💬 Friday Thread: What Surprised You in Your Reading Life This Year? & What's On Your Bookish Holiday Wishlist?
Plus, what have you been reading lately?
Hello, Happy Friday!📚
Well, we’re officially into what is often a very busy month. How are you feeling? Is your reading going strong or are you like me and scrambling to find something that grabs you? I’ve sampled so many books in the last couple days, gotten well into a couple only to decide to DNF (not finish) them. I’ll share them below because I’m open to picking one of them back up if any of you tell me I should continue. I’ve decided I may need to just pick up something totally out of my comfort zone and start reading, or close my eyes and just randomly pick something off of my print tbr shelf. Desperate times call for a different reading plan haha. I say desperate times because I can feel myself starting to feel grumpy and out of sorts with no book to look forward to getting back to at the end of the day- can you relate?
A book that I started a couple weeks ago that I’ve been dipping back into this week and is helping to remind me that our reading lives ebb and flow, but reading will be there for whatever we need it to be is How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen. I plan on doing a full review on here when I finish, but for now I’ll share some quotes that have really “hit” me and maybe, if you’re feeling like me and having some reading struggles this month, they will resonate with you too!
Reading became the pathway to the world, a world without geographic boundaries or even the steep risers of time
Women seem to be reading not only as a solitary activity but as an opportunity for emotional connection, not just to the characters in a novel but to those others who are reading or have read the same novel themselves - this is so true right?! I feel like this Friday Thread is a way we’re all emotionally connecting over books, characters, reading etc:)
A book provides what it always has: a haven
What saved my sanity were books. What saved my sanity was disappearing, if only for the fifteen minutes before I inevitably began to nod off in bed, into the convoluted plots of Elmore Leonard’s latest thriller, or into one of my old favorites like Wuthering Heights…
These are just a few of the quotes that spoke to me in just the first 30 pages. I’m looking forward to the rest of the book. Since I seem to be entering my era of reading books about reading, I put on my Christmas wishlist the nonfiction book 1000 Books To Read Before You Die: A Life Changing List by James Mustich . I’m very curious about what the 1000 books are and I like the idea of having this as a little coffee table book to browse here and there. Also, I think it could be a fun conversational piece when other readers come over. I’m excited to hear what bookish gifts you’d like to receive in the comments.
In case you missed the recommendation exchanges….
Question Time
The questions I ask in weekly threads are meant to be fun and help us connect, so please know you don’t have to answer each question, if you only have the time/desire to answer one, great! Please put book titles IN ALL CAPS for easy reading:)
What surprised you in your reading life this year? - this could be books you expected to love but didn’t or vice versa, genres, the amount of reading you did, really anything that surprised you this year!
What’s on your bookish holiday wishlist?
What have you been reading lately? - and do/did you like it?
Have a great weekend! 📚
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