2026 reading list

Last year did not go excellent. We’re sticking to the same goal of 60 books.

Currently Reading

  1. Planes Flying Over a Monster: Essays – Daniel Saldaña París

Series Challenge

I flamed out at the bottom of 2025 but I did finish five uncompleted series, so I had some moderate success. I will be continuing the series challenge this year in the hopes of knocking out several fully published series that I have already started, with the exception of the Flesh and False Gods trilogy. The top reading priority is Flesh and False Gods (Chloe Gong); top reviewing priorities are Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling, really wanna get this one off my list) and The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins). Hope I don’t crash and burn this year (lol). I was thinking of including Magical Cats (Sofie Kelly), which I think might be finished, but there’s like a million of them.

Series are listed alphabetically by title. Hyperlinked series titles lead to the review series pages; hyperlinked book titles lead to the individual reviews. Asterisks are rereads that still need to be reviewed. I don’t have a specific TBR goal, other than to finish as many of these as I can.

Challenge Read Count: 1/6

  1. Flesh and False Gods – Chloe Gong
    1. Immortal Longings
    2. Vilest Things
  2. Harry Potter – J.K. Rowling
    1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
    2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix*
    6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince*
    7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows*
  3. The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
    1. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
    2. Sunrise on the Reaping
    3. The Hunger Games
    4. Catching Fire*
    5. Mockingjay*
  4. The Lost Queen – Signe Pike
    1. The Lost Queen
    2. The Forgotten Kingdom
    3. The Shadowed Land
  5. Shady Hollow – Juneau Black
    1. Shady Hollow
    2. Cold Clay
    3. Mirror Lake
    4. Twilight Falls
    5. Summers End
    6. Mockingbird Court
  6. Warrior Cats – Erin Hunter
    1. Into the Wild
    2. Fire and Ice
    3. Forest of Secrets
    4. Rising Storm
    5. A Dangerous Path
    6. The Darkest Hour

OWC Challenge

I learned about the Overeducated Women with Cats (OWC) challenge at the tail end of last year, which was a bit late to join in, so I stalked their IG and made damn sure I didn’t miss the announcement of the 2026 OWC challenge. I really want one of those stickers, goddammit. The goal is to read twelve books by the end of the year, each matching a specific prompt, so at a minimum I will have completed 1/5 of my overall reading goal. As of January 3, I’m off to a good start with prompt 3 (unintentionally appropriately) completed. I can already think of several challenge-fitting books that will also fit in with my series challenge. I have a good feeling about this year.

Challenge Read Count: 6/12

  1. A book that starts a series
  2. A book set in a fully invented world
    Brigands & Breadknives (Travis Baldree) – completed 1/19/26
  3. A book that plays with memory or time
    Weyward (Emilia Hart) – completed 1/3/26
  4. A book reviewed by OWC
  5. A book with an anthropomorphic animal
    Mockingbird Court (Juneau Black) – completed 1/10/26
  6. A book published in 2026
    The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox (Katrina Kwan) – completed 3/29/26
  7. A book long-listed for an award
  8. A book told in an unconventional format
  9. A book recommended at a bookstore or library
  10. A book rooted in a cultural tradition different from your own
  11. A nonfiction book about science or nature
    The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne (Chris Sweeney) – completed 6/5/26
  12. A book that blends genres
    The Enchanted Greenhouse (Sarah Beth Durst) – completed 1/25/26

Finished

  1. Weyward – Emilia Hart
  2. The Priest and the Shepherd – Chloe Gong
  3. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More – Roald Dahl
  4. Mockingbird Court – Juneau Black
  5. The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery – Siddharth Kara
  6. Brigands & Breadknives – Travis Baldree
  7. The Enchanted Greenhouse – Sarah Beth Durst
  8. The Night Sister – Jennifer McMahon
  9. The Apothecary Diaries 1 – Nekokurage
  10. The Apothecary Diaries 2 – Nekokurage
  11. The Apothecary Diaries 3 – Nekokurage
  12. Ninetails – Sally Wen Mao
  13. The Apothecary Diaries 4 – Nekokurage
  14. The Apothecary Diaries 5 – Nekokurage
  15. Selkie – Nataly Gruender
  16. The Apothecary Diaries 6 – Nekokurage
  17. The Apothecary Diaries 7 – Nekokurage
  18. The Apothecary Diaries 8 – Nekokurage
  19. Butter – Asako Yuzuki
  20. The Apothecary Diaries 9 – Nekokurage
  21. The Apothecary Diaries 10 – Nekokurage
  22. The Apothecary Diaries 11 – Nekokurage
  23. The Apothecary Diaries 12 – Nekokurage
  24. The Apothecary Diaries 13 – Nekokurage
  25. The Apothecary Diaries 14 – Nekokurage
  26. The Apothecary Diaries 15 – Nekokurage
  27. The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox – Katrina Kwan
  28. The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne – Chris Sweeney

DNF

  1. Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc (David Elliott) – DNF’d 1/21/26 on page 30. The blurbs crow that it’s “like Hamilton,” which is (1) quite a lofty claim and (2) profoundly irritating when it isn’t even close. Maybe it needs to be sung and/or rapped before it starts sounding like Hamilton, but it sure doesn’t read like it. I didn’t like the style, I got bored, and the author’s fetish for documenting the POV of the fucking FIRE that eventually takes Joan out got old with the speed of summer lightning. The fire has nothing much to say for itself except for how much it yearns for the burn. Like a lover. What in the actual fuck. This is an unhaul.
  2. Neurodivergent, by Nature: Why Biodiversity Needs Neurodiversity (Joe Harkness) – DNF’d 1/22/26 on page 41. It’s fine but my ADHD interfered and I got bored and I’m reading two other books anyway :’)
  3. The Real Jaws: The Attacks that Inspired the Movies (Rachel Lee Perez) – DNF’d 2/12/26 on page 19. Thank gods I got this at the library. I accidentally clicked on the GR reviews before I’d even started the book. Mistake. I tried not to let the negative tone of the reviews influence my judgment, but I know myself well enough to know that I still would’ve clawed the writing apart under more favorable circumstances, because Perez can’t write for shit. So many other reviewers said the writing was unprofessional (for a nonfiction book), was poorly researched, and read like something you might hear on a podcast, and I should’ve listened. I think somebody said it was like reading a report on other people’s research, like, fucking yikes. I can’t speak to the research when I didn’t even make it to page 20, but Perez really tried to hammer home the horror of these attacks, which made her writing far more repetitive and judgment-flavored than it had to be. The parts that I saw were also just slightly contradictory, given that she gushes about the beauty and majesty of sharks and decries our “misconstrued perceptions” (you see what I mean about the writing?) while in the same breath talking about terrifying shark encounters. Not that both things can’t be true, but I happen to know from the reviews that this will get worse as the book goes on. In conclusion, support your local libraries. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
  4. The Great Auk: Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife (Tim Birkhead) – DNF’d 3/29/26 on page 34. I’m 0 for 3 on my most recent library books, which is a bummer. This one sounded promising but I lost interest and took too long to get through the first two chapters, and I’m done.
  5. 6:40 to Montreal (Eva Jurczyk) – DNF’d 4/8/26 on page 123. And my library losing streak continues. Last night I said “Everyone is annoying but I’m still reading,” which turned into “Everyone is annoying, why don’t we stop?” real fast. I don’t know if Agatha is suffering from generalized depression (possibly having to do with her cancer) or severe, years-long postpartum depression or if she’s just naturally a bitch with an inexplicable grudge against Blundstones, and I frankly don’t care. She was darkly amusing in places but tiresome in every other way, and she lost me when she decided that interior design is an inferior career for inferior people – again, for reasons completely unknown to me. Goodreads reviews indicate that she will not get better, and spoilers for the ending thankfully confirmed that I made the right choice. I might still read the final chapters just to see if it really is as bad as the reviews say it is, though I have no reason to doubt their word. I was pleased when Finch died, but that was it. Cyanne is annoying as fuck, Vivien and Dorcas likewise. I really don’t get the obsession Agatha has with Dorcas, who makes wild promises she can’t actually keep and has an infuriating habit of forcing unwanted food onto passengers. With all due respect to her alleged competence, she needs to fuck off.