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Welcome to my weekly update for December 28, 2025! I hope everyone who celebrates the holidays had a great time and received some bookish goodies and everyone else had a good week!
I should probably change the title of these posts to quarterly updates. *sigh* My husband and I have been in north Georgia with his job for a few months. That’s just a few hours’ drive from our permanent home so we’ve gone back and forth quite a bit to spend time with our friends and family.
On one of our trips back home to Asheville, NC, we visited the NC Arboretum to see the Trolls: A Field Study exhibit by artist Thomas Dambo. I’ve followed Mr. Dambo on social media for a few years and just saw one of his trolls in person for the first time this summer in Breckenridge, Colorado. He currently has two traveling exhibitions on display in North Carolina and one of them is practically in my family’s backyard. It was just as playful and enchanting as I expected.
My husband and I visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for their Garden Lights, Holiday Nights display. My phone battery was almost dead so I didn’t take many pictures but I had to take a picture of the Ice Goddess. We’ve visited this garden once before in warmer months, when she’s an earth goddess covered in flowers. I was so happy to see her repurposed for winter! The garden as a whole was magical.
Slideshow:
All images © Jennifer G. at Introverted Reader 2025
Posted:
(re)Viewing Last Month: September 2025–Brief reviews of the television shows and movies we watched.
It’s time for reading challenge sign-ups! I’m hosting my usual two but added a third for this year.
2026 Immigration Reading Challenge New!
2026 Books in Translation Reading Challenge
2026 Southern Literature Reading Challenge
I like to set you up to succeed so you have the option to only read one book for each of these challenges if that’s what you’d like!
Read:
So many books! I keep getting overwhelmed when I try to write this post and try to list everything I’ve read since September. So I keep putting off my update. I’m just going to list the books I’ve read over the past two weeks and direct you to my GoodReads shelf if you’d like to see more. This is a shame because I’ve read some really good books, but time does not seem to be my friend lately. I have not reviewed any of these books.
The Secret of Snow by Viola Shipman, read by Nancy Peterson–4 Stars
Once Upon a December by Amy E. Reichert, read by Sharon Freedman–3.5 Stars
The Jolliest Bunch: Unhinged Holiday Stories, written and read by Danny Pellegrino–3.5 Stars
Currently Reading:
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause by Tom Gjelten
Up Next:
I’m trying so hard to finish the Bacardi book for Shelleyrae’s Nonfiction Reading Challenge before the end of the year. This will be the first year I don’t finish all twelve categories! If I can finish this book, at least I’ll only be one category short.
What did your week look like?
Hosts:
Deb Nance at Readerbuzz hosts The Sunday Salon and Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer hosts Sunday Post. Kathryn at Book Date hosts It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?
23 Comments
Loved the images! Did you manage to finish Bacardi? I’m so intrigued by the book, would love to know your thoughts on it. And I have my eyes on Master of Djinn too, have heard the audiobook is especially good.
Wish you a happy new year 2026, and great reads and travels ahead!
Great to hear from you, Jen. Hope you enjoyed your holidays. Such great photos. We really love NC. Wishing you the best in 2026.
Thanks for stopping by!
The pics are wonderful:). And the one shot of the night-lit garden is enchanting. We are also planning to visit Wakehurst Gardens on New Year’s Eve for their Glow Wild show, which we saw last year and absolutely loved. A Happy New Year to you, Jen:)).
I hope you enjoy the gardens again this year. Happy New Year!
That Garden Nights event sounds like my kind of thing!
Happy New Year!
We’ve been to a lot of garden and zoo lights over the years and this was by far the best we’ve seen!
How great to be near family and friends over the past few months! I just can’t believe we’re at the end of 2025; time goes so quickly the older I get.
Happy New Year!
I agree; I don’t know how time passes so quickly nowadays!
Nice you are close enough to spend some time with friends and family. Happy New Year!
Anne – Books of My Heart This is my Sunday Post
Thank you!
Hope you have a great week!
Thank you!
Those trolls look too cool! And I bet some of the Unhinged Holiday Stories were pretty amusing 🙂 Enjoy the rest of your holidays!
Most of them were just amusing, one or two were serious, but a couple had my husband and I cackling with laughter!
We saw the Dambo Trolls in Dayton, Ohio! He added one in Michigan not too long ago, and we need to visit it. It’s just really up there in the Upper Peninsula. Lol.
Awesome! It felt like he was almost following in my footsteps for a while-adding trolls in places I had just been! I was so excited to finally see one in person in Breckenridge and then this exhibition had 12 trolls, I believe. They aren’t as big as his others but they’re still larger than life and so charming!
I’m glad you’ve been able to enjoy so much time with family and friends 🙂
The trolls look charming!
10 or 11 of 12 is still cause for congratulations:)
Wishing you a wonderful reading week, and a very happy New Year
The one I’m missing for sure is myth, legend, and folklore, which is right in my wheelhouse. I don’t know why I struggled to choose a book for that category!
You’re in the part of the country with fairly good weather compared to our snow, sleet, and freezing rain! Enjoy it and have a happy new year.
Harvee https://harvee44.blogspot.com
We like to complain about our weather in the southern Appalachians but we generally have pretty moderate temperatures and weather year-round. Except for the freak events like Hurricane Helene. But at least that was a rarity too, instead of the norm.
I’m glad to see you both posting and hosting. I’m intrigued with the idea of the Immigration Reading Challenge. It sounds important, and it’s something I think I need to participate in. I shall go check it out!
It’s nice to be checking in with everyone!