Though actually only about the digressions…
In the A & B post I mentioned the TPL 2025 Reading Challenge. So I’m going to try and do that.
There was also this thing on social media to read 12 books recommended by 12 friends. So I’m also going to try and do that.
Those are both “2025 goals.”
I also bought two “scratch off” posters: 100 Essential Novels and 100 Challenging Novels. There is no time limit on these ones!
I’m still trying to mostly read my shelves but occasionally, as I am sure to no one’s great surprise, I get sidetracked.
First: McFadden, Freida: The Widow’s Husband’s Secret Lie. When someone in the TPL fb group mentioned this one I giggled for a while. I had to read it. Listen actually because it’s an audiobook. It was ridiculous. Intentionally. It’s a satire full of all the usual whodunit tropes. McFadden has written dozens of books so it works for the TPL category: a book by an author who has written 25 or more books.
And then Rogers, Janet: Ego of a Nation. TPL category: a book of Canadian poetry. I’m not sure where I heard about her but she is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from the Six Nations band here in Ontario. Poetry is not one of my usual genres and I think I just put it on hold as soon as I found it so I wouldn’t forget. I’m glad I did.
And then the big diversion: Lewis, Sinclair: It Can’t Happen Here. When I finished it I noted that it took me 38 days to read about 380 pages. It was written in 1935. The language has changed enough since then that it isn’t quite the same; large parts of it are the same. It’s all just a little bit different too. And I read slowly. Like really slowly.
And then, of course you have the fact that I had to take breaks while reading it. You know, a break after reading the part about the intellectuals fleeing the US to come to Canada. A break after the dissidents were all rounded up into “not concentration camps”. A break after the book burnings. And so on. And it broke my heart so much that when it was done I walked down to the library on a cold dark rainy night, so I could return it and get it out of my house.
And I couldn’t read anything else at the same time for fear I wouldn’t have the nerve to get back to it. So yea. That was a bit of a side-quest from the reading.
Maybe that’s enough for today and I’ll actually get to C & D in another post…. but I’m going to leave the title lol