Tag Archives: reading

the big 2025 reads post!

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The stats: I read 82 books / 27,420 pages. Items of note: I switched over to StoryGraph and after a little while of scratching around trying to get comfortable, I like it much better than what I used previously. I used Libby extensively, both for audio and e-books from my library.

These things helped make 2025 a great reading year for me, especially in the genres of horror, thriller, mystery, and suspense. I like things grim and foreboding, I like reading about the darker side: murder, kidnapping, suspense, police procedurals, vampires, ghosts, face-eating zombies and the unknown. But I also appreciate it when writers find new ways to approach these fairly well-worn topics and this year was a treasure trove. This year – Gothic horror of all types. Chainsaws! Hooks for hands, vampires next door in Southern subdivisions and taking vengeance for the historic genocide of their people. Cursed film reels and a missing friend returned after a two year absence and weirdly not the same. Final girls! A haunted house! A murder in Oxford! Oh, and Fort Sumter. (Hmm.)

I don’t tend to rate or review books except for the ones I find to be the most outstanding. This year, my highest rated book was Silver Nitrate, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. (I think she was also one of my top authors in 2024, for Mexican Gothic.) I read two of her other books in 2025 – The Bewitching and The Seventh Veil of Salome, and they were both very good as well. The Bewitching also makes my short list of outstanding reads for the year, although farther down on the list.

Slightly lower on the rung: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones. I loved this book despite being a little let down by the ending. This book is not for everyone – it is graphic and very dark, but I could not put it down and ended up falling down a Stephen Graham Jones rabbit hole and reading his Indian Lake trilogy as well. The first novel in that trilogy, My Heart is a Chainsaw, also was a standout for me, possessing an unforgettable main character with an enthralling backstory and intermingling stream of conscious thesis on the horror film genre. (I learned a lot about horror movies and ended up watching a few that were mentioned here.)

Also in this ranking group was a late-year read, Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent. This was pure mystery, with main characters who work as lexicographers. I loved the way Dent worked in literary puzzles and clues as well as old words and language – a very novel and cerebral approach to an English mystery.

Other honorable mentions in the horror genre came from Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. Again, not for everyone due to very dark and graphic content and trigger warnings galore, but again, for me – I couldn’t put it down. Rachel Harrison contributed two titles to my list this year, both in the horror / suspense genre, with The Return and Play Nice (rated less highly than The Return but still a standout read). Content warning(s) – none of these are for the faint of heart.

And for something completely different, favorite nonfiction: The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson, which covered the onset of the Civil War.

I hope you read some fantastic books in 2025 and are looking forward to more in 2026.

Past Big Reads posts: 2024, 2023.

the big 2024 reads post!

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Firstly, Happy New Year to all. The last week or so has been a blur of stretchy pants, movies, excellent eats, naps, and family time. 2024 was ‘mid’ as my daughter would say so we are all ready to embrace 2025 in the calmest, softest, most forgiving and patient ways we can, and hope for the best.

Now on to the content – the big 2024 reads post!

The stats: I read 75 books / 27,617 pages.

Favorite fiction: Without a doubt, the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells get top honors for fiction this year. I’m not usually an enormous science fiction fan (although maybe I really am but just don’t think I am) but her writing style was addictive and SecUnit was the most fascinating and loveable character I spent time with all year.

Favorite author: Martha Wells. In addition to Murderbot, I also read her Witch King and Cloud Roads series and liked them enormously, though not as much as Murderbot.

Runners-up in favorite fiction: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. I loved this book and devoured the rest of the series although I confess that after Annihilation I was completely baffled by the Southern Reach / Area X tale as it unwound; but it was undeniably fascinating. Also, honorable mentions to The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman, Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, and Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Favorite nonfiction: After seeing the Georgia O’Keeffe ‘My New Yorks’ exhibit at the Chicago Institute of Art, I picked up her biography by Roxana Robinson and loved it – it was like reading a novel. Runner up in favorite nonfiction would be Red Comet by Heather Clark, about Sylvia Plath.

There were definitely novels that did not do it for me this year, but I’m going to focus only on the positives this year – I think reading is very subjective and just because I didn’t love them doesn’t mean others would feel the same.

I hope all the readers out there had a very satisfying year and look forward to more excellent hours spent with books in 2025.

a few good things

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  1. I bought a cinnamon broom for the den and it smells sooo autumnal.
  2. It has been a very hot and dry month in Michigan yet this evening we are sitting here with the windows open listening to a gentle cool rain.
  3. I just finished a fantastic creepy book – one of the best books I’ve read this year, I think – highly recommend “Mexican Gothic” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It was EXCELLENT. So atmospheric with a heroine you immediately are staunchly behind and the most chilling and fascinating setting. I’ve just picked up another by her (“Gods of Jade and Shadow”).
  4. We spent all day yesterday at the first marching band competition of the year. Unfortunately it was 85 degrees with a blazing sun on a high school football field with zero shadow (and zero parking which meant street parking blocks away). Wool uniforms are still de rigueur and if we parents in the stands were red faced and running with sweat then the kids were truly suffering. But I love a good marching band and so I was deeply satisfied and even more so when our kids won second place in Class A competition, best percussion, best color guard, and best in music!
  5. Next week is Homecoming. Insert happy face emoji surrounded by hearts.

I need a few good things today because I have a case of the Sunday Scaries. My beloved boss has moved up and out of Widget Central and I am left with a mass of complex tasks, exponentially increasing workload, and instability. I keep telling myself it isn’t my first time at this rodeo but – let me bury my nose in a gothic horror novel and a delicious cinnamon broom for a bit longer, okay?

august ahead

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July has flown by and here we are with August ahead, which used to be a summer month (albeit an elderly one) but is now the back to school month. The kid has a driving test on Sunday, and then the hustle begins with pre-band camp, band camp, her sweet sixteen, picture day, and then the first day of school before Labor Day.

Brandon is still in Iowa but we managed to carve out a long weekend for a Chicago museum spree. (And gosh, I love Chicago. Maybe being a Midwesterner makes me biased, but that city has a vibe and an easygoing indifferent accessibility – a history and a style – like none other.) We stayed in a glass loft on the South Loop with a view of the rail and the river on one side and a glittering expanse of Lake Michigan on the other. It was blistering hot and stormed at night, lightning brighter than the city lights all around us.

“Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

We saw Georgia O’Keeffe’s ‘My New Yorks’ exhibit at the Chicago Institute of Art and although I’ve never been a huge fan of her flowers or Southwest motifs, seeing the city through her eyes and brush changed my opinion on her altogether.

“New York Night” by Georgia O’Keeffe
“The Shelton with Sunspots”

I’d vastly prefer my mister to be here, but with him gone, the structure of the summer has softened and turned uncertain. With more time to myself, I turn inward. There have been lots of summer evenings on the front porch with books, watching the sun wheel through the western sky and come down in sprays of green and gold through the leaves of our old tulip tree. I’ve read some really good things this summer – I loved a book of Kate Atkinson short stories ‘Normal Rules Don’t Apply’, and Lev Grossman’s ‘The Bright Sword’ was wonderful (and the last sentence flooded me with unexpected emotion and tears). I am reading a fantastic biography of Georgia O’Keeffe that reads almost like a novel and having these other little worlds to dive into after the workday is done (and sometimes before evening calls with my colleagues in Japan as we negotiate a thorny contract) has been like a swim in a very cool pool when you’re hot and sticky.

I head out on a business trip tomorrow which will likely be a short and uninspiring parade of a boxy interstate hotel and strip mall restaurants and then home for a weekend of hopefully not much by the pool with Georgia as she meets Alfred Steiglitz. There is a cardinal sitting in the pine tree outside of my open home office window singing for the feeders to be refilled. August ahead looks – busy? and short with all of the activity. It is a birthday month for a few very important women in my life – mother, grandmother, and the kid. Anyway, I hope to greet it on the porch with a book and possibly armed with a knitting needle. Be well and enjoy the last heavy breath of summertime.

2023 reads

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I haven’t kept up with regular book posts throughout the year so instead I offer a quick summary of my 2023 reading. I read 65 books, falling pretty short of previous years, but I don’t have any “worst of” to list because if I don’t like a book I simply won’t finish it. (Life is short.) I think my lower total is indicative of starting and abandoning several selections that just didn’t do it for me. I will, however, say that I read some pretty dubious stuff while down with Covid because my attention span just wouldn’t let me focus on much else so who knows how it all evened out.

Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) again captures a top spot with The Running Grave, the latest in the Cormoran Strike saga. I don’t particularly like Rowling and don’t agree with her public statements about the trans community and think she should have just kept her mouth shut since other people’s choices in that area don’t have anything to do with her, but for some reason I can’t hold Strike accountable for her bigotry. This one wasn’t quite as engrossing for me as last year’s Ink Black Heart but still quite good.

Top honors also go to Natasha Pulley’s Watchmaker of Filigree Street trilogy, which I found absolutely beautiful and which brought me to tears several times.

I gave Nona the Ninth high marks as well. This is the latest of the sci-fi goth mindbender series that is Tamsin Muir‘s Locked Tomb series. Holy smokes it’s good.

I also loved Circe by Madeline Miller and Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati gets an honorable mention.

2024 is starting out for me with the Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. It has a sexy premise of occult Yale secret societies so we’ll see if it holds up! I look forward to seeing what my bookish friends get into in 2024 and as always, I love recommendations and would love more friends over on Goodreads (link in my sidebar). Happy 2024 reading!