Review: SUNRISE ON THE REAPING

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.

A Roundup -- 56 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 56 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. 

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. 
• 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, and then had to add a few to cover all the books with eight votes.
• 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.)
• Over 300 book titles were suggested with many super popular classics, like the Iliad/Odyssey, falling just below my cutoff threshold.

______________________________________________________________________

Must-read Classics

(Numbers after the titles represent how many lists out of 20 it was on. Stars * 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. A Christmas Carol / Dickens -- 8*
51. Gulliver's Travels / Swift -- 8*
52. Lord of the Flies / Golding -- 8*
53. The Sun Also Rises / Hemingway -- 8*
54. A Tale of Two Cities / Dickens -- 8
55. Their Eyes Were Watching God / Hurston -- 8*
56. 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."
• Though there really aren't any surprises on this list, it is still mainly authored by old, dead white men writers. But I think a shift is occurring. There are ten women authors named, I expected Austen and the Bronte sisters but was delighted to see the list included Morrison, Atwood, Hurston, 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.

How I hope to use this list: 

• I've read 45 of the top 56 books. I am determined to read all of the top 30, which means I only have five titles to go to complete that small subgoal for myself: Anna Karenina; Crime and Punishment; War and Peace; Midnight's Children; Don Quixote. Though all are big, dense books, I know I can do it. 

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.

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

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.

-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

A Retrospective of 2025 Sunday Salon Posts

Visiting three Thomas Danbo Trolls with the family in April 2025

As I look back on a year of my Sunday Salon posts, 2025 comes back into focus before many events will begin to fade from my memory. 

Please click on the hyperlinks to read more about my year.

The only post I made in January was titled "So Much Crying" and I remember why. Trump was back in power and things looked awfully bleak for our future. I read two sad books, attended a play in Seattle, Kimberly Akimbo, where I remember crying my way through it, and President Jimmy Carter died. The photos were taken the same week. The first I named "Sunrise over Mt. Rainier" taken in the small hamlet where our daughter lives and teaches. The second was taken under the convention center with a view of sunset over Elliott Bay in Seattle. It is so uniquely beautiful.
(So Much Crying, Jan. 19th)

In February we made a quick day-trip up to Mt. Rainier National Park with our four-year-old grandson. It was one of those wonderful, magical days, too. In fact, it was so beautiful we all had to shed layers due to all the sunshine creating radiant heat. Just the other day our grandson asked us if we would please take him back up the mountain again soon. Special! (Feb. 2, 2025)

In March my mother turned 96 and the family gathered to help her celebrate her birthday. I love the photos of Mom reading to her her great-grandsons and the silly one of all of us making faces.
(Spring, March 30)

We found ourselves in Olympia in April attending a "Hands Off" rally with other like-minded people. It felt good to be doing something, even if it was such a small effort in resistance against the current administration.
(A Day of Action, April 6)

I like to wander around our neighborhood in the Spring taking photos of the gorgeous flowers in our neighbors' yards. In this post I write about visiting the Thomas Danbo Trolls with the family. (See photo above.) This particular week I focused on flowering trees. Aren't they gorgeous?
(Easter Week and Before, April 20)

How quickly the year seems to be going. In this post I share a photo of Don and Jamie. We went for a hike in the Fairy Forest near our home and Jamie led us on a new route, where we discovered the woodpecker tree. Our special "Jamie Days" were coming to an end. Next school year he would be old enough to go to school and wouldn't need to spend one day a week with us. I didn't realize how emotional I'd feel about this ending.
(Memorial Day and the Beginning of Summer, May 25)

For the second year in a row we rented a house at a national park so the whole family could enjoy a week together exploring nature. This year we went to Glacier NP in Montana. The post is crammed full of marvelous photos of our experience. The above photo is taken on Logan Pass. On our way up to the summit we experienced a tremendous rain storm. But it blew over and we had a wonderful evening -- hiking, visiting with other park visitors, admiring a bachelor herd of bighorn sheep. So many memories. The highlight of the year. (Glacier National Park, July 6)

"Busy Summer 2025" is the title of this August 10th post. That is for sure. We raced around all summer from one event to the next. On this particular post I talked about our family reunion one weekend followed by my 50th-year high school class reunion the next. Earlier in the summer we celebrated Don's 50th-year reunion also. I love this photo of the cousins being photo-bombed by our grandsons. After I got home from the class reunion I created a list of the top 50 books I've read since high school graduation. It is linked in this post. 
(Busy Summer, Aug. 10)

For the first time in a long time our church hosted a weekend family camp. I grew up attending an end-of-summer family camp with the church of my youth. I also attended church camp every summer during high school. It is a tremendously favorite experience of mine. I talked about all three of these experiences in this post. Our older grandson, Ian, taught himself how to paddleboard as you see in the upper right photo.
(Family Camp, Sept. 15)

Don and I spent a week in Eugene in October helping Mom move out of her house and into a very nice retirement community. It was an exhausting, demanding event but all my siblings chipped in to help. And it felt like we stepped out of time for a week. Now we no longer have to worry about Mom driving or wonder what she is eating. Pictured: the moving crew.
(Back to Standard Time, Nov. 2)

Based on this wrap-up one could easily get the impression that all we do is go on vacations or to the theater. Of course, that is not correct but this post will not disabuse of that notion. Our younger daughter took the whole family to see The Lion King musical in Seattle as her Christmas gift to us in early December. Almost right after we got home from this wonderful event, our area was hit with a ferocious rain storm which caused all kinds of terrible troubles for many, many people. I spent a lot of time early in the month creating a best-books-round-up list for 2025 and linked the results here.
(December Fun, Dec. 13)

And that brings me to the end of the yearly wrap-up with a post about all the books I liked and didn't like in 2025. I also find myself finishing up other posts, like my yearly challenge list, and creating other lists, like my favorite novels, nonfiction, and audiobooks. I can really drag out the end of the year almost all the way to the end of January!
(2025 Survey of Books)

Goodbye 2025. Hello 2026!

-Anne

Classics Club 26 for 2026

The Classics Club -- 26 Questions in 2026: 

1. a. When did you join the Classics Club? b. How many titles have you read so far? 

• a. I think I joined the CC in 2007. I'd recently become a high school librarian and suddenly realized how woefully behind I was on reading classics when students started asking me questions about them.
• b. So far I've read 144 books. Link to my current list: Here  

2. a. What classic are you reading next and why? b. Any books from 1926?

• a. Today I am starting A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Last year, part way through the year I started the practice of reading 12-pages a day of classic books at the encouragement of some book blogger. Magically following that practice I was able to finish more than double the number of classic books compared to other years. I let off that practice in December and am determined to pick it back up in 2026. I purchased a used copy of A Passage to India in an old, overstuffed used book shop this past summer and it seems like a good place to start the year.
• b. I just looked. The only book still unread on my CC list which was published in 1926 is The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. I will make it a 2026 priority. 

3. Best Book I've read so far for club? Why?

• I have read some wonderful books which are also so memorable. To name two: Lonesome Dove (McMurtry, 1985) is one that really stands out. It is such an epic story, one I got completely lost in. // Brideshead Revisited (Waugh, 1945) is another. This one just wrapped me up in its beautiful language and symbolism.

4. Classic author who I've read the most:

• Easy. Jane Austen. I've now read all her major novels and most of her shorter works. Just the juvenalia left to go.

5. An author I'd like to learn more about, read more works by:

• Herman Melville. This year Moby-Dick is my One Big Book.

6. The first classic I ever read:

•  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I read a lot of from a series of Children's Great Illustrated Classics and I remember that one clearly.

7. Favorite Children's classic read as a child?

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I had it figured out that I was Jo, my older sister was Meg, and my younger sister was Amy. My brother, by default, was Laurie. (No Beth.)

8. My most memorable classic

• Pride and Prejudice. Probably because I have interacted with it so much over the years.

9. Least favorite liked classic?

• Wide Sargasso Sea by Rhys. I hated HATED that book. And I didn't even have to read it so I should have stopped reading but it was a CC SPIN book for me so I kept going. Another I did stop reading and never finished was Clockwork Orange. Awful.

10. Favorite movie or TV adaption of a classic?

• Pride and Prejudice TV Mini Series/BBC with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet.
• Midsummer Night's Dream movie (1999) with Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline

11. Favorite Most recently read biography about a classic author: Harper Lee

• Furious Hours: Murder, Mayhem, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

12. Favorite classic author in translation? Favorite translator?

• Fyodor Dostoevsky.
• I just read the book Brothers Karamazov and was so impressed. In the forward it was mentioned that other translators had flattened out the author's intended humor and recommended the edition I read, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky 

13. A favorite classic poet? Playwright?

• Poet: Rumi, Persian poet and mystic. I just love the imagery evoked from the poems.
• Playwright: Shakespeare. I do not, as a practice, enjoy reading plays by anyone however. Recently I watched the movie "Hamnet" which is fictional story about Shakespeare's family and how he came to write Hamlet. In the last scene, portions of Hamlet is performed. So moving.

14. a. Which classic character most reminds me of me? b. Which character do I wish I could be like?

• a. Anne Elliot in Persuasion by Austen. Often overlooked.
• b. Pippi Longstockings by Astrid Lindgren. More fun-loving.  

15. What is the oldest classic I've read?

• Does the Bible count? The oldest parts of the Bible, the first five books, are considered to be written 13th-12th Century BCE.

16. What classic do I wish had an ending beyond the original ending?

• I've always wished that there was more story to Pride and Prejudice. 

17. Favorite edition of a classic?

• I own the whole Chronicles of Narnia first Book Club Editions with illustrations by Pauline Baynes, published in the 1960s.

18. Do I reread classics?

• Yes, sometimes. I've reread all of Austen's books. Sometimes I pause before rereading others because I don't want my memory of the book to be tainted if I don't like them as well.

19. A classic title I could not finish:

• As I said before, A Clockwork Orange (Burgess, 1962)

20. A classic book I expected to dislike but ended up loving --

• Lord of the Flies by William Golding, 1954. I hadn't read this as a teenager like the rest of the world and thought I'd escaped something awful but I really appreciate this book and think of it often.

21. Fellow Classic Clubbers whose blogs I frequent:

• Deb Nance at Reader Buzz
• Brona at Brona's Books
• Chris Lovegrove at Calmgrove Books
• Margaret at Books Please
• Adam on Roof Beam Reader (not sure if still active)

22. Readalongs?

• I'm not opposed to them but just haven't participated.

23. If I could, what book would I recommend for a readalong?

• Moby-Dick, since I'm reading it anyway this year.

24. What is my favorite part of being a member of the Classics Club?

• The SPINS for sure. They force me to keep chipping away on the list.

25. What would I like to see more of on Classics Club?

• I wish we had more SPINS, one per quarter. And have them on a specific schedule so I can keep track and know when the next one is coming. For example: One per season, starting dates: January 1st, April 1st, July 1st, October 1st. 

26. A question I have for the questionnaire?

• Q: What is one classic you remember reading and liking that no one seems to talk about?
• A: Lorna Doone by Blackmore. I remember reading it as a kid and loved it. (I bet I read an abridged version.) It is never on any list I've seen as if it has completely slipped off the face of the earth.

-Anne

First Review of 2026: WORTH FIGHTING FOR

John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, activist, and story-teller who writes a blog, Stuff that Needs to Be Said, aimed at anyone who is feeling frustrated with the Christian Nationalist barrage of messages aimed at us every day --  that some people, mainly rich white people -- are more deserving of God's favor than everyone else, especially poor people of color. I became aware of Pavlovitz in 2016 after Trump's election because he wrote a blogpost "Here's Why We Grieve Today" where he spoke to all of us who were aghast at the results of the election. For the past eight years he has kept up the drumbeat, calling to disenfranchised Christians to action. There are many of us -- people raised in the church and Jesus-loving folks -- who simply cannot understand how our faith has been co-opted by a movements which is antithetical to everything Jesus came to earth to teach us -- that God is love and all people were created in His image.

Pavlovitz has written several books, I think Worth Fighting For: Finding Courage and Compassion When Cruelty is Trending is his fifth. Since I find solace in his blogpost, I figured a bigger dose of his essays in book form would bring even more comfort.

In the introduction, Pavlovitz let's his readers know he is not interested in placating anyone. "Love isn't real until it moves from aspiration to incantation." This book provides a wake-up call. God is not going to magically make things better, even if we pray harder. People who are upset about the state of the nation right now need to get moving to make things right. He gives a whole litany of things we need to act on now:

• God isn't going to ensure that schools are safe for all children, including LGBTQ kids.
• Love isn't going to make assault weapons less available on our streets.
• Jesus isn't going to rescue our elections to prevent wannabe dictators from taking power.
• Love isn't going to protect our planet, the, poor, the marginalized.
• God isn't going to dismantle racism and bigotry.
• Love isn't going to push back against anti-immigrant mentality.
• You and I are. "Human beings fighting like hell together for the common good will do all those things."

Since since I am not a regular reader of Pavlovitz's blog, I am not sure if the essays in this book originated there and made their way to the book, or if they are original thoughts. Some of the essays were misses for me, not information I needed at this moment. Others essays cut to the quick. In the essay "How Much Is a Black Life Worth" he begins by asking, "White friend. how much is your father worth to you? Your son? Your sister? Your spouse? Would they be worth stopping traffic for if they were suffocating on a street?" He goes on to say we should all be sickened by a white cop placing his knee on a black man, suffocating him to death. Yet the greatest resistance to the Black Lives Matter movement came from the evangelicals. "Until white Americans are willing to have our own hearts as broken for the injustice Black Americans experience as they would for their own family members, we'll keep perpetrating injustice and rationalizing police brutality" (115).

This is not an easily digested book. Every essay gave me a moment to pause and reflect. And I hope I can remember many of the quips like: "You simply cannot be both 'for God so loved the world' and 'America First.'" God is not small, Pavlovitz argues. Many people treat God as if he is limited and small, as if he can only love and care for a finite number of people, so they shove any marginalized person off the list for not being worthy. Pavlovitz says we need to make our table bigger and invite everyone to join us so we can all partake together of the goodness of our earth.

There are not words minced here. We are in for the battle of our life and the time is now. We have to act now because later will be too late. "America, we are not helpless victims in the fight for our best selves, we are the sole combatants. It is up to us whether we rise to this occasion or find ourselves free-falling. May we become a nation that shuns the toxic fool's gold of greatness and reaches for the invaluable medicinal riches of goodness" (150). Love can win, but it may require overtime on our part.

Pavlovitz does offer a few suggestions of places to start. For example, he started a ministry around the concept of a bigger table -- envisioning a table big enough for everyone. Imagine sitting at a table and being willing to sit and listen to everyone you are supping with, even those whose opinions are not the same as yours, or people of different races and creeds. It is a good thought. Now to make it a reality.

Worth Fighting For was a good choice as my first book of the new year. It sets me up to stay encouraged, ready to stay engaged and willing to fight for the right way to live, a returning to more compassionate country. On the other hand, there is nothing fun or lighthearted in these prose. I would think the book has only limited appeal to many. So many people are discouraged with the state of affairs today, one needs to feel like they are not alone in this fight. Reading this book will help you feel like you are not alone.

Happy New Year! This is my first book/review of 2026. Thanks Sheila for hosting this important event. Join her at Book Journey.

Happy Reading in 2026!

-Anne

Review: A MARRIAGE AT SEA

Title: A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst

Book Beginnings quote:

March 4, 1973. 

Maralyn looked out at emptiness. There was little to see but the water, shifting from black to blue as the sun rose. A clear sky, the ocean, and themselves: a small boat sailing west.

Friday56 quote (from page 28, last page of preview):

But like all utopian visions, theirs had its contradictions

Summary: Maurice and Maralyn are an odd couple. He is an awkward loner. She is outgoing and friendly. They both have a dream of running away from all responsibility -- to drop out and sail away. The only thing is neither has ever sailed before. Most people's dreams would stop at this point, but not these two. They actually set about making their dream come true, selling everything they own, building a boat, and in June 1972, they set sail, leaving England forever (they think.) All goes well for nearly a year, before they find themselves in the Pacific stranded in a lifeboat and a dingy after their boat is sunk by a random whale strike. Now the story shifts to one of survival at sea. The couple has to find ways to stay alive while battling their inner demons. The marriage is put to the greatest of tests.

Review: A Marriage at Sea is my last book of 2025. I had wanted to read it as soon as I heard about it. What I didn't realize at the time was how long ago the story happened, over fifty years. It is unimaginable today that someone would set sail without GPS or even a radio. But of course, GPS wasn't invented yet and Maurice, in particular, didn't want to rely on a radio or anything other than his own knowledge and ingenuity when they set out on their worldwide trip.

All goes well for the couple as they cross the Atlantic, make their way through the Panama canal, and find themselves in the Pacific about 300 miles from the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, when a whale surfaces underneath their little boat. An hour later they are marooned in their lifeboat and their dingy with the few provisions they could gather before the boat sank. The next 117 days, the couple have to find a way to survive when all they have is each other and their fraying wits.

I've been thinking about the word "obsession" in the subtitle. What a weird word to place in a book title of a book about a shipwreck. Or is it? Maurice and Maralyn become obsessed with their dream to sail away, leaving their life behind them in England. Maurice becomes obsessed with learning everything there is to learn about nautical tables and tides. They both become obsessed with their roles aboard ship. Maurice, the captain, refers to himself as the god of the boat. While they are in survival mode, Maralyn becomes obsessed with keeping Maurice alive since he deeply depressed. Years after their rescue, we learn of Maurice's deep obsession with Maralyn herself. Yes, it was a story about obsession, making it a unique angle on the story.

My rating 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4.

 

-Anne