Since we're five days into a new year, I figure I should probably post my wrap-up of my remaining 2018 reading challenges. I was a little disappointed that I didn't quite complete my Mount TBR Challenge. However, the rules of that challenge state that it only includes books bought before January 1, 2018. I read more than my goal of 36 books that I own last year, if I include the ones that I bought during the year. I was pretty pleased that I read 9 books that I bought. It sounds small, but that's a better number for me than normal! So even though I didn't technically complete the Mount TBR Challenge, I think I'm satisfied.

70 out of 104 categories complete
(It helped that you could count one book for two categories,
​but I was still pleasantly surprised by this number!)

Reading challenges are definitely one of the areas where I can overcommit myself. With a new baby arriving in June, I knew when I started this year that I needed to limit the number of reading challenges that I signed up for. It sort of worked. I only signed up for 6, instead of my usual 10+. And I'm happy to report that I did fairly decently! I'm still working on a couple, so here are the first three reading challenges that I completed this year.

​1. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (3 points)
2. The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes (2 points)
3. Doll Bones by Holly Black (2 points)
4. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (3 points)
​5. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (3 points)
6. Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly (3 points)
7. One Came Home by Amy Timberlake (2 points)
​8. Paperboy by Vince Vawter (2 points)
9. M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton (3 points)
​10. The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox (3 points)
11.  Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien (3 points)
12. Sounder by William Armstrong (3 points)
​13. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (2 points)
14. Crown:​ An Ode to the Fresh Cut by Derrick Barnes (2 points)
​15. The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars (3 points)
16. Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary (2 points)
17. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary (2 points)
18. The Grey King by Susan Cooper (3 points)
​19. Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson (2 points)
20. Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson (2 points)
​21. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (3 points)

Even though I've been pretty much MIA here since June, I have still been participating in my real-life book club. It's been so nice to have one night a month to escape the craziness of my house and talk to adults for a while. These are the books that we read this year.

January - Wonderland Creek by Lynn Austin
February - The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
April - A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
May - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
June - A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
July - The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
September - Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
October - News of the World by Paulette Jiles
November - Circling the Sun by Paul McLain

Our Favorite Books: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. A couple of our members were reading it for the first time, and the rest of us loved revisiting this classic. Also The Nightingale. Such a powerful and well-written story.

Not-So-Favorite Book:​ News of the World wasn't quite what we were expecting. It was very well-written, but maybe not as gripping as we thought it would be.

Best Food Served: This is one of the best parts! We always have good food, but at our November meeting, we had warm, fudgy brownies for dessert, topped with peppermint ice cream and chocolate peppermint sauce. We all decided that we could easily eat that every time!

Welcome to another year of the Newbery Reading Challenge! Newbery and Caldecott books are fun to read - whether it's our first time experiencing them, or we're revisiting them from our childhood. If you want to challenge yourself to read more Newbery and Caldecott books this year, then you have found the right place!

Here are the rules:​
Each book you read is worth points. You get:

• 3 points for a Newbery Medal Winner
• 2 points for a Newbery Honor Book
• 1 point for a Caldecott Book (Both Medal winners and Honor books are worth a point.)

In addition to that, you pick a level to aim for:

• L'Engle: 15 - 29 points
• Spinelli: 30 - 44 points
• Avi: 45 - 59 points
• Lowry: 60 - 74 points
• Konigsburg: 75+ points

You can get to this level with any combination of points you want. You can read all Newbery Medal winners. You can throw in a few Honor Books. If you want, you can even read 75 Caldecott Medal winners! How you get to your point level is totally up to you. 

Also, anywhere in the point range for your level counts as completing that level. So for example, if you signed up for the Avi level and read 46 points' worth of books, then you have completed that level!

Challenge Guidelines:

• Rereads count (because you were probably a kid when you read it last, and your perspective on the story just might have changed since then).
• Audiobooks and ebooks count.
• And paper books count, too. :)
• All books must be read between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2019. Books begun before January 1 don’t count.
• Books can be used for other challenges as well.
• Reviews are encouraged, but not necessary.
• Choose your point level. You can always aim for a higher point level, but you can't move to a lower one.

To join the Newbery Reading Challenge:

• Write a post (or a comment) stating your intention to join. Choose your point level. You can find the challenge image above to use in your post.
• Add your link to the Linky at the bottom of this post. Make sure you include the link to your sign-up post, not just your homepage.

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted anything! My daughter arrived in June, and blogging has taken a backseat to figuring out this whole two-kid thing. I hope to start posting occasionally again, and I have some end-of-the-year reading lists and stats coming. And the Newbery Reading Challenge will continue! I'll be getting that post up soon.

In the meantime, I post fairly frequently on the Litsy app with all sorts of bookishness. My name is smilingshelves, and I'd love to connect with you there.

Hope all is going well for all of you in the blogosphere! Happy reading!

I'm participating in Becky's Book Reviews' Middle Grade Reading Challenge this year, but I hadn't actually updated my progress at all this year. Last week, I sat down with the list of middle grade books I had read so far, and was surprised to see that I had read 27! I knew I loved middle grade books, but I didn't expect that they would account for over a third of my reading so far this year. I decided to share some of the awesome books I've read in hopes that someone else might be inspired to try some of these great middle grade titles!

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
This is one of this year's Newbery Honor books. It is incredibly powerful.

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
​This was just pure bookish, problem-solving, code-breaking fun!

Rebound by Kwame Alexander
​Okay, I haven't read that many books published this year, but I needed some category to get this book on my list, because it is awesome.

The Door in the Alley by Adrienne Kress
I've read seven books this year that are the first book in a series. Many of them were good, but this one definitely has me hooked.

The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser
​This book was just delightful. Can the Vanderbeekers adopt me, please?

I actually went to a bookstore last week and walked out without buying anything!! This is not a common occurrence for sure. It's a really nice used bookstore, but there were at least ten books filed in the Fiction section that were actually nonfiction (like Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt). It was really starting to bug me, but I didn't quite have the courage to say anything to the person at the desk. Sadly, I wasn't really in the mood to buy any books after noticing that. Hopefully the next time I visit will be different, because I've certainly walked out of there with stacks of books before!

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan (Georgette Heyer and James Herriot references?? Yes, please! This book is pure delight for any book lover.)

Birth of the Chess Queen by Marilyn Yalom (I haven't been in the mood to read nonfiction for a long time, so I'm taking advantage of the feeling while it lasts.)
The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists by Gideon Defoe (This was a library book sale find. It's small and short, so I decided to read it and check it off my list of books to read. It is hilariously satirical so far!)
​The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall (Continuing my audio reread of this series!)

The Pearl Sister by Lucinda Riley (I love Lucinda Riley's books, and I'm so excited to dive into this fourth book in her Seven Sisters series!)

I rarely stop reading a book before I've finished it. I'm someone who likes to finish what I've started, even if I'm not totally enjoying the experience. I know this is kind of silly, because there are so many amazing books out there. Why would I waste my time reading something I didn't like?

But what if I've read other books I've loved by that author? What if everyone raves about the book? That's what I'm running across at this moment, and I can't decide whether to bail or not.

The book I'm reading is Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Her Grisha trilogy was five-star reads for me. I enjoyed The Language of Thorns, her collection of folk tales. Six of Crows takes place in the same world, although with completely different characters than the Grisha trilogy. Well, the world she created was one of the things I loved, so why wouldn't I like another book set in that same world? Not to mention that everyone seems to love this book. It has a 4.46 rating on Goodreads. That's crazy high. I've read many raving reviews. It seems like this would be a surefire win for me.

All of those are reasons why I'm struggling to give up on this one. I'm 150 pages in, and I just don't care about the characters. I knew it was a book about criminals and a heist going in, but I'm not finding enough redeeming qualities to make me feel attached to any of the characters. And I like heist stories (I've watched Ocean's 11 several times), but this one is just not hooking me.

So do I walk away from the book? There are still 300+ pages to go, and even though it's a fast read, I'm having trouble forcing myself to even pick the book up.

I'm curious about how everyone else makes this decision. What criteria do you use when you decide to DNF a book?

My wonderful husband took care of our two-year-old on Saturday so that I could have one last day to myself before the baby arrives. I read a book and a half and went out to lunch. It was glorious!

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (Our book club book for June. I've never read one of our selections so far in advance, but I wanted to make sure I had it done before baby arrived!)
Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman (This was the book that I read in entirety on Saturday. It was so good and so much fun!!)

It Happened at the Fair by Deeanne Gist (Christian fiction set at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. There's original photographs and everything, so I'm learning a lot!)
The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall (I'm loving revisiting this series through audio!)

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (I loved her Grisha trilogy, so I'm excited to try this series.)

Several months ago, I had never heard of the author Robin Hobb. And then came Litsy (which is an awesome bookish app that you should be on, if you're not already). All sorts of people were posting about loving her books, people with widely different tastes in books. And every post or review just raved about her. This definitely caught my attention.

But I hesitated for a couple of reasons. She writes fantasy, which is a genre I devoured in high school but have only dabbled with since. And she has several different series, so it was confusing to know where to start. And the main character appeared to be an assassin, which is not a profession I prefer to read about.

But how could I resist, when so many people said they loved her books so much? So I did my research, figured out where to start, and gave her a try.

And now I understand all the raving. They aren't fast-paced books (even though there is an assassin involved). But you are pulled so deeply into the world that you find yourself living in it even when you aren't reading. The plot and characters are human and complex. The dilemmas are to be wrestled with and are not easily solved. Even a whole day after finishing it, I can't stop thinking about this book.

I just placed my first Book Depository order, so that I could own the entire Farseer Trilogy because I need to read the rest of it right now. Library books are not enough. And because I fell in love with the U.K. covers, and I must own these versions. Aren't they amazing?

So add me to the list of Robin Hobb lovers and ravers. Even if fantasy isn't your thing, you should give her a try. Really, her books are about humanity. She writes in trilogies, so you can jump in anywhere, but the Farseer trilogy was the first and starts Fitz's story from the beginning. I recommend starting there.

Now I just need to wait impatiently for my Book Depository order to arrive so that I can dive back into the world of the Six Duchies.