Typically, Three Things Thursday is a blog series I do where I choose 10 random categories and write 3 things about each. For today’s post, I only chose 5 categories and they’re all bookish! Let’s dive in, shall we?
Three bookish memories from childhood
1) My weekly library trips with my mom. We would go every Saturday morning, and I would check out 10 books, as that was the maximum number of children’s books I was allowed to check out. I would read them all and be ready for my next 10 books the following Saturday.
2) Receiving a copy of The Complete Guide to the Baby-Sitters Club, which I read so many times that the cover fell off and my parents bought me a new one. THE BEST.
3) Getting in trouble for walking and reading during my walk home from school one day. Apparently, it’s “unsafe” to be lost in a book when there are cars around?! Hrmph!
Three books coming up on my TBR list
1) The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak—I hated this author’s previous book, but I heard really good things about this one, so I’m going to give him another try. Don’t let me down, Jason!
2) Worst Case Scenario by TJ Newman – I loved Newman’s previous two books and I’m excited to dive into her latest release as soon as my hold is in.
3) The Night Swim by Megan Goldin – I bought this book from Book of the Month years ago and I’m finally going to pluck it off my shelf soon.
Three of the lowest-rated books on my Goodreads Want-to-Read list
1) Pete and Alice in Maine by Caitlin Shetterly (3.38 stars) – Lisa gave this novel 4 stars but it has a very low rating on Goodreads. A lot of people said this book is boring and apparently the dialect the author uses is slightly problematic? IDK. I may try this on audio since more character-driven stories work better for me in that format.
2) All This & More by Peng Shepherd (3.4 stars) – This “choose your own adventure” story piqued my interest when it was talked about on Sarah’s Book Shelves Live. Most reviewers say the book just goes on forever, so I’m not sure if I’ll give it a try or not.
3) Piglet by Lottie Hazell (3.45 stars) – Another SBSL rec! I may remove this one from my shelf, though, because a lot of the negative reviews talk about the disordered eating that’s rampant through the book and that’s just not something I need in my life.
Three book goals I’m pondering for 2025
1) Read one 500+ page book every quarter – I tend to shy away from big chonkers, which is why I’m pondering this goal. Right now, the books I have my eye on are The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher (544 pages) and 11/22/63 by Stephen King (849 pages). If you have ideas for other 500+ page books, I’m all ears!
2) Read more Agatha Christie mysteries – This year, I set a goal to read 6 mysteries by Agatha Christie, which has been such an enjoyable goal! And it would be fun to become an AC completist and read more of her books in 2025.
3) Choose six books I previously abandoned and give them another shot – I’m curious about all the books sitting on my “abandoned” list on Goodreads. It’s possible that I just wasn’t in the right headspace for some of them. Then again, there are so many books to read so why rehash the past?
Three 2024 releases I loved this year
1) The Women by Kristin Hannah – I devoured this book, even though it was long and sad and heavy. Learning more about the Vietnam War and PTSD among those who served was fascinating.
2) Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera – Listening to this book was, hands down, my most favorite audiobook experience ever. It was so good!
3) Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez – I loved this contemporary romance that had a lot of difficult themes at the core of the novel. The ending was pure perfection.
What’s a bookish memory from your childhood?
Last year I wrote a post about books, and one of the themes that came up in the comments was how many of us had gotten in trouble for reading when we weren’t supposed to. We’re just a bunch of lawbreakers up in here! I have fond memories of my childhood trips to the library and I still have my library card from back then.
Overall I liked Pete and Alice in Maine but I hated the ending. I would have liked the book a lot better if I’d skipped the last chapter. I finally read 11/22/63 this summer after only 10 years of thinking about it, and I LOVED it. And I have all the feels for The Women <3
Yes- 11/22/63, so good! I read a bunch of longer books this year, and really enjoyed them. Another idea- if you haven’t read it yet- is Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I haven’t read it yet, but I read some of his other books this year and loved them, and everyone raves about it.
i also loved Listen for the Lie.
I ALSO used to get in trouble for reading… in school. Like, while the teacher was talking, I would have my book in my lap and be reading it. Teachers don’t like that!
The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak is on my TBR this year as well! Agatha Christie, especially the Poirot series is one of my go to comfort series 🙂
Loved reading this, even added a couple books to my holds list at the library!
I enjoyed 11/22/63 a lot! A few other super long books that I enjoyed were Obama’s book and the Ken Follett books. As for long books you should skip, The Covenant of Water was good for a while and then just felt like a slog, and the Goldfinch was also good but was a 30 hour long audiobook and I was ready to be done. I feel like when it is long, they really need to step up their game, as holding someone’s attention for that long requires a different set of skills.
I do not plan on revisiting my abandoned books. Even if they are wonderful, there are so many books out there and there was probably a reason I abandoned them, so I think it best to just move on. What would be worse than trying again and abandoning them twice!?
I remember I struggled with fluency when I was 4 or 5. Then did okay afterwards. I was homeschooled so I read A LOT. Books were my escape when my parents’ marriage went to shit. I would lock myself in the room and just read.
I think I’m going to have a read big books goal next year, too!
Stephany, you should read Pillars of the Earth!!! Ken Follett makes historical fiction fly by. Gone with the Wind is also on my list as a classic I should read. I’m considering The Stand and Roots, too.
Great bookish lists! I don’t do book goals because I enjoy too much to read on a whim, but I did start War and peace in January as an online read-along on Substack that would go through the entire year. Stopped a few weeks in, so that was a fail, but there’s always tomorrow… (or next year)? But that is a book you can really tackle, hah.
I used to go to the library weekly – though my favourite was going to my neighbours house and borrowing Nancy Drew. Her grown daughter had the complete series and I would go over with a bag and get 3 or 4, and then call when I was finished those and go back and get more. There are well over 100 books in the series and I read through it at LEAST twice.
I enjoyed this post and I love that you are so analytical about book ratings — and divided your 3 things into different book directions. My daughter did a data visualization a few years ago involving her Goodreads data and one of the findings was Tuesday was the day she most often started a book. This is my first year for NaBloPoMo and I like the idea of a three things kind of post. I do have great memories of going to the library with my mom as a kid!
I love your bookish childhood memories, I have very similar ones! As for GR…I never look at the ratings of a book because I almost always disagree with them. Usually I will have a book that I loved and it will have like a two star rating, or vice versa a book I hated will be nearly 5. So I have just accepted that GR and I will never be friends, although I occasionally use it for a plot synopsis when a book is recommended, to see if I would be interested. I read Pete and Alice and I gave it three stars (in my spreadsheet, not, obviously, on GR). The dialogue was terrible and that is a huge deal breaker for me. Also it was depressing as hell, which is not typically something that bothers me – I like a depressing book often – but it was all about the early days of the pandemic. Sometimes I can handle it, sometimes not, and with the terrible dialogue I was just not into it.
Oh, I love these kinds of posts, finding out what people have read and or are reading. What books they love and how they got into reading. I read with my dad who really taught me not only how to read but gave me a love of reading. I’ve been reading ever since. Though it’s true I tend to read every book but the ones I just bought. I need to tackle my TBR pile soon.
Ooo, I never had that BSC complete guide! I wish I had! I was a huge fan and had some of the other special books (did you have the one with the letters that came out?).
Ha, I have a similar story of walking and reading a book and walking right into a huge mailbox.
Ooo thanks for the Worst Case Scenario reminder! I need to add to Libby!
The revisiting 6 abandoned books goal is very interesting. I abandon a lot for the same reason – just not right for me at the time. Maybe you will find some missed gems!
I love all things book and this post didn’t disappoint.
Specially your pondering of 2025 goals. I am not sure I would want to revisit the DNfed books. They landed on that list for a reason. And there are so many stories out that wait for me…
I may help with your 500+ page goal. I LOVE reading 500+ books. I even have a whole Goodreads list dedicated to this: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/51853470-tobia?shelf=500-pages I may have not been perfect in moving them all in there but maybe you find something.
I was just thinking the other day about reading and walking at the same time, and how I used to do that as a kid. Another reading thing, we used to have read-a-thon fundraisers at school, where we would go around the neighborhood and ask people to sponsor us, and they would say they were going to give me X amount per book. Well, then I would go and read 40 books or something, and people would have promised $1 a book, and I couldn’t go ask them for $40 in 1977, and I couldn’t lie and say I had read fewer books (why? why couldn’t I? no one would have known!), so I just never followed through and collected. Sigh.
I did a ‘chunkster challange’ way back in the days when I was in a group of book bloggers (all have since given up blogging, but they used to make badges and so on) and I remember reading a few big books for that. I really liked ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, though I have heard that the author is problematic more recently. I also loved ‘Cloud Atlas’, though it took me awhile to get into.
I really liked Pete and Alice but it might be too character driven for you? Also the pandemic factors heavily in the plot/subtext of the book so if that is triggering, I would skip this. The ending was very interesting and kind of maddening but also at the same time not surprising? It would make for a good book club discussion.
I love that you went to the library weekly with your mom. I hope my boys remember going with me. My town did not have a library so I had no access to a library during the summers. So I remember begging my mom to buy me baby sitter club books at B Dalton at the mall!
If you’re into non-fiction, I think a lot of biographies are 500+ pages… I just read one on the Bronte family. I like big big tomes for winter hunkering here. Even though it takes me so long to read them, it’s usually summer by the time I’m done.