Here we are halfway through 2023–can you believe it? Today I was looking back through my blogging notebook and reviewing the progress or lack thereof I had made on my 2023 challenges. Here they are in no particular order:

I had originally hoped to read a classic every other month. So far I have completed:

JANUARY AND FEBRUARY

MARCH AND APRIL

CIRCE by Madeline Miller, which I have finished but have not reviewed as yet.

MAY AND JUNE

So, I am right on schedule with the Classic Club Challenge.

Desperately needing to pare down my TBR shelves, I decided to read a book each month from them. Notice there are some overlaps with other challenges. What blogger doesn’t love killing two challenges with one book? LOL

JANUARY: I doubt I reviewed this book, but a signed copy I received from an Imprint evening in Houston had sat on my TBR next to my bed for quite a few months. Crying in the Bathroom, by Erika Sanchez, a memoir, was a tad disappointing after having read her earlier I Am Not Your Typical Mexican Daughter, which I loved. In her second book, Sanchez was more in-your-face in her memoir and she used such profanity, including the F bomb frequently, that it became a turn off. I persevered, however and finished the memoir. I placed it respectively on my signed-authors shelves, for who knows what Sanchez will write next!

FEBRUARY:

This non-fiction self-study, self-help book had been on my TBR shelf (again next to my bed) for over a year. I was saving it to take to my bookstore when I had one, but instead, I loved it so much, I kept the copy on my keep-forever-at- my-house-shelf in my ofice and will reread and refer to it from time to time. I even marked pages that would be appropriate for a workshop or class in the future.

MARCH: It Starts with Us is another book I haven’t reviewed yet, but it had been on my TBR shelf with the others since the beginning of the semester. I ordered it on the recommendation of a student who said she wanted to read it. I did not realize that this book was a sequel to It Ends With Us (sounds backwards, doesn’t it?), but I lucked out because it read well as a stand-alone novel as the author very cleverly had the two main characters read from each others’ journals about what had happened in the first book. Also very cleverly, Colleen Hoover, the novelist, marked journal entries by using italics. It was an enjoyable read.

APRIL: Everybody Writes by Ann Handley, a fellow blogger, had been languishing on my Kindle for over a year. I had started it once or twice, but I found very little that was useful for my Advanced Writing classes I had been teaching for the past 34 years. HOWEVER, when I changed my teaching assignment to Freshman Composition, Writing 1301, in the spring semester, the authors’ advice and especially her writing prompts became very valuable. Thank you, Ann.

MAY: And now we come to the overlap. Circe by Madeline Miller had also been on my Kindle since it was first published, and when someone donated a paperback copy to my bookstore, I found it very easy to have the print copy at the bookstore and read it on my Kindle at home in the evenings.

JUNE: I have not read June’s selection yet, but I am still on schedule because June isn’t over yet!

All in all, I am on schedule and clicking right along, which is amazing because since January, I have taught not my usual one but two classes, opened Rae’s Reads, my bookstore (where we have had three author events; a ladies tea, complete with speaker; a pot-luck dinner for twelve; a mini-craft-sale; and established a 5th and 6th grade girls’ book club, The Nerd Herd, since January.) I have been one busy lady, and there’s no let up in sight. Saturday we have an outdoor music concert. Then in July, I’ve scheduled a poetry workshop; a classroom shower for a former student who is starting her first teaching job; and hopefully, in August, a nurse who will speak on “Proactive Health Habits for Seniors.” At all of these events, we feed our guests and give them a free book on their first visit. It has been both exhausting and exhilarating!