Welcome to Litsy!

Exchanged gifts with my best friend last night and I think she may win the gift giving game this year!!

If anyone needs me I‘ll be cozied up with this working on my 2026 reading challenge.

My Bookish Goals for 2025

✔100 books - I read 199
✔50K pages - I read 64,229
💀25% NF - I hit 24% which is a bit shy but I am still happy with it!
✔50% not US - I did 53% and read from 64 different countries!
✔12 Chunksters - 15

It is always so fun to look back at what we accomplished even if we just missed out goals, at least we tried!

As a teen, I adored The Luckiest Girl, one of Beverly Cleary‘s “First Love” novels, but I never read the others. I decided to remedy that and picked up Fifteen this year. It was sweet! But TLG is better. 😊 (The others, perched alongside the tattered copy of my old favorite, have been purchased and are ready for me to read in 2026!)

This was my June #BookSpin pick.

What a lovely, touching, perfect coming of age story. Earlier this year David Nicholls gave me a wonderful middle aged love story, now this Shakespearean love of 16-year olds. This was just beautiful. Lovely, sad, easy yet beautiful storytelling. There are also huge mother/son dynamics here and they get me every time.

Sweet Sorrow, by David Nicholls (2019) [RE-READ]
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: An average British teenager joins a Summer stock Shakespeare company to impress a girl, and distract himself from the anxieties of increasingly complex life.

Review: I think this is the most underrated book I‘ve read. This was my third time reading it, and I‘ve only loved it more every time. It perfectly captures the feeling of the end of high school.⬇️

I think I would use this in the classroom not as a book for the whole class. I would just have it in my classroom for students to read to understand that growing up is tough and a lot of people face the same challenges and that everything will be ok!

“The first step is getting you to admit that we need a plan.“

Love? Maybe is a heartwarming story about Piper, a teen learning about friendship, love, and self-discovery as unexpected surprises challenge what she thought she knew about relationships. This is a contemporary realistic book.

I don‘t remember these from my childhood, but Beverly Cleary understands kids of all ages #AuthorAMonth #BeverlyClearly

REHOMING 📚 I need to make some room on my shelves so I'm giving away books! If you would like me to send anything in this stack to you, please comment below. *US only per my postal budget 🙏