The Books of 2025

This was a pretty darn good year for reading. I chalk some of that up to recovery time from my knee replacement, although the month I had the surgery my reading was down (because I was loopy from all the medications and had Goldfish Brain). 

I read 102 books this year with a total of 31,501 pages. Bryce looked up how thick a printed stack of those pages would be (book paper, not thick paper). I guessed 2 feet. 

I was wrong. 

It's 8.5 feet tall! That's a lot of words, a lot of stories, a lot of knowledge. Here's my Storygraph cover collage that is way smaller than I thought it was (I'll include my notebook pages with the list per month at the end that will be infinitely more readable): 

In figuring out my breakdowns for genres, I always struggle a little. There are so many books that cross genres, so some are in multiple categories. Also, I looked at Storygraph to see how my books were classified by genre, and discovered that I do not agree with all their assessments. So, I did the best I could. 

First, the split between fiction and nonfiction was 85 fiction, 17 nonfiction (a mix of essays, memoir, natural history, poetic essays), 

I read 15 books this year that were given to me by Bryce. That's way up! More than one per month, which was my goal for this year. 

My most voluminous genre was horror, at 24, followed by thriller/mystery at 20. (So if you lump those together into mysteriously thrilling horror, as it was kind of a squishy category to differentiate between, it's 44.)

Next was contemporary/literary fiction at 13, followed by fantasy/sci fi with 12 books, historical fiction at 10, and speculative fiction at 5. 

I read 14 young adult/middle grade books. 

Diverse books challenges my categorization skills, but I landed on windows into different experiences, spanning race, ethnic background, disability, LGBTQIA+. I counted 28, with 12 specifically LGBTQIA+. 

Now, for the bests! It was a very wide-ranging year of reading, and so there wasn't an automatic standout for Book of the Year. After reviewing them all, I did come up with 10, and a Book of the Year. Oddly, this was the Year of the Witch (I read four books about witches and they were all quite different.)

My Best Books of 2025: 

10) Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab. 
This is an expansive vampire story that tracks multiple women through their transformations, loves, and time periods. It is so, so good and the ending is worth discussing with people! This was not a predictable book in the least. 

9) ADHD is Awesome: A Guide to (mostly) Thriving with ADHD by Penn Holderness. 
I wrote lots about this book here, but a quick sum up: the format/design is ADHD-friendly, and it had practical strategies and aha moments galore. I also loved that it was by someone with ADHD, and included sidebars that were from his wife's point of view, which was great for the perspective of someone who lives with someone with ADHD. 

8) Tilt by Emma Pattee.
This book snuck into my subconsciousness and lived there, rent-free, for a long time. It's a bit of an odd duck, imagining a world where a major fault in Oregon produces a catastrophic earthquake. The character at the center is a hugely pregnant woman who was in an IKEA to finally buy her crib when the earthquake hits, and follows her through her journey to reach her husband, who was across town at the time of the quake. It is such an interesting string of what-ifs to sift through. Very well-written, and I loved that it was absolutely never cheesy. And the hugely pregnant lady didn't bother me as it may have years ago... her pregnancy is central to the book (wow does it complicate travel) and so if that is a trigger, maybe skip this one. 

7) The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman.
What a completely delightful book. I picked it up at my favorite independent bookstore because the cover nabbed me, and how could I resist a book about a bookseller who loves books way more than than people? It's a love letter to books and readers, it's a story of found family and finding the courage to be vulnerable. It was funny, it was sweet, it wasn't cheesy...I loved it. 

6) I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
This book was darkly hilarious. It was heartbreaking. The title seems to be the literary equivalent of clickbait -- it's a shocking, harsh statement but not really true. This memoir is an eye-opening look at the horrors of child stardom, an overbearing and narcissistic Show Mom, dysfunctional family in general, surviving substance abuse, and disordered eating. Which does not sound funny at all, but Jennette approaches the insane challenges in her life with such a sense of humor that you can't help but laugh. You also feel a bit like you're watching someone circle down the drain, but it is somehow not a depressing book. It just has a number of very dark moments, but ultimately, it's uplifting. 

5) Knife: Meditations on an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie.
This is Salman Rushdie writing about what happened when he was savagely attacked by a man with a knife at a speaking engagement at Chautauqua in Western NY, his physical and mental recovery, and his thoughts on his assailant. He is such an incredible writer, and really approaches this difficult event and how it changed everything moving forward with such honesty and rawness. 

4) Compound Fracture by Joseph Andrew White. 
This was an eye-opening, gripping, and vengeful story. A trans teen in Appalachia looks to put to rest a family blood feud, faces people who are hateful, violent monsters, and he seeks revenge and justice. Technically horror, and there's some graphic violence, but it is such a satisfying story and you just love Miles. I love this in the author's bio: "Andrew writes about trans folks with claws and fangs, and what happens when they bite back." I look forward to reading more by this author!

3) The Witches of New York by Ami McKay.
Oh, was this a rich and lush world to submerge into! Turn of the century, three women's lives intersect in NY where they run a tea and spell shop. There are dark forces afoot, an Egyptian obelisk, and magical powers, but it is never cheesy and it had me gripped all the way through. It's in Storygraph as "Witches of New York #1" which made me think maybe it's a series, but then there wasn't a #2 that I'm aware of. Sigh.

2) Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. 
This is another witch story, but holy wow, it is so original. A small Hudson Valley town has a resident witch who is kind of like a ghost, because she roams the town and shows up randomly in your house, but has her eyes and mouth sewn shut and NOTHING SHOULD EVER CHANGE THAT. The town has to try to keep outsiders away, because if people wander into town, they can't leave. They become a part of this odd curse. Obviously things go awry, and it was terrifying and just so well done. Also, the author is Dutch and originally wrote the book in Dutch, set in a small Dutch town in the woods, and when he rewrote it in English, he set it in the Hudson Valley (feels like actual Sleepy Hollow), and decided he wanted to make the ending scarier. I wish I could read Dutch! 

1) Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian.
Yep, another witch book, but like NOTHING I've ever read before. This book is an adventure! The town has a resident witch and people (mostly men) want to hunt her down because of an altercation with some folks that ended poorly (for them). She is super un-huntable, but a small party ends up picking up ghosts, and animals, and mysterious children... and there's a seriously evil force who would love nothing more than to destroy the witch and the witch hunters, and is just deliciously vile. It's so good. Like, I would re-read it good. 

Honorable Mentions: 

Definitely Better Now by Ava Robinson
A funny and heartbreaking novel about the after-one-year sobriety experience, dating while sober, and grief. It was so good at bouncing between hilarity and literally making me sob. 

Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
I love this book, but it's not for everyone. It is funny and also shines a light on how easy it is to fall on desperate times as a young, single mother, and how society judges efforts to climb back up out of that hole. I learned a LOT about professional wrestling AND OnlyFans. 

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Awesome historical fiction that is sometimes called "historical fiction biography" -- the story of a real midwife in post-Revolutionary War Massachusetts (the part that's now Maine), a murdered body found in the frozen Kennebec River, how male doctors tried to delegitimize midwives (often with disastrous results), and how the justice system at that time dealt with sexual assault. Fiercely feminist and fascinating. 

Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
This is the second book about Aven Green and her friends and family, and if you haven't read these, even if you're an adult and not a middle-schooler, please go do it. Aven was born without arms, and in the first book her family moves to a dusty theme park in Arizona, far away from the school and people who have known Aven forever and don't think twice about how she does so much with her feet. Aven is also adopted, and I felt the books did a great job of the need to find origins and birth family, and a family supportive of that quest. In this one Aven has survived 8th grade in the new space with her amazing friend group, but now she faces the frontier of high school, and her best friend Connor has moved away. It's hilarious, and touching, and... like so many books this year...made me laugh and cry.

The Worsts, Disappointing, Boooo: 

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden: Yes, I know this is insanely popular and there's a new movie coming out. I hated it. If you want to read something similar that's way better written, read The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine. 

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell: I read this right after my second knee replacement, and I can't remember exactly why I hated it so much but I really, really did. 

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino: I wanted to like this, the premise sounded interesting (woman becomes increasingly unhinged in her pursuit of a house in the DC area in a difficult market), but it had a subplot that had me almost abandon it early on and then towards the end it completely jumps the shark. 

Books that are Hard to Classify/Weird as Hell

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. A delightfully strange and thinky book I reviewed here. 

Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky. On my special shelf, amazing but deeply, deeply weird.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar. An odd futuristic rivalry/love story with jumping times and Red vs Blue (and sometimes I had a hard time telling them apart). Good, but strange. 

The Last Word by Taylor Adams. A totally bonkers, completely unhinged thriller/horror book about a woman who is housesitting in a remote beach location when she gives a one star review to a horror writer... who then utterly terrorizes her. Several mysteries within, but also one of those amazing Final Girl type stories. But utterly bonkers and when you lend it to people they may think slightly less of you, haha. 

Bunny by Mona Awad. This kept coming up in lists and I read it in October, but holy wow is it strange. It's a fever dream, has some similarities to Black Swan,  and leaves you completely confuzzled as to what the hell you just read. I lent it to my best friend, who was like "WHAT IS THIS BOOK????" There's a follow-up, We Love You, Bunny, which I will probably read out of sheer curiosity and my best friend informed me I can tell her about but she won't read. SO WEIRD. 

The Probability of Everything by Sarah Everett. Middle-grade YA, a girl who loves math and the sense of control figuring out probabilities gives her decides to make a time capsule of family memories as an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. It's beautiful, heartbreaking, and you have to read it to see why it's hard to classify. Beautiful portrayal of grief, and if you wish to read it, DO NOT GOOGLE IT. There are secrets that will ruin it if you know ahead of time. Our school librarian did this for Young Adult Book Club last year, and it blew everyone's mind. Highly recommend.

That's it! Here are my notebook pages with all the titles and authors by month. What did you read in 2025? 

Holidays On Our Terms

The holidays can be a really tough time. It used to be a lot harder, but this is a time when grief can jump up and twist my ear, bringing tears instantly. A couple years ago it was an unexpected stab from the movie A Christmas Story, yep, the "You'll shoot your eye out!" one, but that scene where they watch the kids come down the stairs and that magic... oof, it hollowed me right out. Even so many years later. A week or so ago I had a sudden hit of sadness, holiday-related, but I just couldn't put a finger on it. Just general "I'm sad we don't have kids" tied to this time of year, that isn't debilitating but does still pop in to say hi. 

Grief is like that -- you can think you're fine and healed and doing great and then just the right trigger reminds you of loss. But the great thing is, the more time that passes and the more acceptance of life as it is, not as it was hoped for...the less it ruins your day. 

Anyway, because we don't have kids, we can tweak our traditions. We can rearrange things to suit our needs. 

And so, we had our Christmas today. Like, full on breakfast/stockings/music/under-the-tree presents, the whole deal. Why today? Because tomorrow we will be on the phone with, on zooms with, and in person with family. This is a good thing -- but in the past we would open a present (we are very slow and appreciative of each one), then get a call, then get back to our thing, then get a call, and people always thought we should be done by the time they called. We never were. It made for a very interrupted experience.

So, when it's just you and your husband and the cat, you can say "Guess what? Christmas Eve is now OUR Christmas." No one calls, the day is totally ours, and we can draw out our traditions as much as we'd like. It is quite delightful. 

We also moved our big tree. God, that sounds bougie. We got a fake tree a year or two into being in this house, and we've never looked back. I think it's 7.5 feet tall, which is monstrous, and we usually rearrange furniture to put it in front of a big window in the living room. We also have a smaller tree that has moved around (sometimes in our bedroom, sometimes on the stairs landing in the window, sometimes in the first floor bedroom/guest room/Bryce's D&D room). It looks kind of like a cedar (particularly if you squint) and we hang an assortment of owls, gnomes, and wooden snowflakes on it. 

Well, we didn't like the idea of rearranging furniture, especially because we were behind on getting the tree up. We also really like the seating setup we have now. So...we put the cedar tree on a table in the living room, and put the big tree in the dining room. Because we can! We have a smattering of snow in the following pictures because we had a brief covering that promptly melted, but for a second we had a white pre-Christmas.

We keep some traditions just the same, like our photo card:

I loved the picture of Lucky on the back so much that I ordered a photo ornament so he can always be an angel on our tree. 

And, my annual Book Flood from Bryce that I am SO excited to crack into: 

Also, Eggi enjoyed the new tree locale (doesn't hurt that Bryce made the lowest ring of ornaments cat toys):

And we have some fun new ornaments: 

D&D ornament from me to Bryce

Annual Danforth Pewter ornament for us (I also get the annual Snowflake Bentley ornament)

Per Bryce's tag to me, a "literate sea unicorn"

And from the side, since it's so stinking cute! 

We love our traditions. We love that we can shake them up every once in a while to make them more us. We love our family of two (plus Eggi). 

Happy Holidays from our family to yours! 

Lightening the Load/Getting Rid of "Stuff"

I am finally on Winter Holiday Break! Wahoo, two weeks of rest and rejuvenation. 

But also, two weeks with space to do some work about the house that I tend to push to the back burner more often than not. 

Bryce and I are dedicated to getting rid of things. Going through, sorting, deciding, and letting go of things we do not need or are hanging on to out of obligation or "shoulds." 

Sometimes it's hard, though. 

In our craft/guest room (that now has a sign on it declaring it my best friend's "place"), we have a recliner. It's quite comfy, but HUGE. Mostly, because it's a recliner, yes, but also a glider. And it was originally bought for our nursery. By my mother-in-law. 

Technically, the nursery was too small for it, so it was in the nook outside the nursery.

Now, it's in a room where it takes up a ton of space, and with the futon taking over the daybed, we don't really need it.

Yep, that's a Jeff Goldblum mermaid sequin pillow. That's signed on the back.

Now that I've taken a picture of it, it doesn't look as abused as I feel it is. You can't see all the places the cats (mostly Lucky) have shredded the piping and the upholstery with tiny threads we keep snipping. I think we could give it to Goodwill (with a good vacuuming). It just holds a lot of emotional weight. 

There are a handful of things, mostly in that room, left over from the nursery. One is the dresser that I use to hold gift wrapping and packing things, and the other is the 6-cube shelf that butts up to the daybed and currently holds mostly my embarrassingly huge puzzle collection. I'm thinking of putting the dresser in the closet to make more space and to move things we don't use that often out of the main space. 

We'd like to put our musical instruments in this room, and figure out how to make it a bit more...cohesive. Maybe I should give a more honest picture of the current chaos (it is also the Wrapping Room currently!): 

It's also where my exercise bike lives, and the Puzzling Table/Wrapping Table that handily drops both leaves.

Good gracious this is a terrible view: dresser, cube, wrapping organizer, craft supplies, puzzles

Music stand, unmanaged detritus... 

See how easy it is to make things look different than reality with camera angles? Ha. 

I did take my violin out recently (I need to get new strings and have it tuned up/inspected). I was happy to learn that I haven't forgotten how to play (although man I have to build up callouses again, my poor fingers!) Bryce has several guitars, and he's more likely to play them if there's a dedicated, uncluttered space. It makes sense to move/get rid of stuff in that room.

This room has literally never been a child's room -- the people who lived here before us were flippers, and the people before that built the house and never had children. This was a craft room then too, but held a giant dollhouse (not creepy at all). It feels different than when we repurposed a room that was meant to house a child.

It will probably feel uplifting to move out some of the repurposed nursery things. But also, we feel a tiny bit of guilt. Even all these years later, to get rid of something someone bought us for a baby that never was feels somehow ungrateful. Logically we know that's not a thing, but emotionally it feels icky. 

Still, getting rid of things we don't use/need and making space for the things that bring us joy is a priority right now. We joke that all our stuff is destined for Goodwill anyway (no kids to inherit), but there is sadness in that. Looking at people who are ahead of us in years, it will be so much easier if we chip away at things before we have to downsize. 

I think we'll reframe this task as a Lightening, rather than a loss. We are making sure that our home suits our purposes and doesn't become a burden of things. We are prioritizing what matters to us and jettisoning the rest. 

Bonus Day

Last week was rough. Honestly, this whole school year has been particularly punishing. I have been eating my lunch anywhere from 1:30 to after 3, I'm pretty sure I gave myself a UTI by not peeing enough during the day, and I feel like I'm flitting from one crisis to another. The kids are lovely -- sometimes there are dysregulated moments but it's nothing I can't handle. It's more my schedule, the two grade levels, the adults, and interesting choices made by upper administration. It becomes SO MUCH. I was at school until 7 multiple days last week and just fried when I got home. If teaching were solely about the kids it would be amazing, but there's all this other crap that bogs us down.

I made it to Friday morning despite the full moon and the lovely "do more with less" and "make it work" structural philosophy of modern public education. I was exhausted. I went to crawl out of bed around 6:30 (late for me) when my phone buzzed. 

It was a somewhat cryptic message from the school district -- "We are aware of the widespread power outages impacting our schools and families, please stay tuned for more updates."

Then, just a little bit later, "If your child is waiting for a bus outside, please bring them inside. If your child has already been picked up by their bus, they are warm and safe. If we close they will be returned to your home." 

Okay, that sounded super promising. I was faced with a dilemma -- get dressed or don't get dressed? I chose to get dressed, because reverse psychology of course. 

And then... the "we're closed" text and call came in. 

What a wonderful, wonderful time to teach in my district but NOT live there! I had power, and heat (it was 9 degrees F out). 

If you aren't a teacher (or don't live with one), there is no way to explain the utter joy of an unplanned bonus day off. Whenever we take time off, either a personal day (which are very limited) or a sick day, we have to make sure we have plans that cover every minute of every day. We have to take what often lives in our head and make it doable by someone who we may or may not know, depending on availability. It is sometimes a lot easier to just suck it up and go in. If we have planned days off, that's typically when we have doctor's appointments and obligations that we can't do during the school day. So a bonus day... it's nothing but freeeee! 

I didn't go back to bed, but I did sit on the couch with my book. I cocooned. I took two naps. I worked on a puzzle. I got back in pajamas. IT. WAS. GLORIOUS. 

It was exactly what I needed. 

I thought about my friends who also teach in my district but don't live there, and how the ones with kids would have some free time since their child/ren would be at school and they didn't have to be. 

I also thought about how lovely it is that I can just veg on the couch and not have to take care of anyone else. It was one of those "because I don't have kids" moments that make me smile. 

I am proud that I didn't fill my time with work. I am proud that I didn't open my laptop ONCE. I took the rest I needed. (And oh, did I need it.) 

What a lovely, lovely gift. 

Old Couches

My best friend did a fly-by visit last night -- she picked up her eldest from college for Thanksgiving, and stayed over since he's in school up here. It was short, but lovely (minus my alarm being on 10% volume and sleeping until 7:00 am, which is WAY LATE). 

Bryce cooked a delicious dinner for us and we had gluten free carrot cake for dessert. We ate it in the living room, and Bryce apologized profusely for the state of our couches. "They're so old and gross, it's like we have old man couches! So embarrassing!" 

They're a bit saggy and one is just hemorrhaging feathers from every cushiony surface, but they're not actually that old. 

My best friend asked, "when did you get them?" and Bryce said, "I'm not sure, a while ago?" and I said, "2017." 

Bryce is always freaked out by my creepy memory, and he was like HOW do you KNOW that? 

Well. 

I know that because we bought the white/oatmeal/ecru couches in 2017, as part of our "things we can have because we'll never have children" campaign. 2017 was when our parenting dream officially ended. And so 2017 is when we bought couches that would have been highly ill-advised with small humans. 

They just looked at me and were like, "Oh. That makes sense." 

Yeah. Sometimes my creepy memory can make me sad. But also, that was less than 9 years ago, really the couches should hold up better than that!  

Anniversary Ghoul 2025

Having our fun wedding anniversary on Halloween means that every year, I get an Anniversary Ghoul from Bryce. 

It's a tradition that's super important to both of us -- a hand-drawn ghoul that Bryce selects and executes in my Halloween card (we do an anniversary card on the "legal" date, and then a Halloween card on the fun one). Past ones include the Babdook, Mothman, Pennywise, Marianne (from the French Netflix horror show, so scary!), a spider, a chipmunk morphing into The Thing, a werewolf, the faceless lady in the pond from The Haunting of Bly Manor but instead of that pond it's our pond... I look forward to it every year. 

This year, it was something no one else will ever have. I may have to copyright it. 

The envelope gave me a clue: 

Pay no attention to the tiny smudge of guacamole in the upper left corner...

Any guesses? I looked at it and was like, whaaaa? But then, I burst out laughing. I knew exactly what it was going to be.

Ever seen one of these? It's a Cthulhu Walrus. With a vestigial fin. 

Why is it so funny? 

It's based on something I drew for a student in my 7th grade Social Studies class, who was wailing during a review on the Arctic Native Americans "I don't even know what a walrus iiiiissss!" I assured her she did, and drew what I thought was a pretty good walrus on my board. I am famous for drawing very bizarre things in the name of education. You will see a slight difference between my drawing and Bryce's...

I had to take a picture and bring it home to show him, because it's frankly terrifying. Although, recognizable enough for the kids, who were indignant when I said in a slow, low voice, "Bye Buddy, hope you find your dad!" and one of the students yelled "that's not a walrus, that's a unicorn whale!!!" If you haven't seen Elf, this will all be gobbledygook to you, so go watch Elf and come back, haha.

This may be my favorite ghoul, as it is completely custom. And we have a little thing for Cthulhu (see fun picture of a crochet Baby Cthulhu our friend made Bryce below). As a childless couple, traditions are important. Marking the passage of time and celebrating those years is important. Celebrating the children in ourselves... important! 

Eggi is way into the cute little demon. And she went totally into that bag 2 seconds later. :)

Memorial Garden

This year sucked for gardening. Between my knee recovery and the very wet followed by insanely hot and dry summer... I let things atrophy a bit. 

One garden that does okay is my birdbath garden. I plant annuals around the birdbath, because I keep trying and failing to amend the soil and things struggle to grow. I have worked in so many bags of Bumper Crop soil conditioner and it seems like it goes right back to being compacted, root-y, rock-y, walnut-poisoned dirt.

Fun fact: walnuts give off a compound called juglone, which poisons the ground within the dripline of the tree AND anywhere walnuts fall or even parts of them are transported by asshole squirrels. This garden is full of walnut leavings. There are lists of juglone-resistant plants, but even those seem to struggle a bit. Things end up stunted and anemic.

Yesterday, I was putting up the rest of a decorative/hopefully somewhat practical fence border behind my birdbath garden (I'm embarrassed to say I first started putting it up in July and half of it was languishing on the mulch at the side of the house...). I'm hoping it lends separation from the weedy wilds behind the somewhat cultivated part in front.

While I was trimming the highly invasive Autumn Olive to the left, I made a realization. 

This garden is my memorial garden. I have two separate statue things that I didn't connect until now.

 

The first is my Jizo. Someone told me about the Japanese Buddhist figures that represent protectors of children, especially children gone before they're born. They can symbolize the loss from miscarriage. It spoke to me.

Bryce got us a beautiful statue of a little boy Buddha with an open book in his lap after I miscarried the last time I was pregnant. I love that statue, but we didn't want anything to happen to it so he became an indoor statue. We pass him every time we go down the stairs. 

He's perfect right there. I still wanted something in the garden though, especially the birdbath garden I can see from my office. And so I got a Jizo, made of volcanic something that makes it very outdoor friendly. 

The other statue in my garden is a memorial stone my co-workers got me when my Grandma Rosemary passed away. The butterfly is bleeding rust a bit, but it's lasted a long time. 

I read it for the first time in a long time yesterday, and it struck me... It applies to our losses, too. Here it is, bigger, for ease of reading: 

When I read it yesterday, it reminded me of my losses. My two babylings, one wayward and one that wouldn't stay. They were so loved in those brief moments where we thought we'd gotten our miracle, and they are always, always in my heart. 

My birdbath garden has always been a bit of a meditative place, and I feel at peace when I'm working or admiring there. I keep trying to get pollinator plants to survive there -- we'll see how the salvia and agastache do when they (hopefully) return in the spring. The irony of my memorial garden filled with infertile soil that no amending ever seems to fix isn't lost on me. But I keep trying, and restarting each year so there can be pretty flowers, butterflies, and hummingbirds in the summer.