For the past five years (2020) and (2021) and (2022) and (2023) and (2024), I set reading goals tied to the year — 20200 pages, 20210 pages, 20220 pages, 20230 pages, 20240 pages. As of December 30th (which is the date GoodReads last updated my reading stats), I hit 22,745 pages with 66 books. So definitely beat my goal.

I still wish GoodReads would give you a running page count throughout the year.

To stay on-brand, I set 20260 as a goal for 2026.

My favourite things I’ve read this year:

• You Be Mother (Meg Mason)
• Mr. Wilder and Me (Jonathan Coe)
• The List of Suspicious Things (Jennie Godfrey)
• Proof of My Innocence (Jonathan Coe)
• The Rachel Incident (Caroline O’Donoghue)
• Sunrise on the Reaping (Suzanne Collins)
• Fair Play (Louise Hegarty)
• The Impossible Thing (Belinda Bauer)
• Probably Nothing (Lauren Bravo)
• Consider Yourself Kissed (Jessica Stanley)
• Bitter Sweet (Hattie Williams)
• What a Way to Go (Bella Mackie)
• Bring the House Down (Charlotte Runcie)
• Marble Hall Murders (Anthony Horowitz)
• The Killer Question (Janice Hallett)
• What We Can Know (Ian McEwan)
• The Queen Who Came in From the Cold (SJ Bennett)
• The Impossible Fortune (Richard Osman)
• The Rose Field (Philip Pullman)
• The Heir Apparent (Rebecca Armitage)
• That’s Not How It Happened (Craig Thomas)
• The Correspondent (Virginia Evans)

What is on your list of favourite reads this year? (Feel free to list movies or television shows if books are not your thing.)

This is a monthly series, published near the end of the month summarizing what I found, ate, watched, googled, and felt this month. New categories added from time to time.

Books Added to My TBR (e.g., books I just learned about that I’m excited to read… maybe)

• Alice with a Why (Anna James)
• The Rainshadow Orphans (Naomi Ishiguro)
• A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer (Maxie Dara)
• Dolly All the Time (Annabel Monaghan)
• Shady Hollow (Juneau Black)

Notable Meals (new recipes, old favorites, and restaurant items we ate this month)

• Salad (lettuce, red and yellow pepper, cucumber, shredded carrots, macadamia nuts, and won ton wrappers) with sesame balsamic vinaigrette.
• Peanut udon noodles with steamed broccoli.

Television, Movies, and Music (watching and listening)

• We finished Down Cemetery Road. I am thrilled this has been renewed for a second season. All of the actors are phenomenal. Ending was a little meh, but I didn’t care because everything that came before it was so good and endings are hard.
• The Traitors UK, Season 4. It’s marked as Traitors Celebrity on Peacock. I worried I wouldn’t like it as much as the regular UK Traitors, and it would feel more like the US version, but everyone is polite and kind and very very British. So we loved it.
• My Oxford Year. As long as you go into it knowing there are 1,000 plot issues (make that 10,000 plot issues), you can enjoy this tearjerker for the Oxford views and scenes from Hatfield House. Don’t bother screaming things like, “You cannot take one class and get a masters degree!” at the television. The actors cannot hear you. Instead, put small details like character development out of your head and enjoy Harry Trevaldwyn’s bar monologue.
• The Holdovers. It was sadder than I thought it would be. I loved seeing western MA, especially Buckland, Shelburne Falls, and Deerfield. And the performances were all fantastic.

Added To My Ongoing Mix Tape

• “Yellow” (Coldplay)
• “Born This Way” (Lady Gaga)

Tabs I Left Open (things I Googled and left up on the screen)

• The landing page for the game Blue Prince.
• The Richard and Judy book club list.
• A low-poly weasel I’m trying to convince the Wolvog to 3D print for me.
• The route of a 102-mile walk in the UK we’re considering doing.

Micro-Joys

• Josh left his charger behind in a hotel room, but the hotel staff found it, and my in-laws were able to pick it up for him. Three cheers for not having to repurchase existing chargers. Except… the charger they brought him was not his charger. Boo. Except the Wolvog directed him to a piece at IKEA that saved the day for $4. So all is well that ends well.
• Finished the final book in His Dark Materials. I’ve now read all 10 books/novellas in the series.

Mood

• Happy that the kids are home and antsy because I always get antsy this time of year.

What about you? Let me know what you’re eating, seeing, listening to, googling, feeling this month.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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For whatever reason, I still had free access to the New York Times mini until about a week ago. It didn’t shut off for me when it shut off for everyone else, and I secretly hoped that my account had slipped through some crack and would go unnoticed for years. Not the case. It was a sad day when the little lock appeared on the mini.

I tried a handful of other mini crossword options — Washington Post, LA Times, Apple News, etc — but the closest one I’ve found to the New York Times mini is Crossherd. The clues feel like New York Times clues, even if the interface looks different.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

Flying is usually my chosen superpower (not that anyone is bequeathing me with superpowers). I used to think that invisibility would be a close second, but I could also see a lot of issues with invisibility, and I wouldn’t actually want to overhear conversations.

But more and more this year, I’ve been thinking that optimism would be a more useful superpower. I’m not talking about ostrich-like head-in-the-sand optimism (which, apparently, ostriches do not do). I’m talking about hearing all of the facts and still holding hope that things will be okay.

It has been a hard year to have hope.

It is so much easier to get swept up in the chaos — everything feels in flux, and it has been a long time since I’ve read the news and felt any positive emotion. So it feels like a superpower to be able to see everything happen and still feel like everything will be okay.

So while I would still choose the ability to fly — it just feels so useful — always being able to access hope would be a close second.

Many months ago, we were in Deerfield, MA, and we decided that we’d watch The Holdovers during winter break. We had never seen it, though it had been on my TBW list for a long time. Winter break was the perfect time for a holiday movie, right?

So there we were, all snuggled up and ready for movie night, when we learned it had left streaming a week earlier. WHY WOULD THEY REMOVE A CHRISTMAS MOVIE BEFORE CHRISTMAS? That is probably the only time someone would want to watch a Christmas movie.

The ChickieNob quickly pointed out that it was probably in the library (it was) and we could borrow it (we could). Of course, we now need to rig up a way to watch the DVD.

The lesson of this story: Don’t wait to see things on streaming sites because they pull them off.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Finding a Different Path is getting rid of things, which both weighs on and lightens the heart. She writes, “Even all these years later, to get rid of something someone bought us for a baby that never was feels somehow ungrateful. Logically we know that’s not a thing, but emotionally it feels icky.” I get that. Objects hold meaning, including nursing chairs.

Lastly, Not a Wasted Word gives an update on stressful, annoying, and happy things. The change in packaging (and formula?) for a beloved product resonated with me. I don’t do well with any change, but I especially don’t do well when I need to find a new product because a random manufacturer threw a curve ball. The “improvement” is rarely an improvement for the user.

The roundup to the Roundup: Streaming sites confuse me. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 19 – 26) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.