Reading Plans 2024

These are my 2024 goals for my reading life:

• Read 10 books from my Classics Club list so I stay on track to complete 50 books within 5 years. 
• Read at least 6 books from my Readers' Advisory Reading List. 
• Read at least 6 of the 35 books on my #nonficnov tbr list before November.
• Complete the 2024 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge at the Victorian level of 5 books.
• Complete the current Canadian Reading Challenge for which I need to read 10 Canadian titles before July 1.
• Get my owned-but-not-read shelf down to fewer than 100 books. It is currently at 139 titles. I need to both read from this shelf and stop adding to it.
• Read a total of 100 books (my usual GoodReads goal).
• Figure out where I left off with my Century of Books project.
• Continue posting a Book Report the first week of each month.

If there is no overlap at all among my challenges that means that I will need to read 77 books. There are definitely books on my shelves that would fit some of the other goals, so this should be do-able. 

Solitude

Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World 

by Michael Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book started off very strong, but floundered about 2/3 of the way through and became a meandering memoir rather than the examination of ideas and studies related to solitude. 

The author lived in Vancouver when the book was written so I am counting this toward the Canadian Reading Challenge.

Flash and Bones

Flash and Bones 

by Kathy Reichs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have read quite a few of the titles in this series and they are usually an entertaining, somewhat educational, excursion into the icky-ness of forensic pathology. This novel was no exception. Mainly set in North Carolina and focusing on the world of NASCAR racing all the elements I would expect in a Kathy Reichs novel were here. I learned a lot I didn't know about auto-racing, including that Canadians follow NASCAR and there are famous drivers from Quebec. 

I am counting this towards the Canadian Reading Challenge (the author and some of the characters are Canadians).

The Building of Jalna

The Building of Jalna 

by Mazo de la Roche
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The Jalna series consists of sixteen novels that tell the story of the Canadian Whiteoak family from 1854 to 1954, although each of the novels can also be enjoyed as an independent story. In the world of the Whiteoaks, as in real life, people live and die, find success and fall to ruin. For the Whiteoaks, there remains something solid and unchanging in the midst of life's transience--the manor house and its rich surrounding farmland known as "Jalna." The author, Mazo de la Roche, gave the members of her fictitious family names from gravestones in Ontario's New Market cemetery, and the story itself balances somewhere between fact and fiction." --Goodreads

I came across this series as part of my Readers' Advisory project. This first book was written in the 1940s and looks back to the 1850s in both Ireland and Canada. I enjoyed the book, but it was a bit slow. I also found the main character, Aldeline, difficult to sympathize with. I don't plan to continue with this series, but am glad that I read it as it is probably typical of both its time and genre.

This book is on my Readers Advisory Reading List, and I am counting it toward both the Canadian Reading Challenge and the Historical Fiction Challenge.

17th Canadian Reading Challenge

Once again the Canadian Reading Challenge is being hosted at Canadian Bookworm. 

I did not successfully complete last year's challenge to read 13 Canadian books. I did read 9 new-to-me Canadian titles since Canada Day 2022, two of them 5-star-reads, so I'm going with that it is all good. 

Here are my completed books for the 16th Canadian Reading Challenge:

1. World of Curiosities by Louise Penny
2. Remembering Orwell by Stephen Wadhams
3. The Unquiet Englishman by Richard Greene (5-stars)
4. Biography: Fiction, Fact, and Form by Ira Nadel
5. Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs
6. Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields
7. The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquart
8. Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood
9. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner (5-stars)

I am signing up to participate in the 17th challenge and look forward to another year of great Canadian reading.