So many changes today…Man Flu has become bronchitis, 2025 has become 2026, my bullet images should look a little better in dark mode (still not perfect…but a good step), and a fourth, funny item should go here. Oh well…punchlines are for closers, I guess. And I haven’t made a sale in weeks.
Anyway, here’s the first Miscellany of 2026, thanks for reading!
Odds ‘n ends about books and reading that caught my eye this week. You’ve probably seen some/most/all of them, but just in case:
I’m sure I need to tell very few of you this, but today is the 134th anniversary of J.R.R. Tolkein’s birth. Fans around the world will be participaing in Tolkien Birthday Toast 2026.
Public Domain Day 2026—Center for the Study of the Public Domain brings us (as per their custom) the lists and some thoughts on the works newly in Public Domain.
Is It Possible to Overconsume Books?—Krysta at Pages Unboud has some thoughts.
The Books That Keep Us Company: There is something special about the series we really, truly grow up with…—Molly Templeton’s latest has something we can all relate to (I imagine), even if her cited examples mean little to us
Novels About Old People—Mike Finn has a good list of books featuring elderly chatacters
Book Blogger Challenge (2026)—a challenge for book bloggers that focuses on the community and blogging itself
45 Book Bloggers to Follow in 2026—Pages Unbound has a list of 45 to keep an eye on (which may help with the challenge). I can vouch for a lot of these (not that it matters), and assume the few I haven’t encountered/interacted with are just as good
And now, it’s time to look at another batch of Best of ’25 lists:
Read Like Nobody’s Watching- Raven’s December Reads and Books Of The Year 2025. —Raven features a few great-looking ones in 2025
The damppebbles Top Ten(ish!) of 2025—Hard to go wrong with Emma (unless you’re looking for reliable numbers)
Spells & Spaceships’ The Best Books I Read in 2025
A Fictional Escapist’s Top Five of 2025!
Best of 2025 reads—from reader@work
Fantasy Book Nerd’s TOP BOOKS OF 2025
My Top Ten Books of 2025—I agree with a couple of The Orangutan Librarian’s picks and have added some to a TBR.
Top 10 Books Read in 2025—in what was a bad year of reading for him, Peat Long did find some gems.
The Hard Word wraps up their Top Twenty-Five for First Twenty-five Years series with 15-11, 10-6, and 5-1
My favorite sentence/passage/phrase (or two) that I read this week :
“Already, even with the great act still ahead, there was flowing in upon me, from the barren years beyond it, a dejection such as I had never conceived. It was not at all like the agonies I had endured before and have endured since. I did no weep nor wrong my hands. I was like water put into a bottle and left in a cellar: utterly motionless, never to be drunk, poured out, spilled, or shaken. The days were endless. The very shadows seemed nailed to the ground as if the sun no longer moved.”—Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
To help talk about backlist titles (and just for fun), What Was I Talking About 10 Years Ago This Week?
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs
allysonyj
Love “Til we have Faces”, though my copy disappeared from my mother’s shelves when I wasn’t looking. It is a precursor to all these retellings of myth (“The Penelopiad”, “Circe”, “The Song of Achilles”, etc.) that are burning up the best-seller lists right now. looking forward to your more extended thoughts on this.
theorangutanlibrarian
Glad to hear you liked my top ten 😀 Thank you for sharing!!