Just A Second: Reading Challenge

Showing posts with label Reading Challenge. Show all posts

Saturday, January 17

2026 Reading Challenges

Here we are, over halfway into the first month of 2026, and I'm finally getting around to sharing a little about my reading goals for the year. And I don't even have a book that I've finished to lead with! That's kind of the way it's been for the past couple of years though. I keep working on The 52 Book Club reading challenges, fully knowing that I won't read fifty-two books. Expecting and planning to read approximately half that many. But it's okay because it's not a contest! The challenge continues to be entertaining and motivational for me, and encourages me to choose books outside of my favorite authors and genres. A few of my favorite books over the past couple years are just such books - the ones that wouldn't likely have come to my notice except that they fit a challenge prompt.

I will be doing The 52 Book Club Challenge for 2026, and my personal goal is to get about halfway through it. (Since my goal is approximately 26 books, I will be doubling up prompts when I can)

Find out more about the 2026 Reading Challenge HERE, and you might want to check out the 2026 Reading Challenge Guide.

#the52bookclub #the52bookclub2026

I've read through the guide and the list of prompts, but I haven't yet given much thought to the books I've started already or the ones on my TBR list to see which prompts they'd fit.

There are mini-challenges throughout the year, and I may try to do those as well, but with books that do double-duty for the main challenge as well. I just look at them as they're released and decide if they looks appealing to me or not.

In 2025, there was a Connections Reading Challenge in the summer. Instead of a list of prompts that could be done in any order, this challenge was organized so that each book was connected in some way to the one before it or after it, so it had to be done in order. There were twenty-one books in the list! I embarked on the challenge (with books that doubled in the main challenge, of course), thinking that I would just see how far I could get by the end of the year. The answer was: not very far! But also I figured it would do no harm for me to keep plugging away through the list and try to finish it, and who cares how long it takes! (I'm currently reading a book that is #8 on this list.)

I write bookshelf summaries, usually at the end of a month and about halfway through a month, and depending on how the posting dates line up, I may share with Book Date, at Share Your Shelf hosted by Slices of Life, and What's On Your Bookshelf? #whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge hosted by Deb's World.

I usually link my individual book reviews at the BookWorms Monthly link-up.

***************

So that's where I stand at the beginning of the year, as far as reading goals. Since I usually do a What I'm Reading post around the middle of the month, I'll add an abbreviated version of that here, and hopefully have more to share in a couple weeks!

I'm currently reading . . .

A Certain Darkness by Anna Lee Huber

The Belle of Belgrave Square by Mimi Matthews

Secrets of the Maison Fournier by Amelia Pine

Up Next . . . On the TBR stack . . .

One of the books I acquired over the holidays, but I haven't decided which one!

I finished reading . . .

A Holiday By Gaslight by Mimi Matthews (Read my review HERE)

No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister (Read my review HERE)

***************

Happy Reading!

This post may be linked at What's On Your Bookshelf? #whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge hosted by Deb's World, and/or at the weekly reading list meme hosted at Book Date.

©2008-2026 Just A Second. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. This post was written by a human. http://justasecondblog.blogspot.com/

This post contains affiliate links - using affiliate links from Just A Second helps supply books and coffee. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Friday, January 9

2025 Reading Challenges Wrap-Up

Here I am, finally writing my 2025 summary of books read and the reading challenges I've ~~completed~~ participated in. Looks like I can manage an average of one book every two weeks while working full time and doing the other things I do. Hard to believe I used to clock sixty or seventy books a year several years ago!

As hard as it is for me to pick favorites, I think I should start off by choosing my top five that I read during the year:

No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

10 Marchfield Square by Nicola Whyte

Food For Thought: Essays and Ruminations by Alton Brown

***************

I think this is the third year I've done the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge, and my goal was to make it about halfway through. Looks like I did get twenty-six books checked off the list, which makes me wonder if I should have doubled up prompts. To me, that feels like cheating. I'm fine with getting only partway through these challenges, because even if I don't read that many books, it does encourage me to keep reading and to consider books outside of my favorite authors and genres.

Find out more about the 2025 Reading Challenge HERE

#the52bookclub #the52bookclub2025

1. A book with a pun in the title - Frauds On Favourite by PJ FItzsimmons

2. A character with red hair - The Highland Heist by Pepper Basham

3. Title starts with the letter M - Murder Most Fair by Anna Lee Huber

4. Title starts with the letter N - No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

5. Plot includes a heist - Monet For Nothing by PJ Fitzsimmons

11. A prequel - The Wedding Gift by Connilyn Cossette

12. Has a moon on the cover - While the City Sleeps by Elizabeth Camden

13. Title is 10 letters or less - Black Fog by KT McWilliams

18. A character who can fly - The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl

19. Has short chapters - The Blind Scribe by Connilyn Cossette

20. A fairy tale retelling - Before Beauty by Brittany Fichter

21. Character's name in the title - Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery

22. Found Family Trope - No Safe Harbor by Elizabeth Ludwig

25. Breaks the fourth wall - The Terrifying Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

33. A Standalone Novel - Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell

35. Written in third person - The Work of Art by Mimi Matthews

36. Final sentence is less than 6 words long - The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

37. A genre chosen for me by someone else - Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

39. Has an epigraph - A Deceptive Composition by Anna Lee Huber

40. Stream of consciousness narrative - Village Books by Craig McLay

41. Cover font is a primary color - Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

43. Explores social class - A Holiday By Gaslight by Mimi Matthews

44. A celebrity on the cover - Food For Thought: Essays and Ruminations by Alton Brown

49. Set in a country with an active volcano - The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer - Ragnar Jónasson

51. A book that is 300-400 pages long - Harvest of Gold by Tessa Afshar

52. Published in 2025 - 10 Marchfield Square by Nicola Whyte

***************

There are mini-challenges within the 52 Book Club as well, and I completed the October one:

While the City Sleeps features a police officer for Pick Your Costume

Someone You Can Build A Nest In has both a sugary sweet and a mischievous character for Pick Your Treat

The Terrifying Tales is Pick Your Scare Level: Keep You Up All Night

Instead of a mini-challenge in the summer, there was The 52 Book Club's Connections Challenge. This is like a whole new reading challenge, so I decided I would work my way through it, but without an end date. I don't need that much extra pressure! Some people do these mini-challenges as separate from the 52 books, but that's out of my league at this point in my life.

So I didn't get very far with this, because it was a little tough to choose a next book for this challenge that would also work for the regular challenge. I'm currently working on what would be the eighth book in this chain, so for now I'm going to keep going with it. Maybe I'll finish, maybe I won't. I will be perfectly fine with leaving it undone if it's too much for me.

1. Pick any book - Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

2. Title shares a word with previous title - Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery

3. Set in the country where the previous author was born (Canada) - Village Books by Craig McLay

4. Published the same year as the previous book (2012) - No Safe Harbor by Elizabeth Ludwig

5. +/- 30 pages from the previous book - Murder Most Fair by Anna Lee Huber

6. Similar title font to the previous book - Food For Thought by Alton Brown

7. Author shares name with character from previous book - While the City Sleeps by Elizabeth Camden

***************

I also linked up some of my books with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2025 hosted by The Intrepid Reader and Baker. This was such a simple challenge. Just link up my historical fiction reviews each month. I aimed for the Renaissance Reader level, which is ten historical fiction books over the year. Turns out I got a few more. That said, I will not bother doing this book link-up next year.

1. Harvest of Gold - Tessa Afshar (ancient Persia/Israel)

2. Frauds on Favourite - PJ Fitzsimmons (1920s England)

3. A Deceptive Composition - Anna Lee Huber (1832 Cornwall, England)

4. The Work of Art - Mimi Matthews (Regency England)

5. Black Fog - KT McWilliams (1618 London)

6. The Wedding Gift - Connilyn Cossette (ancient Israel)

7. The Blind Scribe - Connilyn Cossette (ancient Israel)

8. Jane of Lantern Hill - L.M. Montgomery (1920s Canada)

9. The Highland Heist - Pepper Basham (1910s USA and Scotland)

10. No Safe Harbor - Elizabeth Ludwig (1896 USA)

11. Murder Most Fair - Anna Lee Huber (1919 England)

12. While the City Sleeps - Elizabeth Camden (1913 New York City)

13. Monet For Nothing - PJ Fitzsimmons (1920s Paris)

14. A Holiday By Gaslight - Mimi Matthews (1880s England)

***************

There's a social media group called What The Dickens Book Club and I've been a member of the group for a few years, but unfortunately the posts often get lost in my FB feed and I lose track of when discussions are and such. I thought I'd find time to read a few of these classics and participate with the group in 2025, but wound up reading only two of the books on the list (Mountain Interval and Jane of Lantern Hill).

I do try to be consistent with writing bookshelf summaries, and depending on how the posting dates line up, I've been sharing at the BookWorms Monthly link-up, at Share Your Shelf hosted by Slices of Life, and What's On Your Bookshelf? #whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge hosted by Deb's World.

This post will be linked at Share Your Shelf hosted by Slices of Life.

Thursday, October 30

October Reading Challenge Update

October is almost over, and I won't be finished all three of my October Mini-Challenge books by tomorrow, but I was kind of chuffed to realize I'd fulfilled all three of the mini-challenge prompts! So while it is still October, I'll give myself props for doing that, and offer an update on the Connections Challenge I was working on too.

The October Mini-Challenge prompts asked readers to choose a book featuring a mythological, princess, or first responder character, since those are popular costumes. For the Trick or Treat prompt, choose a book with either a sugary sweet character or a mischievous character. And then to choose a book with a scare level of cozy, mysterious, or "keep you up all night".

1. Pick Your Costume: I picked the First Responder costume. In While the City Sleeps by Elizabeth Camden, the hero is a police lieutenant named Jonathan Birch. Our heroine Katherine has a big-time crush on him so I'm imagining him as pretty swoon-worthy. Katherine is a dentist, and she thinks that the babbling of one of her patients while under the influence of laughing gas revealed his connection to bomb threats in New York City, so she takes the information to Lieutenant Birch. I definitely won't finish this one right away, but it fit this prompt!

2. Trick or Treat? I've been listening to the audiobook version of Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell, which I thought was a good book choice for October. The main character is a shape-shifting monster named Shesheshen, and maybe she could be described as mischievous, although in a very scheming and secretive way. Shesheshen has a human love interest named Homily who is definitely very sugary sweet. By the way, Homily does not know that her 'girlfriend' is actually the monster her entire family has been hunting in order to break a curse, so the dynamics are interesting, to say the least. I'm almost finished listening so this review will be coming soon.

3. Pick your scare level: I just finished The Terrifying Tales by Edgar Allen Poe, and it's an excellent spooky season read. While it isn't "keep you up all night" in the way modern horror films have conditioned us to think of scary stories, some of these short stories are quite sinister and disturbing. No jump scares, no crazed chain-saw-wielding lunatic stalking you in your nightmares, but the prospect of a madman murdering his landlord because of his eye, or the realization that the Cask of Amontillado might have been the perfect murder that left no clue, are terrifying indeed. If I have time, I'll review this one tomorrow.

***********************************

The 52 Book Club's summer mini-challenge was the Connections Challenge. Instead of a list of prompts that can be done in any order, the idea of this challenge is that each book is connected in some way to the one before it so it must be done in order. There are twenty-one links in the connection chain and I knew I had no chance of finishing during the summer, but I figured I'd work on it and see how far I could get by the end of 2025.

1. Pick any book. Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn was my choice. (Read my review HERE)

2. The title of this book must share a word with the previous book's title. Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery shares the word "of" in the title. (Read my review HERE)

3. Village Books by Craig McLay is set in Canada, where the author of the previous book is from. I wasn't a big fan of this book, and it took me a long time to get through it, which slowed down my entire Connections Challenge progress. (Read my review HERE)

4. I found a book in my Kindle library that was published the same year as the previous book. No Safe Harbor by Elizabeth Ludwig (Read my review HERE)

5. The next book on my nightstand TBR stack was within 30 pages, so that worked out well. Murder Most Fair by Anna Lee Huber (Read my review HERE)

6. I happened upon a book at the library I wanted to read, and it did have a reasonably similar title font. Food For Thought: Essays and Ruminations by Alton Brown (Read my review HERE)

7. I was presented with a challenge here, because the author of the next book is supposed to share a name with a character in the previous. And the previous book was non-fiction. But Alton Brown mentions his wife Elizabeth a number of times, so I picked out While the City Sleeps by Elizabeth Camden, which I'm still working on. This book is doing triple duty in the reading challenges!

So here's where I am at the moment, not even a third of the way through. To think that others did this over the summer, and many of them did this in addition to the regular 52 Book Challenge! So as I originally planned, I'll keep going at least till the end of the year and see where I wind up, and probably just keep plugging away until I finish.

And this is the current status of my 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge. A bit short of halfway through, but there's only two months left in the year. I'm okay with it!

©2008-2025 Just A Second. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. This post was written by a human. http://justasecondblog.blogspot.com/

Monday, June 30

June Bookshelf Review

Like a crazy person, I opted to start on the 52 Book Club's Connections Reading Challenge, which takes the place of a summer mini-challenge this year. The entire challenge is twenty-one books, which CLEARLY I won't finish during the summer, but will just plod along through it for the fun of seeing how many I can do. And for my own entertainment, I may continue until I do finish, even if that takes me into next year. For me, reading challenges are to push me to read more and to read books outside of my most favorite genres, and not for comparison or competition with others. Anyway, true to form, I've no sooner started on the Connections and then realize that I'll not be able to start the third book of the challenge until I've finished a couple of review books. :shrug: That's the way it goes!

June's Books Completed and Reviewed

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn - Spy thriller meets murder mystery as four women, all retired professional assassins, realize that the firm they worked for is trying to kill them. They combine their skills and resources to protect each other, and naturally, to kill the would-be killers before they become victims. (When I posted the May Bookshelf Review, this review hadn't posted. You can find it HERE.)

The Blind Scribe by Connilyn Cossette - Shalem's curiosity about languages and about a mysterious stranger gets him into trouble, but it turns out the stranger is a scribe and willing to trade knowledge with Shalem. (Read my review HERE)

Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery - Jane's life in Toronto is not a happy one, really, but it's all she's ever known . . . until her father has her come spend a summer with him on Prince Edward Island. A lovely novel about growing up and family bonds. (Read my review HERE)

During June I started reading:

Murder Most Fair by Anna Lee Huber - Well, I finally started on this next one in the Verity Kent series (I'm getting behind in it!) and am just getting introduced to the mystery to be solved, but I have a couple of review books and a library book that have to take priority, so this may have to be on hold for a little bit. Such a pity, because I love this character!

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer by Ragnar Jónasson - With very few clues to start with, detective Helgi is tasked with finding out what happened to a popular crime author who has vanished. There are alternating timelines, including one in which an unnamed character is interviewing that author. I'm very curious to see how it all will get tied together, and I'm just beginning to see some possible connections.

The Highland Heist by Pepper Basham - Fourth in the Freddie & Grace Mystery series, this one starts with Frederick and Grace arriving at Grace's childhood home, only to discover that the estate has been sold, her father has deceived her about his financial situation, and that her mother has left an inheritance to Grace and her sister. But claiming it may be a real challenge!

Where My Books Took Me in June . . . Here's where I've traveled through the pages during the month, along with One Word to sum up the ones I finished.

Killers of a Certain Age begins on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, moves to New Orleans, then to the UK, and then to Paris. Plus flashback scenes in the USA, UK, and Zanzibar.

One Word: Ruthless

The Blind Scribe is set in ancient Israel.

One Word: Learning

Jane of Lantern Hill takes place in Toronto and Prince Edward Island, Canada.

One Word: Belonging

Murder Most Fair has started in Great Britain.

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer is set in Iceland.

The Highland Heist begins in the USA, but looks like it will move to Scotland.

Coming Up in July!

10 Marchfield Square by Nicola Whyte - Just picked up from the library and I doubt I'll be able to renew it, due to demand, so this is definitely the next one I'll start.

Before Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Brittany Fichter - Sorry, Beauty! Bumped again!

Village Books by Craig McLay

Believe it or not, I also have no less than three new books recently purchased that I need to put into rotation as well. I really need to find more time to read!