Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

When I joined Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, I read very little, reading and books was not a part of me. And it’s been amazing.

For me this is like a new phase in my reading journey. If you asked me a few years ago if I was a book reader, I would ave said no, you ask me now and I will say yes, definitely.



In 2025 my target is 62 books.

I’m reading a mix of fiction and nonfiction from Classic Reads to contemporary.

I tend to pick picks that challenge me. This year my main focus is Jane Austen, Bloomsbury Group, continuing with mythology, and starting / trying to read some books about science. And I’m sure there will be a lot of other books that I will distracted by on the way.



2025 reads covered in
======================
message 2 - 3 ---- fiction
message 4 - 5 ---- nonfiction

2025 reads --- fiction part 1
======================

A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen; Bryony Lavery) ---📖 � 4* my review read in Jan 2025
Camille (Alexandre Dumas fils) 📖 �3.5* my review read in Mar 2025
Dream Play (August Strindberg) 📖 � 3* my review read in Jan 2025
Patriotism (Yukio Mishima) 📖 � 4* my review .
The Post Office Girl (Stefan Zweig; Joel Rotenberg) --- Reading the first few pages caught my attention.
Contemplation (Franz Kafka) 📖 � 3* my review read in Jan 2025
Six Characters in Search of an Author (Luigi Pirandello) 📖 � 3.5* my review read in Mar 2025
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo Guanzhong; Martin Palmer)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury) 📖 � 5* my review read in Jan 2025



The Trojan Women (Euripides) 📖 � 4* my review read in Jan 2025
Hecuba (Euripides) 📖 � 3.5* my review read in Jan 2025
Helen (Euripides) (translator: Emily Wilson) --- It will be good to revisit this one again, it's been a few years since I read this one.
Six Tragedies: Phaedra / Oedipus / Medae / Trojan Women / Hercules Furens / Thyestes (Oxford World's Classics) (Seneca; Emily Wilson) 📖 � 4* my review read in March 2025

Cymbeline (William Shakespeare) --- Second read.
Tales from Shakespeare (Mary Lamb & Charles Lamb) 📖 � 4* my review read in Apr 2025
New Boy (Tracy Chevalier) 📖 � 3.5* my review read in Apr 2025
The Tempest (William Shakespeare) 📖 � 4* my review read in Feb 2025
Tender Buttons (Gertrude Stein) 📖 � 3* my review read in Feb 2025
The Task and Other Poems (William Cowper) --- A revisit, Cowper was one of Jane Austen's favourite poets.
Chinese Poetry (translated by Charles Budd (1912)) 📖 � 3.5* my review read in Jan 2025
Poems by Emily Dickinson, Series One


2025 reads covered in
======================
message 2 - 3 ---- fiction
message 4 - 5 ---- nonfiction

2025 reads --- fiction part 2
======================

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) --- the novel
Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice (Curtis Sittenfeld) 📖 � 2.5* my review read in May 2025
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen) 📖 � 4* my review read in Apr 2025
Sense and Sensibility (Joanna Trollope) 📖 � 1.5* my review read in Apr 2025
Jane Austen Collection Volume 2: Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion 📖 � 4* my review read in Jan 2025
The Jane Austen BBC Radio Drama Collection 📖 � 3.5 - 4* my review read in Feb 2025

Passing (Nella Larsen) 📖 � 4.5* my review read in Jan 2025
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison) 📖 � 4* my review read in Feb 2025
The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga) 📖 � 3* my review read in Apr 2025
Jacob's Room (Virginia Woolf)
Good (C.P. Taylor) 📖 � 3.5* my review read in Mar 2025
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) 📖 � 5* my review read in Apr 2025
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1) (Stieg Larsson) 📖 � 4* my review read in Mar 2025
The Women (Clare Boothe Luce) 📖 � 4* my review read in Feb 2025
Moon Over Minneapolis (Fay Weldon) 📖 � 4* my review read in Jan 2025
Top Girls
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories (Alice Walker) 📖 � 4.5* my review read in Feb 2025
In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women
The Wheel Spins
Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2) (Hilary Mantel) 📖 � 4* my review read in Feb 2025
The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3) (Hilary Mantel) 📖 � 4* my review read in Mar 2025
Wolf Hall: (Thomas Cromwell, #1) (Hilary Mantel) 📖 � 3* my review read in Mar 2025

2025 reads covered in
======================
message 2 - 3 ---- fiction
message 4 - 5 ---- nonfiction

2025 reads --- nonfiction part 1
=========================

The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of Women's Self-Portraits (Jennifer Higgie) 📖 � 4* my review read in Mar 2025
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (Alice Walker)

The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception: A Companion (Marco Fantuzzi; Christos Tsagalis) --- I've been trying to work this out and I think this might help.
The Middle East: The Cradle of Civilization (Stephen Bourke) --- One of the books I've lined up to get a little more familiar with Mesopotamia.

The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (Anthony Gottlieb) --- I enjoyed this last time and reading agin.
Brief Answers to the Big Questions (Stephen Hawking) 📖 � 4* my review read in Feb 2025
Brief Answers to the Big Questions (Stephen Hawking) 📖 � 4* my review read in Mar 2025


2025 reads covered in
======================
message 2 - 3 ---- fiction
message 4 - 5 ---- nonfiction

2025 reads --- nonfiction part 2
=========================
Vanessa Bell: Portrait of the Bloomsbury Artist (Frances Spalding) --- One of the two books lines up.
The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant (Richard Shone) --- Looks interesting.
Roger Fry (Virginia Woolf) --- Second read, a nonfiction biography by Virginia Woolf of her friend, artist and art critic, Roger Fry.


Jane Austen: A Life (Claire Tomalin) --- I found this helpful last time, and it will be good to read again.
A Memoir of Jane Austen: And Other Family Recollections (James Edward Austen-Leigh) --- I've been wanting to read this for sometime.
The History of England by a partial, prejudiced & ignorant historian (Jane Austen) 📖 � 3.5* my review read in Mar 2025
Jane Austen at Home (Lucy Worsley) 📖 � 4* my review read in Jan 2025



2025 reads covered in
======================
message 2 - 3 ---- fiction
message 4 - 5 ---- nonfiction

Jan was filled with many surprising reads, and this was one of them

and this another

What you say about becoming a reader is absolutely heartwarming. And I love your choices, and your art focus. I'm also starting Invisible Man soon, and think I have The Post-Office Girl around somewhere.

I'll also be reading Jane Austen and about Jane Austen, and just started one that has the same title as the Tomalin book, but is by Carol Shields: Jane Austen: A Life and I think it will be really good too.

Looking forward to your thoughts on all of these!

How lovely that you have become a reader! I would have had a completely different life if I had not had books. Happy reading.

Kathleen wrote: "What you say about becoming a reader is absolutely heartwarming. And I love your choices, and your art focus. I'm also starting Invisible Man soon, and think I have [book:The Post-Offi..."

thank you Kathleen, and it's fantastic, I'm really looking forward to both these novels.

And Carol Shields, I hadn't realised she had written a bio on Austen, I had this inkling Austen's novels were more than romance and slowly starting to see how.

Sara wrote: "How lovely that you have become a reader! I would have had a completely different life if I had not had books. Happy reading."

thank you Sara, it's been a journey and I still can't quite believe it, my regret is I didn't have the confidence to read sooner but I'm trying to make up for that now.

Franz Kafka

The first work I read by Kafka was Metamorphosis with this group this was when I first joined Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ and books were a lot tougher than these days, but it wasn’t until I read The Hunger Artist last year that I appreciated his work.

I've read the first of the six plays from Six Tragedies: Phaedra / Oedipus / Medae / Trojan Women / Hercules Furens / Thyestes (Oxford World's Classics) (Seneca; Emily Wilson), this read is more heartbreak then romantic, and I am not sure if I will ever get used the the violence in these old plays but the poetical touches are just wonderful.

Great accomplishment. Bravo.

Sara wrote: "Great accomplishment. Bravo."

Thank you Sara - it's been truly amazing