June was a proper broadside, no holds barred, no quarter given! Books tumbled from Mount Doom by the day, screaming in terror and leaving behind stray bookmarks and badly-bound pages in their wake. We are halfway through the year, so it’s time to see how I’m doing with some of my goals. In 2022, 34% of my reading came from newly-purchased titles: that’s currently hovering just under 10%. I’ve made excellent progress on the science survey, having completed it in May and beating my earliest-finish date (August) by several months. Progress on Mount Doom is…proceeding. It’s not dramatic, but it’s happening. So far I’m at 45 % of goal, which means I’m a touch behind but not terribly. So far in 2023 I’ve read nine titles that earned the bold/superior favorite mark, and if that continues it’s going to be difficult to choose top ten favorites in December. Here are five I suspect will make it to the end.’

Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey, Jack Loeffler
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? A Memoir of Learning to Believe You’re Gonna Be OK, Sean Dietrich
The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy, Bell Irwin Riley
The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, Will Storr
A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman

Classics Club
Paradiso, Dante. Translated by Anthony Esolen.

The Big Reads:
The Jewish Annotated New Testament: Serious progress made after I decided to focus on one Big Read at a time. I’ve finished the texts proper and am reading the bountiful essays.

Climbing Mount Doom:
Sparring Partners, John Grisham
Faces Along the Bar, Madelon Powers
The Island of Dr. Moreau, H.G. Wells
Paradiso, Dante. Translated Anthony Esolen.
Inside the Klavern, David Horowitz
The Dirty Life: Food, Farming, and Love, Kristin Kimball
Nine Pints, Rose George
The 99% Invisible City, Roman Mars
DISCARDED: Spark Joy, Marie Kondo. There’s irony for you.
DISCARDED: First Shift: Legacy. Someone gave this to me but I’m more interested in purging than finding out what it is.
DISCARDED: Island of the Sequined Love Nun. Tried the first chapter, didn’t grab me.
DISCARDED: Heart of Darkness, Joseph Konrad. Picked this up in a little free library at a friend’s urging but didn’t get interested in reading it.

Readin’ Dixie:
Sparring Partners, John Grisham

And now, COMING UP IN JULY:
Some American history-related material to coincide with Independence Day, naturally; Space Camp; and…..a special week of reviews in which I take a look at children’s literature from the 1990s, from Goosebumps to the Babysitters Club!