Recent reads: December 2025

The last book post of 2025. I’ll probably finish at least one more book before the end of the year, but it’ll be in my next post. I don’t track too carefully what I read in terms of numbers and this year is no different, but I do like reflect on what books I’m still thinking about and that’ll be in my 2025 wrap up post that’s coming soon.

The biggest change in my reading lately is that I’ve been gravitating towards nonfiction more and more, particularly histories and biographies. I think with the world, and my country in particular, being in such a difficult state, I want to see how others handled difficulty in the past. There are so many stories out there and we can’t read them all, but I’m trying to read more history to help me understand the present.

Mansfield Park

I realized I’d never read this Austen novel and found a used copy so was able to correct that. It isn’t my favorite Austen, but I came away thinking about how clearly Fanny sees the other people in her circle. That is especially true of the entire situation with the Crawfords where Fanny sees them for who they really are right from the beginning.

Gaudy Night

Another Lord Peter Wimsey mystery with very little Lord Peter in it. Harriet Vane does most of the detecting when odd things start to happen at her old college in Oxford. I have to say I almost didn’t finish this one. It took so long to really get going but I’m so glad I finished. All the backstory and lead up paid off big time. I also love the chemistry between Harriet and Peter.

The Knitter’s Book of Wool

I found this book at my library and picked it up to read the first portion where Parkes talks about all the different sheep breeds. I found it super helpful for how to think about yarns made from different breeds. I’m already using that information to think differently about the yarns I use in my knitting.

Delicious: The Art & Life of Wayne Thiebaud

A kids book that I adore because it has some really great color reproductions of Thiebaud’s work. I’ve been getting more and more interested in his work and seek it out at musuems we go to. I’m so glad I have this in my collection to be able to look at the images. I’ll also say that it’s a good background on him and how he worked, a quick read, but I enjoyed it. I think it may be out of print, but I found a used library copy online.

The Wager

A nonfiction read about an absolutely harrowing shipwreck in the mid 18th Century. I’d not read any of David Grann’s books before and now I really want to read more of them. His writing is amazing. This story is almost unbelievable and I learned more about scurvy than I ever thought I would.

The Thursday Murder Club

This book is the start of what has been an incredibly popular series of mysteries and I can see why. The folks living in the senior apartment fill their time trying to solve cold cases until a murder happens right there on the grounds of their complex. The characters are fun and the mystery was good as well. I’m sure I’ll read more of this series at some point.

The Bookmakers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives

I found this book via Robin Sloanes 2025 gift guide and it was sitting on the shelf at my library branch. What a great read! Smyth tells the story of the book via the different lives of people who made them and how they changed them or pushed the boundaries. It’s a fascinating read that travels through time as books change and how they’re made changes as well.

Every Summer After

I needed some lighter fare after the nonfiction and turned to romance and a new to me author, Carley Fortune. I didn’t love this one. By the end I wasn’t quite sure what to think of either of the main characters. Sam and Percy meet when they’re 13 and the story is told alternating between the past and the present filling in on their relationship and how it developed over the years. The writing was fine, but the characters didn’t reel me in the way they usually do with these types of books.

One Golden Summer

I continued on the romance train with the follow up book to Every Summer After because I was very intrigued by Charlie, Sam’s brother, and wanted to read his story. This book was so much better than the first one. I absolutely loved both main characters. The banter was hilarious and I could relate to both main characters in different ways.

To Bless the Space Between Us

A book of poetry that I’ve been reading bit by bit in the mornings over the last several months. O’Donohue also talks at the end extensively about the need for blessings which I enjoyed as much as some of the blessings themselves. This quote from the writing on blessings at the end hit me like a ton of bricks and feels especially important given the current times we live in.

Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possiblitiies for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and enouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. (p 216)