Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth

Castle Rackrent 

Maria Edgeworth 

1800

4/5 stars

  

This short novel is the rambling account of four generations of an Irish landowning family told in first-person by a long-serving retainer. 

The often unreliable narrator is well-written, and Edgeworth used the vernacular to great effect, while still painting a vivid, intelligible picture of the characters and situations.  The satiric footnotes and word definitions added so much to the overall tongue-in-cheek humor.  

I had expected a more serious book, given that the subject is irresponsible and negligent landlords, but I laughed out loud several times and found it to be quite enjoyable overall.   

My only complaint was the brevity of the tales of the first three Rackrent lords.  Had that been expounded on, with the same wit and style, it would have been a five star read for me.

- read for The Classics Club and Reading Through the Centuries -

The Story of the Glittering Plain by William Morris

The Story of the Glittering Plain 

or The Story of the Glittering Plain which has been also called the Land of Living Men or the Acre of the Undying 

William Morris

1890/1891 (first published as a magazine serial)

4/5 stars

This is a fantasy taking place in a mythical medieval time about the knight Hallblithe, who goes in search of his kidnapped betrothed. Following her trail, he meets with pirate-warriors and eventually accompanies one of them to the Glittering Plain, a utopia of sorts where youth is regained for eternity. After a year of disheartening adventures, he escapes this land and continues his quest to be reunited with his love.

I wouldn't consider this an allegory, though it reminds me a great deal of both Spenser's Faerie Queene and George MacDonald's Phantastes. Through my own fault, no doubt, I failed to perceive the pro-socialist message that is reportedly part of this tale, and saw only a chivalrous tale in the reminiscent of both the King Arthur stories and Greek mythology.

Morris chose an archaic prose style, fitting for the subject and creating an unearthly effect.  The characters were two-dimensional, but again, that was fitting for this type of story.  Overall, I enjoyed it a good deal, especially his descriptions and storytelling and look forward to reading more of work in the future.

- read for both the Mount TBR challenge and the Key Word Reading Challenge (link to both) -

My 2026 Goal and Three Reading Challenges

My goal for this year is a big one: to spend no money on books.  

This is huge for me, and I know it's going to be hard, but I have a huge backlog of Kindle books to read and quite a few nonfiction paper books, and I need to focus on whittling down all these unread treasures.  With the 1000 or so unread e-books, plus access to a good library system, I'm not going to run out of reading material.  

I may have to adjust my goal in regards to audiobooks later in the year, depending on how quickly I run through what I own.  We'll see how that goes.

Since I own so many, I have forgotten a lot of what I have.  To help me out, I made a Lucky Dip TBR jar.  I typed out and cut into strips over 150 authors/titles of Kindle books.  When I need a bit of help deciding what to read next, I'll just pull one out and see what I get.

Another way I'm going to help myself read what I own is to participate in a these three challenges.  I'll probably not be able keep up with them all but it's fun to have a little prompt when I'm thinking about what to read next.  I'll come back to the page I made for these challenges and add the books I read for the prompt.

2026 Key Word Reading Challenge by Chapter Adventure

The point of this one is to read a book with a certain word in the title.  The graphic below shows the monthly choices.

Calendar of Crime by My Reader's Block

This challenge is for mystery books only.  This spreadsheet shows the ten topics to pick from for each month.  I've got an enormous amount of Golden Age mysteries to read, so this might be a fun way to whittle them down.

Mount TBR by My Reader's Block

This challenge is just to encourage reading books already owned.  I'll be working toward the Mt. Ararat level.  

Challenge Levels: 

Pike's Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile/s 

Mount Blanc: Read 24 books from your TBR pile/s 

Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books from your TBR pile/s 

Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books from your TBR pile/s 

Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books from your TBR pile/s 

El Toro*: Read 75 books from your TBR pile/s (*aka Cerro El Toro in South America) 

Mt. Everest: Read 100 books from your TBR pile/s 

Mount Olympus (Mars): Read 150+ books from your TBR pile/s

2025 Year in Review

In 2025,  I read 88 books and listened to 41 audiobooks. I love stats, so it was fun to see that I read just over 38000 pages, with 300 as the average. I rated 14 books as 5 star reads (see below) and gave an average of 3.7 stars.  On Goodreads I was a top 5% reader and also top 5% reviewer.

My top favorites of the year were The Prisoner of Zenda (reread) and it's sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (new-to-me). I had loved the first one, and because I loved it so much, I never wanted read the second. I just couldn't imagine how it could measure up. It did! They are both SO good, and I highly recommend them.  (reviews are here)

 Here are my other five star books this year (most of which were rereads): 

-The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (reread) 

-The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. -Tolkien (reread) 

-The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (reread) 

-This Rotting Heart by Celeste Baxendell  

-Ties of Starlight by Celeste Baxendell 

-The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Dolye (reread) 

-Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (reread) 

-Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope 

-The Lost Queen: The Life & Tragedy of the Prince Regent's Daughter by Anne M. Stott 

-The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery (reread) 

-The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones 

-Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter by Dan Jones 

-The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation by Ian Mortimer 

I read a LOT of great indie spice-free fantasy (and will gladly give recommendations), but mysteries were still my most-read genre. Overall, it was a stellar year of reading. 

How was it for you? Remember, if you read more than 4 books, you beat the median and had a great year!