Tag: reading-challenges

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To Be Read Books

2026 Audiobook Challenge

The 2026 Audiobook Challenge is being hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer and That’s What I’m Talking About. Audiobooks are something I have only recently picked up, but eager to give it a try. I found them exceedingly useful last year for making daily chores more enjoyable.

I will probably manage a maximum of 1-5 books under “Newbie (I’ll give it a try)” status, although I am secretly aiming for “Weekend Warrior (I’m getting the hang of this)” at 5-10 audiobooks.

These are the 10 audiobooks I have shortlisted so far.

Are you signing up for the 2026 Audiobook Challenge?

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Books Recommendations

Review: The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins

I didn’t expect to enjoy The New Magdalen so much! Some minimal research pointed out that “Magdalenes” were rescue shelters for fallen women (~prostitutes/ unmarried pregnant women) back in 1800s.

The book is set in the background of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). A lady named Grace has sent out from Canada to England, to seek a home with one of her wealthier distant relatives as a paid lady’s companion after her father dies. She is also now engaged to be married to a family friend in England.

And yet within a few months of her arrival in England, another woman shows up (whom people have been mistaking as a fallen woman “Mercy” from one of the said Magdalenes) — and now she claims to be the real Grace!

So, who is the real impostor? How do we figure this out in the 1870s, with no DNA testing, photographs, photocopies, or international or electronic databases? Original handwritten letters from relatives and friends are really all you have, and if lost, you are done for.

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Miscellany

The New Magdalen for Classics Club Challenge

I signed up for the Classics Club challenge last year, and I am slowly — very, very slowly — trying to finish off the items on my list. Thanks to CC Spin #41, the new “lucky” number is 11, and so I am off to read:

The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins (1873)

After much hunting around, here’s a blurb at Storytel that actually seemed interesting:

“You don’t have to put on the red light“, as Sting sings – except this female main character, Mercy Merrick, comes to that conclusion herself. Originally written as a play, “The New Magdalen” is a classic Victorian sensation novel, highlighting the prejudices against a woman of the streets in English society.
Mercy is at the frontline of the war in France when she meets Grace Roseberry, a traveller who is returning to England to connect with her wealthy English relative, Lady Roy, after being left penniless in Italy. Spotting an opportunity to change her life, Mercy cunningly takes Grace’s name. It’s a dramatic tale of a stolen identity amongst the upper classes, which would be right at home in the pages of “The Talented Mr. Ripley”.

Stolen identity, well! This one actually reminds me of Lady Audley’s Secret by M.E. Braddon. I do like them, those plot-twisty mysteries by Wilkie Collins!

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Memes To Be Read Books

TBR for Spring 2025

List of to be read books for Spring 2025: This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt is easy to list out … though for me, very difficult to cover! Oh well, let’s see how this year fares.

What’s your TBR for Spring 2025 looking like?

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Memes To Be Read Books

Bookish Goals for Year ‘25

Ten Bookish Goals? Hmm, that’s a lot. I cannot think of a list of 10 bookish goals for Year ’25, for this week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt. At most, here are 6 goals and I’d be very surprised if I can manage 2 or more of these:

1) Read at least 12 books, one for each month.

The challenge, of course, remains in shortlisting 12 out of the TBR Pile…

2) Read more diversely across genres.

That means, not just sticking to SFF or historicals – but to also try out more horror (incl. the new “cozy horror” niche), more philosophy, more humor, perhaps a thriller here and there.

3) Complete the backlist books from at least 1 favorite author.

The aim is to see how the author has grown over the years, and of course, enjoy the books and the process along the way. Perhaps: Lois McMaster Bujold or Patricia A. McKillip. Any other suggestions (in any genre) are welcome 🙂

4) Continue to read the classics, slow though it may be.

I signed up for the Classics Club challenge last year and sometimes, when you are overwhelmed by the busy pace of things, an old classic seems the right solution.

5) Be more active on the blog.

There was a reason I set it up in 2020 (to create! to stay connected!), and I do need to water the bookish garden now and then.

6) … Speaking of which, perhaps just move to a free plan of WordPress for the blog?

In which case, I need to figure out how to move content from Bluehost to the new unpaid version. If anyone has solutions for this, please share!

How about you? Did you manage to work up a plan for reading and blogging this year? What are your top bookish goals for Year ‘25? Do any of our goals align?

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Best of List Index Memes

Ten Changes in Reading Habits

This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has an interesting theme – how our reading habits have changed over time. This actually proved to be a fun walk down memory lane. Let me count the ways, then!

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Books Recommendations

Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot

I count George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss as one of my all-time favorites, so I was eager to start Scenes of Clerical Life as my Spin #38 pick for Classics Club Challenge. I was also fortunate to find the Librivox Recording by Bruce Pirie (available in Podcast formats too) and it was so good — highly recommended!

Scenes of a Clerical Life by George Eliot

Scenes of Clerical Life has 3 stories, each one progressively longer and more impactful.

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Memes To Be Read Books

Classics Club Challenge: CC Spin #38

Several months ago, I had decided to participate in the Classics Club Challenge and signed up with a bucket list of 100 classic literature books that I wanted to read. Occasionally, a random number is also generated by by the hosts at The Classics Club, and you can play along by reading that entry number from your chosen list. Rules are here.

This is my first CC Spin, and the Lucky Spin Number this time around is …

…. Number 17

On my list, entry #17 is Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot (1857). If I remember correctly, I chose this book because Eliot seems to have had a difficult relationship with her father and she has reflected some of that tension in this book. Plus, Eliot is one of my favorite all-time authors.

Not a very promising book cover, that. But let’s see…

Are you participating in CC Spin #38, or generally in the Classics Club Challenge this year?

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Memes To Be Read Books

Spring ’24 TBR

This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has us looking at our Spring ’24 TBR. I don’t know about you, but I’d be lucky to finish these off for the whole year! Still – subject to change and all that – here’s my set:

Folks, how have you been? Anybody else feeling the reading blues lately? Or, er, since last year? What are your solutions — and of course, your own Spring ’24 TBR lists?

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Index Memes To Be Read Books

Classics Club Challenge

I have decided to sign up for The Classics Club reading challenge this year. Based on this sign-up post and this FAQs post, we can choose our own criteria for what maketh a “classic” and then we have to make a list of 100 classics that we want to read – not immediately – but over the next 5 years.

For my own “classics” criteria, I’m going with a mixed bag of books famous in a specific genre* OR any books published before 1974 (i.e. more than 50 years ago). Here follows the list!

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