Reading Reality, LLC

11/30/2025

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 11-30-25

George is back! Or, actually, George's back. Technically, this picture isn't really about George even though it is. It's about what George is watching through the catio screen. From early spring to late fall, the view from the catio is trees. All trees. ALL THE TREES. We have no grass in the backyar...

11/30/2025

Stacking the Shelves for November 29, 2025

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!

11/29/2025

Stacking the Shelves (681)

Very much apropos of Stacking the Shelves, I learned a new acronym from author Olivia Dade when I was prepping the post for Second Chance Romance earlier this week. I'll confess that I feel both seen and a bit insulted at the same time. The acronym is STABLE or SABLE, and it's short for "STash [...]

11/29/2025

A Season For Spies by Iona Whishaw

Spies are not what one expects to have home for the holidays, not even during wartime. But the Christmas of 1940 was a bit of a special case in Britain. The war was finally on, and everyone expected the troops to be home by NEXT Christmas. This particular Christmas, on the other hand, everyone was looking over their shoulder for German infiltrators, saboteurs and yes, spies.

Lane Winslow has been seconded from her war work as a translator to perform a mission that would be more suited for her 'father the spy' than for Lane herself, or at least that's what she thinks when she begins. It's certainly what her boss thinks, but he seems to have had even less choice in assigning Lane than she had in accepting.

The mission is to pick up a British agent off the coast of Scotland near her grandparents' cottage. In a driving snow, in the middle of the night, far from aid or even transportation. The job is dangerous enough without running headlong into a traitor out to pick up her OWN agent and kill Lane's charge. That the whole flying circus turns up on Lane's grandparents' doorstep, one clown at a time, should have turned this case into a farce. Instead, it's the making of Lane Winslow and the start of a fascinating series of mysteries.

Making it the perfect kick-off read for this year's holiday season!

11/28/2025

: A Season for Spies by Iona Whishaw +

My Review: The Lane Winslow historical mystery series has been recommended to me any number of times. That’s not really a surprise as it strongly resembles the Maisie Dobbs series which I have enjoyed very much, but has come to an end with last year’s The Comfort of Ghosts, set at the end of Mai...

11/28/2025

Thanksgiving 2025

That's Tuna in the picture, exploring some kitchen towels that ALSO look a lot like the holidays. The picture also shows off that Tuna is a very tall boi, and we're also grateful that he doesn't have opposable thumbs because he can certainly REACH all the doorknobs, he just can't TURN them. Yet, at least, because he's certainly working on it.

We're making a whole Turkey Dinner in the crockpot we seldom use, and we're grateful for the recipe, too. It's a bit of an experiment, but that's OK since it's just us and the cats - who are all pictured in today's post. Not that they are getting any of the crockpot turkey as there are onions in that crockpot. A bit of PLAIN turkey was supposed to have been set aside for their holiday delectation so that they could be thankful too. Instead, they all got some of Hecate's wet food to make up for our neglect.

And we at Chez Reading Reality are all happy for all of you who follow the blog, or catch us here on Insta, especially every single member of the cats' fanclub. Happy Thanksgiving to each and every one!

🦃

11/27/2025

Thanksgiving Day 2025

As always, we are thankful for our cats and for you, the readers of Reading Reality. Six days after JFK's assassination, Lyndon Johnson gave a Thanksgiving proclamation. Here are some excerpts from it: A great leader is dead; a great Nation must move on. Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorro...

11/27/2025

Welcome to the Holiday Book Bingo Challenge!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to sign up at to participate in ALL of the Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon challenges posted by ALL of this year's Elves - including yours truly,

The challenge here is to get a BINGO! on the book bingo card in the picture. (If you want to see it bigger, you can also participate at https://wp.me/p3gHJx-g2w)

When you get a bingo, post it here with the hashtag with the titles and/or the covers of the books in your bingo. (Or comment on the post at Reading Reality's website at the link in the full Insta bio.)

The good news is that you get one entry in the giveaway for each and every bingo!

However, only one book per bingo square, and one square per book. If your book could theoretically fit two, or more, you'll just have to choose - and possibly read another holiday book!

Seasons Greetings! Happy Holidays! Let's play BINGO!

11/26/2025

2025 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon Holiday Book Bingo Challenge

Welcome to the Holiday Book Bingo Challenge portion of the 2025 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon, hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer! The sign-up page for the can be found here – and you’ll definitely want to find it so you can participate in ALL of the Elves’ Challenges. The challenge here at Re...

11/25/2025

3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years by John Scalzi

That's the amount of time the time traveler can travel for and still manage to make it back to where/when they came from. And it's both. Time travel tourism, as sold by 'the Organization' takes the scientific or well-heeled traveler to not just another time, but another slice of the metaverse. The butterfly can flap its wings as fast as it wants - but any changes occur in someone else's timestream. They think. They believe. They seriously effing hope.

So you can change history - just not yours or the history of your own world. BUT, definitely but, you can change someone else's. Maybe, just maybe, the history of a whole entire slice of the multiverse, just enough to save it, and yourself, and humanity as a whole.

Or at least that's the theory the time travel technician of THIS time stream has been working on. For the whole 27 years he's been there. This day, the day of this story, is his last day on the job, giving him the opportunity to think about all the crazy things and people he's seen, so that he's ready, at the end of the day, to do the craziest thing he's ever done. AGAIN.

This is a short, terrific, story with a devastating twist. It will make you laugh along the way, because humans are gonna human in any stream of the multiverse. It will also make you think of every time travel story you've ever read - because they ALL fit, every last one of them. And it will leave you wondering, like all the best SF does even - or especially - when it makes you laugh along the way.

11/25/2025

A- : 3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years by John Scalzi .com

https://www.readingreality.net/2025/11/a-audiobookreview-3-days-9-months-27-years-by-john-scalzi/

My Review: Time travel is a fun idea to play with - which is why there are so many stories about it. Well, the stories aren’t really about the time travel, per se, because that's usually just a lot of handwavium. Where the stories come in - and often go out - is about what [...]

11/24/2025

Second Chance Romance by Olivia Dade

There are plenty of infamously (snigger, snort) towns named Climax or In*******se, so there's absolutely no reason for there not to be a Harlot's Bay. Not even one that leans in really, really hard into the name because it's hilariously adorable.

This second book, after leans even further in, as FMC Molly Dearborn, graduate of Harlot's Bay High, is the sultry-voiced narrator of the smutty romances that seem to be playing everywhere in town. Especially in the back of Grounds and Grains bakery/cafe, where owner Karl Dean STILL can't get enough of Molly's voice - even though he was an idiot who never got more of Molly than her friendship way back when.

Through a real comedy of errors, Molly learns that Karl is dead, and she runs (well, flies) back to Harlot's Bay ASAP to at least attend his funeral. Which isn't because he isn't, and Molly's sorta/kinda stuck, leaving Molly and Karl with a month to figure out if what they never had has what it takes to go the distance.

If only he can get over his fear of rejection to say the words in his heart, and/or if Molly can't get past her fear of bad decisions and worse betrayals to hear the truth in Karl's actions even if he never manages to say the words.

With the whole town looking on with delight and raised cellphone cameras, hoping to catch the moment where 20 years of dreams finally do come true for them both.

If you're looking for a book to make you smile amid the holiday crush, and a romance that manages to be both gooey sweet, delightfully spicy and yet serious in all the right places, give Second Chance Romance a real chance!