Reading List: July 2026

Introduction

Hello! Welcome to my first reading list on Quenq. Really, my first reading list in general. In the past, I have made small lists of books I want to read, but they got lost in notepad documents. Frankly, I never cared enough to sift through them. By making a public reading list, I hope to encourage myself to commit to this!

This introduction segment is just for this blog. I won't yap like this in all the others. I promise!

Anyway, I plan to make a blog post monthly. Don't expect it to be on the exact same day, but I do want to aim for the same week each month. Consistency is key to developing a reading habit. Likewise, blogging monthly will keep me reading! It will go both ways.

The reading lists will include: what I am reading, what I finished reading that month, any brief reviews I have, and my wishlist of books. Hopefully, all of the books I finish will receive a grade out of five stars. Even better, I'll write a brief review. However, if it gets too long, I'll have to make a separate blog post about it.

It is also a goal of mine to review everything at the end of the year. This is when I will discuss my top five (or less, but hopefully not) favourites and least favourites. Depending on how quickly I get through my wishlist, I might make a whole new one to start the year off fresh. Who knows? I certainly don't! Nevertheless, having this goal gives me something to strive for. For this year, I want to read at least five books. That way, I will have enough to order them.

Currently Reading

This is when I admit I am currently not reading anything. Boohoo! What's the point of a reading list if I don't actually read?

This is when I clarify that I am assigning myself books to read this month. I have many books I never picked up or never finished. Of the ones I've picked up, I've usually enjoyed them. To be honest, I don't know exactly why I never finish them. Probably a mix of a short attention span, doomscrolling, and laziness.

So, the goal for this month is to pick books I currently own, but have not finished. I am choosing to read:

1. Animal Farm by George Orwell. This is one I started. I think I got most of the way through it, and I was thoroughly enjoying what I read. It will also be fairly easy to complete.
2. The Periodic Table: The New Guide to the Building Blocks of Our Universe by Jack Challoner. I wanted to include a non-fiction on here. My attempts to read this were met with confusion, but it was interesting, nonetheless!
3. Goosebumps: The Ghost Next Door by R. L. Stine. This one I bought because it blew my mind as a child. I remember the plot well enough, but I have not sat down to actually reread it.

I want to complete all of these by my next blog post. One of these I can skip most of the plot of, and another is a young teens' book. The only one I am worried about is The Periodic Table. Either way, this will help me gauge what I can finish in a month. It's been so long since I have read, so I have no clue!

Wishlist

Again, I don't know how quickly I will get through books, so this could be too long or too short. We shall see!

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I own a copy of this, but the book is nasty, so I'll have to buy a new one. I'm going to look for it secondhand, so this might take a while.
• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Absurdism sounds wonderful on paper, but I want to understand it beyond that by, um, reading paper.
• Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries by Niel deGrasse Tyson.
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
• Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin.
• The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI[i] by Cory Doctorow. I hate GenAI.
• [i]Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow. Just found this guy in Goodreads and, oh my god, I want to read both of these books.

This list is sufficiently long, so I will cut it here. Let's hope I get through all of these!