In summer, my favourite reading spot is the back garden of our family home in the Bay of Plenty.
When it’s not warm enough to read outside, my favourite spot is curled up on my couch in the evening, or reading in bed on Saturday morning (one of the privileges of being an empty-nester: no children at home who need feeding or ferrying to activities).
I spent a couple of days in the Christmas-New Year break uploading my 2024 and 2023 reviews to Amazon and Goodreads. This has reminded me of several books I’m looking forward to reading, including:
The 2025 releases in the Trinity Lakes Romance series, including:
Finally, I’m looking forward to reading my own third novel, Always On My Mind. Of course, I have to write it first …
What about you? What books are you looking forward to reading this year?
This is the same as my 2024 challenge, which I exceeded: I ended up reading 166 books (although I only counted reading my own new release, Always In My Heart once. I probably read the whole manuscript at least three times, and read parts of it many more).
In previous years, I have also set myself more specific challenges, such as reading books from my to-read pile, books from new-to-me authors, books from BIPOC or international authors, books from indie authors, or nonfiction books.
I found I’d set myself too many goals, some of which were difficult to track. It sometimes meant I was forcing myself to read books I didn’t really want to read so I could improve my tallies (e.g. a nonfiction book from my to-read pile written by a new-to-me international author).
While I haven’t counted, I think I read more nonfiction books and more books from new-to-me authors last year than in many previous years, which suggests I’m better off not counting.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve done that. I am using Mary DeMuth’s 90-Day Bible Reading Challenge (but giving myself grace: I don’t have to finish in 90 days. Finishing is good enough).
I didn’t get any books for Christmas … which isn’t a bad thing, because my to-read pile is already a little excessive.
I did give several books for Christmas. I gave several family members paperback copies of Always By My Side, my debut novel which published last year.
I also gave my mother “Kingmaker” by Sonia Purnell, which is a biography of Patricia Harriman, British aristocrat and daughter-in-law to Winston Churchill. I might borrow it when she’s
Yes, I achieved my Goodreads Reading Challenge for 2024. I’d aimed to read 120 books, which was down from previous years because I didn’t known how many I’d be able to read while also working full-time and publishing another book. I’ve read more than I thought I would because I’ve found reading relaxing at the end of a busy day at work, and have managed to read even when my brain has been too tired to write.
I actually increased my target from 120 to 150 books when I realised I’d already read more than 130 books by the first week of December.
This year, knowing I was working full-time and trying to publish a book, I went easy on myself and didn’t set any other targets.
In previous years, I have also set other goals, such as:
I did track each of these categories on Goodreads, which tells me I’ve read:
On the whole, I’m impressed that I’ve read more books and more widely than I thought I would, particularly considering I was also writing and editing my own book.
Or click here to mark it as To Read on Goodreads 😉
In past years, I’ve focused on my list (and my reading) on contemporary Christian romance. This year, I’ve branched out with my reading, so my list includes a combination of fiction and nonfiction from Christian and general market authors.
That’s easy: Peter Jones, as The Book in the original version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. However, that’s really a recording of a radio play rather than an audiobook …
If we’re going for pure audiobooks, then my children loved Miranda Harcourt’s narrations of the Horrid Henry books. She did a great job with all the character voices, just like when she played Queen Elizabeth in Blackadder II.
As for real audiobooks for adults … I’m not a big audiobook listener, so I don’t have a favourite narrator, although I will admit to preferring British narrators over American (but that would only work where the characters are British).
I have come across a couple of narrators I haven’t enjoyed, usually because their monotone narrations.
I like narrators who can act well enough that I can hear the difference between the characters, rather than having to guess who is the point of view character in each successive scene. It’s hard to like a book if I don’t like the narration.
So I don’t really have an answer to this question.
These are the authors we love so much that we click on the “buy” button as soon as we see the preorder on Amazon. Or we frequent our local bookstore, asking when they expect the book to arrive and remind them to put a copy aside for us …
[True story: my local Christian bookstore used to unpack new stock after closing. I’d often get a call during dinner to say a book I’d ordered had arrived. Sometimes he’d just call because he’d unpacked something he thought I would be interested in. He was usually right. I haven’t bought nearly as many paperbacks since he closed the shop and retired.]
Anyway, here is a selection of my must-buy authors:
Note that I don’t buy all the books by these authors. I enjoy Carla Laureano’s contemporary romances, but don’t read her fantasy releases. I love Gabrielle Meyer’s Timeless series, but haven’t read her earlier books.
I think I was about seven when I first discovered the ability of a good book to take me away from my small-town home and take me to another time and place.
I don’t remember the title, but I do remember it was a Nancy Drew mystery. I’d borrowed it from the school library, and it was probably a Scholastic title (the school library had a lot of Scholastic titles, from the regular book club catalogues).
It doesn’t matter. I had fallen in love with reading, and nothing has changed in the intervening years.
If I read and enjoyed the book, I might watch the movie, but it will depend on the genre and how faithful they are staying to the source material. If I think of examples of movies I have watched after enjoying the book, they tend to be children’s or young adult stories (e.g. Harry Potter, Divergent), or books that I haven’t read in decades, such as Dune, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
I haven’t watched the Bridgerton or Outlander TV series, for the same reason.
If I haven’t read the book and I see the movie first, I’m unlikely to go back and read the book. For example, my husband and I watched The Maze Runner movies, then he bought me the books. I’ve never read them, because I didn’t like the way the movies ended so don’t want to invest the time in the books when I already know what is going to happen. however, I recently bought the prequel novel, so I can see how they got there…
However, I diligently watched and loved the Christy TV series, loosely based on the classic Christian novel by Catherine Marshall. I think the reason I enjoyed that was because it took the book and expanded it while remaining true to the source.
