2025 Reading Challenge discussion

We've gotten through the first quarter of the year! It's time to check in. Answer the questions below:

1. How are you doing on your goal?

2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?

3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)

4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?

I'll start. :)

1. I am an almost embarrassingly seven books ahead of my goal. I think I'm going to use it to get some real chunksters out of the way this year like Moby-Dick; or, The Whale or War and Peace.

2. Seabiscuit: An American Legend (audiobook), hands down. Funny because I don't care a whit for horse racing, and I've never had a thing for horses.

3. There were, sadly, a large number of books I didn't enjoy so far this year. Topping the list are The Rosie Effect, Landline, and Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. The first was terribly unrealistic and frustrating, the second was just frustrating with a terrible premise, and the third didn't have enough data to back up its claims. All three were trite.

4. I've been saving Words of Radiance (second in the Stormlight Archive series), and I think I'm going to jump in.

1. I'm really behind on my goal due to some medical stuff, but I'm feeling like these next couple months will be good!

2. Favourite book: Days of Blood & Starlight (cannot tell you how much I *love* this series ahh!) and a close second: Angelfall

3. Least favourite: Every Day (Loved the concept, just not the execution/characters)

4: Book I'm most excited to read: Mistborn: The Final Empire :)

1. How are you doing on your goal? Well... I was just doing the Popsugar challenge and am on track for that one. Since I've really increased my reading amount, I decided to also starting doing the Read Your Age challenge, increasing my reading goal to ~100 instead of the 52 in the original. So now technically, I'm 13 books behind.

2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?
I really loved Me Before You by Jojo Moyes but I've really read some great ones so far (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, The Time Traveler's Wife, In the Woods)

3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)
I was disappointed in Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. I can't really put my finger on it but it just was not a page-turner for me. Maybe it was just overly long.

4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?
Since I'll be going into summer semester, I will have much more time to read and plan on tackling some of the larger books on my list, including House of Leaves and Outlander

Woohoo, look at me finally deciding to join in on community discussions and stuff! :)

1. I've somehow managed to overshoot my goal by 48 so far, so saying that I'm doing really well strikes me as being the ultimate understatement! I don't really have much of a plan apart from going more or less in reverse alphabetical order on my Kindle and checking out all the other library books/new stuff/etc. that fall into my lap, but I reckon there've been worse plans. :) (tbf though a lot of the books I read this quarter were very short, other longer ones should work their way in there eventually)

2. I'm terrible at picking favourites; I've never been able to do it! Looking through my ratings it makes sense to say how extremely glad I was and am to finally start reading Fullmetal Alchemist and finally read Journey to the River Sea, but there were too many other good to great books in there to leave unmentioned.

3. Not sure honestly, I can never really pick least favourites either! Eric kind of bored me and Starter for Ten eventually frustrated me, but I still liked certain things they did and they were lacking in different ways, so I guess I'll call it a draw on this one.

4. Again I don't have much of a plan so it's really hard to say, though I am excited to get back to Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, as well as finish the Animorphs series and start in on Everworld. I could continue the Brandon Sanderson party (I say continue, but it probably ended about ten messages back) and nominate Warbreaker, but I don't even know if I'll read that yet. Instead I'm going to go for Station Eleven, because while I'm worried that it'll turn out that the book isn't able to hold itself together and that it'll eventually fall apart, if it continues the way it has done in the first 80 pages for the rest of the book it's very easily going to be one of Those Books for me. You know what I'm talking about surely; we all have them.

Em, sorry for writing so much. :s

Paul wrote: "Instead I'm going to go for Station Eleven, because while I'm worried that it'll turn out that the book isn't able to hold itself together and that it'll eventually fall apart, if it continues the way it has done in the first 80 pages for the rest of the book it's very easily going to be one of Those Books for me. You know what I'm talking about surely; we all have them."

Station Eleven is certainly one of Those Books for me, so I hope you enjoy the rest of it!

1. I am 10 books ahead of schedule, which is really surprising to me. I need to set aside some time to read some more long books or increase my goal (or both!).

2. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption for sure.

3. The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra. I usually love historical nonfiction and I had high hopes for this one, but I just didn't engage with it. I was also pretty disappointed in Landline.

4. It's so hard to choose, but it's probably between The Handmaid's Tale and Watchmen.

1. How are you doing on your goal?
I am right on track with my goal. Which is both good and bad. At one point I was 4 books ahead and then seemed to really slow down. I have been sleepy lately and not been able to get much read at night. I am hoping to read more in April and maybe get ahead again.

2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?
I have read some good books so far. I have read quite a variety of genres. I think my favourite so far has been Fall of Giants. I really like Ken Follett. I also liked And Then There Were None. It was my first Agatha Christie book and I am sure it won't be my last. It reminded me so much of the Murder She Wrote TV show that I grew up watching. I don't know why but it did. I liked that it was not filled with a lot of gratuitous violence or sex (not that I am against reading books with violence and a bit of steam but I feel like so many books add it in for the sake of adding it in).

3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)
That was an easy one to pick. My least favourite book was No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices. It was such a teaching 101 type of book, where it stated the obvious over and over again. There was nothing insightful in it and I think even a beginning teacher wouldn't get anything out of it.

4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?
I have so many good ones on my "to read" list for this year. I think the few I am looking forward to the most are A Dance with Dragons because I am looking forward to seeing what has happened with some of my favourite characters. I am planning on re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I haven't read it in over 20 years and I remember loving it. House of Leaves is a book that is also on my list and am planning on reading it this summer. I love the way the book is written. It really intrigues me.

1. I'm 20 books ahead of schedule. Kind of surprising because I felt like I was falling wayyyy behind when I first got started. Silver lining to having a cold lol.

2. That's really hard. I'd have to say it's a tie between The Lunar Chronicles series and the first two books I've read from the Winner's Trilogy. Both were recs from a librarian and both are YA which I haven't really gotten into before. But they've been really surprising and fun to read.

3. I've been pretty disappointed in a lot of the Alphabet Series books by Sue Grafton. I'm determined to finish out the series but it's been a big let down for the most part.

4. Oh, I'm not sure. I'm really looking forward to reading The Narrative of John Smith at some point but there's loads of good stuff on my TBR list I can't wait to start on.

1. I was way ahead of my goal of 56 so I upped it to 75. I am still 13 ahead, bu I still have several chunky books to read.

2. Favorite book was Winnie-the-Pooh which I listened to on audio. I read it to fulfill a children's book from my childhood on a challenge and I am so glad I did because I had forgotten how wonderful it is. Also really enjoyed The Sisters Brothers which is not something I expected to like as a western, but it's a different kind of western.

3. Least favorite also easy - At Swim-Two-Birds. Way too weird for me. Made Ulysses seem almost easy to understand.

4. Looking forward to Doctor Zhivago and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I love the 1960s movie of Doctor Zhivago so I look forward to the book. And Perfume has gotten some interesting buzz in another group I'm in.

1. How are you doing on your goal?

If I count only books I've finished reading, the result is one or two. My goal is reading 50 books (2+ per month), so I'm quite behind... But, I'm reading several books in parallel, I believe I can catch up soon.

2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?

I'm reading Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work and Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd more than others and both are my favorite so far.

3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)

Some books I brought from my home country... Since I'm re-establishing the reading habits in English, it has become difficult to dive into other language's world!! LOL

4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?

I got Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future and #GIRLBOSS from the library. I'm looking forward them!

1. I'm three books ahead of my goal in our challenge; I had hoped to be further ahead but my vacation did not have as much free time as I had hoped. We'll see what the summer brings. I'm also in the Mocha Girls Read challenge, where I am two books ahead. We have to spell out Mocha Girls Read with titles and authors, and for some reason, I keep being drawn to books that start with S, so I haven't been able to knock this one out like I should have.

2. Wow, this is a really hard one. I enjoyed a lot of books this quarter about equally, but for very different reasons. I finally read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, so that's nice to finally make up a decade or two there. This is Where I Leave You was enjoyable for all of the crazy things that happened in the book; this wasn't great literature but it was great fun. Kizzy Ann Stamps was one of the best children's books I've read so far, and it tells the story of integration in a very different way. Overall, I probably enjoyed Where'd You Go, Bernadette the most. It was a fun read and I didn't see all of the plot twists coming, which is always nice. But I read a lot of great books this quarter.

3. There was only one book I read this quarter that I didn't enjoy, and that was Matched. This was empty dystopian YA that wanted to be a romantic, less brutal Hunger Games and fell very, very short. Lesson learned - I now only read YA books that my niece recommends; no one else.

4. I'm currently reading Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, which is hands down the funniest book I have ever read in my life. I just might finish it today. After that, I'm looking forward to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and finally finishing The Book Thief.

Happy reading all!!

1. How are you doing on your goal?

Surprisingly, pretty well! I'm currently 2 books ahead, so that's nice! I started the year out wonderfully and was 4 books ahead at one point, but got busy with rehearsals and performances in real life, so only got to read a couple books in March. Time to get cracking, I guess. :)

2. Favorite books of the quarter:

Hmmm... so many! I'm glad I've read so many good books already. Harry Potter has been great. It's my first time reading them (wasn't allowed in middle school...) so it's nice to "make up a decade or two" as ReGina said. I enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale, A Discovery of Witches, and listening to The Hobbit.

3. Least favorite?:

Probably Big Girls Do It: Volumes 1-4. Just ridiculous.

4. I don't really "plan" what I read. I've actually had my husband pick out the last two books I've read and have enjoyed both. That being said, I'm in the midst of a couple series and would like to finish them - Harry Potter and the All Souls trilogy. I also have The Girl on the Train on hold at the library. Finally down to the double digits on the waitlist for that one!

I've enjoyed reading everyone else's updates and find myself excited for them whenever someone's looking forward to reading a book I've already read and loved! Yay reading!!!

1. How are you doing on your goal?
At the end of March, 135 of 402 books read for the GR's challenge. I read 43506 pages.


2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?

For non-fiction: Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland and The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Beard.

For fiction: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

For Young Adult: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven and Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith.

3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume 1. Boring, repetitive, and gross. The translation I'm reading is not the book I remember from childhood, thank goodness.

4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?
I don't plan ahead that far; I can't be sure what I'll be reading five minutes from now.

Kanako wrote: "I got Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future and #GIRLBOSS from the library. I'm looking forward them!"

I bought #GIRLBOSS a few months ago and haven't started it yet. I know I need to!

1) I'm making good progress toward my goal. According to the math, I am 5 books ahead. It helps that I started out strongly in January and February because my conviction and motivation flagged in March; I hope to recover my enthusiasm this month. It's a quarter of the way through this year, and I am a quarter of the way toward my goal (30 of 75 books).

2) My favorite books of the quarter were: Letters from Father Christmas, Cinderella Stories Around the World: 4 Beloved Tales, Memoirs of a Geisha, Jurassic Park, and Bunnicula. I had never read any of these books before, but now I am glad that I have. Now I wish Tolkien was my grandfather. I have a better understanding of the movies Memoirs of a Geisha and the Jurassic Park series after reading their books. I understand why Bunnicula was very popular when I was in elementary school, and it's fascinating to read about the Cinderella story told by other cultures; I only wish that there had been more than the four versions of Cinderella.

3) My least favorite book was How to Build a Girl. The writing style struck me as weird, the main character was definitely weird, and the main character's thought process (or lack thereof) was downright bizarre. *SPOILERS* *SPOILER ALERT* The main character is very immature, not that bright, and does strange things, like picking up certain unhealthy habits, because one day she just decides to do so...She's also weirdly obsessed with wanting to have sex to the point where one has to wonder if the book should be called How to Build a Whore instead. *END SPOILER ALERT*

4) There are a number of books that I'm looking forward to reading, and a lot of them are classics like The Invisible Man, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Alice in Wonderland, The Divine Comedy, The Lord of the Rings, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Castle of Wizardry, Vampire Hunter D, The Snow Queen, etc. I believe the best books are yet to come.

3. Easy - Limonow. It's a biography of a truely terrible person. Rapist, fascist, murderer - need I say more?

Julia, I have to ask...Why did you want to read a book about someone like that?

This is such a great way to review the first quarter!

1) How are you doing on your goal? I am four books ahead of schedule, so all is going smoothly!

2) What was your favorite book of the quarter? There were a few this quarter. The Husband's Secret, Flappers and Philosophers, and The Diary of a Young Girl all stand out to me for a number of reasons- quality of writing, character development, and (in terms of The Diary of a Young Girl) just the historical quality of it.

3) What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? Again, there were a few for me. I couldn't enjoy The Painted Girls mainly because of the writing- the characters were crass and there were parts of the plot that seemed incomplete or not fully developed. The idea behind it was interesting, but it just wasn't for me. Another one I couldn't get into was The Widow of the South for some of the same reasons- I couldn't care about the characters, the plot seemed forced, too much of a focus on death and dying (being a Civil War book I guess that was to be expected though). Again, the concept was interesting, but not one that I could get into to.

4) What book are you MOST looking forward to in quarter two? PLENTY!!! I have some great books coming up. I'm currently reading Anna Karenina (and loving it!), and will be starting The Girl You Left Behind soon. I'm also looking forward to getting to Orphan Train, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and All the Light There Was this quarter!

I like that a couple have mentioned The Handmaid's Tale, one of my absolute favorites. :) And a lot of the favorite books are going on my TBR.

1. How are you doing on your goal?

Well ahead for the first time ever!

2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?

Getting to read Toni Morrison's new one God Help the Child was a highlight.

I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake. It was a complex narrative but I loved the question of reliability.



3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)

I didn't have a least favorite - I enjoyed all of the selections this time around and wasn't disappointed by any - unless you count that I wished Toni Morrison's new book were longer?? :-)


4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?

Miranda July's The First Bad Man and finishing Sarah Water's The Paying Guests.

1. How are you doing on your goal?

I'm actually pretty impressed with myself. I set out to read 12 books this year, figuring work and illustration commissions would take up a lot of my time. But we are only a fourth of the way through the year and I've already read seven books - I'm 58% of the way done with my challenge. I'm thinking of expanding it.

2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?

Well, that is a tough one. I'd have to say it'd be between two books: Fire Sea by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and Angelfall by Susan Ee. Both are fantastic books and parts of series that I'm working on. (My TBR is way too long, I swear).

3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)

Well, that one is easy enough: A Hunger Like Fire by Greg Stolze. Don't worry, there are no spoilers - I just hated it. The author has no sense of style in his writing, it comes across as having no editors ever touching it. And Stolze seems to have just the most basic of understandings of Vampire lore. You can read my review on it, I was pretty honest there.

4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?

Oh boy - like I said earlier my TBR is super long at the moment. But I'd have to say... All of them? The ones I'd guess I'm most excited for is: World After and Serpent Mage. But I plan on keeping up this pace of reading a lot - so we'll see how far I make it this year.

Good luck to everyone in their challenges and happy reading!

1. How are you doing on your goal?
Fine, I'm like ten books ahead but that's good because I'm so great stressing out that it's better achieve goal and more..

2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth was great as I guessed, Chris Hadfield seemed nice according interviews and so was book too.

I like Poisoned Apples poems too. And lately I have read Sookie Stockhouse books which are so much fun. And Agatha of course, the most of months my montly Agatha is the best book of the month.

3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)
The Books strange new things was just awful and I didn't like Mr Mercedes either even if I like King very much.

4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?
Maybe I finally manage to read my complete works goal and read Donna Tartt books. Really waiting to read The Secret history and reread The Goldfinch And I think I going to reread Anna Gavalda too.

1. How am I doing on my goal?
Nunber of books right on schedule, number of pages slightly under, but catching up.

2. My favorite book?
Tricky to name just one. I've just discovered Kristen Ashley, and everything I've read from her so far I really like.

3. My least favorite book?
The Count of Monte Cristo, not because I didn't like the story, but it took me such a long time to plough through that one.

4. What book I'm most looking forward to reading?
I had all these plans for this year, scheduled my whole year with books I want to read for which challenge. I was very ambitious, and sort of forgot that reading should also be fun. And I still do want to read those books I planned, just not right now. So I have to spend some time re-arranging my schedule and I'll just wait and see where I can fit in which books I've read.

1. I'm... 21 books ahead of my goal, largely due to a slew of great graphic novels, which are fast reads (for me, anyway!).

2. There's been a LOT of good reads in this quarter. Difficult to pick and choose. LoveStar: A Novel was fantastic, in a hilarious-insane kind of way. Flex deserves all the praise it gets - I keep raving about it, because it's made out of something like one half charm, one half awesome, and a lot of percentages of smart. And City of Stairs was as good as I was made to expect.

3. Least favourite was probably The Book of Strange New Things - the more I think about that one, the more I dislike it. Schismatrix Plus is a strange collection in which the main novella was almost painfully unreadable to me, but the short stories were fantastic.

4. I'm especially looking forward to the all-the-awards-nominated The Goblin Emperor, and Neal Stephenson's Seveneves & China Miéville's Three Moments of an Explosion, both of which are conveniently published almost exactly on my birthday.

1. SOOOOO BAD! Actually, I'm only three books behind but I keep reading and finishing books and it STILL says three behind. I'm cursed to never catch up.

2. My favorite is between Ready Player One and The Alchemist

3. Belzhar - if this book did not have it's main character it would have been a five star read but the ending just kills it for me.

4. God Help the Child and finally getting around to Yes Please

I just got 1 fun reading book done because I was in school until the middle of March. Now I can't wait to start reading fun books again since I'm totally done with school and graduatein may. right niw I'm in the middle of Heart of a Lion by Gilbert Morris. It is the first book in a series about biblical characters. This one is about Moses, but it is historical fiction. I'm really liking it and looking forward to the rest of the series. I'm also lookong forward to knocking some books off my tbr and my nook and hopefully not adding too many more!

Courtney wrote: "4. God Help the Child and finally getting around to Yes Please

I received and ARC of God Help the Child from the publisher and I thought it was excellent (as all of her works are!) I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think

I think I am moving along in my challenge. I do keep picking long books however and it can slow you down. I have a number of books I look forward to. One is the second of Patricia Bracewell's trilogy about Queen Emma. There's a new Anne Perry. A new Steve Berry

Kara wrote: "Kanako wrote: "I got Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future and #GIRLBOSS from the library. I'm looking forward them!"

I bought #GIRLBOSS a few months ago and h..."

#GIRLBOSS is on my TBR list as well. I would appreciate all comments as to whether this is one I should pick up or not.

1. How are you doing on your goal?

I am six books ahead of schedule and excited as can be about it! :) Never thought I would get that far this early on!

2. What was your favorite book of the quarter (pick a few if you can't narrow it down to just one!)?

Really enjoyed Unbroken immensely! I don't read a ton of non-fiction but the story is truly amazing and moving! The Mercedes Lackey Five Hundred Kingdom reads were also fun although not as great as the first two books in the series!

3. What was your least favorite book of the quarter and why? (Please make sure to avoid or mark spoilers.)

Hmmm, there were two books that I found good but hard to read. Walking by Thoreau was wonderful but I found the language bogged me down a bit as it is so different. Found myself re-reading paragraphs at times. The other book that didn't wow me was Outlander. I fell in love with several characters and loved many parts of the story line but it was just too much in parts. Several others who have read it said they also had some issues with the first two books but they haven't been able to put the others down. So I do plan on reading a few more in the series.

4. What book are you MOST looking forward to reading in the second quarter?

I am curious to see if The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain makes me laugh. Also really looking forward to reading Ayn Rand as she has often been recommended to me but somehow I have never read anything by her!

I am presently on my first book See Jane Run at chapter 28 page 408 so I am almost done read. It's really a page-turner.

1. I am doing awesome with my goal this year! I just can't seem to stop reading right now which is good because I often get distracted in the fall.

2. My favorite book of the quarter was The Silver Linings Playbook.

3. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom was just not something that I found useful.

4. The book I am looking forward to reading in the Second Quarter is, well, all of them. Even when I do not like a book, I can usually find something of value in it.