Christmas is on Sunday? What?? It still feels surreal, just like every year. I'm feeling much more prepared today than I was last Tuesday, so I'm hoping I'll be able to enjoy a nice, calm, peaceful weekend holiday celebration with family and friends. I wish the same for you and yours!

I mentioned last week that my reading goal for 2022 is 200 books. How am I doing? Not TOO badly. I'm at 188 read and I should finish both my paper read and my audiobook today. That gives me ten days to read ten more books. Can I do it? Like Bob the Builder says, "YES, I can!" Well, we'll see about that, Bob, but like the Little Red Engine chants, "I THINK I can." 

If you want to share your bookish holiday wishes, join in the TTT fun. All the details are at That Artsy Reader Girl.

Top Ten Bookish Gifts Santa Is Going to Bring Me (if he gets "his" act together, of course)

After my 2021 foray into the world of reading challenge hosting (at which I proved to be a right failure), I vowed never to host again. Famous last words! An idea for a reading challenge occurred to me while I was showering the other day and I decided why not? So, here goes...

I know I'm not the only bookaholic who loves to read books about my favorite hobby. Whether it's a swoony rom-com with a library meet-cute, a drama involving a book club of frenemies, a behind-the-scenes memoir by a bookstore owner, a biography of a favorite writer, or a tantalizing mystery that delves into the world of rare books, I'm there for it. Book stacks on the cover? I'm in! My eye will always be drawn to bookish books. I have hundreds of them on my various Goodreads TBR lists. One thing I've never seen in all my years of taking on reading challenges is one dedicated entirely to books about books. That is a downright travesty, my friends, so I made my own! 

The challenge will run from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023. You can sign up any time during the year, starting now. 

Challenges are more fun with friends, so please join me. Feel free to grab the challenge button, post about the challenge on your blog, and help me spread the word.

Please use the linky below to sign up for the challenge. Create a post on your blog or on social media announcing that you are participating in the challenge, then use that link to sign up using the linky widget below:

Only 12 sleeps left until the Big Day? How is that possible? Ack! I still haven't finished decorating, haven't even started sending out my Christmas cards, have only bought a few gifts, and...yeah. I'm sure I will get everything done by Christmas, but I'm stressing a bit over here. I'm also lagging behind in my reading. If I hope to reach my goal of reading 200 books by the end of the year, I better hurry it up. I'm at 180 right now. I'm almost finished with my main read, but that still leaves 19 to go. We'll see how I do.

Seasonal reading lists are my favorite, so I'm loving today's TTT topic: Top Ten Books On My Winter 2022-2023 TBR List. In fact, I started my list last week with this post listing 12 of the 25 I planned to read to complete my goal. Since then, I have read three of them and DNF'd one. Today, I'm going to give you 13 more that I'm hoping to read in the next few weeks. 

I'd love to see what's on your Winter TBR list. If you want to join in the TTT fun (and you do!), click on over to That Artsy Reader Girl for all the deets.

1. How to Fake An Irish Wake by Eliza Watson—This is my current paper read. It's a fun cozy mystery set in Ireland and featuring a genealogical mystery: the search for a man's biological father in a small Irish town. I've only got about 50 pages to go and I'm not sure "whodunit" yet.

2. The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell—I started this mystery on audio yesterday. It concerns the mysterious disappearance of two teenage parents from a party at a house called Dark Place. Two years later, a mystery novelist moves into a cottage near the now abandoned home and gets embroiled in the cold case. I'm enjoying the read so far.

3. The Gods of Green County by Mary Elizabeth Pope—I mentioned this novel in a TTT list a couple weeks ago. I need to read a book set in Arkansas for a reading challenge and this one sounds intriguing. It's about a woman who's taking on the powers that be in her small town to find out what really caused her brother's suspicious death. Neither of my local libraries had a copy of the book, so I went ahead and bought it. I'm planning to read it this week.

4. All the Lost Places by Amanda Dykes—Bethany House sent me a copy of this book to review. It's gotten great buzz, so I'm excited. It's set in Venice and concerns an abandoned baby who is found floating in the canals. Decades later, a translator may be the one who solves the mystery of the child's true origin.

5. The Final Gambit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes—I've enjoyed this YA Knives Out-like series. This is the last book in the series and I'm excited to see how the story ends.

6. Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan—Ever since it came out last year, I've been wanting to read this story about a woman whose dying brother's wish is to know the truth about Narnia. When his sister timidly approaches C.S. Lewis, she has no idea that their encounters will change all of their lives. Sounds like a heartwarming holiday read!

7. Willis Wilbur Wows the World by Lindsey Leavitt—Leavitt's books are always fun. I'm sure this one will be no exception. It's about an enterprising 9-year-old who decides his life's true calling is to become the neighborhood life coach. Hilarity ensues.

8. The Ghost of Wyvern Lake by Sheila A. Nielson—This is a Halloween story, not a Christmas one, but it sounds fun so I'm going for it. When the fish in Wyvern Lake start dying of a mysterious illness, the owner drains the water hole only to uncover an old church with a very angry ghost inside. It's up to a group of young ghost hunters to free their town of a malevolent entity.

9. Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister—I'm intrigued by this book's premise. It's about a mother who is shocked and devastated when she witnesses her 17-year-old son killing a stranger. The next morning, she's stunned all over again when she discovers that it's not tomorrow but yesterday. Time is moving backwards, a miraculous gift she's been given to save her boy from committing a horrendous act.

10. Cece Rios and the King of Fears by Kaela Rivera—The second book in a MG series based on Mexican folklore, this one features a young bruja who must take on a powerful criatura in order to save her sister's soul.

11. Things We Didn't Say by Amy Lynn Green—I enjoyed the one book I've read by Green and I'm really looking forward to her newest, which just came out. This one is actually her 2020 debut. It concerns a young woman who is studying linguistics at the University of Minnesota. When she's asked by the Army to serve as a translater at a nearby German POW camp, she does it only reluctantly. Her service there, as well as her growing compassion for the prisoners, makes her an enemy in the surrounding town. When she finds herself falling for one of the inmates, she must question her own traitorous heart.

12. The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope—This historical fantasy sounds fun. It's about a woman who can commune with spirits and the debt she owes to a powerful entity. In order to free herself from its clutches, she must perform a daring heist that will no doubt lead her into all kinds of trouble.

13. Death Al Dente by Leslie Budewitz—I still need to read a book set in Montana and this cozy mystery sounds fun. It concerns a woman who turns her family's 100-year-old general store into a boutique selling local delicacies. When a former employee turns up dead, she has to channel her inner Nancy Drew to save herself and her store from suspicion.

There you go, thirteen books I'm planning to read before the year ends. Have you read any of them? What's on your Winter TBR list? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

I really can't believe it, but there are only 25 days left in 2022! Where has the time gone? Interestingly enough, I have exactly 25 more books to go until I meet my goal of reading 200 books this year. Will I make it? I don't know. I could read a book a day until January 1st, but I've also got a lot of other things that need to be done. I'd like to at least meet my goal, if not surpass it. We'll see how things go. Since today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is a freebie and next week's is Top Ten Books On My Winter 2022-2023 TBR List, I'm going to combine them and do two posts about the 25 books I plan to read before the year ends. 

Before I get to that, though, two things: (1) If you're not aware, TTT is hosted by the lovely Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Click on over for all the deets on this fun meme and to give her some love. (2) If you're a reading challenge fiend like me, please check out my other blog, Ready for a Reading Challenge? It's a database of current reading challenges being hosted all over the Internet. If you're hosting a reading challenge this year, let me know. I'm happy to add it to my database to help spread the word. 

This list is a combination of books I still need to read for reading challenges, a couple book awards I'm helping to judge, a review I'm writing for a genealogical magazine next year, and just fun reads that I've been meaning to get to. I've mentioned most of them before, so bear with me.

1. Roll for Initiative by Jaime Formato—This Cybils nominee has a strong Dungeons and Dragons theme, which made it a little hard to get into for me with my total lack of D&D knowledge or interest. Once you get past that, though, it becomes an engaging story about finding your tribe. I've only got about 100 pages left in the book. Overall, I've enjoyed it.

2. Oh My Stars by Lorna Landvik—I'm listening to this lively story on audio. It's set in small-town North Dakota (a very difficult state to find if you, like me, are doing a read-a-book-set-in-every-state challenge), where a suicidal Southern woman lands unexpectedly after a bus breakdown. Violet has never belonged anywhere, so she's shocked when tiny Pearl starts to feel like home. 

3. The Kind to Kill by Tessa Wegert—This mystery, the fourth in the Shana Merchant series, just came out today. When a tourist goes missing during a Thousand Islands community festival, our fearless detective takes the case amidst outcries that she attracts trouble to the otherwise peaceful community. Shana can't help her familial connection to a serial killer, but will his dirty deeds lead to the end of her career?

4. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly—I need an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner for the POPSUGAR reading challenge and I've been meaning to read this one anyway. If you're not familiar with it, it tells the true story of five Black female mathematicians who worked for NASA starting in the early 1940s. Although their work was essential to the success of the American space program, they had to fight against blatant racism and sexism in the workplace just to perform their jobs.

5. The Hope of Elephants by Amanda Rawson Hill—Who doesn't love elephants? This middle-grade verse novel is about a young girl who's coping with her dad's cancer diagnosis as well as the terrifying possibility that she may have inherited his genetic mutation. I'm interested to see how pachiderms come into play...

6. The Blackout Book Club by Amy Lynn Green—I really enjoyed Green's last historical novel, so I'm looking forward to this one, her newest. It's about a woman who becomes the unlikely head of a small library in Maine during World War II. When the library's future is threatened, she invents a book club to save it from closure, a move that just might save herself as well.

7. Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson—I love the Truly Devious YA mystery series so I'm excited to read this newest installment, the fifth. This time around, Stevie Bell is studying abroad in England when she's introduced to a notorious cold case in which two Cambridge students were murdered after a game of hide-and-seek got out of hand. Can the intrepid amateur sleuth figure out whodunit?

8. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear—With New Year's resolution-making time right around the corner, this will be a good, motivational book to re-read. It's a quick read, but one that has some great ideas to impart.

9. Flip Turns by Catherine Arguelles—Another Cybils contender, this novel features a girl whose family owns a town swimming pool. When a series of pranks is launched at the pool, she must channel her inner Nancy Drew to figure out who's pulling the tricks and why.

10. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens—I mentioned in my last list that I re-read this classic every year. I'm feeling super Grinch-y this year, so it should be just the thing to reset my frame of mind.

11. Doing Life With Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out by Jim Burns—On a related note ("Adult" children, man, they're rough!), this book is about how to successfully navigate those tricky and changing relationships between parents and their growing-up children. I feel like I'm completely failing at this, so hopefully this book will be helpful.

12. Death On the Nile by Agatha Christie—I need something for a "Book Turned Into a Movie in 2022" reading challenge prompt, so I chose this classic mystery, which I've never read before. Normally, I don't watch a movie before I read the book it's based on, but I did already watch (and enjoy) the film.

There you go, 12 (of 25) books I'm planning to read before 2022 disappears forever. Have you read any of them? What did you think? What did you do for your Freebie today? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.