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I picked up Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews at the library so that I could reread it for the first time since I read it in middle school. I think it was trending on Threads as a reread or something and that triggered […]
I came across the book On Writing Well by William Zinsser when browsing the shelves of Half Price Books for my writing curriculum portion of my personal curriculum last fall. I grabbed it on a whim based on the reviews I found online. Please note […]
I have huge reading goals for 2026 but haven’t really talked about them much so I thought I would post a list of my tentative summer reading goals. I do have more books in mind but don’t want to overload with too many books at the start of the summer. I tend to read a lot in the summer, more than the winter by far so I am not worried that I am only at 7 out of my 26 books read goal for 2026. I am keeping track of my reading goals under OscoeyReads on StoryGraph. My 26 for 2026 booklist can be found with the following link and at the end of this article in the Links section. My challenge is open ended. Add whatever books you like!
For the summer I want to keep it pretty simple and I just chose a few books I had on hand or had already checked out from the library. I usually read a lot of fluff books over the summer but since I am doing my 75 Soft challenge for my Q3 personal curriculum I do have quite a few non-fiction books to read in there as well.
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First up is Skinny Liver by Kristin Kirkpatrick and Ibrahim Hanouneh. This is a detailed description of many types of fatty liver disease and how you can both prevent and heal many forms of it. It is a good book to read if you meet any of the criteria for potentially having Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease or NAFLD such as being in your 40’s or older, overweight, eating a typical American diet or have genetic risk factors. I am in the middle of this one and it is so far engaging and pretty good. They recommend a Mediterranean diet as a solution so this was a good start to my 75 Soft challenge.
Another book that I checked out from the library and am in the middle of is Forgotten Orphan by Glynis Peters. This book is about a girl who was left at an orphanage with her twin brother when she was small with no indication of who her parents are. Her brother is adopted out immediately but she remains until she is an adult and WWII breaks out. This book was a bestseller and is a little fluffy but so far I am really enjoying reading it. It is a quick read and I was excited to see that the library had other books that looked to be in the same series.
I have three health books checked out from the library right now and The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes is the second one I plan on reading this summer. It is a book about the rise of sugar in the western diet and how it has affected diabetes rates. I picked this one up on a whim but so far I have read the intro and it is pretty good and fitting for a summer of focusing on my health and reworking my diet. I am interested to see what they end up recommending. Being on the low histamine diet there is not a lot of processed sugar involved but I do notice how much less sugar is in every day foods now that I live outside of the U.S.. It is crazy how much sugar is added to everything now!
The third library book I have checked out on health is Outlive by Peter Attia. I have not started this one yet but it did come highly recommended by a friend and when I was doing my research into a low histamine diet. I am starting this one after The Case Against Sugar and am hoping it will provide some insight into Blue Zones and how to live a longer, healthier life.
Next up is The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf. This book was given to me as part of a set of Bestsellers and it has been calling to me ever since. I am also interested in reading Founding Gardeners by the same author as well. She writes about Alexander von Humboldt and how he created nature, environmentalism and other ideas about the world in general. I am pretty excited to read this one and may even do a whole unit on it for my future personal curriculum.
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton is a book I picked up on a whim at Half Price Books this year. I don’t know much about it besides what is written on the cover but it jumped out at me on the shelf. It appears to be about a young bride who hires a miniaturist to create pieces to fill a doll house sized replica of her house in the 1800s. This is one of my fiction books that I am hoping will be a little fluffy for a poolside read this summer.
Wild by Cheryl Strayed is also a book I picked up at Half Price Books but I had heard of it and the movie before I bought it. This book is the author’s account of traveling the Pacific Crest Trail after the death of her mother and is supposed to be very good. I picture this one as a July read but we will see when I actually end up reading it. I will definitely be watching the movie after I read the book as well.
One of my personal curriculum goals is to do a unit on ethics, logic and philosophy taking inspiration from one of my favorite shows, The Good Place. I did buy a few books from the series at Half Price Books based on a list of books mentioned in the show and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is one of them. I don’t think I have read anything like this except maybe long ago in college so I am curious to read it. Eventually I will do the whole list of books from the series but for now, reading one seems like a good start.
I wanted to read at least one classic this summer and I felt like it was time for a reread of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens so I pulled out my copy from middle school to add to my summer reading list this year. I haven’t read this on in at least a decade so I am curious as to whether my opinion on it has changed at all. I have read it a few times since middle school and I have loved it every time. The two cites the book is about are London and Paris and it is set during the French Revolution. Honestly it has been so long since I read it last the details are getting fuzzy but I am excited to read it again!
An easy finish for me will be Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan. I started the Percy Jackson series last summer at the insistence of my youngest and got through about half of the third book. These are about Percy Jackson who is the offspring of a god who is coming of age and now exposed to all of the monsters that want to attack him. The series is very well written but is at a middle school level so it goes very fast. I have read them before with my other kids but I love how sweetly my youngest wanted me to read it with them. I should be able to finish this one easily and maybe we will watch the movies or TV show again this summer just for fun.
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood is the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. I got this in a set of bestsellers and have been holding off on reading it until the TV series came out. Now it is time to read it so I have it on my list for the summer. I greatly enjoyed The Handmaid’s Tale show and book so I expect to enjoy this one as well.
I wanted to do an honorable mention to the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch for a summer read. I checked this book out randomly from the library but it looks like it is the 9th book in the series so I am going to find the first book at read that prior to the other ones. The series sounds interesting and is about a cop who solves a mystery in an alternate universe and I want to read at least the first one in the series.
Another honorable mention is this Ghiblioteque by Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham book I found at the library. It is a description of the Studio Ghibli films and appears to be pretty comprehensive. I am going to look through this one before I return it but not count it as fully read. I may go back later and read it fully but it is so detailed I know I won’t get through the whole thing before I have to return it so I want to pause on it and let someone else enjoy it this summer.
Thank you for reading about my summer reads! What do you plan on reading this summer?
Links:
Books:
Skinny Liver by Kristin Kirkpatrick and Ibrahim Hanouneh
Forgotten Orphan by Glynis Peters
The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes
The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
I first heard of Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo when I was in my lack of time and mental capacity for reading period and the show caught my eye on Netflix. I love a good fantasy world and I binge watched the first season […]
I first heard about Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke on Threads. Someone was talking about how Anne Hathaway had bought the movie rights and everyone was excited for it to be turned into a movie. The idea of a trad-wife going back in time to […]
As a second book in a series, The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sara Beth Durst does not disappoint! It weaves a cozy tale of Terlu Perna the wayward librarian who was turned into a statue for her unsanctioned creation, Caz the sentient plant. And yes, if you have read The Spellshop it is the same Caz that leaves the library for an island adventure!
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The book starts out with the same library fire during the overthrowing of the crown but this time we follow Perla as she comes back to life and finds herself in front of a very warm and inviting greenhouse in the middle of a snow storm. There are many mysteries behind why the greenhouse is only tended by one lonesome man and what is happening to the spells as they degrade over time.
As the story unfolds we are introduced to a new cast of characters and layers to the strict magic rules enforced in the kingdom. Yet again, forbidden magic is a key element to our hero’s success. I am really interested to see how and when the concurrent stories will all come together for an overarching story of how magic was restored to the common people in the kingdom, if that is the intention of the author of course!
The Enchanted Greenhouse lived up to the level of lovability that The Spellshop received and I loved reading it. I highly recommend reading both books and Sea of Charms when it comes out in July. I don’t want to give too much away but the story is great and also fills in some of the gaps in The Spellshop for the overall world experience. I am really hoping at some point there will be a book where all three books tie together and maybe Caz and Perla are reunited but maybe that happens in Sea of Charms, we shall see!
Thank you for joining me on this reading adventure! What cozy books are you reading right now?
Links:
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst Review
As always, please look for books at libraries and used bookshops but here are the Amazon links if you need more information about them or want to join us and preorder Sea of Charms for July!
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst Book
The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst Book
The Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst Book
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed […]
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst is a book that I picked up kind of on a whim but ended up loving. I honestly don’t remember if it was a book I saw in my Amazon suggestions or if it was one of the books […]
The end of 2025 and our first quarter trying out a personal curriculum came quicker than I though it would. I did make some progress but as I suspected, the holidays and travel got the best of me and I didn’t get through everything I had hoped I would. Luckily I just was doing a trial curriculum for this first set to see how much progress was realistic for me to complete. For fall of 2025 I did three subjects which were P.H.E, Art and French.
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
For Physical Health Education (P.H.E. as they call it in Canada) I did spend time outdoors, swimming and watching kids do sports but honestly I did not get as much exercise as I had hoped in this fall. Usually I spend a lot of time walking around the neighborhood but illness, weather and a lack of time meant I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped. I need to establish a new walking route either in my neighborhood or around the kids school so I can get back into the swing of walking. Part of this is because I am still recovering from my foot issues and every time I have walked they flare up again but really, I should be at least walking the dogs once a day for a short period and slowly build back up again. The dogs are still getting exercise mostly running around the dog park, but it is just not me that is doing the majority of the walking.
I did join the Conquerors Challenge app and am doing the Hadrian’s Wall challenge but honestly I am making huge progress on that one and ahead of my goal just with my normal step count activity so I am going to need to shorten my time length for my next challenge. If you would like to check it out my referral link is here and below under links.
Next up is my art class for fall of 2025. I did make a little bit of progress for art but with all the travel we did I could not take my art with me. One of my goals was to use up some of my extra diamond painting drills and we did do a little work with that and diamond painted the wooden bird houses we bought but this was pretty tricky to complete with the glue I bought so we will be painting the rest of the houses with acrylic paint.
Another art goal I had was to make book covers for my notebooks I am using for my personal curriculum. Unfortunately I only got as far as marking off my blank diamond painting canvas. I am not giving up on this one yet though and may try to complete this project outside of my personal curriculum for winter quarter 2026.
Last but not least is my French class. I made significant progress in French by working on it every week and taking our tutoring lessons with Preply. Although I am frustrated with how much I forget every week, I am making progress and did get through a lot of this book even though it was difficult for me to concentrate. I did not get through any Duolingo or my short stories book but I was using fall of 2025 as a test to see what was realistic to get through in a week with this book. Going forward I think doing one to two chapters in depth every week is a much more realistic goal than what the book recommends of getting through the whole thing in 60 days. I knew going in that the premise of learning French in such a short timeline would be way to much to get through so I am glad I didn’t put too much pressure on myself to get through it. I really want to have a deep learning of French instead of a quick pump and dump course where I will forget everything once the book is put away and that takes time. If I do French outside of tutoring every week my understanding will be slow but deeper so I don’t forget as easily.
Overall I am pretty happy I decided to do a personal curriculum and make my self-education more formal. It gives me guidelines to follow, goals to achieve and keeps me on track with my learning progress. I will be working out a curriculum for 2026 in the next week or so and posting that to both the Oscoey blog and my YouTube channel @cozyoscoeyhobbies (Cozy Oscoey). Look for that in the future!
How is your personal curriculum going?
Links:
Conqueror Challenge Referral Link
Fall 2025 Personal Curriculum Wrap Up on the Cozy Oscoey Channel
Check out our video on Cozy Oscoey: Introduction to Personal Curriculum
Preply: Get 70% off a trial lesson: Preply Trial Discount
Books:
Learn French Fast for Adult Beginners by Speak Abroad Academy
Short Stories in French for Beginners by Olly Richards
Dual Language Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Author),
Items I Bought:
When I first say the concept of a Personal Curriculum on YouTube it was like something clicked in my head and I finally had a name to what I was trying to accomplish in the next few years. I have been trying to find things […]
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