Women are hired to work on code-breaking cyphers, amid a flurry of men with giant egos, poor mannerisms, and potential nefarious intentions.
What I Liked
Previous stories have trodden the same ground, although often in WWII. This one picks up after the war, focusing on the beginnings of the Cold War. Cat Killeen moves hundreds of miles to work in Arlington Hall, home of the Army Security Agency. The story follows generally a combination of her getting to work with someone brilliant but difficult at work, showing her aptitude for the work, and building a social life with some other girls who work in the same unit, with the requisite dating of someone from security intelligence (aka maybe a spy!).
What I Didn’t Like
The story was decent but a little short on action; it was the “cozy” equivalent of a spy thriller. There’s also a scene where things happen to her rather than because of her, and it feels like a lost chance for more agency in the protagonist. So the ending felt more flat than determinative.
Edward has left, leaving Bella to pine for him and find new ways to fill the hours. She takes new risks to feel alive, including getting closer to Jacob.
What I Liked
While it is obvious to the reader from the beginning that Jacob is a werewolf, the slow “build” that all the young guys that he hangs out with are a pack is fun. While it is commonplace for so many books now, it was great to re-read the twist that Meyer put on the franchise back in ’06. It’s fun to see the family worry about the connections, and even her dad and mom chiming in.
What I Didn’t Like
The trip to Italy is a bit over the top in places, while fascinating. The Discovery of Witches series does something similar, and is better handled than the excess shown here.
I feel like I don’t prioritize reading as much as I should. Reading gives me great joy, and yet I default to TV watching, doom scrolling, and silly things like work, eating, chores, etc. My wife gave me the book, BR00283 Everyone in my family has killed someone by Benjamin Stevenson, for Christmas and I went deep down the enjoyment rabbit hole. It was unique, it was unusual, it was delightful.
I have also been reading Elizabeth Wheatley’s Tears of the Wolf and Oath of the Wolf. They have also been excellent. I haven’t reviewed them yet, and therein lies a source of consternation for me.
Book reviews. I could have said B was for the book reviews as they go hand in hand, do they not? If you’re anal-retentive like me, yes, they do. I read it, I review it.
Except I am way behind on book reviews. I’ve done 283, which is amazing to me. I remember when I was back at 25 and 50. Now, how many are in the backlog, let’s see…there are 27 books on my Kindle in the “READ” collection, but I won’t review all of those, probably 22 or so (others were DNF’s or just reference materials I was looking at). Then I have another 31 that are relatively “recent reads” in the last year or so. Still fresh in my mind. Then another 63 from the previous year or two, and then another 186 that are sitting there. Taunting me from years gone by. So, that makes, lemme see, carry the one, and ummm…302 pending review. More than I have accomplished in the last ten years combined.
But I digress. I’ll make progress on that “backlog” this year, but it is a digression. The real question is…
What will I read this year?
I fear that I do not read enough non-fiction. I have about 150 books on my Kindle that are non-fiction, although some are more for browsing than complete reading. I put them there so I would remember I had them, like a Chair Yoga book. It isn’t the type of book you “read” so much as open on the desktop perhaps and apply part of it to a routine. But I threw it on the Kindle so I can flip through and see what’s there. My biggest challenge for NF reads is that I often feel like I want to highlight as I go. Except the Kindle is designed to save those highlights in a separate file (MyClippings). Which means even if I synch the book back over to the PC, the highlights are still ONLY on the Kindle in a separate file.
I’ve been experimenting and I came up with a couple of options. If I read it on my PC, and make highlights there, they stay with the file. Alternatively, if I do it on my Kindle, I can run a plugin to Calibre that will lift “annotations” from the MyClippings file and put them in an extra field in Calibre. Either or both would work. It’s “easier” if they’re just in the file itself, if I go back later, but harder to find perhaps; alternatively, the annotation highlights in a separate file make it really easy to write a review and lift stuff out, but often out of context.
I’m leaning toward setting aside 30 minutes every day to just read non-fiction. I’m currently working my way through a Harvard Business Review collection about toxic workplaces (I know, riveting, right? I like it, though, seeing how academics and other experts approach issues that I myself face as a manager, and how they explain their views) and highlighting as I go on the Kindle. If it works, I’ll stick with that method as the Kindle is portable; if it doesn’t work for my subsequent review and blogging, I’ll likely open the file directly on my desktop. I tried to get it to an old iPad 2 that we have, but alas, not quite the tool I wanted.
But I think I can at least categorize the main areas of Non-fiction that I’ll delve into this year, and I’ll push myself to do 14 books. I should have a biography in there somewhere but maybe I’ll count that instead in the fiction category (there’s a few options below where a person could show up in rebel, for example).
PolyWogg’s Reading Challenge for 2026: Non-Fiction
R
E
A
D
I
N
G
Writing
Astronomy
Exercise
Mental Health
Retirement
Finances
Career
Goals
Business
Women
Recipes
AI
Creativity
Software / Tools
I’ll come back to the non-fiction side of things again when I get to my L is for Learning post. 🙂
Let’s talk fiction
My goal is 50 fiction books a year, although if I was totally honest with myself, 300 would be my real goal if I thought it was attainable. 🙂 I am struggling with how to read established series, to be honest. So many different books out there by different authors, all of which interest me, and yet I also want to read series. The only series I feel “finished” on probably is Sue Grafton — all 25 of her Kinsey Milhone alphabet series (A is for Alibi, …) plus two of her older books that nobody ever mentions, both of which were quite good and I’m glad I chased them down.
But I would love to read all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, plus a full-on deep dive into a year of Sherlock Holmes and all the new books — they may not be canon, but they are often fun. Or I could go “legal” (Grisham, Berhnardt, O’Shaugnessy, Gardner), sagas (Archer), fantasy (P.C. Cast, Jordan, Wheatley), action (Child, DeMille, MacDonald), forensics (Cornwell, Reichs), light (Evanovich), British sleuth (Francis), procedurals (Jennings, ), westerns (Butcher, L’Amour), etc. And I’m not even talking hundreds of sci-fi books in the Star Wars and Star Trek universe, cozies, other types of detectives and sleuths, etc. It’s a lot.
Huh, I just realized that my latest review isn’t even complete — I forgot to code it properly in the HTML file, so that it will show up in the indexed pages. Sigh.
But where was I? Oh, yeah, deciding what to read this year between established series and new authors or standalone books. Obviously, duh, the answer is both! 🙂
PolyWogg’s Reading Challenge for 2026: Fiction
R
E
A
D
I
N
G
Banned book
Childhood favourite
New release (2026)
Best of 2025
Infrequent genre
Canadian author
Canadian setting
Award winner: 1950s
Award winner: 1960s
Award winner: 1970s
Award winner: 1980s
Award winner: 1990s
Award winner: 2000s
Award winner: 2010s
Classic
Bestseller list
Legal
Police
Amateur sleuth
P.I.
Vampires
Fantasy creatures
Romance
Science fiction
Star Wars
Star Trek
Time travel
Fantasy adventure
Personal discovery
Rebel
Serialized novel
Western
Edith Wharton
Writing under an alias
Brothers
Sisters
Spring
Summer
Fall
Winter
Humour
History
Women
Mystery
Geography
Indigenous
Series
Gift / Loan / Recommended
Holiday themed
Some resources that I’ll draw upon from earlier Reading Challenges:
Ernest Cunningham, a writer who specializes in books on how to write, joins his family at a snowy retreat to welcome his brother home from jail. After he turned him into the police and sent him there.
What I Liked
The main character, Ernest aka Ern, breaks the fourth wall every page or two. Sometimes it’s foreshadowing, sometimes it’s narration, sometimes its commentary on himself, his life, the rest of the family, past events, future events, etc. It should be ANNOYING but is somehow delightful. Each section of the book is devoted to one family member, combining the current timeline with the past timeline where they killed someone (no, not all murders — car accident, patient dying on an operating table, etc.). And yes, even the narrator. When the first body shows up in the current timeline, things start to unravel in the family too.
What I Didn’t Like
There is a plot hole in the story, and not the one the narrator mentions (he mentions there is a giant plot hole big enough to drive a truck through, kind of as a literary joke), but it IS still there. Potential spoiler, but someone needs to be identified and conveniently, two people in particular who COULD identify him never see the picture. Normally, that would negate a star or even two, but the pieces hang together so well otherwise, I had to let it pass.
I rarely react when I hear that a celebrity has died. Often, it is authors that affect me more than actors or musicians. But Robert Redford was probably my mother’s favourite actor, partially (hah!) influenced by looks. And so I react a little more knowing that she would have been said to hear of his passing at 89 years. (Although she liked Paul Newman more, I think).
For me, I don’t have strong views about his role as a director… Ordinary People, The Horse Whisperer, and the Legend of Bagger Vance were all enjoyable, but didn’t move me deeply. Equally, I don’t have strong attachments to any of the movies he produced.
But his acting chops? IMDB has 82 entries as an actor for Redford, and I’ve likely seen about a quarter to a third. More in the middle than the beginning or end of his career.
Like most viewers, I probably noticed him for the first time not in his TV episodes but in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Obviously not in 1969 at its first release, since I was only 1yo at the time, but in subsequent reruns on TV. I’ve never seen The Candidate (1972) from start to finish, only bits and pieces. My mom loved The Way We Were (1973).
But The Sting (1973) is one that I think I actually saw at the drive-in with my siblings when I was only five. I’m not kidding. I remember the bicycle scene and the song (Raindrops keep falling on my head…). I’ve probably seen it front to back about three times, and another ten times in bits and pieces on TV runs.
I found Three Days of the Condor (1975) too confused, even after seeing it when I was in my teens. And I have to confess, I found All the President’s Men (1976) way too slow. I’ve survived it once, and perhaps watched bits and pieces here and there another two-three times. Great story, way too slow of a movie.
I enjoyed The Electric Horseman (1979), although it was a bit campy. I remember finding Brubaker (1980) quite dark, although outside of the basic plot of a prison warden cleaning up a prison, I remember almost none of the movie.
But 1984 brought out The Natural, the best that ever was. That’s a direct quote from the movie about baseball player Roy Hobbs, where all he wants is to walk down a street someday and have someone say, “There goes Roy Hobbs. The best that ever was”. It may not be the best movie of all time, but I think it may arguably be the best role that Redford ever played. So subtle in places it’s staggering.
I know that many people consider Out of Africa (1985) as the best movie of his career, but I found it soporific. I have never made it through from start to finish without falling asleep.
Yet I have no credibility at all. Legal Eagles (1986) was a light version of a courtroom drama, with near RomComAction on high alert. Darryl Hannah was relatively fresh off Splash and Clan of the Cave Bear, and despite playing a kook, she just came off as a kook. Spaced out and hardly present. By contrast, Debra Winger was just coming off An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment, and I thought she was awesome. The movie is not great, I won’t lie, but I really enjoyed the three of them together. I wanted a better editor, but well, I enjoyed it anyway.
Sneakers (1992) is really quite popular with certain age groups, and while I enjoyed it, the plot was weak with quite a few scenes straining the suspension of disbelief.
He lent his voice to narrating A River Runs Through It (1992), but it was Indecent Proposal (1993) that really caught people’s attention. If you don’t remember the premise, he played an eccentric billionaire who sees a young married couple being affectionate and it prompts him to enter their lives with an indecent proposal — if they agree to let him sleep with the wife for one night, he’ll give them $1,000,000. He’s a bit sleazy with his offer, which is not his normal pure, ethical character choice. And a large number of late night comedians made the same joke — most wives would waive the money for a chance to sleep with Redford. Yet there was a deeper storyline about the couple considering it and what even the proposal itself does to their love and marriage, regardless of their choice. I liked it, but I had three regrets … first and foremost, that they had spent too little time on Redford’s character, maybe other indecent proposals he might have made. Secondly, the pacing in the movie is off, with much need for a better editor. But lastly, I hate to say it, but Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson as the couple don’t really work for me. They don’t seem to have the right chemistry, and while Woody comes off as a relatively dumb schmuck, Demi doesn’t rise to the level of even Striptease.
When it comes to Up Close and Personal (1996), I really want to love the movie. Michelle Pfeiffer from my teenage crush days and Robert Redford in a love story, complete with a journalism / reporting storyline? What’s not to love? The plot, the dialogue, the lack of chemistry between the two of them, the camera work, the pacing. I come close to hating it, just because I had high hopes for it.
I don’t have strong views on The Horse Whisperer (1998), the Last Castle (2001), or really any of the next 13 years until he shows up in the Marvel Avengers movies. Where he has virtually nothing to do. He has gravitas enough to hold a senior position in the Marvel Universe, but it doesn’t do much more than a cameo would have done. Nor any of the acting roles until 2020.
As I said, I liked him best in the middle of his career, not the TV stuff at the start or the movies in the last 20 years.
My final rankings
If I reduce all of it to my five favourite Redford movies, I would choose:
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Sting (1973)
The Natural (1984)
Legal Eagles (1986)
Sneakers (1992)
And if I was to only watch one? That would be really tough. He has some really great scenes as Sundance including “I can’t swim”; The Sting is one of the best ensemble casts; and The Natural is sublime for understated acting.
I’m going to have to go with The Natural and Roy Hobbs. I don’t know that I would say Robert Redford is the best that ever was, but he’s in the running. If they are looking to bury a souvenir with him, I hope it’s a bat with a lightning bolt.
