where we've been and where we're going

2025 edition

Well hey, friends, we read seven classics together this year…almost. Sorta. It’s Gone With the Wind’s fault.

We’ve spent a lot of time in Great Britain, mostly London — dystopian, Victorian, and otherwise — but also visited a bit of revolutionary France, traveled the swampland of the Limberlost (which I never realized was in Indiana before), and we’re currently mired in the Civil War South with Scarlett O’Hara. And we need to be content with that, because we just passed the halfway mark and we’re not getting out until the end of March, because ELEVEN HUNDRED PAGES, ohmygosh. But they’re so good, it’s worth it.

Here’s a glimpse of this year’s books:

Even if you took part in the poll last fall to choose the next round of books, you may have forgotten (like I did) which book was scheduled after GWTW.

So for the record, in the tail end of March we’ll be starting Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott and I hope you’ll join us for it because it’s wonderful as long as you don’t actually expect it to be about Ivanhoe (surprise!) since it’s totally not. It is, however, about some other fun characters…one in particular…whom I won’t tell you about yet because it’s a fun surprise to stumble upon in, oh, the middle-ish of the story.

Ivanhoe is about 400 pages so it will take us through June, and we’ll vote for the next round of books in May.

Finally, some fun links you’ve shared with us lately:

• 14 Famous Author’s Houses You Can Actually Tour — including Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens…

• How the English language would sound if silent letters were used

• Bookish (and other) comics, like so…

Happy reading,

Shannon