Summer Reading Challenge
My friend and fellow writer, Amy, https://www.messymiddle.com/2025-summer-reading-challenge-is-a-wrap/ started a summer reading challenge to inspire herself to read more. She’s so creative and talented when creating these things, you can’t help but join in. This summer she celebrated the Reading Challenge’s ten year anniversary. Amy provides 30 categories and challenges her readers to read 7 books from those categories. This is my third year to participate and the categories have stacked my TBR pile! This summer I started with a book “hanging over me” that I really wanted to finish. Kate McIntosh’s The Champagne Letters filled that slot. Hearts West was a historical book and Letters of a Woman Homesteader was set in a time I wished to live. Why You should Read Children’s Books by Katherine Rundell was about books, (duh). I listened to The Paris Cooking School by Sophie Beaumont. You have to pick a “penalty book” to read and you lose two points if you don’t finish it. In a crazy moment, I picked Pride and Prejudice. ( I had to take the penalty).
By far, the most interesting category was a book published when you were ten years old. Googling the year that I was ten was an eye popper! I was surprised to find a real classic that I had never read, published that year. At my age, I read Madelaine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time for the first time.
The most fun category this year was “a book with a main character with your first name”, Not surprisingly, few authors chose Tonya for the main character’s name. For some reason, Alexandra Kraeler Corbin did in her book Tonya Takes you Touring. The title held real promise but the book didn’t quite deliver. Although I enjoyed it for the format. Ms. Corbin is a screenwriter and frequently broke the fourth wall in her book.
Of the seven books read for the challenge, I liked The Champagne Letters best. I love historical fiction and when the subject is still around today, it’s just fun. This book is about the beginnings of Clicquot champagne and the woman behind the company at a time when women should not have been in business. I’m glad Amy challenged me to pick all of these up!
