Yes to mood reading! You have some wonderful goals for 2025.

Ohhhh the controversy!! 😂😂 Love this Jane! I wish you much success this year, my friend!

Everyone's goal should be to do what makes them happy. Good luck to you! My goals this year include reading more of my physical books, resisting hype for books that wouldn't usually interest me, and slowing down. I want to read less but enjoy it more.

I only read what actually interested me. Be it dark, and spicy books , or how to build a bridge. LoL. I cannot get into audio books. I find my mind wandering when I have tried. I may have said this before,,but I never own more than 5 books that I haven't read, and I make sure I buy no more until im down to that number. Great Video, and Take Care 👍😁👍

My morning walk with an audiobook is a highlight of my day.

Great goals! I especially like that you're going to do what works for YOU!

What are your reading goals for 2025? 📚

I like Horror the same reason I like Rollercoasters, or anything else that pumps my blood faster, and also I like things that aren't mundane. Just found Your Channel. 👍😁👍

Hi Jane! I've never read Rebecca (I'm not a fan of classics) but I am planning on it for March. This was a fun discussion to watch. Happy New Year!

I really enjoyed Black Sheep, too. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is my favorite LaRocca story. Oh, no, so sorry Wuthering Heights didn't work for you. It's one of my favorite classics, but I totally understand why so many dislike (and even loathe) it. I hated Wuthering Heights when I had to read it in high school, but I revisited as an adult and fell in love with it.

Hi Lady Jane, thanks for that great live stream. I cudgeled my brain and consulted my last quarter century of reading logs and here's what I got for a horror girl that might want to test drive a few…classics that don't suck. Definitely want to start with Dracula and Frankenstein, I like Mary Shelly better than Bram Stoker but they are both great. You really impressed me with your breakdown of Nabokov, clearly are very smart and not afraid to engage with serious text, so no classics for babies here, these books are the real deal and not always easy readers, but they are worth it, they don't suck. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Forever being discussed alone side Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, Maxim de Winter is a bastard of the kind and caliber as Mr. Rochester but not quite as bad as Heathcliff. Mrs. Danvers is as bad as Milton's Satan. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My favorite Sherlock Holmes story and one of only a few that run to novel length. Anything by Flannery O'Connor, she never wrote a bad story. But be advised she's as dark as Poe or King or McCarthy, no happy ending, ever with Flannery. Anything by John Steinbeck, he never wrote anything bad either. Of Mice and Men has the advantage of being short, a bunch of the smartest readers on Earth are reading East of Eden over on Alana Estelle's channel, Grapes of Wrath is one of my all time favorites. Cannery Row is hilarious, Travels with Charlie is the best road trip story ever. Enjoy. All things Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughter House Five was his magnum opus, if you can't get into him there my advice would be to just come back later in life. If he clicks with you in his Children's Crusade then all the rest will be great. Don Quixote by Cervantes. Need a good laugh? A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. He did more than just delinquents on rivers. His War Prayer is super short but will knock your socks off! If you like Twain’s delinquents on rivers stories that new James by Percival Everett if a great read, well deserved Booker Prize last year. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. These early forays into Sci-fi can be rather hit or miss and The Time Machine is the only one I really liked. Some people loved War of the Worlds but I found it slowed down and became claustrophobic when our dude gets pinned down in that damn basement. I'll take Joyland or IT over Misery any day of the week. I'm a retired prison guard, you NEVER wanted to get locked in a cell! Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Frequency billed as YA but I don't see why, it's a powerful look at the human condition…the adults don't have it figured out either! Moby Dick by Herman Melville. My GOAT. I always used to tell reading buddies who were struggling with The White Whale to try The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger first just to get your sea legs. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Bogart will forever be Sam Spade in the theatre of my mind. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hester Prynne rocks. To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway. This guy is hit or miss with me. My other favorite E.H. would be For Whom the Bell Tolls. A Farewell to Arms ain't half bad either. If you like Hemingway you'll like William Faulkner's first novel Soldiers Pay. His second, Mosquitos is very different, but pretty good too, reminds me of F.Scott Fitzgerald believe it or not! After that you get into his Yoknapatawpha County novels and after two trips through every damn one of them…no. Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux. Erik rocks. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Even if you don't like war stories this will be a great read. The Hobbit, J.R.R.Tolkin I liked the whole series but the Hobbit is the best. If you’ll permit me a few more by category I’d add: Westerns, not a big O.K. Corral guy but there are a few dust busters that I've loved and that don't suck. Shane by Jack Schaefer Lonesome Dove by Larry McMutry, WOW! Super character driven, but oh what characters! True Grit by Charles Portis, Mattie Ross is an indomitable 14 year old bad ass! C.S. Lewis I love Clive Staples, all things Narnia but his best reads are The Screwtape Letters and That Hideous Strength (his whole Space Trilogy is good but as a stand alone book this is the best.) 1984 by George Orwell. I love G.O. he never wrote anything bad and he's one of my few authors on whom I'm a completist. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. 451 is a terrific read but as different from his Midwestern Dandelion Wine type stories as 1984 is from Homage to Catalonia. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In my opinion this is the weakest of these three that always get lumped together but still a very good read. Classic Sci-fi 2001 by A.C. Clarke is the best hands down. HAL 9000 rocks! Phillip K. Dick has a bunch of good reads too like We Can Remember That for you Wholesale and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Russians All Russians rock! Tolstoy has some excellent novellas that can ease you in if you're scared. The Death Ivan Ilyich is emblematic of his work. Gogol is easy as the Russians go. Dead Souls is wonderful. Somewhat more modern is Just Send Me Word by Orlando Figes, your ticket to Stalin’s Gulag.

Hi Lady Jane, I see you're going LIVE at 6PM, so cool! What time zone are you in? I don't want to miss it.

Hi Lady Jane, you and Kari did a very smart run down of that 'Tender is the Flesh' book also. We here in the global west in general and the United States in particular are fond of congratulating ourselves for not doing racial slavery anymore and whipping those pesky Nazis and all. But I hope future generations (if there are any) will be kind to us when they reflect on the fact that we made very little moral issue of having virtually all our products made by ill compensated workers in the global east. (this message sent from my Android phone made in...yeah...)

I'll try to think of a few classics I could recommend to a horror girl. Maybe a list like "some 95 year old books that don't suck". Weather is supposed to be too cold to cut any firewood tomorrow so maybe I'll get back to you then.

Hi Lady Jane, ha, ha, ha! We were just talking about the many perils of making book recommendations over on Alana Estelle’s channel. I went back and watched your last few videos and that wonderful talk you had with Kari about Lolita, BookTube needs more long form discussions and reviews, not all topics can be distilled down to 240 characters. Also couldn't agree with you more on your take about horror as a form of erotica. That's either all Stephen King's fault or he's taken full advantage of the phenomenon to sell millions of books. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an obvious early example of scary meets sexy from my blessed classics. Remember that Frankenstein incorporates that as a strong plot point also (the Monster tries to force the Doctor to make him a wife)...Beau of the Fifth Column is fond of noting that the monster’s name is not Frankenstein, Frankenstein is the doctor and the doctor IS the monster. I loved both Dracula and The Modern Prometheus but found the latter to be a much deeper dive into the human condition. Mary Shelly really sets up Frankenstein’s Monster as one of the great literary patron saints of the well read but uneducated. He stands with George Orwell 's Boxer from Animal Farm (when he retires he’ll try reading a few books), Jane Austen’s Mr. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice (father of Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet, and Miss Bennet. He had his garden and he had his books.) Virginia Woolf’s Septimus Warren Smith of Mrs. Dalloway (he might come out alright, or he might not. He was one of those “half educated, self educated men whose education is all learned from books borrowed from the public libraries, read in the evening after the day’s work, on the advice of well-known authors consulted by letter”)---page 127. Thomas Hardy’s Jude Fawley (Jude the Obscure), the stone mason by day and scholar by night and extremely unlucky. Or Mary Elizabeth Brandon's Isabel Gilbert, The Doctor's Wife (almost Don Quixote meets Anne of Green Gables and is extremely lucky). You and Kari killed me with your deep dive into Nabokov. It's been quite some years since I spent time with Humbert Humbert and I didn't like him well enough then to warrant a re-visit. The best reason to read Lolita is because it is a prerequisite for Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafiai. This is a modern gem! Azar was an English Professor at the University of Tehran in the 1970’s and this is a powerful, incredibly well written account of her experience teaching before and after the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1978. Spoiler Alert! Everything changed! No more talking great books with your reading buddy Brother Doug, no more equal rights for women and definitely no more Nabokov. You’d better just don your veil and burka and have Kari and a half dozen of your most trusted girlfriends over to your apartment in the middle of the day at the risk of your very lives if you want to read Lolita in Tehran.

Hey Jane! Happy New Year! I'm laughing as there were a few books I've hesitated on reading and those were ones you found underwhelming or just not as good as you would have wanted, particularly None of this is True and Assistant to the Villain. I feel like I dodged some bullets. And the ending had me laughing! I hope you have a year full of great books!

Hi Lady Jane, new sub here, not sure why the YT algorithm gods brought me here (big classics reader kind of brother I am) but since they can't ever be wrong I figured I'd better appease them by watching your 2024 wrap-up vid. Glad I did! Wuthering Heights has got to be the most polarizing novel of all time! Have you read Jane Eyre? Ethan Frome is my personal favorite Edith Wharton but not sure it's her best. She likes complicated characters that don't always sit well with modern readers. False Dawn is a great read, has vaguely Wm Somerset Maugham vibes like The Moon and Sixpence (Paul Gauguin must have been a piece of work for real!) Looking forward to your 2025 BookTube vids.

just reminding me that I gotta get to Black Sheep! Also really want to read Goddess of Filth. I've wondered it Whispers Down the Lane was based on a specific case during the Satanic Panic, so now much more intrigued by it 👀oof I've been nervous about American Rapture for the same reason! Looks like overall, you had a great reading year! 💙

Congratulations on a successful reading year! I'm usually underwhelmed by the books getting all the hype 😄.

BTW I read 60 books...all books btw no audiobooks counted in my reading. 😂

A bit under the weather but I'm going to be back to watch this and see what exactly you have been up to. 😊

Avalanche!!

Very interesting selection of books. I'm glad we buddy read None Of This Is True and agree with your sentiments.

Happy New Year, Jane!