Category Archives: reading

Current Kindle Unlimited Books

2023, reading

You can borrow quite a few Kindle books from Kindle Unlimited … BUT only 25 at a time. Or, well, 25 slots at a time (if you borrow a title and it has an audiobook component as well, it counts for two slots). Right now, I have saved/borrowed my max amount, which comes out to 22 titles.

My reading genres are all over the place! I don’t even remember any longer why I borrowed some of these titles, and to be honest, I have a zillion books in my Kindle account and on my TBR on Goodreads.

I’m hoping that by calling attention to them, I’ll be more motivated to start working my way through them. Plus, I find it helpful to see the covers somewhere. I’m very much a mood reader and seeing the covers makes it more enticing to read the novel vs. seeing a list of titles.

Of these books, the one I am reading right now is Love Lettering. In this book, a hand-letterer who makes custom journals and planners (sounds like someone from the Planners Gone Wild community!) “accidentally” puts a hidden message in a couple’s wedding announcement, indicating that the relationship won’t last. About a year later, the intended groom comes back and confronts her about the hidden message. As it turns out, he never got married. I picked this one mostly because the main character was a planner girl and did hand-lettering and that made me think about my friend, Cindy Guentert-Baldo and my other friends from PGW.

That (and, apparently 16 other books) are what I’m working through right now. As for you, do you use Kindle Unlimited? What are some titles on your TBR?

The Great American Novel Puzzle Reading Challenge!

2022, Challenge Accepted!, Exciting Adventures of the Everyday, reading

We wanted to pick up a new puzzle to work on, after *finally* finishing the Thomas Kincaid puzzle that was a pastel, fuzzy-edged nightmare to complete. We wanted something brightly colored, easy, and fun. This puzzle of 50 Great American Novels was just the thing! In fact, we started and completed it in one day!

After we finished it, we decided that it would be fun to turn this experience into a challenge. We both want to read more literature and classics, and enjoy reading books together. We also think it would be fun to explore them more academically and Donald suggested that we could even write little book reports on them and discuss the major themes and ideas that resonated with us.

We have each read a selection of the books already, but decided for the purposes of this challenge, we would re-read books and read them at the same time as each other.

Books Jenn has previously read:

  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Books Donald has previously read:

  • The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  • The Call of the Wild by Jack London

We love making choices using random methods. For selecting which book to read next (and subsequent books), we took a photo of the poster that came with the puzzle, printed it out, cut each book apart, folded it up and stuck it in a large jar, which Donald then proceeded to vigorously shake around. Then, I picked one without looking, and we unfolded it together.

Our first read is going to be Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut!

Keep an eye out for our review of this book after we have completed it!