Tag Archives: Reading Challenges

Reading Plans for 2023

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For most of my life, I’ve just read whatever was next in the stack or something I was in the mood for. Reading challenges have helped broaden my horizons and be more intentional in my reading. Plus it’s fun to share reading lists with the other participants. And some challenge hosts offer drawings for prizes!

I dropped one challenge I participated in last year. All of these are categories I already read anyway. Plus they leave me some room to still delve into something new and unexpected through the year.

I have not heard or seen anything from Karen at Books and Chocolate about whether she is hosting the Back to the Classics Challenge again this year–so that probably means she isn’t. That’s too bad, as this was one of my favorites. But I’m sure she has other priorities in her life right now.

I will still read classics, though. I’ve made it a mission to since I wasn’t exposed to many growing up. I’ve been trying to read through Dickens novels that I haven’t read yet. All I have left are Martin Chuzzlewit, Barnaby Rudge, Dombey and Son, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, so I’ll read at least one of those. I also got the audiobooks for Pilgrim’s Regress by C. S. Lewis and Martyr of the Catacombs. I finished Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire series last year, so I’d like to explore some of his other works.

Bev at My Reader’s Block hosts the Mount TBR Reading Challenge, which encourages us to get to those books we already own but have not read yet. That’s something I need to do every year, and I have enjoyed participating with Bev the last few years. She has the goals set out as a series of mountains, and we’re supposed to declare which one we’re aiming for. I think I’ll stay with Mt. Vancouver (36 books), even though I’ve reached the next level a couple of years. The sign-up and more information for this challenge are here.

Shelly Rae at Book’d Out hosts the Nonfiction Reader Challenge. This can be done one of two ways. Shelly has twelve books in different categories that we can aim for. Or we can be a “Nonfiction Grazer” and make our own goal. Although I might hit a few of her categories, I’ll go the grazer route. I normally read several nonfiction books (over 30 last year). This year, I’d like to hit these categories:

  • At least one biography, autobiography, or memoir.
  • One writing book
  • One book of humor
  • One Bible study book
  • One Christian living book
  • One book of letters or journals
  • One book by C. S. Lewis that I have not read yet
  • One book on organization or productivity
  • One book pertaining to a holiday (probably Christmas)
  • One book related to midlife or aging

Finally, The Intrepid Reader. hosts the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. A good many of my fictional reads fit this category. I’m going to aim for the Medieval level at 15 books.

And that does it for this year, I think!

Do you participate in reading challenges? Which ones.

Reading Challenge Wrap-Ups

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I enjoy participating in reading challenges and sharing books I have enjoyed. Most of these challenges involve the type of books I would be reading anyway. The only difficulty comes in the time it takes for record-keeping. I haven’t decided yet which challenges I will participate in next year. But I can recommend any of these.

Most of the challenge hosts require a wrap-up post at the end of the year. I shared my Back to the Classics Challenge Wrap-Up, hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate here. But I decided to include all the rest in one post so as not to be tedious for readers.

Bev at My Reader’s Block hosts the Mount TBR Reading Challenge. The idea is to read books you already owned before the start of this year. Bev has made levels in increments of twelve, each named after a mountain, and we’re to choose a level to shoot for. Even though I’ve reached Mt. Ararat (48 books) the last couple of years, I decided to play it safe and stick with Mt. Vancouver (36 books).

That turned out to be a wise decision as I just made it with 38 books. Instead of making a separate list, I marked the books in this category with (MTBR) on my list of all the books I read this year.

Shelly Rae at Book’d Out hosts the Nonfiction Reader Challenge. She provided 12 categories of nonfiction, and participants chose which level they want to aim for. Thankfully, this year she has included a Nonfiction Grazer category where we set our own goals for how many and what kind of nonfiction to read. That worked best for me this year.

I read a total of 33 non-fiction books this year, which can be seen on my Books Read in 2022 post.

As to my personal goals for this challenge:

Even though I didn’t hit every category I wanted to, I did more in others, and I feel I had a rich and varied nonfiction reading experience this year.

The Audiobook Challenge is hosted by Caffeinated Reader. I aimed for the Binge Listener level at 20-30. I finished 30, so I was right on target. I also marked these on my list of books read this year. I posted what I had listened to through June at the check-in here. Here are the ones I listened to through the end of the year:

The Historical Fiction Reading Challenge is hosted by The Intrepid Reader. I aimed for the Medieval level of 15 books. I completed 22.

As you can tell, Roseanna M. White and Kristy Cambron are favorites in the category.

I’ve included split-time novels here, which have both a modern and a historic timeline. I’ve never been sure whether classics count—books written before our time but were modern in the time in which they were written. If so, I’d have eleven more.

And finally:

The Literary Christmas challenge hosted by Tarissa at In the Bookcase. For this I read:

I also started Hope for Christmas by Malissa Chapin, but haven’t finished it yet. Maybe I will by the end of the year.

I didn’t get quite as many in this category as I had hoped to, but we had a very busy December.

Whew. It’s been a good year of reading.

Back to the Classics 2022 Wrap-Up

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“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say” (Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature).

That’s why I enjoy reading classics: they still speak to us after decades, even hundreds and thousands of years.

I’m thankful that the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate has expanded my horizons. Without it, I might have never have branched out beyond Dickens, Austen, and Alcott to discover Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, and so many others.

Karen chooses different categories for the challenge each year. The categories this year are (titles are linked to my review of the books):

A 19th century classic. Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
A 20th century classic. The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
A classic by a woman author. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
A classic in translation. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin.
A classic by BIPOC author. To Sir, With Love by E. R. Braithwaite
Mystery/Detective/Crime Classic. Dracula by Bram Stoker. Though this is a Gothic novel, the nature and identity of the Count are also a mystery.
A Classic Short Story Collection. Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott
Pre-1800 Classic. The Confessions of St. Augustine.
A Nonfiction Classic. The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis
Classic That’s Been on Your TBR List the Longest. Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne. I’m including all four Pooh books as one entry since they are so short.
Classic Set in a Place You’d Like to Visit. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
Wild Card Classic. The Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope

We’re allowed three children’s classics for this challenge. I just had two: Dr. Dolitte and Pooh.

For completing all twelve categories, my name is entered three times into Karen’s drawing of a $30 prize towards books.

Next week I’ll wrap up my other reading challenges as well as share the books read this year and my top ten or so favorites.

Audiobook Challenge Check-In

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The Audiobook Challenge, hosted by Caffeinated Reader and That’s What I’m Talking About, is having its mid-year checkpoint today. Here are the audiobooks I have listened to so far this year (titles link to my reviews):

  1. The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow. The events of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and beyond from the viewpoint of Mary, the quiet, bookish middle sister. Excellent.
  2. Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope, the fourth of his Barsetshire Chronicles. A young vicar trying to get in with society’s elite gets into trouble. The village matron’s son falls in love with the vicar’s sister rather than the beautiful but cold society maiden his mother had picked out for him.
  3. The Path Through the Trees by the “real” Christopher Robin of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, Christopher Milne. This book is the sequel to his first, The Enchanted Places (both are reviewed at the ink.
  4. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope, the fifth in his Barsetshire Chronicles, had numerous threads, but the main plot focuses on a widow and her two daughters who live in a small house on the property of her brother-in-law, who owns the manor house and never liked his sister-in-law.
  5. The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope, the final book in his Chronicles of Barsetshire series. A stern vicar is accused of stealing and resistant to the community’s attempts to help him. All the threads from the previous books in the series are satisfyingly tied up.
  6. To Sir, With Love, an autobiographical novel by E. R. Braithwaite about a Black teacher in a London school of rowdy students in the 60s.
  7. The Winnie the Pooh books by A. A. Milne (When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, and Now We Are Six). All four reviewed together. I’ll just count them as one entry since they are so short.
  8. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. Part helping rich and poor understand each other, part coming-of-age, part unraveling a crime.
  9. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. Russian classic about a bored young rich man who turns away the naive girl who loves him only to find he does lover her when it’s too late.
  10. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Challenging to listen to, but I am glad I did.
  11. Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan. Novel about a college girl asking C. S. Lewis about Narnia for her dying younger brother.
  12. Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott. Stories about her brief time as a Civil War nurse.

I had chosen to aim for the Binge Listener level at 20-30 audiobooks this year, and I am well on my way to that goal.

Reading Plans for 2022

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One of my favorite activities is setting my reading plans for the year.

For many years I just read whatever came to hand, whatever I was in the mood for. I like to allow for that and for reading new books and unplanned discoveries. But making plans for the year helps me be more intentional, work in the books I plan to “get to someday,” and broaden my horizons.

Reading challenges also help with those purposes, plus they are fun. And some offer prizes!

The reading challenges I plan to participate in this year are:

The Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate. This is one of my favorites. Through this challenge, I’ve been introduced to classics I never knew about before and authors I had never tried. My usual classics taste tend toward 19th century Britain: Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Elliot. These are the cozy classics to me, and I try to read from them every year. But it’s good to branch out, and Karen’s categories help me do that. The categories this year are:

  • A 19th century classic.
  • A 20th century classic.
  • A classic by a woman author.
  • A classic in translation.  Any book first published in a language that is not your primary language.
  • A classic by BIPOC author. Any book published by a non-white author.
  • Mystery/Detective/Crime Classic. It can be fiction or non-fiction.
  • A Classic Short Story Collection.
  • Pre-1800 Classic.
  • A Nonfiction Classic.
  • Classic That’s Been on Your TBR List the Longest.
  • Classic Set in a Place You’d Like to Visit.
  • Wild Card Classic. Any classic you like, any category, as long as it’s at least 50 years old!

Since the categories were just posted, I haven’t had time to think about them and decide what to read. But I’ll enjoy contemplating them! I’m sure I’ll continue with the next in Trollope’s Barsetshire series for the 19th century classic. I might delve into The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis for the nonfiction: I’ve been wanting to read that for a while.

Shelly Rae at Book’d Out hosts the Nonfiction Reader Challenge. She provided 12 categories of nonfiction, and participants choose which level they want to aim for. Thankfully, this year she has included a Nonfiction Grazer category where we set our own goals for how many and what kind of nonfiction to read. That will work best for me this year.

I’m going to plan on at least 12 nonfiction books. I usually read more than that, but many are in the same categories. This year I want to read:

  • At least one biography, autobiography, or memoir.
  • One writing book
  • One book of humor
  • One Bible study book
  • One Christian living book
  • One book of letters or journals
  • One book by C. S. Lewis that I have not read yet
  • One book on organization or productivity (I have 13 on my shelf! Some read, some dipped into, some unread.)
  • One book pertaining to a holiday (probably Christmas)
  • One book related to midlife or aging

Bev at My Reader’s Block hosts the Mount TBR Reading Challenge. The idea is to read books you already owned before the start of this year. Bev has made levels in increments of twelve, each named after a mountain, and we’re to choose a level to shoot for. Even though I’ve reached Mt. Ararat (48 books) the last couple of years, I think I will play it safe and stick with Mt. Vancouver (36 books).

There are a couple of other TBR challenges I have participated in for previous years, but the rules of each are slightly different. So, to keep it simple, I think I’ll just stick with this one. It’s such a feeling of accomplishment to get to those books!

These next to are new to me. They focus on books I usually read anyway, so they won’t require extra effort except for the record keeping.

The Audiobook Challenge is hosted by Caffeinated Reader. Last year I listened to 25 audiobooks, so I’ll aim for that again with the Binge Listener level at 20-30.

The Historical Fiction Reading Challenge is hosted by The Intrepid Reader. I read 15 in this genre last year, so I will aim for that again with the Medieval level.

I’ve seen some other interesting-looking challenges with various categories, like this one. But I don’t want to get involved in too many to keep up with. I may have already! We’ll see how it goes.

Do you participate in reading challenges? Which ones?

Reading Challenge Wrap-Ups

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It’s that time of year–time to close and report the results of the different reading challenges I participated in this year.

I finished the the Back to the Classics Challenge early this year! I completed all twelve categories, and I posted what I read for each here.

The Nonfiction Reading Challenge hosted by Shelly Rae at Book’d Out encourages us to read nonfiction in particular categories. The categories and the books I read for them:

1.Biography: Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn
2. Travel: EPIC: An Around-the-World Journey Through Christian History by Tim Challies
3. Self-help: Don’t Overthink It by Anne Bogel
4. Essay Collection: Christian Reflections by C. S. Lewis
5. Disease
6. Oceanography: Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
7. Hobbies: How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
8. Indigenous Cultures
9. Food
10. Wartime Experiences: Woman Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue by Kathryn J. Atwood
11.Inventions: The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith, the “Q” Gadget Wizard of World War II by Charles Fraser-Smith.
12. Published in 2021: Ten Words to Live By: Delighting In and Doing What God Commands by Jen Wilkin.

My post listing all the book I read this year shows I competed 38 nonfiction books. But they didn’t all fit these categories, so I only reached “Nonfiction nibbler” status as far as this challenge goes.

Bev at My Reader’s Block hosts the Mount TBR Challenge to encourage us to read the books we already own.. Every 12 books read is another level or “mountain” climbed.

The Backlist Reader Challenge hosted by The Bookwyrm’s Hoard has the same idea as Mt. TBR.

I used to list all of the previously-owned books I read for this challenge, but that’s not a requirement, and seems redundant after listing all the titles I read this year. But I completed 48 books from my own shelves and Kindle app, reaching Mt. Ararat for the Mount TBR challenge. That feels like an accomplishment!

I enjoy reading Christmas books after Thanksgiving through the end of the year. Tarissa at In the Bookcase hosts a Literary Christmas Reading Challenge for that purpose each year. This year, my Christmas reading included:

  • Expecting Christmas, a 40-day devotional by multiple authors
  • A Quilt for Christmas by Sandra Dallas, a Civil war-era novel. A woman makes a quilt for her soldier husband. When he dies, she assumes the quilt was buried with him. But the quilt shows up again in a surprising way. Meanwhile, she has to determine how far her beliefs go when she is asked to shelter a runaway slave wanted for murder.
  • Last Christmas in Paris: A Novel of World War I by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb. An epistolary novel set during WWI. Four friends plan to meet in Paris for Christmas the year WWI starts, thinking it will be over by then. Obviously, it wasn’t, and they don’t make that date. The last of them goes to Paris for Christmas in the 1960s to read the last unopened letter. So good.
  • A Christmas by the Sea by Melody Carlson. A woman and her son travel to the beach house she has inherited. She plans to fix it up and sell it to replenish their resources after her husband’s long illness. But her son thrives in the new town and wants to stay.
  • The Yuletide Angel by Sandra Ardoin. A Victorian-era novel in which an anonymous donor, dubbed the Yuletide Angel, gifts needy families with supplies in the middle of the night. Only one person knows the benefactor’s identity is female, and he follows her unseen to insure her safety. But soon someone else stalks her in the darkness.
  • The Ornament Keeper by Eva Marie Everson. A woman unpacks the special ornaments her husband has given her each of their twenty years together. But now they have separated due to festering anger and unforgiveness. Can they find their way back to each other before it’s too late?
  • Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien wrote letters to his children as Father Christmas for several years, complete with disasters set off by the kind but bumbling North Polar Bear. Delightful.

Letters from Father Christmas and Last Christmas in Paris weren’t on my radar when I started the challenge, but I am so glad I found them. Otherwise, I did read all I set out to read for the challenge this year.

I also listened to a Christmas story laid out as a podcast series by Audible, The Cinnamon Bear: A Holiday Adventure. It was styled like a modern version of old radio serials. It was a little bizarre in places, kind of a conflation of Candy Land and Oz. But it had some clever writing here and there.

We watched a couple of Christmas movies, but not our usual White Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life. We saw A Castle for Christmas, in which an author running from her problems visits a castle in Scotland where her father worked as a child. She learns the castle is for sale, but the curmudgeonly owner doesn’t really want to let go of it. It’s a pretty cute movie. One not-good part, but nothing explicit is shown. And we also watched Elf, which was a lot of fun.

And that wraps up for reading challenges for this year! I’ll hammer out my reading plans for next year next week. I’ll probably participate in each of these again. They all enhance my reading and broaden my horizons.

Back to the Classics Challenge Wrap-Up

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Karen at Books and Chocolate hosts the Back to the Classics Challenge. Books have to be 50 years old and fit within the categories chosen for the year in order to qualify. Karen draws a name from participants at the end of the year to receive a $30 gift card towards books, and the number of categories you finish determines how many entries you get.

Here are the categories I finished this year. Titles link back to my reviews. I actually finished back in June (a record for me, I think), but am just now finishing this post.

1. A 19th century classic: The Warden by Anthony Trollope
2. A 20th century classic: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
3. A classic by a woman author: Silas Marner by George Elliot (Mary Ann Evans)
4. A classic in translation: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
5. A classic by BIPOC author: The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth and Olive Gilbert
6. A classic by a new-to-you author: Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster
7. New-to-you classic by a favorite author: Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
8. A classic about an animal, or with an animal in the title: Animal Farm by George Orwell
9. A children’s classic: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
10. A humorous or satirical classic: Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
11. A travel or adventure classic (fiction or non-fiction): A Room With a View by E. M. Forster
12. A classic play: Our Town by Thornton Wilder.

Karen wants us to put the number of entries we get for the prize drawing based on the number of categories completed. I have three entries because I completed all twelve categories.

Karen also wants us to put our contact email here: barbarah06 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Once again, I very much enjoyed this challenge. Some of the books were cozy; some were challenging. All stimulated thinking in one form or another. That they still speak and still provoke thought and discussion after to so long a time is, I suppose, what makes them classics.

Louisa May Alcott Reading Challenge

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Louisa May Alcott Reading Challenge

Tarissa at In the Bookcase hosts the Louisa May Alcott Reading Challenge in June. You can read all the particulars here.

This year I’m reading The Orchard House by Heidi Chiavaroli. It’s a time slip novel with one story set in modern times and another in Louisa’s time, both connected to her. And isn’t that cover gorgeous!

I doubt I’ll read anything else connected with LMA this year–I have too many other things on my reading plate. But we’ll see. If this one goes quickly, I might try to work in another.

Reading Plans for 2021

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One of my favorite things to do is chart out my reading plans for the year. I don’t want to be rigid about them: I like flexibility to pick up something unexpected during the year. But being intentional with my plans helps me get to the books I’ve long wanted to read plus expands my reading horizons.

Last year I participated in several reading challenges, thinking that they’d be easy to do since they overlapped and I could list the same books for several of them. But the record-keeping took way too much time and thought. Then one host just stopped blogging in February and one took her blog down during the year. So this year, I am back to the tried and true plans I have used for years plus a couple of new ones that worked out well last year.

Karen at Books and Chocolate hosts the Back to the Classics Challenge. Books have to be 50 years old and fit within the categories chosen for the year in order to qualify. Karen draws a name from participants at the end of the year to receive a $30 gift card towards books, and the number of categories you finish determines how many entries you get.

Here are the categories for this year. We don’t have to name what books we’ll read yet, but I have a couple of ideas (subject to change!)

 
1. A 19th century classic: any book first published from 1800 to 1899. Probably The Warden by Anthony Trollope, the first of his Chronicles of Barsetshire series. I read the middle book in the series, Doctor Thorne, last year and loved it.
2. A 20th century classic: any book first published from 1900 to 1971.
3. A classic by a woman author. Something from D. E. Stevenson.
4. A classic in translation, meaning any book first published in a language that is not your primary language.
5. A classic by BIPOC author; that is, a non-white author.
6. A classic by a new-to-you author, i.e., an author whose work you have never read. Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster. I’ve read a couple of books based on this one, so I need to read the original.
7. New-to-you classic by a favorite author — a new book by an author whose works you have already read. I’m working on reading what Dickens books I haven’t read yet. Maybe Nicholas Nickleby.
8. A classic about an animal, or with an animal in the title. The animal can be real or metaphorical. (i.e., To Kill a Mockingbird).
9. A children’s classic. Thinking about either Peter Pan or Tarzan.
10. A humorous or satirical classic.
11. A travel or adventure classic (fiction or non-fiction). It can be a travelogue or a classic in which the main character travels or has an adventure.
12. A classic play. Plays will only count in this category.
 

Bev at My Reader’s Block hosts the Mount TBR Challenge to encourage us to read the books we already own.. Every 12 books read is another level or “mountain” climbed. We don’t have to list the books yet, but we do have to commit to a level. I am committing to Mt. Vancouver (36 books). The one main rule here is that the books have to have been owned by us before January 1, 2021.

The Backlist Reader Challenge hosted by The Bookwyrm’s Hoard has the same idea as Mt. TBR. The main difference is we don’t have to own the books–they can be on our TBR list as well as actually on our shelves.

We don’t have to list what books we’ll read for the TBR or Backlist challenges, but these are some that I want to get to. I only asked for two books for Christmas—a record low for me!—because I had so many stacked up from previous gifts.

The Nonfiction Reading Challenge hosted by Shelly Rae at Book’d Out should be easy, since I read a lot of nonfiction anyway. But the books need to fit in these categories for this year’s challenge.

  1. Biography
  2. Travel
  3. Self-help
  4. Essay Collection
  5. Disease
  6. Oceanography
  7. Hobbies
  8. Indigenous Cultures
  9. Food
  10. Wartime Experiences
  11. Inventions
  12. Published in 2021

There are different levels to choose from for goals. Though I know I’ll read more than 12, I am only going to aim for the Nonfiction Nibbler (6 books). If I come up with titles to fit the other categories–titles that I want to read for themselves and not just for the challenge—I’ll see how far I can get.

Finally, Tarissa at In the Bookcase hosts a Louisa May Alcott Reading Challenge in June and a Literary Christmas Challenge in November and December. I’ll say more about those when they come up.

So that the plan for this year. I am excited!

Do you have any plans for reading this year? Do you participate in any reading challenges? I’d love to hear about them.

(Sharing with Senior Salon)

Literary Christmas Challenge Wrap-Up 2020

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A Literary Christmas: Reading Challenge // inthebookcase.blogspot.com

Tarissa at In the Bookcase hosts a Literary Christmas Reading Challenge to encourage reading and sharing at Christmas time.

I didn’t get to one book from my original plans, but I did listen to an audiobook I hadn’t planned to—so I guess it all worked out evenly in the end.

Here’s what I finished, linked back to my reviews:

  • Loving My Actual Christmas by Alexandra Kuykendall, nonfiction. Ways to enjoy Christmas as it is rather than an idealized version, with lots of tips.
  • Joy to the World: Daily Readings for Advent by Charles Spurgeon, nonfiction. Short excerpts taken from some of Spurgeon’s Christmas sermons and arranged as a 25-day devotional.
  • A Christmas Longing by Joni Eareckson Tada, nonfiction. A lovely book filled with Joni’s artwork and meditations about Christmas.
  • A Very Bookish Christmas by Sarah Holman, J. Grace Pennington, Kate Willis, and Rebekah Jones, fiction. Four stories each tie in with a classic book.
  • Mistletoe and Murder: A Christmas Suspense Collection of ten novellas by different authors, fiction. Very suspenseful!
  • A Tale of Two Hearts and The Old Lace Shop, two stories in Michelle Griep’s Once Upon a Dicken’s Christmas. I’m not quite done with the last one, but I wanted to get the wrap-up post in before the reading challenge closed completely.

Thanks to Tarissa for hosting once again! I always enjoy it.