TTT: The World is Getting HOTTER. Books On Climate Change.

Top Ten Tuesday:

Books That Touch on the Topic of Climate Change

Our world is getting HOTTER each year. Here are some some books, both fiction and nonfiction, which touch on the subject of climate change or global warming.

How to Survive the End of the World: A Graphic Exploration of How to (Maybe) Avoid Extinction by Katy Doughty. Nonfiction. Graphic/illustrated.
"For apocalypse aficionados, the morbidly curious, and the just plain curious, this is your antidote to existential dread—a timely, imaginative, and ultimately hopeful take on humankind’s ability to survive the odds."

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar. Fiction.
"The story is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other."

Playground by Richard Powers. Fiction.
"Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity."

The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go From Here by Hope Jahren. Nonfiction.
This a slim, urgent missive on the defining issue of our time: climate change, our timeless pursuit of more, and how the same human ambition that got us here can also be our salvation.

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger. Fiction.
Set in a not-too-distant America, this is the story of a man setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved wife. He seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths he finally finds the courage to face his future and fight for his rights.

The Loneliest Polar Bear: A True Story of Survival and Peril on the Edge of a Warming World by Kale Williams. Nonfiction.
"The heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of an abandoned polar bear cub named Nora and the humans working tirelessly to save her and her species, whose uncertain future in the accelerating climate crisis is closely tied to our own."

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. Nonfiction.
"Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us."

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert. Nonfiction.
"The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?"

A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future by David Attenborough. Nonfiction.
"A Life on Our Planet is my witness statement, and my vision for the future. It is the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake -- and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right. We have one final chance to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited. All we need is the will to do so."

Plasticus Maritimus: An Invasive Species by Ana Pego. Nonfiction.
"Inspired by Pêgo’s life’s work, and filled with engaging science and colorful photographs, this foundational look at ocean plastics explains why they are such an urgent contemporary issue. She offers a critical look at our current “solutions” to plastic contamination and in her most important proposal calls for deep changes in our habits, motivating young and old alike to make a difference, together. An artificial and almost indestructible species, Plasticus maritimus deserves to have its days numbered! Together, we can send it packing."

The Twenty One: The True Story of the Youth Who Sued the US Government Over Climate Change by Elizabeth Rusch. Nonfiction. YA. 
"Compelling and timely, The Twenty-One tells the gripping inside story of the ongoing landmark federal climate change lawsuit, Juliana vs. The United States of America. The Twenty-One is for readers interested in the environment and climate change, as well as youth activism, politics and government, and the law."

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- USA is 250 years old

Our grandson and his cousin enjoying the 4th of July parade yesterday in their hometown. 

Weather: Lovely, possibly too warm. We'll see. Our air conditioner pooped out and our new setup is coming the end of the week but until then we are lobbying for cooler than normal temperatures.

Happy July 3rd! Yes, you read that right. The small community where our daughter and her family live do the big fireworks show on July 3rd, instead of the 4th. We attended this year with them and had so much fun. The above video is a speeded up version of a portion of the fireworks display.

Gig Harbor, Washington

Lest you think it always rains in this part of the country: This photo of the Puget Sound with Mt. Rainier in the background will disavow you of this notion. We took the photo as we were leaving Gig Harbor and a fun afternoon with friends and new acquaintances.

Books since last update:

• Completed:
• Kin by Jones. Two Black girls who consider each other kin since neither has a mother. Motherhood becomes one of many themes. The other is the poor treatment of Blacks in America, especially in the South. Rating: 4 stars.
• Madame Bovary by Flaubert. I finished this classic eventually but found myself really dreading it. Madame Bovary is really a pathetic character. Rating: 3 stars.
• Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Fawcett. This fun, cozy fantasy involves magic and cats.What's not to love? Review pending. Rating 4 stars.
• Goldfinches by Mary Oliver and Melissa Sweet. A darling illustrated book using Oliver's poem for its text. Love. Love. Rating: 5 stars.
• Currently reading/listening: 
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Desai. I only have this book for a few more days from the library so I will likely have to get back in line for it to finish it up. It is for book club in August, so I will have some time.
• Enormous Wings by Frankel. Another book (audio) will will return to the library before I am finished with it. Back in line I go.
• Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Everyone by Burton-Hill. I am loving this book which I am reading with a Spotify program open so I can listen to each classical piece as the author talks about the composer, the time period of the piece, how this music fits in the history of music. I have already found some new pieces which I hope to listen to again after I am done racing through them for this books sense.
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: A Graphic Adaptation by Loewen and Powell. Oh boy. This book is timely!

Have a lovely day!

-Anne

Review: KIN (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Kin by Tayari Jones

Book Beginning/ First Line Friday snippet:

My first word was "mother," spoken out loud and with texture. MOTHER.

Friday56 snippet:

All the other women were gathered around Annie's grandmother, petting her and circling her in hymns.

Summary: Vernice and Annie are two motherless girls. Annie is raised by her grandmother, Vernice by her aunt. Both girls feel the loss profoundly but they do have each other, they will always have their best cradle friend. But after high school their stories diverge and the difference become very stark.

Review: Oddly I was reading this novel, one of the hit books of 2026, when my husband and I started listening to the nonfiction audiobook of The Warmth of Other Suns by Wilkerson. Both books tell a similar story of what it was/is like growing up in the South if one is Black. The injustice is just galling. When I would say as much to my husband he would remind me that it is okay to read stories about hard things and that I shouldn't shy away from reading books that make me feel uncomfortable or sad. I agree with him but it became pretty hard for me. The timing of reading the two books at the same time was too much. I got pretty trapped in my own feelings so I had a hard time wanting to read the book, though I recognized its literary excellence. For this reason today I am sharing a few thoughts from other reviewers on Goodreads. They seem to have a better perspective than I do.

This book is the literary hit of 2026—full stop. It’s gut-wrenching, thought-provoking, empowering, heartbreakingly realistic, deeply embracing, and profoundly resonant. It takes the word kin and restores its true meaning: kin isn’t defined by blood, but by the people who truly see you, who hear the words you can’t say, who touch your soul, who hold space for your flaws, your mistakes, your missteps, and still call you theirs. -Nilufer

In novel after novel, [Jones] explores the dynamic quality of love without questioning its persistence. How we relate to one another — even those most dear to us — is not “an ever-fixèd mark.” Given the vicissitudes of time, she asks, how could it be? Our affections are altered by distance, thinned in some places, amplified in others, the way sound changes as it travels. -Ron

Three things stand out—how vivid and believable the characters are (it’s a great character study), how beautiful the language is, and how much I felt the place and time. -Debbie

The theme is deep female friendships and how those can be kinships that go even deeper than biological ties. But what stood out for me, even more than the "cradle" friendship of Niecy and Annie K, was the writing. Beautiful, lyrical prose in which the similes and metaphors were so apt, so surprising, so so so perfect, I felt chillbumps rising on my arms a few times while listening to the audiobook. The dialect and narrator accents were spot on as well. -Emily

Thank you Goodreads reviewers for the assist.

My rating: 4 stars.

__________________________________________________________

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

Classic Review: MADAME BOVARY

Gustave Flaubert was born in 1821 in Rouen, France. His father was a doctor. When he was thirteen he wrote to a friend that he would be "quite disgusted with life were he not engaged upon a novel." Like many young men of his day he felt disgusted by the "bourgeois" society into which he was born. When he began writing Madame Bovary he wanted to write a story about ordinary people, yet he held these types of people in contempt. "The bourgeois -- that dull, graceless animal, petty, materialistic, cliche-ridden --could make him physically ill" (6) Yet, in Bovary, Flaubert attempts to paint an objective portrait of these folks. 

It was a friend of Flaubert, Louis Bouilhet, who gave him the idea for this novel based on a local occurrence he thought might make an excellent, realistic novel. And Madame Bovary was born. In Flaubert's version of the original, a young woman, Emma, is married to a dull country doctor. She quickly gets bored with her life and wants finery beyond their means and the community. Emma is always pining for something more than her life offers. She takes a lover and when that affair ends, she takes a second lover. Her taste for finery leads her to go hopelessly into debt which eventually leads to more and more desperate acts and ruination for the whole family.

Flaubert wanted Bovary to be a meticulously constructive piece of literature. He also wanted to show people talking, acting, thinking as real people do these things. He spent more time than the average French writer (any writer?) to the writing of his sentences. "It was his ambition to make them rhythmical, lyrical, and expressive in would life prose to the level of poetry" (7) Sometimes it would take Flaubert a week to write two pages of text. But all this work on his sentences paid off because it is remarkably easy to read, considering the time period in which it was written.

Alan Russell, the translator and the writer of the introduction for the version of Madame Bovary I read, said that Emma Bovary is one of the "great individuals of fiction." She is "self-centered, self-dramatizing, envious, improvident, impulsive, aspiring above her station or capabilities, egotistical, and desperate with raging of unsatisfied desire. Of such a character her name, 'Bovary', as become a symbol of those qualities" (9). Needless to say, she is not likable in the least.

Whenever I read a book known as a "classic" I wonder why this book, this story has stood the test of time and what universal message to it continues to portray. I wasn't sure how to answer those questions when I finished Madame Bovary. All I could think was it was too bad Emma didn't live in the 21st century. If so she could have divorced her boring husband, had sex with as many men as she wished without most people batting an eye, crowd-sourced funding to cover her debts, and gained fame and recognition as a social media influencer making daily instagram posts about her most recent complaints or showing off her new clothes.

I eventually turned to Shmoop to get the answers I craved as to the classic status of this book. Here are a few points they made about Madame Bovary:

• Bovary is one of the finest examples of "realistic" fiction written up to that point in time and had tremendous influence on literature for decades afterwards.
• Flaubert's writing creates a level of intimacy with the characters that up to that time was never done. We may not like them or their actions but we know what they are thinking and feeling.
• They agree with me. They think Emma is stuck in the wrong century.

So do teachers still assign Madame Bovary to their classes of 11th or 12th grade students to read? I doubt it. If they did, I suspect there would be a lot of kids who sneak off to watch the movie or read the crib notes, refusing to dive deeply into the story of an unlikable, self-centered woman stuck in a small community with nothing to do but shop and pine for romance.

What was your experience with the book? Though I found the text very readable I just didn't want to read it. Sorry, Emma Bovary, I didn't like you and wanted to spend as little time as possible with you. I kept going because this is my Classics Club SPIN selection for the Spring. My rating 3 stars.

Citations:

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: A Story of Provincial Life. Translated by Alan Russell, Penguin Books, 1988.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Madame Bovary Introduction | Shmoop." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc.,  11 Nov. 2008. Web. 30 Jun. 2026.

-Anne

TTT: Anticipated Books of the Second Half of 2026

Top Ten Tuesday: My Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of 2026

Nonfiction: I realize this book is already published but I just became aware of it. I am hoping to get my hands on this book this July and read it for 'Paris in July Challenge' since it was originally published in French.

Contemporary: This book sounds like it has a lot of potential and is possibly funny...which is what attracted me to it.

Historical: I really liked this author's book, North Woods, so I am sure this one will one I like, too.

Historical: Set in Iceland, Nordic folklore. Yes, please!

Mystery: This sounds like a mystery right up my alley.

Mystery: I like reading books which deal with ecology and I LOVED The Overstory. It this book is half as good as that book, I'll like it.

Historical: The Frozen River was one of my favorite books read in 2025. This one sounds like another historical novel where I will learn something while I am being entertained.

Sci-Fi: Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven is one of those books I can't get out of my head. I look forward to reading more by this author.

Contemporary: John Green is a must-read author for me. He usually writes YA novels but this one was not listed in that category. An adult novel from a favorite author? Oh Boy!

Contemporary: Barbara Kingsolver is my favorite author. I'm sure of all the books on this list, this is the one I will for sure read as soon after publication as I can.

And a few more books that sound good:

Contemporary: Pachinko was a fabulous book. Will this be as good?

Nonfiction: In the fall my husband and I spend a lot of time in the car driving up and down the freeway going to football games. We like to listen to audiobooks on those trips but they have to be books Don approves of. This sounds like one he'd like.

Contemporary: Lessons in Chemistry was so fun. Will the magic continue in this book?

I am not going to pretend that I will read all thirteen of these books. I do like this exercise in looking forward, however, since it will give me ideas of where to start when I am choosing my next or upcoming reads. What books are you looking forward to in the second half of 2026?

-Anne

Spring Goodreads Challenge Complete

Today I completed the Goodreads Spring Quarterly Challenge by finishing my selection for Pride Picks, Kin by Tayari Jones. It is the second quarter in a row where I've completed the challenge and this time with three days to spare. Woot woot.

The specific books I read for this challenge were:

2nd Quarter (Spring, April thru June)

• Page-Turner -- Read two books during challenge period (April 3)
• Speed Reader -- Read three books during challenge period (April 3)
• Book Boss -- Read five books during challenge (April 15)
• Community Picks -- Heartwood by Amity Gaige (April 23)
• Trending Books -- What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (May 11)
• Marathon Reader -- Moby Dick by Herman Melville (May 6)
• Editor's Picks -- Heartwood by Amity Gaige (April 23)
• Books on Books -- What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (May 11)
• AAPI Heritage -- Things In Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (May 2)
• Summer Reading -- Animal Farm by George Orwell (May 28)
• Escapist Reads -- This Land is Your Land by Beverly Gage (June 6)
• Pride Picks -- Kin by Tayari Jones (June 27)

You'll notice I doubled up on a few books in two different categories. That is totally legit. Goodreads gives participants lots of options of books in the different groups (usually between 75-125 choices) and sometimes the same book shows up on two lists. Bonus! Knock off two lists with one book!

In case you are wondering how you can join in to the summer challenge which starts on July 1st, here is how you find the challenge page: 

1. Go to your Goodreads home page.
2. On the left hand side of the page is a column, underneath CURRENTLY READING should be 2026 READING CHALLENGE. Click on the words "View Challenge."
3. On the CHALLENGE DETAILS page underneath the graph of how many books you've read so far this year is how many achievements you've collected. Click on the words "All achievements in this challenge."
4. Scroll to the bottom of the next page which is the 2026 Reading challenge bookmarks. Click on the words "More challenges."
5. Now you will see the words SPRING CHALLENGE (if you are looking in June) or SUMMER CHALLENGE (if you are looking in July). Click on the words "Challenge details."
6. Finally you have arrived at the book marks which explain the specific challenges. Click on any bookmark and the details of that category will be explained and the allowed books will be listed if you click on the words "Browse Books." All twelve don't open up instantly. For example, Pride Picks category didn't open until June 1st this quarter. Some books you will have three months to read and others you may only have one month to read. 
7. Once you earn a bookmark it will change from black and white to a colored picture. So fun.

Give it a try. Decide if you want to try the Goodread Challenge this summer or not.

BTW--Be my friend on Goodreads. Find me and friend me. You find me by searching my name: Anne Bennett . For confirmation you found me, my website is linked to Goodreads: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com  / How can I find you? 

-Anne

Six in Six

Emma at Words and Peace

Emma at Words and Peace is now hosting Six in Six, a flexible meme in which at or around the end of the sixth month (June) one may list six titles in six categories chosen from books one has read so far during the year. For 2026 therefore it’ll be six books in six categories in the sixth month on the twenty-sixth day of the month (for me.) 

Let's see if I can pull this off... if not I guess you'll never know I even tried! Ha! Emma has way better ideas than I do, so be sure to check out her list. (Here) I've read or reread all these books in 2026:

Around the world:

1. Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières -- GREECE
2. The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras -- COLUMBIA
3. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy -- Fictitious island off Antarctica, 1000 miles from AUSTRALIA
4. Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante -- ITALY
5. A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar -- INDIA
6. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali -- IRAN

Memoirs/Biographies:

1. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
2. Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances by Kwame Alexander
3. Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
4. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
5. The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
6. Toni at Random by Dana A. Williams

Humorous (at least partially):

1. So Far Gone by Jess Walter
2. Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
3. The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
4. The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt
5. Vigil by George Saunders
6. Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach

Animals important to story:

1. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville -- WHALES, especially one big white Sperm whale.
2. Moby Dick by Will Eisner -- See above
3. Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick -- See above
4. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov -- BLACK CAT
5. The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett -- CAT
6. Whistler by Ann Patchett -- HORSE

Classics:

1. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1924)
2. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks (1961)
3. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
4. Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)
5. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
6. Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life by Max Ehrmann (1927)

Poetry:

1. Startlement: New and Selected Poems by Ada Limón
2. Little Alleluias: Collected Poetry and Prose by Mary Oliver
3. Goldenrod: Poems by Maggie Smith
4. Woman Without Shame: Poems by Sandra Cisneros
5. Poems and Prayers by Matthew McConaughey
6. Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances by Kwame Alexander

How'd I do? Just a few duplicates, not bad.

Pick your categories and join in the fun! So what if you can't have it done by the 26th? Emma suggests you make the list during July!

-Anne

Review: THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND

Title: This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History by Beverly Gage

Book Beginning/First Line Friday snippet from the introduction:

If you grow up near Philadelphia, sooner or later you eventually end up at Independence Hall.

Friday56 snippet (from page 17, last page of preview)*:

Taken as a whole, the Philadelphia area yields a remarkably efficient tour of how, in a formal sense, the United States of America came to be. All the big characters are there: Washington, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lafayette. So are the key moments--Declaration, Revolution, Constitution--that Americans have been debating for two and half centuries. But it wasn't the big-ticket places that really spoke to me...What stayed with me, after I departed for a long drive up I-95, were the instances in which ordinary people looked to the founding legacy and made it their own. 

        *I listened to the audiobook, so this will have to suffice for my Friday56 entry.

Summary: Beverly Gage, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, embarks on a series of thirteen road trips around the U.S.A. to highlight important moments in the country's history. Gage visits museums, roadside attractions, reenactment sites, even souvenir stores. Some of the places she visited are well known sites (Independence Hall) and others are much more obscure (spending the night in a missle silo turned into an AirBnB). She doesn't try to tell a sanitized story of only heroic moments but also uses her road trips to point out places and events that highlight our country's challenges and mistakes. The words of the Declaration of Independence that gave birth to a new nation in 1776 have been consistent touchstones over the years since, but various people and groups have embraced the Declaration and molded its powerful words to fit a particular viewpoint or support causes across the political spectrum. Gage shows that Americans can honestly face their history -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- and still love their country.

Review: Don and I were on our own road trip when we listened to the audiobook of This Land is Your Land, going on a virtual audio road trip around all regions of the US. Our destination was coincidentally also an historic site - Yellowstone, the nation's first National Park.

Beverly Gage is a history professor at Yale University in Connecticut. Last year she and two other professors joined together to teach a course titled "America at 250: a History." No doubt Gage was able to use information she gleaned to write this book to teach the class. Her writing style is very accessible and engaging. She is a good storyteller, often personalizing her experiences on the road. She usually traveled alone but her college-aged son joined her on several trips. He was accustomed to family trips with multiple mandatory stops at historical sites along the way. Gage explained how she was always taking notes about what she was learning. Since it took several years to make her thirteen road trips, she experienced some personal challenges along the way, like a car that was acting up and needing time off for cancer treatments. I especially liked how Gage engaged with her material. This is anything but a sterile, textbook-style account of what she discovered on the road.

Benjamin Franklin supposedly wondered aloud at the Constitutional Convention, whether the sun is rising or setting on our republic. In an interview for the YaleNews, Gage was asked for her conclusion on this same question. I love her answer so much I'm sharing it here:

The first conclusion that I reached is that this is a question Americans have been asking for 250 years. In some ways, that question is the national tradition.

I also discovered that it’s very hard to know in our own historical moment how to judge what’s happening around you. One of the things that history does is give us some measures against which to judge our own time. But you have to really know that history. It can’t just be a matter of assuming that things were so great in the past and now they’re so horrible. I am a real skeptic of the idea that we are living through the worst and most divisive moment in American history. I don’t think that is true. I think there are some very particular things that are happening in the U.S. that are quite concerning, quite alarming, don’t bode so well for the future, but I think it is a form of historical amnesia to think that our problems are so much worse than what the country and its people have confronted over time (YaleNews).

Gage also urged her readers to get off their computers and go out and visit new places around the country. Talk with the people. She feels much more heartened about the state of the nation since her trips. Don wished aloud at the end of book that everyone in America would read this book for the country's 250th birthday. It is true. One can love their country and acknowledge it has problems.

We both rated this book 5 stars.

-Anne

TTT: My Summer Reading List (and how I did on my spring list)

Top Ten Tuesday:

 Summer 2026 Reading List (and How I Did On My Spring Reading List)

Top Ten Tuesday: Summer Reading List. 

Below the line is how I did on my spring reading list.

Summer reading list: 

Book Club Selections:

1. SOTH Gals (July) : You Before Me (Moyes)
2. RHS Ladies (July): No Meeting
3. SOTH Gals (August) : Theo of Golden (Levi)
4. RHS Ladies (August) : The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Desai)
5. SOTH Gals (September) : TBA
6. RHS Ladies (June): The Book Club for Troublesome Women (Bostwick)

Challenge Books:

1. Classics Club Spin Book TBA from this list -- possibly: The Stranger (Camus)
2. Printz Award Winner or honor book -- Sisters in the Wind (Boulley)
3. Paris in July Challenge -- possibly: Fresh Water for Flowers (Perrin)
4. A NYT Book Best of Century selection -- possibly Austerlitz (Sebald)
5. Three Goodreads Summer Challenge selections TBA, starting July 1st.
1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
   

Books I've already started, recently acquired, and/or have on-hold at the library:

1. Kin (Jones)
2. Agnes Aubert's Magical Cat Shelter (Fawcett)
3. Enormous Wings (Frankel)
4. Land (O'Farrell)
5. The Typewriter and the Guillotine (Braude)
6. The Warmth of Other Suns (Wilkerson)

A few unknowns right now which will become clear as the season progresses.

How I did on my spring reading list: 

 Yellow: completed. 

Aqua: in progress

Green:  not completed, DNF

Light pink: Did not get to yet!

Book Club Selections:

1. SOTH Gals (April) : China Room (Sahota)
2. RHS Ladies (April): So Far Gone (Walter)
3. SOTH Gals (May) : Today We Go Home (Estes)
4. RHS Ladies (May) : Theo of Golden (Levi)
5. SOTH Gals (June) : The Man Who Could Move Clouds (Contreras)
6. RHS Ladies (June): The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Sparks)

Challenge Books:

1. Classics Club Spin Book TBA from this list -- Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
2. Printz Winner/honor book -- The Legendary Frybread Drive-In (Leitich)
3.  A past Pulitzer Prize winner from this list -- American Pastoral (Roth)
4. 2026 One Big Book Challenge -- Moby-Dick (Melville)
5. Women's Prize winner or finalist -- The Correspondent (Evans)
6. Three Goodreads Spring Challenge selections TBA, starting April 1st.
1. AAPI Heritage -- Things In Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (May 2)
2. Summer Reading -- Animal Farm by George Orwell (May 28)
3. Escapist Reads -- This Land is Your Land by Beverly Gage (June 3)

Books I've already started, recently acquired, and/or have on-hold at the library:

1. What We Can Know (McEwan)
2. Poems and Prayers (McConaughy)
3. I'm Glad My Mother Died (McCurdy)
4. A Flower Traveled in My Blood (Gilliland)
5. Little Alleluias (Oliver)

Feeling good about the books I got to!

-Anne