“Building the Book Fort” is a weekly post where I track my bookish life.

Currently Reading:

• The Darkest Night ed. by Lindy Ryan
• The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher by E.M. Anderson
• How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm by Cressida Cowell
• Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck

Finished:

• Death at a Scottish Christmas by Lucy Connelly
• Slashing Through the Snow by Jacqueline Frost

Total pages read this week (and last week): 522

Total books read: 103 of 100

TBR (goal is -24): -34

#ShelfLove Challenge: 60 of 51

Yule was quiet and wonderful, just how I wanted it. Spending Christmas Eve alone was difficult, but I made myself a giant mug of hot chocolate and a bowl of popcorn, and watched my favorite Christmas movie, “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.” After that, I settled in on the couch with Wolf Winter, my cats, and a big mug of tea. Christmas morning was also a bit difficult, but I’m glad I had plans to have a late lunch with a friend, as that helped me a lot.

I did next to nothing yesterday, and at first I felt guilty about that. Then I realized that I haven’t had any real time off from work just to relax since March. Any time off I’ve had since has been either only a day off in which I ran around trying to catch up on everything or because I was sick, injured, or dealing with something stressful. So, the only productive thing I did all day was to set up my 2026 Reading Tracker.

In addition to doing another year of my #ShelfLove reading challenge, I’ve decided to try the Reader’s Gauntlet:

I will be doing this challenge on “Easy mode,” and even then I have no idea how well I’ll do, but my only real goal for this challenge is to have fun by gamifying my reading. What I like about this challenge is that it’s not entirely made up of specific reading prompts. I’m too much of a mood reader to succeed at those challenges, unless they’re very short-term seasonal ones, and even then it’s iffy. Instead, just about every book I am likely to read will fit into the Reader’s Gauntlet somewhere, and the real challenge for me will be to fill in the “blanks” as I go along, similar to unlocking an achievement in a video game. That sounds like a lot of fun!

Over the remaining days of 2025, I’ll be doing my best to finish all of my current reads so that I’m starting 2026 fresh.

What are you reading? Let me know in the comments!