{"id":46170,"date":"2026-01-27T19:59:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=46170"},"modified":"2026-01-27T19:59:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:59:22","slug":"sonderbooks25-2004-sonderbooks-stand-outs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=46170","title":{"rendered":"Sonderbooks25 – 2004 Sonderbooks Stand-outs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It took me a long time, but I’ve finished reading all the reviews I wrote in 2004 and made a new phone-friendly webpage of the 2004 Sonderbooks Stand-outs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I began #Sonderbooks25 at the start of 2025 – celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks by revisiting my old Stand-outs. My original plan was to just go over the reviews of the Stand-outs and choose one book to reread from each year. But, well, it got out of hand. I read all my reviews posted in 2004. They cover Sonderbooks #70<\/a> through Sonderbooks #90<\/a>. This was before I started the blog – or had even heard of blogs – and was posting ezine “issues” every two or three weeks.<\/p>\n

And ah! 2004! This was the year before my then-husband started his affair and my life blew apart. I’ve also reread my posts about that year in Project 52 – this post about the start of 2004<\/a>, and this post about the second half of 2004<\/a>. There’s a super painful side to those posts, as I was so clueless that my husband was on a path out of our marriage – but on the other hand, it was a wonderful reading year!<\/p>\n

I read some fabulous books that year. I’m envious of my past self only working half-time and having significantly more time to read.<\/p>\n

I’ve been mostly rereading Stand-outs I can find as eaudiobooks with my library system. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell<\/a><\/em>, by Susanna Clarke was the one book I chose to reread for this project, and ended up being a little disappointed, as you can read about in my new review. I also reread Sabriel<\/a><\/em>, by Garth Nix, which was not disappointing, though I haven’t posted the new review yet. And I reread all the Picture Book Stand-outs, and was rather impressed that they lasted well enough that my current library system still has a copy of each one of them.<\/p>\n

But oh my goodness, there are so many books I want to reread from that year! Little by little, I’m planning to work a few of them into my future reading, even though this project will move on to my 2005 Sonderbooks Stand-outs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I’ve gotten great joy out of reading those old reviews. It reminds me of a great joy of my life – reading – at a time when I was young and happy. I’m so glad I started writing Sonderbooks and can relive what those books meant to me. And let me encourage you to browse those 2004 Stand-outs – you might find some new favorites of your own. For the most part, these ones have stuck with me, and it was a treat to revisit that joyful part of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took me a long time, but I’ve finished reading all the reviews I wrote in 2004 and made a new phone-friendly webpage of the 2004 Sonderbooks Stand-outs. I began #Sonderbooks25 at the start of 2025 – celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks by revisiting my old Stand-outs. My original plan was to just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[426],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sonderbooks25"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46171,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46170\/revisions\/46171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}