Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2025 - My Wrap-Up

So much for optimism. I should have stuck with realism.

This challenge is a good motivator and I started strong (as usual) and then faded (also pretty much as usual). Oh, well.

In 2026 I will drop back to the doable goal of Pike's Peak (12 books). It's shaping up to be a busy year for me, so a more moderate goal seems like a wise choice.

Here's what I read in 2025 from the TBR pile, though:

1. The Great Hippopotamus Hotel - Alexander McCall Smith 

2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith 

3. The Beast and the Silent Blue - David O'Connor (Florida Book Award) 

4. Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver (Pulitzer Prize)

5. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (Radcliff's Top 100 Novels)

6. My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok (Pulitzer Prize) 

7. A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan (Pulitzer Prize)

8. Half the Night is Gone - Amitabha Bagchi (DSC Prize for South Asian Literature) 

9. Matrix - Lauren Groff (Florida Book Award) 

10. The Rural Life - Verlyn Klinkenborg

11. The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons from Working Together - Twyla Tharp 

12. Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow 

13. His Lovely Wife - Elizabeth Dewberry (Florida Book Award) 

14. The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature - J. Drew Lanham 

15. Infinite Country - Patricia Engel 

Reviews can be accessed here or under the Reviews tab.

This was a mixed bag of cozy mystery, classics, award-winning fiction, random nonfiction, biography, and memoir. That's one of the charms of this challenge: because my reading taste is eclectic, so are the books!