"Go away I'm reading" aka amdial7's reading log for 2026

Hi all,

I'm brand new to Club Read 2026 and I look forward to sharing my reading and learning about yours. My name is Debbie and I'm from Oregon but now live in New England. The books I generally read are history, biographies/memoirs, historical fiction or historical mysteries, and I've started reading more of the classics especially by women. Trying to broaden my knowledge through reading the books so many others talk about instead of remaining in my little book cave. I love it in there but life is too short not to explore a bit. I'm a life long reader, I would read 24/7 if I could, and am an archivist by trade.

Your book recommendations are welcome. The Books/Collections on my LT profile are a bit of a mess, the Media is really messed up, and I'm slowly cleaning them up. I started at LibraryThing in 2007, went to Goodreads in 2008, and now I've returned to my LT account after years of neglect. I like both sites for different reasons.

Here is what I've read:

January
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett
I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Oregon Asylum by Diane L. Goeres-Gardner
Hidden History of Civil War Oregon by Randol B. Fletcher
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Oregon Disasters: True Stories of Tragedy And Survival by Rachel Dresbeck
The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton
Bright I Burn by Molly Aitken
Why Do You Dance When You Walk? by Abdourahman A. Waberi
Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf
Arthur Plantagenet: Henry VIII's Illegitimate Uncle by Sarah-Beth Watkins
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles by Jeanette Winterson

February
The Amazing Book of Useless Information: More Things You Didn't Need to Know But Are About to Find Out by Noel Botham
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott by Louisa May Alcott
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt
A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas

March
Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid
Nurse's Stories by Charles Dickens
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
The Man of the Crowd by Edgar Allan Poe
The Lifted Veil by George Eliot
Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe
The Dickinsons of Amherst by Christopher Benfrey Jerome Liebling Polly Longsworth
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
Maru by Bessie Head
William Wilson by Edgar Allen Poe
Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton by Martha Ackmann
Unshelved by Gene Ambaum
The Mysterious Death of Katherine Parr: What Really Happened to Henry VIII's Last Queen? by June Woolerton
The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe
In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu

>1 amdial7: "can anyone advise on when the Touchstones don't bring up the corrrect book?"
Look under the title it finds in the Touchstones box. There is a link "others". It will allow you to find the correct one :) If it is not there, your search is too wide so add the author name for example. Or you misspelled something. Touchstones find the most common work so for titles without unique words in them, you often get the wrong first choice. Just use others and pick the correct one. I like to use the browser search once I open the "others" to pinpoint the title (usually search for the author).

Hope this helps and welcome to Club Read! :)

What did you think of Dark Renaissance: I have it on my to read list

If the book you want does not appear on Touchstones first off, then click on (others) and a list of similar books will appear for you to select the right one.

Welcome to Club read

>3 baswood: Thank you. I really liked it. Learned a lot about the era, Marlowe, and Shakespeare too. Definitely recommend it.

Oooh, I'm interested in Weight by JW. Worthwhile?

>2 AnnieMod: thank you. I’ll try this.

>5 ELiz_M: I mean it’s Winterson, right? Smart and well written. It’s been a while since I’ve read her and it did not disappoint.

It always makes me happy to see someone reading Frances Hodgson Burnett, I do have a weakness for her.

Welcome to Club Read, Debbie! I think you'll be a great addition to our group, and I'll follow along to see what you're reading.

>2 AnnieMod: It worked! Phew... thank you again.

>8 mabith: It was my first time and I enjoyed it.

>9 kidzdoc: Thank you. I learned about the group when I visited your profile and saw this group after you commented on my reading Medgar and Myrlie by Joy-Ann Reid. I hope your reading is going well.

>12 amdial7: I thought so, Debbie, and I'm glad that you first learned about Club Read from me. I've been a member of this group since 2009, and I'm very comfortable with its members and the rich book discussions we have here.

My reading has picked up dramatically this year, as I've already finished 10 books, as compared to 19 in all of 2025, including several outstanding books, most notably Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs. Unfortunately the main reason is that my mother, who is 90 years old and has vascular dementia, suffered a stroke in mid December and hasn't been home since then; I moved from Atlanta into my parents' home in suburban Philadelphia in November 2021 in order to become her primary caregiver after the unexpected death of my father. Mom is in a nearby memory care center and is doing relatively well, so I should continue with my so far excellent year of reading.

>13 kidzdoc: I'm sorry to hear about your mom. I hope the memory care center helps her as well as you as her caretaker. Reading can be a great distraction when things are difficult.

I've added Baldwin: A Love Story to my TBR list as it does look good. But so many pages!

>14 amdial7: Thanks, Debbie. Mom is being well cared for in the memory care center, and the staff there keeps me abreast of her condition and needs, which makes me feel quite relaxed and allows me to read without worrying about her.

Baldwin: A Love Story is quite a mouthful but it moves very quickly, similar to Lovely One, which I'll probably finish today. James Baldwin is my all time favorite author, and this book provides a thorough look into his life, loves, and inspirations. I have all three Library of America volumes of his works, and I intend to read all of them in the next three to four years, using Boggs's excellent biography as a basis to appreciate them more than I previously did.

Love the title of your thread! I felt like that as a child when relatives would interrupt my reading. I remember it clearly. Some people don’t realised that reading can be a serious activity requiring and desiring concentration.

>16 kjuliff: Thank you and 100% agree. I would read all the time if I could with few breaks here and there of course.

>1 amdial7: Lovely thread and a new list of books to scan through! I hope to read Woolf’s Kew Gardens soon.

I've been busy reading and here are the latest with my thoughts. I'm not a talkative person and that extends to I'm not wordy so don't write much.

Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid
This really should be required reading in high schools as it shared the story of Medgar Evers who is not remembered enough as well as his wife Myrlie Evers-Williams. It reads smoothly even during difficult parts. I've read a lot about the Civil Rights Movement and learned much more from Reid which I always want.

Nurse's Stories by Charles Dickens
I didn't know what to expect with this. It was very odd but I liked it. I want to like Dickens (not sure why!) more than I do so I keep trying different books/stories by him.

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
I read this long ago in high school but didn't remember it and was not disappointed with this reread. So good!

The Man of the Crowd by Edgar Allan Poe
I was very into this story but by the time I got to the end I was thinking "that's it?" Disappointing conclusion, it felt very un-Poe.

The Lifted Veil by George Eliot
My first time reading her and enjoyed it. I wanted a bit more with the ending but I was hooked throughout.

I will add here that I'm in different groups over on Goodreads and a lot of what I read are from their group reads (for example, that's why all the Poe stories are happening now), group challenges (how many African authors will I read this year? minimum of 5; how many books authored by Black women do I plan to read this year? minimum of 5; and how many books authored by women do I plan to read this year? minimum of 10), or broader challenges GR is running. My reading is a bit all over the place because of this but I like the variety and being introduced to titles that I might never have come across. I don't tag which fall under those here on LT as I do on GR.

Where do you learn about titles?

>20 amdial7: "My reading is a bit all over the place" 🙂 I think that's a Club Read characteristic. Fun comment. I'm not in the right mindset to answer your question well. But I use a list of 50 books from a book called Beowulf on the Beach as a core for my classics reading. For new and mid-20th-century books I use Club Read and other online social places (notable Litsy). And I check award lists, especially the The Booker Prize. I really like the Women's Nonfiction Prize too. I have a group of friends I met on the Booker Prize Facebook page in 2023, and we chat constantly about books. We call ourselves the Woolfies 🙂 So many of my recommendations come from the Woolfies.

I adore George Eliot but I haven't read any of her shorter fiction yet. It looks like you started with a very atypical work, as compared with her novels!

I follow Paul Cranswick's yearly geographic challenges. I especially liked the Africa and Asia ones. Last year was Europe and this year the Americas. Basically he sets up a country or topic each month and we try to read at least one book a month from that country. This month is books by a Mexican author. I'm also doing a Zola group read, where we are reading through the Rougon-Macquart cycle in Zola's recommended reading order. We are on #10 (of 20). Other than that, most of my challenges are self directed, including The Global Challenge, where we try to read from every country in the world; Holocaust Literature; Nobel Laureates in Literature; Fifty States Challenge; and I track them all in the Category Challenge.

I get most of my book recs from LT friends and my own serendipitous finds.

>18 dchaikin: Thank you. Kew Gardens is good. A quick read.

>21 dchaikin: Glad to have found you all then. Thanks for the lists. I don't usually look at those, no idea why! So good to have on my radar.

>22 mabith: It's for a group read I'm part of. What do you recommend I try by her?

>23 labfs39: That's a cool idea to do geographically. Thank you.

The latest batch of reading is

Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
What can on one say about Poe? He's amazing and with a couple exceptions so far I love what I'm reading.

The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe
I love this perhaps because I have a fondness for the sounds of public bells and it really captured this.

The Dickinsons of Amherst by Christopher Benfrey Jerome Liebling Polly Longsworth
A beautiful book of photographs and the first essay in particular by Polly Longsworth was excellent about Dickinson and her family. If you've never been to the houses I highly recommend a trip. Emily Dickinson Museum

The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
Good but the ending was not what I'd hoped. Be more villainous, Poe! I wish he went slightly farther with this one.

Maru by Bessie Head
My first book by this Motswana author. It was okay. Fiction is often hit or miss with me.

Just finished William Wilson by Edgar Allen Poe and it's reallly good! Highly recommend.

Great brief comments about the books you've read so far in 2026, Debbie. I completely agree with your assessment and recommendation of Medgar and Myrlie; I also learned a lot more about their lives as a result of reading this excellent book.

I'm also a member of Goodreads but I don't participate in any of the groups, although I'm a member of a handful of them. It's all I can do to keep up with Club Read!

Where do you learn about titles?

Great question. I have a subscription to Archipelago Books, a Brooklyn based publisher of literature in English translation that releases 10-12+ titles that are out of print or have never been published in English, such as Queen by the Swedish author Birgitta Trotzig; this is the first book of hers to be translated into English even though it was written in 1964 and she is highly regarded in her home country. The majority of the books I read come from members of this group, although I also have hundreds of unread titles in my personal library. Another frequent source of new books is interviews with authors on the PBS NewsHour, Amanapour & Company, and similar news shows. On Sunday I went to a local independent bookshop and ordered We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America by Norah O'Donnell of CBS News, based on an interview I saw on the PBS NewsHour a couple of weeks ago, and A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America by Trymaine Lee, which I believe I also learned about from a television interview. Although I haven't been going there as often I also buy books from local indie bookshops, particularly Harriett's Bookshop in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, a Black feminist bookstore that has both books that I knew about and went there to buy, along with plenty of other interesting books, written by men and authors of other races, that sound compelling enough to bring home.

>31 dchaikin: are you enjoying all this Poe?

I would love to see the Dickinson home. I’m slowly working through a collection of poetry now.

>30 kidzdoc: Thanks for the book recommendation places. I just weeded my groups here, so much dormancy. I want to focus on Club Read since it is a lot to follow. I also did a similar weeding on GR to primarily those with group reads which I benefit the most from. I don't want to spend too much time on these sites as I'd rather be reading! :)

>31 dchaikin: It's a wonderful place. What do you think of her poetry?

@dchaikin I misread your post. So updated this. My brain went right to Poe not Dickinson's poetry, which I always enjoy but haven't read a lot of.

>33 amdial7: i fall in love with Dickinson’s poetry every time i pick it up. It does take some deciphering

>26 amdial7: I've enjoyed everything I've read by Eliot. I love her writing style and I find that it's a little hard to predict what will happen in the end, which is unusual with Victorian novelists, in my experience. I started with The Mill on the Floss, which I do think is a good starter Eliot. The weaker reads for me personally were Silas Marner and Felix Holt, The Radical, so I wouldn't prioritize either of those. I loved everything else though.

>32 amdial7: I'm with you, Debbie. I am a member of the Literary Fiction by People of Color in Goodreads, but I have yet to read any of its monthly selections. I was also following The Mookse and the Gripes group there, which focused on the Booker Prize, but I'm not following that award as closely as I have in years past. Keeping up in this group is rewarding without being overwhelming, and I'm very happy here.

>35 mabith: I felt the same way about. Silas Marner until I reread it after a long gap. Silas became a very real person to me the second time around, whereas previously I think I had been put off by some of the elements in the plot, which at the time overshadowed Silas himself.

>35 mabith: Thanks! I'll look up The Mill on the Floss.

>36 kidzdoc: I'm in that group too. I generally read their monthly read but I'm skipping this month's. I'd read an earlier book by Susan Choi and didn't like it. I might try their next month's though Dominion by Addie E. Citchens. Time will tell.

>37 SassyLassy: I like how second reads can be so different. I will look at Silas Marner too. Thank you.

>39 amdial7: Last year I borrowed a copy of Flashlight by Susan Choi from my county library system after it was chosen for last year's Booker Prize longlist, but I didn't get around to reading it. I noticed that it is a finalist for this year's Anisfeld-Wolf Book Awards, so there is a very good chance that I'll borrow it again, although not for the Goodreads group read, as I already have several novels that I plan to read this month.

Let me know what you think of Dominion if you get to it.

I finished Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi. This was my first book by her and it was truly amazing while also very sad to read. Then came Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins who is always a good read in my experience. There was something about the ending that wasn't as satisfying as the rest of the book. I can't put my finger on it but still glad I read it.

And now next up is Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton by Martha Ackmann, who is one of my favorite writers. I have been waiting for this book and cannot wait. I love Dolly plus Ackmann's books never disappoint so I'm ready for it.

Devoured Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton by Martha Ackmann which was great as all Ackmann books are. She is a wonderful storyteller for the life of an amazing performer/person. I definitely recommend it.

Keep forgetting I snuck in Unshelved by Gene Ambaum which was ok. I work in that world and found it a bit much so not really funny where it could have been.

Now onto The Mysterious Death of Katherine Parr: What Really Happened to Henry VIII's Last Queen? by June Woolerton which I'm already three pages into and hooked. Also still working through In A Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu.

I recently read Dominion and really liked it.

I get recommendations here on LT and I follow the Women's Prize for Fiction. I also listen to some book podcasts and look at book previews.

I do love historical fiction.

I noticed that the May book of the month selection in the Literary Fiction by People of Color group on Goodreads is all but certain to be The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, as it has a huge lead in the number of votes that have been cast, with less than one week to go until the poll closes. I bought a copy of the ebook earlier this year when it was on sale—unfortunately that is no longer the case—so I plan to read it next month.

>42 amdial7: I was very impressed by Woman at Point Zero too. I read it for the Africa challenge a couple of years ago.

I didn't realize there was another Hunger Games book out.