update: April

                  

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2025. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In April 2025

Books read: 8

Books I decided NOT to finish: 5

What She Ate: I only finished the first of 6 sections. I really thought there would be more on the actual food and foodways of the time/culture.

First Love: Eh. Tales of adolescent wildness rarely hold me; I don't relate. I thought there would be more variety in the short stories.

All Fours: Why is this on my list? Because some recommendation list told me so. Eh. *raspberry at "should"*

The Union: I wanted to get into this, but the story moved too fast, with huge stakes before I got invested in any of the characters. I wanted to know more about both the individuals and their world.

Persuasion: This was on the list from a colleague's recommendation more than a year ago, but I let it go.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 33 (plus 6 checked out/in progress; I put some back that I'd had checked out for a while but hope to read later)

Best book of the month: Ammonite

I learned three new words! That so seldom happens. And it didn't seem overwritten, like someone got hold of a thesaurus and used it irresponsibly. (Lambent, soughing, anther.) An interesting consideration how languages and cultures might develop in the presence of a single sex.

Worst book of the month: Legends

Hit-or-miss anthology.

TBR List Update: March

                 

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2025. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In March 2025

Books read: 5

Books I decided NOT to finish: 2

The Very Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan: It's not the right style of horror for me. Things were dark but maybe too eldritch.

Tin Star: Too much telling, not enough explaining. I could not invest emotionally.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 36 (plus 11 checked out/in progress) 

Best book of the month: All the Sweeter

Technically I haven't finished it yet, but this was a nuanced exploration of foster parenting (not necessarily pitched as a 101 introduction) and it resonated with me.

Worst book of the month: A Splendid Ruin

Which is not to say it was a terrible story. Lots of architectural and social history of familiar places, but not satisfying in its tale of justified revenge.

My persistence in "only books I like" has led to a lot of impulse borrowings on Hoopla, instead of working on the TBR list. I also added a few titles to that list for later. Oh well.

TBR List Update: February

                

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2025. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In February 2025

Books read: 11

Books I decided NOT to finish: 4

Iron Flame: Yeah, I read about a chapter and then flipped ahead trying to find something to get excited about. I just don't get why everyone loves this series so much.

The Children of Men: Interesting premise, but I'm not going to ask my brain to work that hard right now.

Sing, Unburied, Sing: It's been checked out to me for almost a year (bad librarian!). If I haven't read it yet, I'm not going to.

Camp Concentration: It kept looking good on the list, but I got it in person and it didn't. That is all.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 41 (plus 6 checked out/in progress) 

Best book of the month: The Pairing

A culinary romp through western Europe with a pair of highly competitive bisexual friends-turned-lovers-turned-exes suddenly reunited. Made me laugh, scold the characters out loud, surprise-cry on the last page, and read many snippets aloud to my very tolerant wife.

Worst book of the month: 

I liked everything! It was a good reading month in that regard.

TBR List Update: January

               

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2025. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In January 2025

Books read: 5

Books I decided NOT to finish: 1

Moral Disorder: I'm treading lightly and trying not to read things I don't really like. And I'm trying not to feel like a failure for it. It's not very academically rigorous, for sure, but it's self-care.

I'm working on making the decision to DNF Iron Flame (the second in the Fourth Wing series that everyone's so get up about). I brought it along to wait in the hospital on January 30th, but didn't even finish the first chapter between everything else I was paying attention to. I'm going to give it one more chance this weekend.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 43 (plus 8 checked out/in progress) 

Best book of the month: One Day

Loved the concept, loved the reporting that made proper chapter-length stories out of newspaper articles, TV clips, interviews, and other documents.

Worst book of the month: 

Eh. All about the same.

January's count always gets a boost from the completion of books started in the previous year. Also, it's often a quiet time with less socializing and the inclination to stay in out of the rain, so there tends to be a bit more time to read. However, this January was so full of existential anguish that I found myself scrolling the short video feeds a lot more than reading print.

#VirtualMountTBR2025

It's year three of this challenge, for me. The Virtual Mount TBR (to-be-read) challenge is hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block. Participants start with a list of books they don't own but have been meaning to read, and the challenge is scaling a virtual mountain by either reading or deciding to remove them unfinished from the list. You can sign up here! (If you have a literal pile of books, #MountTBR2025 is for you.)

Guidelines (and feel free to adapt them if you'd like to challenge yourself!):

• Have a known list to begin the year. I have consolidated mine into the tool my library uses and have a list of ~50 titles here: TBR List.
• Try not to add anything new! But it's okay to read off-list. I left a little room for this by making a less challenging goal this year.
• Keep track of what I'm reading on my usual page: Reading List.
• Remove titles from the TBR list as I complete them, OR as I decide that I will be okay never reading/finishing them.

I am aiming for White Plume Mountain (48 books) and I have 57 on my TBR list + in-progress stack at the beginning of the year. I will be updating at the end of each month (and sporadically otherwise) with a running total and some commentary.

Reading List 2024

Here's an archived copy of my reading list for this year. I'll be keeping up the new list here: http://mlisunderstanding.blogspot.com/p/reading-list.html

I would recommend the bolded titles with enthusiasm, and I enjoyed the italicized titles but probably wouldn't read them again.