Reading Reality, LLC

12/28/2025

Stacking the Shelves for December 27, 2025

We're starting to say "goodbye" to 2025. This is the last STS of the year.

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual.



This meme is hosted every Saturday by yours truly, - The covers shown here are merely a TEASER! Link to full post in bio to see the pretty covers of ALL the books in this week's stack!

12/27/2025

Stacking the Shelves (685)

This is the final Stacking the Shelves post for 2025. This year has gone by in a blur - and perhaps that's the best thing that can be said about it. Nevertheless, I have some fascinating and fantastic books in this final stack of the year. While these covers are definitely pretty, they are just [......

12/27/2025

Every Day I Read by Hwang Bo-Reum

I do too. Read every day, that is. So I was curious to read the thoughts of someone else who spends a great deal of their life lost between the pages of a good book. (if that sounds like fun or this does, also check out ) I digress just a bit. I did that a LOT talking about/with/to this book because although we are both readers, we are not readers in the same ways, which was kind of the point.

So this is one author's collection of essays that both portrays a reading life AND provides a collection of possibilities for returning to or expanding upon one's own reading. That's never a bad idea, because reading is a way of getting aware from where you are when you can't get away from where you are.

One caveat from my own perspective. Reading is reading. Reading for pleasure is reading. Reading purely for escape is reading. Reading an ebook is reading. (Definitely the last one as one gets older and the book needs to be further away than one's arms can reach in order to read!)

If you think that reading more is going to be one of your New Year's Resolutions, or if you're looking for a bit of escape from the everyday, a chance to get away from the crises of the world or whatever you're finding overwhelming in the moment, or if you just want to visit some old friends you discovered within the pages of a book, take a minute to read. Reading is life!

12/26/2025

: Every Day I Read by Hwang Bo-Reum, translated by Shanna Tan .bsky.social

My Review: I was SO tempted to begin this review with snark - and just keep right on snarking all the way through. Obviously, I chose to begin with a bit of snark, because, well, I do too. Read every day, that is. Reading is life. Not ALL of life, but a lot of life, [...]

12/26/2025

Christmas 2025

It may be George in the picture, but George isn't the only cat featured in 's holiday at this year. The whole gang got in on the action - as they generally do. Whatever you celebrate this time of the year, whether it's Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, or just that the days get longer and brighter from here, all of us here at Chez Reading Reality wish you and yours a safe and happy holiday season and a hopeful and peaceful new year!

12/25/2025

Christmas 2025

Another year, another winter solstice. That solstice, of course, marks the longest night of the year where we live. Day follows night whether we will it or not; what we can do is hope for a better tomorrow and strive to make it so. A poem for today by Susan Cooper (the same person who [...]

12/25/2025

You Better Not Pout by Mia Sosa

This marks the final story in the collection and I'm sorry to be done. Although we were promised cookies and there were no cookies! These are still lovely little sweet treat stories for the

I've listened to the whole collection and I want to take this opportunity to give a shoutout to all the AND whoever cast them. To a person they represented the perfect voice for each character over all eight stories and they've all been marvelous.

That's certainly true of Juliana and Eric in . Because the story, a lovely , is oh-so-real and made more real by the extra stress of the holidays. They've broken up - but they're not telling anyone. Because holidays.

They still love each other, they're just not right FOR each other. But they want to be. The trick, the story, and the beautifully earned are all in discovering, not so much the true meaning of Christmas because they're already there, but the truths and the traumas they haven't been sharing with each other. And it's wonderful not because they figure EVERYTHING out - because who does? - but that they figure out that they have a lot more to learn about each other before they can reach for the they both want. Together.

12/24/2025

A- : You Better Not Pout by Mia Sosa

My Review: If the title of this one sounds familiar, there's an excellent reason. The title is a line from one of the truly classic Christmas songs that has been playing everywhere since, well, Halloween. Because “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” on Christmas Eve, which is TONIGHT. The song has be...

12/24/2025

.Reading Reality's Best Books of 2025

As this year winds down to a close, I decided not to let it wind ALL THE WAY DOWN before putting together my list for the year. I'm sure there's going to be SOMETHING in these final days of the year that I'll wish I'd included, but I'm not waiting around. This year can just GO already.

This year I decided to whittle things down to a manageable number - I still ended up with a dozen. And I had to "kill" a lot of my "darlings" to reach this point. It was a very good reading year. Other areas, well, not so much.

I had THREE "A DOUBLE PLUS" books this year, .jackson.bennett's A Drop of Corruption, his follow-up to his The Tainted Cup, 's latest entry in her long-running and much loved series, The Black Wolf, and 's take on in Six Wild Crowns.

To see the rest of the list, check out at https://wp.me/p3gHJx-eJR/. I had a blast putting this list together, and hope that you'll find a few books to add to your pile when you read it!

I'd like to express my heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of the authors - and the narrators of the audiobooks - for a year of great reads!

12/23/2025

Best Books of 2025

I feel very accomplished this year, as I managed to get this list down to a 'mere' dozen. At one point early on I was adding an additional book to the list each year, which was not so bad when I began in 2011 with 11 books, but started to get VERY unwieldy as I [...]

12/23/2025

Winter2025-2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

What books are you MOST looking forward to this coming season? Visit Reading Reality and the other participants in the WINTER 2025-2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop to take a chance on winning a copy of whatever you might be looking for this season!

All the deets and the list of all the places you can go to see what everyone is looking forward to at https://wp.me/p3gHJx-eGw or just follow the link in the bio!

12/22/2025

Winter 2025-2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Winter 2025-2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, hosted by It Starts At Midnight and Versatileer! Once upon a time, this was the Month of Books Giveaway Hop, now it’s the Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, with the hops starting on the days the seasons change. Yesterday, December 21, was...