Nonfiction Review: ALL MY KNOTTED-UP LIFE: A MEMOIR (+Discussion Questions)

All My Knotted Up Life: a Memoir by Beth Moore

Tyndale Momentum, 2023. 304 pages.

Many years ago the Women's Bible Study at church used a video series by Beth Moore and her organization, Living Proof Ministries. Every woman in our group really enjoyed the study, especially the video portion where Beth was filmed speaking to a group of women on Ephesians, a New Testament book of the Bible. I thought she was incredibly warm, personable, and, surprisingly, funny. I looked forward to every session. After that session ended our group went on to study some other topic or book of the Bible and I didn't think about Beth Moore much after that until her name came up in the news.

In 2016 Beth Moore made a bit of a splash in the news because she was one of the few well-known Christians to criticize publicly then-candidate Trump for his Access Hollywood tape where he talked about the way he treats women. I remember being pleased when I heard this. Finally a Christian standing up to despicable Trump behavior. What we didn't hear about on the news was how awful the people in her church and the Southern Baptist Conference (SBC) treated her after that criticism. Christians were angry with Moore, not Trump. 

Moore was back in news again in 2021 when she announced she was splitting from the SBC over the church's handling of sexual abuse cases among pastors. The abuse had been going on for decades but had only recently come to light. Instead of dealing with it church was covering up these crimes. When she confronted the church's leadership over their white-washing of these serious findings, the men on the council essentially told her to "shut up and stay in your lane." She'd had enough and she quit her association with the denomination, which meant it also ended her association with her own congregation. Once again, I rejoiced that some woman was finally standing up to those bullies, disguised as men of God. What I didn't know at the time was Beth Moore, herself, was a sex abuse survivor.

All My Knotted Up Life is Beth Moore's story, starting in her childhood when, as a young child, she was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her father. It continues through her young adult years where she heard the call to serve God, and onto her ministry years and beyond.

I loved every minute listening to this remarkably candid, funny, excruciating memoir. Beth read the book herself and her Texas drawl is so charming. In fact, I kept thinking her voice reminded me of someone I know well and then realized I have a friend, also from Texas, who sounds just like Beth. I was charmed. I cried as she shared hard stories for her to tell and couldn't help wondering if some of her friends from her old congregation are ashamed at the way they treated her as she tried to stay faithful to God and his calling in her life.

As a Christian I found much comfort in her words. It is so hard to confess to being a Christian these days when so many Christians behave in such un-Christlike ways... purporting to love Jesus but then being the most angry, racist, sexist, unforgiving people on the planet. Not Beth. She's one of the good ones.

This is her story.

My rating: 5 stars.

Note: This is a reposting of the review I wrote in November for this book another memoir, Stay True. I separated it out here and reposted it so I could add the discussion questions, below, for book club discussion groups.

Book Discussion Questions

1. What did you think of the book and your reading experience with it?

2. Have you had any previous experiences with Beth Moore's writings or Bible Studies. If so, in what capacity and what did you think of that work/study?

3. What surprised you most about Moore's story?

4. Moore used a lot of foreshadowing in her writing about events in her childhood before she revealed she was sexually abused by her father. What were some examples of this foreshadowing and how did it make you feel as a reader?

5. Beth Moore described one episode when her father abused her after driving home from a lesson in another town. Do you think this was the first time for this type of behavior? Why or why not?

6. According to A.I.:

Research indicates that child sexual abuse is a significant issue within religious communities, including families of reported Christians. While abuse is generally more common within a child’s home (regardless of religious affiliation), studies have identified specific risk factors and patterns within Christian and other religious settings, particularly involving patriarchal authority structures, the high trust placed in leaders, and a tendency toward secrecy or shielding offenders. 

Do you agree with this statement? How did this same pattern follow Beth Moore throughout her life and her ministry?

7. There were super serious parts to this story but also some very funny moments. Give some examples of the humor used in the book.

8. Moore was a devoted church-goer even as a child and dedicated her life to God even at a young age. Then as an emerging adult she had a mystical experience while a counselor at a girls' camp where she felt the presence of God come over her. (p.112-3) What did she do next? (p.115) Do you recall your baptism and a conversion experience? Talk about them. Have you ever experienced God's presence in this way?

9. Mental illness is a recurring theme throughout the book. Talk about Moore's mother and her husband and their struggles with their mental health issues. 

10. Respond to this quote from the book: "Some of us have prayed hard. And wondered why on earth everything always had to be hard."

11. Beth Moore felt called to Christian ministry yet she kept trying to manufacture how she would serve God. How did she get involved in women's ministry and where did it lead?

12. Beth got herself crosswise with the Southern Baptist Conference several times in her life, the last being in 2021, when she left the conference and her church. How did you feel about these experiences? The reactions from her friends? Her church? Her family, especially her husband.

13. There were a lot more topics we could talk about from the book. Were there any we missed you'd like us to address in our discussion? Expand.

14. Can you imagine asking a friend or family member to read this book? Elaborate.

*I wrote these discussion questions for my own book church made up of a bunch of women who attend the same church as me. I couldn't find any questions online which I though really delved into the depth of the book as much as I hoped they would. Feel free to use these questions for your discussion groups. If you paste any of them onto your post or in printed form, please give me credit. Thank you. Anne@HeadFullofBooks

Sunday Salon -- Hello 2026

Christmas is over but not our memories of it. Here is my daughter's nutcracker collection creatively displayed in her entryway. 

The past few Sundays I have posted lists of books to conclude my reading year in 2025, so today I am posting my first update of 2026. There is a lot to report, making up for a month of no posts:

Weather: Gorgeous! After our November and December of rain, rain, and more rain, we are being rewarded with lovely blue skies, with the temperature in the 40s and 50s during the day and 30s at night. Don actually is on the roof taking down our Christmas lights as I type this paragraph. He thought he'd leave up a few lights as an homage to the Seattle Seahawks since the bulbs are green and blue, their team colors, but he decided to take them all down saying, "When am I going to have another day like today to be outside?"

We are finished with Mom's house: Last week Don and I went to Eugene to meet with my brother and older sister to finish moving everything out of Mom's house, preparing it for sale. We'd gotten the lion's share of the task completed when we were all there in October and on the subsequent trips in November but we still had to deal with all the furniture she didn't take with her to her new place and pack up the loose ends to distribute to St. Vincent's for resale. We did it! The house is empty and new buyers are already in place which means we didn't have to spend a lot of time cleaning. Woot-woot! At one point Mom mused she had no idea how much work it would be to move and clean out a house. We all chuckled. She done all the emotional work while we did all the physical work, I guess.

Christmas decorations and misspellings: For family dinner on Christmas Eve I lovingly set the table ahead of time, using a tablecloth I rarely use, but one dedicated to the holiday. We had a lovely, candlelit dinner after we attended the late afternoon church service. I left the tablecloth in place after cleaning up the dinner, thinking it made the dining room look so festive. The next day, one of my daughters and I sat at the table to play cards. She looked hard at the tablecloth and asked, "How do you spell 'mistletoe'?" I looked where she was looking and realized the whole cloth was covered with a misspelling of the word, spelling it 'misteltoe'. Now I don't know how to feel about the tablecloth. Do I ditch the cloth or do I keep it and make fun of it forevermore? What would you do?

 And then there is this funny ornament: We think it is misspelling/misquoting of Luke 2:11. We put it on the tree every year anyway and then make fun of it. We've had it for years.

This says: "Today ie born wish us a Saviour when ir Christ the Lord." We think it is supposed to say from Luke 2:11: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, who is Christ the Lord.

Speaking of Christmas decorations: We finally put away all our Christmas decorations yesterday. We like to leave the decorations up through Twelfth Night, January 5th, because that is when the wise men arrived with their gifts. Before we had a chance to put things away we left for Eugene for part of a week and then Don was smashed with meetings when we got back. Anyway the task is done. We even got the stepstool out today to swap out our Christmas glasses and mugs for the regular ones. That is usually the last task we accomplish and it is often weeks after everything else is tucked away.  It is so much fun to put out decorations and so unfun to put them away. I'm sure this is a universal feeling.

End of the year lists: At the end of each year I wrap up my reading-year by putting together a bunch of best-of lists. Click on the links for any of these lists you haven't seen yet or are curious about:

• Top Book Club Selections of 2025
• 2025 Survey of Books -- What books I liked and didn't like in categories
• How I did on my 2025 Reading Challenges -- a final roundup
• A retrospective of 2025 through Sunday Salon posts -- highlights from my year
• Top Ten Books I read in 2025 -- both fiction and nonfiction
• My year in books -- a meme -- silly but fun.

Other blog posts you may have missed:

• Review: The Rose Field --#3 book in the Book of Dust series
• Review: A Marriage at Sea
• First review of 2026: Worth Waiting For
• Classics Club: 26 for 2026 --answering 26 questions about my experiences with classic books.
• Review: The Wind Knows My Name -- a book club selection
• TTT: Anticipated books in 2026
• A Roundup of 50 Books Everyone Should Read Before They Die
• Review: Sunrise on the Reaping -- #5 of Hunger Games series
• Review: Wreck -- sequel to Sandwich

An aside: I just stepped outside and heard an unmistakable sound of a lawn mower. Someone is mowing their lawn in January!

Look at what my daughter made for me: Isn't it wonderful? A warm, colorful, very uniquely patterned comforter. I love it.

Reading in 2026: 

• Of the five books I've finished so far this year, four of them are five-star books: Wreck; The Wind Knows My Name; Mother Mary Comes to Me; and So Far Gone. (Two reviews pending.) It feels like a great start to my reading year. 
• I'm currently reading: A Passage to India (for my 12-pages/day classics challenge; The Correspondent (for book club) and The Lion Women of Tehran (also for book club.) All of these books are also excellent.
• My current reading challenges.

MLK Day: Monday is a National Holiday to honor the legend of Martin Luther King, Jr. Our racist President doesn't think it should be a holiday anymore which infuriates me. If something isn't about him, he hates it. Ugh. In honor of MLK, we will attend a program in our town.  I urge you to do something to honor his memory on Monday also. Find out what is happening in your community. If you don't live in the US, you are lucky, but I fear Trump may cause problems for you, too. I cringe to think of it (Venezuela, Denmark, Greenland, UK, Nigeria...)

Minnesota: While I'm at it, I am also so disturbed about what is happening in Minnesota around the death of Renee Good at the hands of ICE. Say her name. She was not a terrorist. She was a mother and an award-winning poet. What is happening to us? It is so, so ugly. 

I needed a palette cleaner after thinking about all the negative stuff happening in our country. So I visited this site Positive.News  about praise-worthy stuff happening this week in the world. Whew. I feel a bit better.

Happy 2026!

-Anne

Review: WRECK

Today I was reviewing in my mind the five books I've read since the new year has begun and for crying-out-loud I could only remember four of them. I had to consult Goodreads to refresh my memory of this book, Wreck by Catherine Newman. And the funny thing about that is I absolutely loved the book.

Wreck is the sequel to Sandwich, which one of my book groups read last year and everyone loved. If possible I think Wreck is funnier and more poignant than the first and I thought it was plenty funny and poignant.

In Sandwich we meet Rocky who is thrilled to be vacationing with her grown children and her parents, as they vacation on their annual trip to Cape Cod. She is squeezed, literally since the house was small, between the two other generations (in a sandwich) and their needs and she is moody due to her menopause symptoms. While there she starts to feel the weight of some secrets from the past and confronts her feelings about potential future changes. Wreck picks up the story two years later. Rocky and her family are together again, this time their own home in Western Massachusetts. This time the title, Wreck, related to Rocky's health being knocked off kilter and about the news of a train wreck which killed one of her son's friends from high school. Both become obsessions for Rocky's focus.

At many points in the story Ricky finds herself down the rabbit-hole of the Internet finding out information she doesn't want to know about the possible cause of her damnable rash that keeps getting worse. I've done the same thing and usually the results are that good. 

Remember the world from back when you couldn't even find out if you had strep throat without a doctor calling the wall phone in your kitchen? Now you just click into your computer and discover that you have cancer - or that you have - I'm seeing this now - a white-blood-cell disorder called leukopenia - or that they've scheduled your autopsy.

When her daughter is home from work with a migraine, Rocky has to stop herself from googling

how often a migraine turns out to be an occult or bursting brain aneurysm because this is a bad neighborhood in [her] mind that nobody else should be led into. 

There are so many brilliant moments in the book, all of them find me nodding my head. Been there, done that. After her father, who lives with Rocky and her husband after her mother died, can't recall a friend's name, Rocky finds she can relate.

I know this exact feeling. I can be on my mental hands and knees, flailing around under the couch of my mind with a hockey stick, trying to sweep out a name I can't remember — and all I'll dredge up is a Ping-Pong ball, a catnip mouse, and a spool of thread. If I look away, though, sometimes it might creep out on its own little feet.

Or who can't relate to this? When Rocky is ambushed by her grief over the death of her mother, she realizes it has become like a background noise in her life. 

Grief is like the sound of the exhaust fan over the stove—a constant hum that recedes a little to the background over time, though you never get to turn it off.

One reviewer said she thought the book was basically plotless and I would agree, but I would add it was plotless in a good way. Rocky and her family are all living their lives, warts and all. Sometimes things don't go as planned, there are road bumps, and misunderstandings but in the end there is love, And it is love which makes the difference.

I confess to crying during a good deal of this book. I was very touched by it, clearly.  Afterwards I instantly messaged one of my fellow book club members to urge her to read it, if she hasn't already. Now I urge you to do the same, but start with Sandwich. The book could stand on its own but why not get the fuller picture? Besides the books are both easy and enjoyable reads.

My rating: 5 stars.

2026 is off to a good start!

-Anne

Review: SUNRISE ON THE REAPING (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games #0.5)

Book Beginning quote:

     "Happy Birthday, Haymitch!"

     The upside of being born on reaping day is that you get to sleep late on your birthday. It is pretty much downhill from there.

Friday56 quote:

     So don't feed the nightmares. Don't let yourself panic. Don't give the Capitol that. They've taken enough already.

Summary: It is the Quarter Quells which means there will twice as many tributes competing in the Hunger Games this year. Twenty-four in all. So when Haymitch Abernathy is selected to represent one of the four from District 12, he isn't really surprised. This is his story.

Review: Back in 2008 I became a Hunger Games fan. I was a fledgling teen librarian at the time and I was thrilled to find a book kids were really excited about. To a small degree the series became like that generation's Harry Potter. I wasn't blogging at the time but by the time Catching Fire came out a year later I was, so I did a combination review of books. Read it here. Over the next several years I re-reviewed both of the books once more (Hunger Games here; Catching Fire here) and had many more mentions of the books in my blog when I created several different lists of favorite/most popular books in the library. In 2010 when we were preparing to receive the third book in the series, Mockingjay, I was thrilled and created an announcement post. (Read it here.) I ordered three books to arrive the day it came out in August 2010 so my daughters and I could all read it at the same time. Here we are doing just that:

Me and my college-age daughters reading Mockingjay the day it arrived in August 2010.

And here is my review of Mockingjay written just five days after the launch of the book.

Fast forward ten years to 2020 when Suzanne Collins published the fourth book in the series, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I was retired by then so I have no idea what kind of reception the book got in the library. Were teens familiar with the series anymore? I didn't know. My younger daughter, who was home with us for COVID lockdown, and I planned to read this one at the same time but my older daughter hijacked my copy of the book before I could get to it. Not together, but the three of us all read it eventually. I didn't like this prequel, considered #0.0 in the series, as much as the originals. (Read my review here.) For one thing I thought the book was too long and could easily have been published as two books. And I realized I didn't feel the need to know how President Snow got started with the Hunger Games. I am realizing just now as I type this, perhaps I didn't like this book as well because I didn't like the COVID lockdowns and had a lot of trouble settling down with books in general that whole year. Not the book's fault, but COVID's? Hmm.

Proof that the series was popular with teens in my library. Hunger Games and the two sequels (at the time) were all in the top ten for circulations in my library over the eleven years the school was open. I created this list on the last day of school in 2016.

Knowing I was so ambivalent about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I hesitated getting very excited about the fifth book in the series, Sunrise on the Reaping. You'd never know this, however, since I went ahead and preordered the audiobook to arrive the day it was published in March. In fact, I let both of my girls listen to it on my Audible account first. Then I kept putting off listening, finally resolving to listen to the book before year's end. I finished it in the nick of time, on December 26th. And here I am reviewing it almost a month later. Dragging my feet again. My last review from books read in 2025.

To say that I was delighted with Sunrise on the Reaping is an understatement. I felt like I was back in 2008-09, reading Hunger Games and Catching Fire for the first time. I was just as enthralled with the story and horrified by the whole premise of the games. Exciting parts were exciting and the backstory was the best of the whole set. But here is my favorite part, which was very different than the other four, Sunrise on the Reaping was stuffed full of poetry. The book almost sang for it. In my opinion it made the emotions of story more amplified. A good deal of the poetry was from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". I recognized it. But a lot of the poetry went unattributed in the audiobook like the snippet below was from William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence". I looked it up. And I imagine a good deal of the poetry was written by Collins herself.

"A truth that's told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent." --William Blake

It was on the point of the poetry that Don, my husband who listened to the audiobook with me, and I diverged on our review of the story. I loved it, he not so much. Or to be more precise, he didn't care for the way that the book's narrator, Jefferson White, read the verses of "The Raven." He read with a definite beat, almost like a drum beating out the rhythm. I interpreted this as the beating of Haymitch's heart or the drumbeat going on inside his head. A picky detail but it lost a rating point for Don. I gave the book a 5-star rating, he gave it 4-stars.

As you can see from this disjointed and long-winded review, I have had a lot to do with The Hunger Games over the past seventeen years and have loved most of those moments, especially those shared with my family. Do I need another sequel/prequel? No, I'm satisfied with where the story let us off at the end of Sunrise on the Reaping. Will I read another sequel/prequel if another comes along. Yes. Yes, I will. I'm a fan, remember?

 

Now it is your turn to share what you think of the Hunger Games series or tell us about the book you are currently reading... comment and link up below.

_______________________________________________

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

A Roundup -- 50 Classics Everyone Should Read Before They Die

A Roundup of the 50 Classics Books 

Everyone Should Read Before They Die

This past week I put on my geek hat again, this time to roundup the top 50 classics everyone should read before they die. 

My method: I consulted 20 lists found online. My favorite lists were: Harvard Book Store Top 100 books and a list of 100 books to read before college, created by College Board in 2022. These two lists added many more recent books, or modern classics, compared to the others. Two or three lists only included books from the 20th century, like Time Magazine's Top 100 of all "Time" only included books from the time period in which they were a published magazine, 1923 to present. One list, oddly, included no books by Russian authors. I couldn't figure out why, but that may account for the reason Tolstoy and Dostoevsky titles aren't closer to the top.

A few more particulars: 

• My publication date cutoff to be included was 25 years ago. Many, many wonderful books, really great modern classics, should be on this list but I decided that is for a different list. One list creator limited her titles to only those with publication dates over 75 years ago, meaning she missed To Kill a Mockingbird among many. There is no standard number for what makes a book eligible to be called a "classic". Atonement just squeezed in with a 2001 pub. date, and Harry Potter titles were included because the first books were published before the deadline.
• I organized the list alphabetically by title. 
• The Great Gatsby was the only book on every single list with 20 votes. 
• Though I have them numbered 1-50, titles with the same number of votes should really have the same place. For example, 1984 thru TKAM all got 16 votes so they should all be in 3rd place, then BNW and WH got 15 votes each so they should both hold 8th place. That is too confusing so I just left it at 1-50.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the correct name but some lists called it "Alice in Wonderland" which implied the sequel, Through the Looking Glass. Whatever the name I was happy to see children's lit included on the list.
• Some list creators had five or six titles by one author, with Dickens and Faulkner getting the most multiple votes per list. At one point I made up my mind I wouldn't include more than two titles per author, just to spread the wealth around, but it wasn't necessary. Only one Dickens' book made the top 50 and none of Faulkner's.
• I also decided to leave plays off the list and then decided to break my own rule by including Hamlet, the best of the best, as a placeholder for all other great plays (Waiting for Godot; Romeo and Juliet; The Cherry Orchard; Our Town, etc.)
• Though there really aren't any surprises on this list, it is still mainly populated by old, dead white men writers. But I felt a shift was occuring. There are ten women authors named, I expected Austen and the Bronte sisters but was delighted to see the list included Morrison, Atwood, and Walker among them. Also there is at least one book each from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And to my count there are seven people authors of color included.
• Over 300 book titles were suggested with many super popular classics, like the Iliad/Odyssey, falling just below my cutoff threshold.

How I hope to use this list: I've read 38 of the top 50 books. I am determined to read all of the top 30, which means I only have six titles to go to complete that small subgoal for myself: Anna Karenina; Crime and Punishment; Moby-Dick; War and Peace; Midnight's Children; Don Quixote. Though all are big, dense books, I know I can do it. Classic books aren't necessarily my favorite books but I am never sorry I read them and I often feel like I have joined myself in union with all readers over the centuries when I complete them. My One-Big-Book of 2026 is Moby-Dick, so that is where I will be starting.

How you can use this list: My recommendation to you, if you aren't a classic book reader, is start with books that are shorter and not so threatening. Start with Great Gatsby. It is a short and easy read. When you are done, reward yourself by watching one of the movies made from it. Next pick a children's classic. Try The Little Prince if you've never read it. Next try a modern classic like A Handmaid's Tale or Atonement. You are actually making progress. Now read one you've always wondered about like A Picture of Dorian Gray, Fahrenheit 451, or 1984. After you are done with that reread any you've read before, or were supposed to have read in school, like Little Women or To Kill a Mockingbird. You may be surprised how much you like it now that you are an adult not being forced to read it. Lastly make of list of five others you'd like to read. Before you know it you will have ten classics under your belt and I bet you won't want to stop.

Must-read Classics

(Numbers after the titles represent how many lists out of 20 it was on. Star next to the numbers reflect the books I have read.)

1. Great Gatsby / Fitzgerald  -- 20*
2. Pride and Prejudice / Austen -- 18*
3. 1984 / Orwell -- 16*
4. Anna Karenina / Tolstoy -- 16
5. Catch-22 / Heller -- 16*
6. Jane Eyre / Charlotte Bronte --16*
7. To Kill a Mockingbird / Lee --16*
8. Brave New World / Huxley -- 15*
9. Wuthering Heights / Emily Bronte --15*
10. Catcher in the Rye / Salinger -- 14*
11. Crime and Punishment / Dostoevsky --14
12. Little Women / Alcott -- 14*
13. Moby-Dick / Melville -- 14
14. One Hundred Years of Solitude / Garcia Marquez -- 14*
15. Great Expectations / Dickens -- 13*
16. Lolita / Nabokov -- 13*
17. War and Peace / Tolstoy -- 13
18. Animal Farm / Orwell -- 12*
19. Beloved / Morrison -- 12*
20. Frankenstein / Shelley --12* 
21. Lord of the Rings series / Tolkien --12*
22. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Twain -- 11*
23. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Carroll -- 11* 
24. Count of Monte Cristo / Dumas -- 11*
25. Handmaid's Tale / Atwood -- 11*
26. Les Misérables / Hugo -- 11*
27. Midnight's Children / Rushdie -- 11
28. Slaughterhouse-Five / Vonnegut -- 11*
29. Call of the Wild / London -- 10*
30. Don Quixote / Cervantes --10
31. Dracula / Stoker --10
32. Grapes of Wrath / Steinbeck --10*
33. Invisible Man / Ellison --10
34. Little Prince / Saint-Exupéry -- 10*
35. Madame Bovary / Flaubert -- 10
36. Stranger /Camus -- 10
37. Ulysses / Joyce -- 10
38. Charlotte's Web / White -- 9*
39. Color Purple / Walker -- 9*
40. Fahrenheit 451 / Bradbury -- 9*
41. Middlemarch / Eliot -- 9*
42. Gone with the Wind / Mitchell -- 9*
43. Hamlet / Shakespeare -- 9*
44. Harry Potter series / Rowling -- 9*
45. Heart of Darkness / Conrad -- 9
46. Picture of Dorian Gray / Wilde -- 9*
47. Tess of the D'Urbervilles / Hardy -- 9*
48. Atonement / McEwan -- 8*
49. Brothers Karamazov / Dostoevsky -- 8*
50. Things Fall Apart / Achebe -- 8*

Are there any surprises to you? I was a little surprised that Harry Potter books made the cut and that Gone with the Wind is still getting mentioned since it has fallen on hard times lately with its references to "happy slaves."

If you are curious how many votes your favorite classic book got on my round-up and it isn't on the above top 50 list, leave a comment with the title name, I'll consult my spreadsheet and get back to you.

TTT: Anticipated Upcoming Books

Top Ten Tuesday: Anticipated Upcoming Books for the first half of 2026

Honestly I don't spend a lot of time paying attention to what is coming, since I always seem to be looking back trying to catch what I missed. But this week I noticed that Goodreads had a list of a few books to anticipate the first half of the year and these are the ones that sounded good to me:

I am a Maggie O'Farrell fan and so psyched for this new book. This is one I will definitely make room for on my reading schedule of 2026.

Ditto to my last comment. Ann Patchett is a must-read author for me. I will be busy in June reading these two books, hopefully. 

I've read three books by Saunders, loved two and hated one. This one drew my attention because the word "psychopomp" and the description, "Things get weird."

Oh-oh. This book isn't due out until the second half of the year. But Mason is another author I admire and now that I know he wrote his first book, North Woods, while in medical school, I am even more of a fan.

Clearly I am highlighting books today for authors I've already read and admired. That is the case for Kate Quinn, too. Her historical fiction is so good. This one sounds very different than all the others. The summary reminds me of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.

Unlike all the other books on this list, I have never heard of this author. I do like visiting historical or scenic sights and thought this collection of stories sounded like it was right up my alley.

Believe it or not I've never read a David Sedaris book. I figure 2026 is a good time to correct that omission. Plus in these times one needs to find humor where they can.

Publication date: Jan. 6. Guess I'd better run to the bookstore. This one is out already as of a few days ago. Moby-Dick is my one big book of the year so this book attracted me as it is a reimagining of the original. I think I should read the original first, however.

Publication date: Jan. 13. Don't have long to wait for this one, either, since it will be out tomorrow! I like the description: "I can't remember the last time a novel made me laugh so hard or feel so much tenderness for its characters."

I like reading true crime. This one sounds intriguing.

-Anne

My Year in Books -- a Meme

I was looking at old posts and I stumbled upon this one, an old meme, My Year in Books, from 2017. Thinking it was pretty fun and creative I decided to do it again. I created a list last year and had a lot of fun with it. Join me.

For those of you joining me from Sunday Salon, this is the last of my rogue posts other than a weekly update. Join in the fun!

My Year in Books

Rules?

• Answer the questions with titles from books you read in 2025. (Some may end up being silly, others may seem overly serious.)   
• The goal is to have fun. 
• Participate by copying the questions below. Erasing my answers and inserting you own.  
• Once you've created your post, link it below so others can see it, then visit others' posts to see how they answered the questions.
• Spread the word. Let's see if we can make this a thing again this year!

Questions:

In high school I was: The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty)

People might be surprised: What the Chicken Knows (Sy Montgomery)

I will never be: Perfection (Vincenzo Latronico)

My fantasy job is: How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell)

At the end of a long day I need: [a] Sandwich (Catherine Newman)

I hate it: [when there are] Furious Hours (Casey Cep)

Wish I had: [a doctor who says] We'll Prescribe You a Cat (Syou Ishida)

My family reunions are: Three Days in June (Anne Tyler)

At a party you’d find me: [acting rather crazy like] When the Moon Hits Your Eye (John Scalzi)

I’ve never been to: Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino)

A happy day includes: Sunshine (Jarrett Krosoczka)

Motto I live by: How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (Angie Cruz)

On my bucket list is: [seeing] The Beatles in America (Leigh Spencer)

In my next life, I want to have: [a] Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley]

Don't take your titles too seriously or judge the actual plot line of the book in your answers. Have fun with this.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

Review: THE WIND KNOWS MY NAME (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende, translated from Spanish by Francis Riddle

Book Beginnings quote: 

Vienna, November 1938 -- A sense of misfortune hung in the air.

Friday56 quote: 

They fulfilled their mission of scaring the locals into submission by annihilating more than eight hundred people, half of them children, with an average age of six.

Summary: The Wind Knows My Name weaves together past and present, tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in the United States in 2019. (Publisher)

Review: Isabel Allende is a reliably good author. In a writing career which has spanned five decades she gives voice to Latin American sensibilities with an eye to social and political turmoil. In The Wind Knows My Name she tells the tale of two children immigrants: Samuel who forced to leave Austria on a Kindertransport to Great Britain in 1938, escaping the Nazis without his parents; and Anita who travels from El Salvador with her mother in 2019, escaping unthinkable violence in her own country only to be separated from her mother in this country. As a social worker, Selena, and her lawyer partner, search for Anita's mother, trying to reunite the two, Anita is forced to live in a series of foster homes, many of them terrible places. Samuel, too, was forced to live in a series of homes in Britain during the war and afterwards. Both of these children were trapped in geopolitical violence and forced to navigate their circumstances in a new place on their own.

It breaks my heart when I hear about the atrocities that are occuring throughout our country by ICE agents looking to round-up immigrants, often separating parents and children with no way of finding each other ever again. This book, by drawing the parallels with what is happening at our border with Mexico and what happened to Jewish children during the Holocaust, bring the horrors into sharp focus. Thank goodness there are good people, like Selena, who are trying to save as many children as they can.

There is a happy-ish ending to this story, gratefully so, or no one would want to read it because of the very depressing message of cruelty it reports. I rated the book with 4.5 stars and look forward to discussing it in book club in a week.

__________________________________________________________________________

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

TTT: Best Books I Read in 2025

Best Books of 2025

I often create separate fiction and nonfiction favorite books lists each year. This year, for some reason, I found it really easy to identify my top five for each category and trouble picking 6-10. So this year, you get to see my top ten books of 2025: five fiction, five nonfiction.

FICTION:

1. The Antidote by Karen Russell -- I guessing this is a cilantro book, either you love it or hate it, but I loved it! It is set during the Dust Bowl in the midwest during the 1930s. It is so full of themes, but one important one is how we deal with history and have selective memories. I knew when I listened to this book in early June it would be my favorite book of the year and it is!

2. Heart the Lover by Lily King -- This story about a long-term friendship/love between two people who broke each other's hearts, yet remained in touch with each other, is clutch-your-hand-to-your-heart good. And the writing is transformative. I didn't even know this was a sequel of sorts to another book I loved by the same author, Writers and Lovers. Now I want to reread both, to catch the hints I missed first time around.

3. Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones -- It is shocking to even me that this book, a vampire story, is near the top of my yearly list of bests. It may have a vampire in it, but it is also an anti-colonialism story and a history of the Black Foot nation and what happened to its people when white men arrived and killed all their buffalo. Super powerful.

4. Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon -- Martha Ballard lived in Colonial Massachusetts and was a midwife. She kept a diary of what her life was like and the medical practices she used. Lawhon took her diaries and focused on one event she mentioned and made it into a compelling mystery. Very well-done and interesting, made even more so by the details being based on facts.

5. The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich -- Erdrich does it again. She writes in such a way to make us aware of many issues at one time. This time it is the overuse of pesticides in farming, and how Native Americans live, even today, in the 'land of plenty.'

NONFICTION:

1. There's Always This Year: On Baseketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib -- A memoir, of sorts. Also,  partly a sports story, as you would guess from the subtitle, the book explores the popularity of basketball in the region of Ohio where the author grew up. There's Always This Year is also part essay, part memoir, part social commentary, part cultural/racial observation, and part poetry, all moving far beyond basketball. 

2. All My Knotted-Up Life: a Memoir by Beth Moore -- Beth Moore is a Christian educator who has created  many Bible-series used for women's ministry in churches, including my own. In 2016, she made the news because she is one of the few Christians who spoke out against Trump for his Access Hollywood tape comments. This is her remarkable story.

3. Say Nothing: A True Tale of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe -- I'd long heard about the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland in the late 1970s through the early 1990s but knew little about it. This book, so well researched and written, cured my ignorance. I found the whole account fascinating.

 

4. Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green  -- One of my must-read authors, John Green is on a mission to wake-up the world as to a deadly infection which is completely curable but the people who need the cure, the poorest of the poor in the world, can't afford the treatments. And the people who can afford the treatment, don't get TB. I told everyone I know to read this book, which doesn't read like a medical book, but it stuffed full of stories of real people, mkaing it personal and relatable.

5. Stay True: a Memoir by Hua Hsu -- An unlikely college friendship — Ken loves preppy polo shirts and Pearl Jam, Hua prefers Xeroxed zines and Pavement — blossoms in 1990s Berkeley, then is abruptly fissured by Ken’s murder in a random carjacking. Around those bare facts, Hsu’s understated memoir builds a glimmering fortress of memory in which youth and identity live alongside terrible, senseless loss. (NYT)

What were your favorite reads of 2025?

-Anne