Wishing You a Happy New Year for 2026
Added 2026-01-01 22:32:57 +0000 UTCDear Book Club Members ---
I just wanted to take a moment to wish you a very Happy New Year and say a deep thank you from the bottom of my heart for making the year just gone such a special reading year. I hope you're as excited as I am for the year ahead.
You have my warmest love and deepest gratitude for making this bookish community so wonderful and living the great books with us. And you should feel immensely proud of your tremendous reading achievements this past year.
I would love to know your favourite books from last year and any insights or cherished moments from your reading adventure. What are you most looking forward to as we journey across this fresh year together? And do you have any New Year's resolutions, new habits, mindsets, or exciting goals for literature and your life?
Here’s wishing you a phenomenal New Year filled with happiness, love, and great books.
Happy reading for 2026, everybody!
Comments
Happy New Year Ben and all fellow readers. Evie is absolutely beautiful! Being part of this book club is truly rewarding and the best thing I ever did. My two adult sons are now avid readers which is great as a result of me constantly talking about the books I was reading. 2025 was tough in many ways - I had sick family member's so I spent a lot of time in the car driving to appointments. So, this year I need to focus more on my own health and well-being. I would like to get into the habit of having my morning coffee outside instead of in front of the computer. Making more notes in each book - I still struggle to do marginalia. I would also like to journal more and write down quotes that I like from these books. I loved Madame Bovary and Emma - I love books about women. Looking forward to this year - The Idiot, Clarice Lispector, Swann's Way, Finnegans Wake and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Happy Reading everyone and look forward to a great year with you.
Helen Lyons
2026-01-14 10:01:50 +0000 UTCHappy New Year! Thank you for 2025. I loved my first reread of Homer (I enjoyed reading Fitzgerald's translation while listening to it on YT). 100 Years of Solitude, a book I was unprepared for, both thrilled and depressed me. Madame Bovary was excellent writing and an intricate psychological-character study. It's hard to pick between Rebecca and Jane Eyre. Because I read Jane Eyre with my family, I'll put that one on top. Nineteen-Eighty Four was incredible (we must celebrate open and unabated-civil discourse, especially making every effort to allow the messages we hate to hear, as much as possible). I read Frankenstein again, and this is currently my favorite book. But I think I'll give the highest rank to Victor Fankl's book "Man's search for meaning." This hit me hard. If you have not read this book, I recommend you read it as soon as possible. It's relatively short. It has allegedly changed many people's lives. I believe the claim. I also appreciate all the interaction gifted to me throughout 2025 in this bookclub. Y'all are awesome ________ Congratulations again on your beautiful baby!!!!!!!
Danny
2026-01-11 20:14:36 +0000 UTCI was blown away by the quality of the paper and the entire book! Such a fantastic price for a book to last a lifetime in my library.
Christina Klock
2026-01-09 20:27:57 +0000 UTCI am spending January with my daughter in Rome. We visited Galleria Borghesi yesterday and saw (among other things) the statues by Bernini of Aeneas, Apollo and Daphne and the Rape of Persephone. I am so glad to have read Ovid and Homer last year so I knew what I was looking at! Also enjoying reading the Greek plays in this setting.
Anne M
2026-01-09 10:02:32 +0000 UTCJust finished my reread of Bleak House. The first read was 30 years ago, for a college English class on Dickens (as a “mature”student 😏). I liked it then, but I had forgotten most of it. So many horrors (personal and societal) have happened since then, this time around it hit me like a freight train! Very disturbing, I had to stop reading frequently, it was too painful. I actually know a family torn apart, committing frauds and felonies due to a still unresolved contested will (with my friend doing nothing with her life but getting into debt, waiting for the money, and filing lawsuits) in a strange reenactment of J&J! One of my family members was a Mrs. Jellyby, dear Lord, they do exist; and my erstwhile parish was also more concerned with sending funds to Haiti than helping out our desperately poor elderly parishioners. Dickens is extremely relevant today. Anyway, I cried quite a bit, I felt like a nonvirtuous incarnation of Esther. But I laughed also. It’s a masterpiece. Fave books this year: Emma (any Austen book, anytime!), 3 Musketeers, Cien años de soledad—magical realism is part of my life. My mantra for 2026 is Joyful Courage. My new year intentions: journal more frequently (daily), write a second novel (gulp), and keep the old carcass from falling apart. Small habit: whatever task that takes under 2 minutes, I will do right now. My greatest hobgoblins are procrastination and discouragement. Proud of in 2025: keeping up as best I could with the HLBC readings and ploughing through Émile Zola’s first five volumes of Les Rougon-Macquart, reading Evelina and poetry, and keeping my house reasonably clean! What a treat to see pictures of your adorable daughter! 😍Thanks, Ben
Yvonne Finnegan
2026-01-08 03:59:05 +0000 UTCBenjamin-you have missed your true vocation. I think you would be a superb psychiatrist/psychologist . You certainly know how to lift a person's spirits!!! And my comment is not some mere platitude. Looking forward to putting in some real reading effort this year.
David Stephens
2026-01-07 19:03:21 +0000 UTCThanks so much Benjamin for all you do to make our experiences as rewarding as they are. My life has changed over the past few years since I joined the group. It truly is the highlight of my days. Each book is such an adventure. These stories give life meaning and help us to understand life. I can’t thank you enough. Happy New Year!
Karen Werner
2026-01-07 02:25:12 +0000 UTCI was SO upset about that I can’t even tell you.
Samantha Mathers
2026-01-06 20:00:29 +0000 UTCThis will be my first full re-read of Lonesome Dove. I would say if you haven't started yet, and you have the copy with the Author Intro, I'd maybe save the intro for after, depending on how sensitive you are to spoilers. Larry kind of dropped a doozy in there. That being said, I love how the Taylor Sheridan Intro frames the book.
stefan
2026-01-06 14:43:07 +0000 UTCReally love orbital too. Though folks seem very divided - a friend of mine told me it was like reading sth generated by AI!
Imogen Thurbon
2026-01-06 11:15:49 +0000 UTCHi to everyone and a Very Happy New Year. Very much looking forward to the reading list this year. At the moment following HLC lecture series on Blood Meridian and will finish this before tackling Lonesome Dove. The prose is just astonishing. Fell in love with McCathy’s language with Suttree. Finished last year by reading Moby Dick and following the lectures. Also incredible. Looking forward to all the books on the programme. Especially Beowulf and the Greek tragedies. Currently reading Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. Very readable. Next on list The Silver Book by Olivia Laing. Had to read Bleak House at school and just hated it but now, 50 years on, relished it and so glad I gave it another go.
Imogen Thurbon
2026-01-06 11:07:57 +0000 UTCHappy new year gang, mad keen on reading Beowulf and the Left Hand of Darkness. I read Orbital this year, which was grouse. I also read a sentence in Wuthering Heights which left me feeling so seen I got upset and put it down for a hot minute, but in a good way. But it was cool to have read something at the perfect time in my life for it to mean the most to me. Wishing everyone well, and I look forwards to reading books knowing that other people all over the world are experiencing, in their own way, the same book. like a brain spiderweb.
Silvia Righetti
2026-01-06 08:02:19 +0000 UTCI just received Greek Plays today! What a beautiful book! This will be so fantastic.
Anna B.
2026-01-06 00:35:07 +0000 UTC
