Tag: Booking Through Thursday

Booking Through Thursday: Tackling your TBR pile in 2026?

Welcome to Booking Through Thursday, a weekly bookish meme about books and reading for everyone who loves both. Booking Through Thursday was first hosted by Deb. With permission, I’ve restarted it in 2026.

This week’s prompt:

Since we’re all readers here, I think it’s safe to say we all have a TBR pile of books we’d like to read. Do you have any plans this year for tackling that pile?

If so, feel free to share your strategy or tactic with those of us hoping to read some of the books we already own.

Do you have plans to tackle your TBR pile in 2026?

How to play:

  • On your blog: Copy the question/image for your blog, answer it there, and post a quick comment here with a link or trackback to your post so we can read it.
  • On social media: Copy the image, answer the prompt, and post a quick comment here with a link.
  • Right here: Answer in the comments and start the discussion here. No need to have a blog to play.

Note: If it’s your first time here, your comment may end up in moderation. (My spam filter is aggressive.) I’ll be in after my writing sprints to set it free.

P.S. The prompt is always open, and you don’t have to play on Thursday. Comment whenever you like!

Booking Through Thursday: What book surprised you?

Welcome to Booking Through Thursday, a weekly bookish meme about books and reading for everyone who loves both. Booking Through Thursday was first hosted by Deb. With permission, I’ve restarted it in 2026.

This week’s prompt:

Did you read anything in 2025 that surprised you? Maybe a bestseller that lived up to all the hype. Perhaps a classic that was surprisingly engaging.

Or maybe it was a book you grabbed from the shelf while you waited for your library requests to come in.

Whatever the case, let us know!

What book surprised you in 2025?

How to play:

  • On your blog: Copy the question/image for your blog, answer it there, and post a quick comment here with a link or trackback to your post so we can read it.
  • On social media: Copy the image, answer the prompt, and post a quick comment here with a link.
  • Right here: Answer in the comments and start the discussion here. No need to have a blog to play.

Note: If it’s your first time here, your comment may end up in moderation. (My spam filter is aggressive.) I’ll be in after my writing sprints to set it free.

P.S. The prompt is always open, and you don’t have to play on Thursday. Comment whenever you like!

Booking Through Thursday: Self-help books

Welcome to Booking Through Thursday, a weekly bookish meme about books and reading for everyone who loves both. Booking Through Thursday was first hosted by Deb. With permission, I’ve restarted it in 2026.

This week’s prompt:

On a sliding scale of they’re the elixir of life to no one tells ME what to do, how do you feel about self-help books? Do you read them? Only certain kinds or at certain times? As background noise while you clean ALL the things.

Let us know!

Self-help books: Yea or nay?

How to play:

  • On your blog: Copy the question/image for your blog, answer it there, and post a quick comment here with a link or trackback to your post so we can read it.
  • On social media: Copy the image, answer the prompt, and post a quick comment here with a link.
  • Right here: Answer in the comments and start the discussion here. No need to have a blog to play.

Note: If it’s your first time here, your comment may end up in moderation. (My spam filter is aggressive.) I’ll be in after my writing sprints to set it free.

P.S. The prompt is always open, and you don’t have to play on Thursday. Comment whenever you like!

Booking Through Thursday: Reading Challenges

Welcome to Booking Through Thursday, a weekly bookish meme about books and reading for everyone who loves both. Booking Through Thursday was first hosted by Deb. With permission, I’ve restarted it in 2026.

This week’s prompt:

Do you participate in any reading challenges throughout the year? If so, let us know (and feel free to share a link to the challenge).

Or maybe you have one of your own devising. Maybe it’s simply a goal to make a dent in your TBR pile.

Whatever the case, happy reading!

Are you participating in one (or several) reading challenges in 2026?

How to play:

  • On your blog: Copy the question/image for your blog, answer it there, and post a quick comment here with a link or trackback to your post so we can read it.
  • On social media: Copy the image, answer the prompt, and post a quick comment here with a link.
  • Right here: Answer in the comments and start the discussion here. No need to have a blog to play.

Note: If it’s your first time here, your comment may end up in moderation. (My spam filter is aggressive.) I’ll be in after my writing sprints to set it free.

P.S. The prompt is always open, and you don’t have to play on Thursday. Comment whenever you like!

Booking Through Thursday: Let’s Read in the New Year!

Welcome to Booking Through Thursday, a weekly bookish meme about books and reading for everyone who loves both. Booking Through Thursday was first hosted by Deb. With permission, I’ve restarted it in 2026.

This week’s prompt:

So, there’s a saying that how you spend New Year’s Day is how you’ll spend the year.

I think all of us here would like to spend at least some of the year reading. That being the case, the very first prompt of the year is:

What book are you reading (or hope to read) on this first day of 2026?

I know some people are working today, some are still cleaning up after the holidays, but I hope everyone can find five minutes for a bit of reading.

Happy New Year!

How to play:

  • On your blog: Copy the question/image for your blog, answer it there, and post a quick comment here with a link or trackback to your post so we can read it.
  • On social media: Copy the image, answer the prompt, and post a quick comment here with a link.
  • Right here: Answer in the comments and start the discussion here. No need to have a blog to play.

Note: If it’s your first time here, your comment may end up in moderation. (My spam filter is aggressive.) I’ll be in after my writing sprints to set it free.

Booking Through Thursday relaunches Jan 1 (that’s tomorrow!)

Booking Through Thursday launches tomorrow. Visit the page to get a sneak peek at the prompt.

I’m excited about this and hope we can build a fun book community here this year.

Anyone can participate, and you don’t need a blog to do so. Read all the details on the Booking Through Thursday page.

If you build it, will they come?

This week’s admin focus was on author websites, which I already have. But it made for an excellent reason to do some maintenance. Most importantly, I needed to update my WordPress template.

As I mentioned in my housekeeping note, the old template had been retired. While it still received security updates, the old template didn’t support new features.

But I’m also considering what else I might do with my blog. One of the things I loved about blogging in the early aughts was the blogging and book community. One of my favorite blog memes was Booking Through Thursday (which started on Blogspot and migrated to WordPress).

Real life being what it is, BTT has been inactive for several years. So, I asked myself: what if I restarted it?

With permission, of course. Deb graciously gave her blessing. So here I am, wondering: if I relaunch BTT, will anyone show up?

The book blogging community is still very active, with plenty of weekly book memes. Do we need another? Maybe not. But I have the online real estate—no ads, nothing distracting.

According to WordPress, I can add a selected category to my blog subscription so people can sign up to receive the Booking Through Thursday posts via email, and not any of the others if they don’t want them. (This may take a few tries to iron out, but it’s possible.)

All this to say, I’m going to give the book meme thing a try. If people enjoy it? Hooray! If it falls flat, then it falls flat.

So, look for the relaunch of Booking Through Thursday on January 1, 2026.

Booking it eternally

From Booking Through Thursday:

What book took you the longest to read, and do you feel it was the content or just the length that made it so?

Wow, I haven’t booked for a while, and this is a fun question.

The first really long book I read was Gone With The Wind. I was maybe twelve at the time and I remember taking at least one break part way through to read a few shorter novels. Because the book is long, and Scarlett, kind of annoying. I’m really not all that wild about Rhett either.

In college, I booked through both Anna Karenina (long) and War and Peace (longer) relatively quickly. Maybe because there was going to be a test. Tolstoy fun fact: the man did know how to write a short story. Really.

More recently, I read the first two books in the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. I’m still tired from that. I read these on Kindle and I was all:

29%? How can I still be at 29%? I’ve been reading for hours.

Will I continue the series? Maybe. When I’m in the mood for epic fantasy and don’t mind seeing all my favorite characters killed off. I think it’s this last bit that keeps me away. Not that I think authors should never kill off their characters. It’s that I don’t trust Martin. I don’t want to get attached to anyone in the series, so I keep all the characters at arm’s length–which is no way to read a book.

As I mentioned, epic fantasy is a mood read for me. Now I need to add epic fantasy where I don’t mind all my favorite characters dying and the books are really, really long, kind of like the literary equivalent of running a marathon. 

That’s a very specific sort of mood. It may be a while before I pick up book three.

Booking it loudly

This week on Booking Through Thursday:

1. What do you think of reading aloud/being read to? Does it bring back memories of your childhood? Your children’s childhood?

2. Does this affect the way you feel about audio books?

3. Do you now have times when you read aloud or are read to?

I’ve spoken before about how much I love audio books. Yes, I know some people don’t consider this “real” reading. I. Don’t. Care. I’d be certifiably insane right now if I didn’t have them to listen to during the commute. (Don’t get me started on “drive-time” radio …)

1. I love being read to and reading aloud. In fact, I still read with Kyra and we’re planning on reading The Secret Garden this week. Actually she’s going to read it herself first, then I can read it to her. She’s convinced it will be that good. A few weeks back, when I had a horrid cold, I pulled the audio book from the car (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) and listened to the rest of it while curled up in a chair with a cup of tea.

2. There is something very comforting about being read to. It’s a great way to decompress after work and survive the commute, so there’s that.

3. As I’ve mentioned, yes, I do read aloud and listen to books. I also do a listening edit on my own books. I import them to my Kindle, then use the text to speech function to listen while I follow along on the page.

Booking it covertly

From Booking Through Thursday this week:

Do you carry books with you when you’re out and about in the world?

And, do you ever try to hide the covers?

Shh. It’s a secret.

The answer is yes. I almost always have a book (or two) with me whenever I go out. If I don’t, it’s an oversight. I simply forgot to take one with me when I left the house.

And seriously, this is the beauty of the Kindle. Not only can I carry multiple books with me, I can also read them on the sly. No more cover angst for me. That being said, I often have a paperback, hardcover, or library book I’m reading with me that might be seen as a little odd. No, no heaving bosoms or Fabio covers ala old school romance.

But.

I’ve been reading middle grade books.

I sometimes wonder what other people think when they see me tearing through the pages of The Mother-Daughter Book Club, or The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet.

And speaking of mother/daughter and books. Last weekend, Kyra and I went on a driving adventure when Bob’s car broke down. She packed up a bag of at least seven books to take with her–just in case.

I’m pretty sure this is hereditary.