Read:
Man or Mango? – Lucy Ellmann (Biblioasis, 2022)
Seascraper – Benjamin Wood (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025)
Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, 2022)
Beautyland – Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2024)
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears – Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020)
The Man Born to be King – Dorothy Sayers (BBC Radio)
The Infamous Gilberts – Angela Tomaski (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2026)
Sunburn – Chloe Michelle Howarth (Verve Books, 2023)
Katabasis – R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, 2025)
Half His Age – Jennette McCurdy (Penguin Random House Audio, 2026)
The Parisian – Isabella Hammad (Grove Press, 2019)
Did Not Finish:
Mother of God – Sara Peters
Currently Reading:
The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien (ongoing family read-aloud)
Rules for Mothers – Julie Swendsen Young
Chernobyl Prayer – Svetlana Alexievich
The Doll Factory – Elizabeth MacNeal
Thoughts:
My reading in January was fairly library-heavy. I got excited about lots of new titles and put a bunch of books on order and then of course more came ready for me at once than I was ready for. Beautyland, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Sunburn, and Katabasis all came from the library in one way or another. For my audiobooks, I’m trying to alternate between the most recent on my TBR and the oldest.
It was a good reading month, both in quantity (11 total) and in quality. Seascraper and The Man Born to be King were both particularly excellent in audio form and while I had mixed feelings about The Infamous Gilberts, the narration was very well done. I enjoyed Katabasis more than I expected and Demon Copperhead was also a highlight of the month. Reviews to come!
What’s Next:
More library books! I’ve have three already out, and 5 more holds coming in soon, then my Libby holds on top of that. My next audiobook will be Nesting by Roisin O’Donnel. A friend also loaned me a copy of Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash that I need to get to. Somewhere in there I need to mix in a bit more non-fiction too.
2026 Reading Goals:
11/100 books
(Pearl also set a goal of reading 100 books in 2026 and, you guys, she’s beating me. She’s at 12 already. And, yes, she’s reading middle grade novels but they’re not short. I’ll share her list below. She says The Bletchley Riddle and Airborn were her favourites.)
Theological: 0/12
Translated Works: 0/12
Pre-2025 TBR: 2/25 (I Hold a Wolf by its Ears from 2020 and The Man Born to be King from 2019 in January)
Goliaths: 3/6 (Demon Copperhead at 548 pages, Katabasis at 541 pages, and The Parisian at 561 pages)
Owned: 2/25
Current TBR: 140 books (previously 129)
Pearl’s Books:
The Poisoned King – Katherine Rundell
The Bletchley Riddle – Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheikin
The Burning Maze – Rick Riordan
The Red Pyramid – Rick Riordan
The Throne of Fire – Rick Riordan
The Court of the Dead – Rick Riordan
Murder is Bad Manners – Robin Stevens
The Serpent’s Shadow – Rick Riordan
The Tyrant’s Tomb – Rick Riordan
The Tower of Nero – Rick Riordan
The Green Kingdom – Cornelia Funke
Airborn – Kenneth Oppel
Karissa Reads Books 
Hi Karissa,
I’m from the UK and I love reading your blog!
I was really thrilled to see that we now have reading recommendations from Pearl – my youngest son was born December 2015 and is a massive reader (about a book every day or two, as well as school, homework, clubs, chores and so on!) But our local library doesn’t have a huge middle school section, and it’s fair to say that a lot of his reading is comfort/escapism…and therefore he reads the same books over and over! He is a huge Redwall and Harry Potter fan, and must have read the series five times through, or maybe more! Anyway, I know I need to get him into other books, so Pearl’s list is really helpful – please ask her to keep reading, and keep sharing!
Olivia
Hi! I’m so glad you found me! It’s so satisfying watching your kid fall in love with reading. Pearl hasn’t gotten into Redwall yet (I loved the series as a kid so have tried them with her). She gets worried about anything bad happening to animals. But a couple of other series she has really enjoyed are Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures and Anna James’ Chronicles of Whetherwhy. I believe they are both UK writers. Rick Riordan is also a big hit in our house, as you can probably tell! I am hoping to get Pearl to write a book review or two of her own at some point.
Aww, I love getting to see Pearl’s list too – a reminder of the days when binging on a favourite author was a completely normal part of reading life. (Rick Riordan has really cracked it; I don’t know how he does it, but kids who love him LOVE him.)
It’s great, isn’t it? My kids love Riordan’s books and it’s amazing how much they’ve absorbed about mythology and Ancient Greece through them.
A couple of months ago, we had a book club that was “dealer’s choice” where you basically talk about a book you read recently that you enjoy. One person was talking about Katabasis. Interestingly, one person at the book club was Greek, and she told the person how to correctly say the title and what it means (depending on context) in Greek. The person who brought the book then said that she tried to look up a video from the author to see how the title is pronounced, and the author claimed she doesn’t know how to say the word. I feel funny about that…
I’ve heard the title pronounced so many different ways! It did bug me that the word is never used or explained within the story itself. It’s only there as the title. I looked it up and I can understand why she chose it but it feels more like a filler title than a real thought-out choice.