January started off as a really good month for reading. I set my goal for 40 books again this year, back up from 30 last year. I’m intending to go into this year reading good books and by that I mean by reading books I want to read and especially more fiction. I think I’ve read a bunch of filler books in recent years which have been less appetizing to the reading palate than I thought they would be. I’m going to get back into monthly or quarterly summaries here so I hope those who enjoy reading will also like this! And as always, please share what you are reading.…

Reading This year I lowered my reading expectations, intending to tackle a pile of magazines and longer books I needed to read this year. I typically read between 40-60 books a year and thought 30 would be a good number to aim for instead of going above and beyond. Well, I hit 40 books a few days ago, picking up some steam in the last couple of months when I thought had burned out. I also read some of the magazines but definitely didn’t tackle the longer books I wanted to read. Looking at you 2025. I still listened to quite a few audiobooks but am trying to shift away…

Reading took a hit in early March with little inspiration but I was able to pull out some interesting reading mid-month that carried over into most of April. I’m currently in another hiatus. Cyclical reading is my life. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett: I love Ann Patchett but I did not love this book. I started it as an audio back in December and then let it lapse. I picked it back up again when the hold came in and then I just could not continue on. The story did not grasp me and I was really over hearing about Our Town every other paragraph. This is a pandemic book,…

My reading slowed in February, which is about how it goes when I come off a bigger month of reading. I thought I would finish another book or two but got a bit bored with a couple of audiobooks I was reading and was slow to read some paper books. There’s always March to finish those! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Claire Jarvis (@infinitenap) Slog: A Trail Tale by Claire Jarvis I technically read this in January but I forgot to cover it in my write-up. This isn’t a book in the way you think of a book and you will only be able to find…

I lowered my reading goal this year to 30 books for my Goodreads Challenge, down from my usual goal of 40-45 books. Last year I read 42 books, in 2022 I read 60 books and 2021 and 2020 are a bit skewed because I was counting a lot of the books I was reading Forest at that time so those years come in at 110 and 188—and it looks like 2019 is skewed at 139, too. I mean, I did read them! Most of them might have been 20 pages long, though! hah! The reason for lowering my goal this year was because I wanted to focus on some longer…

In 2023 I set the goal to read 40 books in my Goodreads challenge. I hit 42 and spent December thinking I would read two more but just never did. And that’s fine. I lowered my goal to 30 this year because I want to read a giant stack of magazines I have piled up in addition to some thicker books I’ve been putting off for a while. Audiobooks will still fill in many gaps and I suspect I’ll surpass 30 books easily but I prefer to ease up on myself on this end a bit. I looked over the books I read in 2023 on Goodreads and realized it…

Alright, time for January’s book roundup! I read 8 books this month! I’ll break down which is audio, kindle, and paper. Audiobooks did a lot of heavy lifting as per usual and I think you want to add in more reading to your life, an audiobook is the way to go. 1: Playing God in the Meadow by Martha Leb Molnar – Kindle I enjoyed this book but was frustrated with the author at several points along the way. The author and her husband have bought a property in Vermont and in front of their house is a huge former apple orchard that has fallen into disrepair due to disease.…

As per usual, I hit a reading slump around May which lasted through most of June. I didn’t finish a book for about six weeks but I am slowly climbing out of that hole. I will likely have another slump, based on years of noticing my pattern, sometime later this summer. Which is why I do a lot of reading at the beginning to the year to counterbalance it all. I’m currently at 35/45 for my Goodreads challenge and I suspect I will end up around the 60 book mark again this year when all is said and done. Audiobooks are still carrying a heavy weight in the count but…

A few years ago I regularly did Monthly Book Reports but that fell by the wayside. It’s hard to believe it has been so long but I think I’m going to bring them back in the form of quarterly updates with my favorites from the previous three months. For the first quarter of the year I’ve read 19 books. Some were great, others I muddled through, and I abandoned one or two. It has been good to see so many people talk about abandoning books that you can’t get into because I was a former “finisher” and it is something I still cling to and am working on. Sure, it…