December 2025: What I Spent

As a reminder, my husband pays the "big bills" like mortgage, phone, car, and electricity. I pay for groceries and the pets and that somehow evens things out. The big story here is that I bought a lot of gifts. Not too shocking, I guess.

Miscellaneous ($13.37, <1%) - I had to print off some photos for work. I teach a first year seminar and I take photos all semester long and then each student gets a packet at the end of the semester. The students like it, I think.

Fitness ($141.25, 3.6%) - This was fitness classes through March.

Bills ($132.83, 5.7%) - Insurance for house and car. This has gone up a bit because of the new car. That's what we like to call lifestyle creep.

Health ($141.25, 6%) - Anyone want to know how much I spent on physical therapy this year? 

Savings ($200, 8.5%) - This is going to be better next year!

Entertainment ($207.49, 8.9%) - Spotify subscription, tickets for the lights at the Rotary Gardens, and a big chunk for my 2026 planner.

Pets ($243.30, 10.4%) - Zelda food and Hannah probiotics.

Groceries ($652.97, 27.9%) - I say it every month and it continues to be true, but we gotta eat.

Gifts ($663.95, 28.4%) - This is more complicated than it might seem. Here's how it broke down. 

    Christmas gifts for my husband are about half

    Secret SANta gift and shipping

    Gifts for student workers, janitorial staff at school (cash)

    Retirement gift to the lady who used to organize yoga at school

    Books for the two nephews we got in the holiday draw

    Gifts for the mail lady (cash)

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I am not sure if I'm going to continue to do monthly what I spend posts. They don't get much engagement. They do, however, push me to go through my expenses every month to see where money is going. Do you have a thought about these posts one way or the other? 

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Did you spend more on gifts than groceries last month? 

2026 Goals

Let's do it!!! I feel like I've really prioritized health and communication in the past few years, so this year I'm going to prioritize fun and leaving the house. 

I typed "Goals" in my photos and this popped up. There's no grey in her muzzle here. 1/14/21

1) At least one trip with Dr. BB and Hannah - I'd like to some sort of camping trip (maybe a state or national park?). I mean, camping in a cabin, not a tent. 

2) At least two trips with friends - Bestest Friend and I already have something fun set up for this month, so this seems very doable.

3) At least two trips to Michigan to visit my high school friends - I'd like to fit in a trip over the summer and a trip for Homecoming in the fall.

4) Go to a fitness class I've never gone to before - I have a couple in mind already.

5) Make homemade ice cream - Years ago, Dr. BB bought me an ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid and I've literally never used it.

6) Do one creative thing a week - I have a lot of sewing projects, maybe I could try some blackout poetry a la Tobia, or do something fun from Keep Going by Austin Kleon, which is a fun little book Maya gifted me.

7) Become a regular reader of at least five new blogs in 2026

8) Leave an average of five blog comments on other blogs every day 

9) Complete NaBloPoMo this year (I have a special project in mind!)

10) Send at least five postcards every month - also, I'm going to continue to track my snail mail

11) Present at a conference for work - I sent in a proposal in November for a conference on campus in February. Fingers crossed it's accepted.

12) Track how many people come to yoga this semester - The lady who organized yoga at the student union retired last week. I'm so excited for her and all her retirement plans, but that means it's now on me to carry the mantle. I want to track and see how many people go and decide if I want to grow the program or just keep on keeping on. I'd also like to see if I need to buy any more equipment for it.

13) Update my resume - I'll leave it to you to figure out why I might be doing this. I love my job, I really do, but higher education is absolutely under attack right now.

14) Have an ePortfolio example - This is silly, but I teach a course where the students must complete an ePortfolio and I used to have a non-academic example to show them, but it has somehow disappeared. I need to make it come back. This should be fairly straightforward and hopefully will be done in January. 

15) Use a new journal to track goals, plan out the year, and take time to notice things I'm grateful for - I have been using habit trackers in a folder to track my goals this year and it worked, but it was more after-the-fact than forward thinking. I want to use this fancy new journal I bought to not only track goals, but be intentional about how and when I'm completing my goals. I want to check in with the journal at least once a day, like I do now with my habit trackers, but also use it once a month with Dr. BB to plan our months and once a week by myself to plan for the week.

    

16) Take a good photo every week and print them out once a quarter - I want to add these photos to the journal. 

17) Take photo of five places at least once a month - The five places are the tree out front, the pond in our neighborhood, the water tower, the log cabin on campus, and maybe the artisan well (this fifth place is still sort of a maybe). I'd like to take those photos roughly around the 15th every month, but I'm going to give myself a lot of grace in that. 

   

18) Pay myself and charity first - My savings has been dismal for YEARS. On every paycheck, I'm going to take money out and put it in various savings places and make at least a $25 donation before I spend other money

19) Reread - I am always tempted by new books, but I buy books I love. I want to reread some of those beloved books this year. Let it be the year of the reread! Last year I reread seven books, so let's say reread twelve this year - one a month, on average. 

20) Do a buddy read - I'm always so jealous of other people doing buddy reads. I want to do a buddy read!

21) Gratitude practice - Write down something I'm grateful for every day in my fancy new journal. 

Rollover goals

22) Be consistent in working out (at least 80% of days of 30 days of intentional movement) - Look, I have a plan. Will it work? Who knows? But I have a plan. 

23) Spend 750 hours outside - Last year I made a 1000 hours goal and it was TOO MUCH. I only made 561.5 hours. I lowered it to 750 this year, but to get those extra hours this year that I didn't get last year, I'm going to start trying to eat lunch outside at least once or twice a week during nice weather and (this is key) read outside if it's daylight and the weather is nice. Also, Hannah and I need to start doing training outside when it's nice out. Surely all of this can add up to another couple hundred hours over the course of a year.

24) Get on the same page as my husband about home repairs, investments, and a will - I 've talked with him about this and we both know we have to do it. 

25) Do two more iterations of CBBC on my blog - I think we can do this, can't we, friends?

26) Date night with Dr. BB every month - We talked about this. I think we're both on board!

I've got a couple of Just January goals and I may reserve the right to add some monthly goals here and there.

1) No baked goods or candy.

2) Do this video to improve posture at least twelve times this month.

3) Train Hannah at least twelve times this month. 

Motto of the year

Be compassionate

Last year, people around me were so kind and loving. My IRL friends, my blog friends, and my co-workers were so supportive. I want to make sure that I give that support back to the world. My first instinct isn't always compassion, but I want to make compassion be the result of my actions. 

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What do you think? Too much? Not enough? Let's find out!

2025 Goals Update

Here are my updates on Q1, Q2, and Q3. 

To get the photos for this post, I just searched the headings in the photo gallery on my phone and you get what you get. LOL. Some of them are strange. 

2025 Cumulative Goals

Health

1) Spend 1000 hours outside ✖

Yearly total: 561 hours, 35 minutes

Not good, really. I think maybe I'll do a more modest goal next year and try to ease up to 1000 hours. 

2) Do something in the yard every week ✖

Yearly outcome: I mean, yes, generally, but the yard is still a mess and I have to confess I didn't really meet the spirit of this goal. 

3) Do at least five yoga poses a day. ✔

Yearly total: 350/365 (95.9%)

This has been wonderful. 

4) Go to a new-to-me fitness class.  ✔

I went to Zumba for the first time this year!

5) Drink 20 ounces of water a day.  ✔

Yearly outcome: 349/365 (95.6%) 

Pretty good. 

6) Exercise for 30 minutes at least 80% of days.  ≈

Yearly outcome: 278/355 (10 days off in August for reasons) - 78.3%. 

Pretty good, but frankly I'm disappointed with myself. 

7) Only eat dessert Thursday - Saturday (or special occasions like holidays and birthdays).  ✖

It turns out that I have dessert more often than I don't. This is something to work on. 

Connection

1) Message my accountability buddy every day and M/T/T at least once a week. ≈

Yearly outcome: This waxed and waned. *sigh*

2) Do two Cool Blogger Book Club sessions. ✔

The Blue Castle in Q1 and the Joy Luck Club in Q3. 

3) Send at least one fun piece of snail mail every month. Track snail mail. ≈

Yearly outcome: Okay, I definitely tracked this. But I didn't send something fun every month. Oh, well. Something to work on for next year. Total was 265 pieces of mail, though! Maybe my goal for next year should be an average of one a day? Is that too ambitious? 

Adulting

1) Figure out a will or whatever ✖

I think you all know that this never happened. 

2) Order new checks.  ✔

Completed in Q2.

3) Limit my clothes buying to the following: two new dresses/season, new mary janes, anything that was on my Christmas wish list that I did not get, necessary bras/underwear/workout gear/replacement leggings or tights (one-to-one replacements on those).   ✔

Yearly outcome: I did pretty well on this. And now my wardrobe needs some stuff!

This is the house where one of my high school friend's lived growing up. His parents sold the house and moved a couple of years ago, but isn't this exactly what you think of when you think of a house?

Home

1) Paint the porch and garage. ✖

This did not happen. 

2) Hem the stupid pants. ≈

Well, someone hemmed them. 

3) Consult an architect/contractor for our bathroom remodel.  ✖

This did not happen.

4) Clean and organize my closet and dresser and keep them that way. ✖

This did not happen.

Me and my SIL. I wore those glasses for hours. 

Fun

1) Learn three new hairstyles: French braid, an elegant low knot, and something else TBD. ✖

This did not happen. 

2) Have one day a quarter where I take off work with no plans. ≈

Yearly outcome: Partial credit. I took off a day in Q1 and two days in Q4 and sort of half-assed it in Q3 (although it ended up being me running errands). Q3 was a mess. But progress was made!

3) Watch at least one makeup tutorial every quarter. ✖

This did not happen. 

4) Go on a girls trip. ✔

We went on a trip to Seattle in July. 

5) Go to at least four new-to-me museums. ✔

Yearly outcome: I did this! Anne and I went to four museums in the first half of the year and I went to a museum with my husband. 

6) Once a month dates with my husband. ≈

Yearly outcome: Six dates. 50%. Is that good? I think probably not. 

7) Actually train Hannah at least three times a week. ≈

Yearly outcome: 71 times throughout the year (this is more like twice a week than three, so that's not nothing, but could be improved upon). 

8) Read big books over 500 pages at least once a month. ✔

Yearly outcome: I read 12 big books this year! I'm so proud of myself for this. 

I think this goal is also why I read fewer books this year compared to previous years. And that's okay because a lot of these were great books. Some were not.

The Last Magician

On a Sunbeam

The Women of Chateau Lafayette

Feed

Night Film

The Bee Sting

Here Be Dragons

Moby-Dick

An American Tragedy

The Hallmarked Man

Gone With the Wind 

Wool

9) Make six new-to-me cookie recipes. ≈

Yearly outcome: I made three new recipes: peanut butter blossoms, brown butter sugar, and ricciarelli. I mean, that's progress. 

10) Do a 30-day project each month. ✔

January: Improve your posture challenge and I did the exercises for 28/31 (90.3%) days

February: 4-5 minutes of core exercises a day and I did it for 14/28 (50%) of days

March: Don't eat candy or baked goods. I managed this on 27/30 (90%) of days

April: Send one postcard a day - I sent 25 in April and the rest in May

May: Two minutes of core work daily on 22/31 (71%) days - I'm collating this in December and have zero memory of doing this in May.

June: Survive. Check.

July: No candy. 31/31 days

August: Lolz. There was no challenge this month.

September: I did a photo a day project and did it on all 30 days

October: Participate in Cool Bloggers Walking Club and I managed a perfect 31/31 day streak. 

November: Comment on at least five posts a day during NaBloPoMo. I was at 28/30 (93.3%) days. 

December: To do at least five minute strength training each day and I was at 23/31 (74.2%). That's not too bad. 

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Do you set yearly goals? How did they go this year? 

December 2025 Accountability Buddy

My 30-day goal for December was to take at least five minutes a day to do strength training, so you'll see occasional random videos of five minutes to meet this goal.

Monday, December 1

5-minute arm workout

20-minute bedtime yoga - I didn't fit yoga in today at lunch, so it had to happen after dinner. 

10-minute evening yoga stretch

Tuesday, December 2

45-minute body blast class at the community center after work

Wednesday, December 3

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime*

40-minute leg workout with Caroline Girvan

7-minute lower body stretch

Thursday, December 4

5-minute shoulder workout

45-minute everyday yoga flow

Friday, December 5

10-minute standing abs

20-minute walking exercise - I got seriously sweaty with this one!

5-minute cool down

Saturday, December 6

5-minute arm workout

45-minute upper body yin yoga

Sunday, December 7

20-minute shoveling - This has been the snowiest winter I can remember since we've lived in Wisco.

Otherwise the day got away from me. I was in the kitchen a lot making cookies and getting food ready for a friend to drop off tomorrow (she's sick and we're doing meal trains and I make a much better dinner for someone else's family than I do my own family). I had book club after dinner. I basically just didn't prioritize exercising.

Monday, December 8

30-minute deep stretch yoga - Yoga was cancelled at the student union today, so I did it in my office!

Tuesday, December 9

20-minutes shoveling - SO MUCH SNOW THIS WINTER.

33-minute leg workout

Wednesday, December 10

20-minute deicing the front walkway 

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

15-minute arms and shoulders

Thursday, December 11

30-minute yoga video in the student union at lunchtime

Friday, December 12

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

12-minute dumbbell deadbug workout (shoutout to Jenny - look at me doing a Caroline Girvan video!)

16-minute no jumping cardio - this was just the same five exercises over and over again - it was a good workout and I'm sweaty, out of breath, and my heartrate is elevated, but it was boring

Saturday, December 13

20-minute iso and dynamic arm workout - Super great workout from Caroline Girvan. 

10-minute cardio dance - Not low-impact if that matters to you

20-minute yoga for open hips and quads - Here's where I admit that the deadbug workout sort of works my abs, but my quads are way more sore today. I clearly have terrible form. 

Sunday, December 14

5-minute bodyweight leg workout (squats, lunges)

30-minute yoga for hips and low back

Monday, December 15

30-minute yoga video in the student union at lunchtime

Tuesday, December 16

45-minute body blast class at the community center after work

Wednesday, December 17

Day off

Thursday, December 18

5-minute shoulder/arm workout

37-minute after work yoga stretch - This was really good. I would recommend it if you want a bit of flow, but mostly stretch.

Friday, December 19

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

Saturday December 20

Day off

Sunday, December 21

39-minute total body circuit

15-minute yoga flow for sciatica 

Monday, December 22

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

5-minute standing ab workout

30-minute walking workout

Tuesday, December 23

18-minute chair yoga - In my office. Two days before Christmas. There were like six cars in the parking lot when I got in this morning. 

45-minute body blast class at the community center after work - Sheesh, she really worked our legs. I'm going to be paying for that. 

Wednesday, December 24

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

30-minute yoga for tired legs

Thursday, December 25

Day off

Friday, December 26

35-minute full body strength with core focus

20-minute yoga for flexibility

Saturday, December 27

15-minute standing abs (no jumping) - this just repeats the same circuit four times, so if you get bored, this is not for you

30-minute cardio - Some jumping included.

15-minute yoga for shoulder mobility

Sunday, December 28

10-minute bodyweight leg workout

45-minute total body yoga deep stretch - I think it's worth pointing out that on all the poses where she puts her elbow on the ground, I'm using a block. I used a block for a couple of twists. I also used a blanket to pad my knees and ankles at times, too. Even though the video does it prop free, I'm still using my props!

Monday, December 29

15-minute stretch class at lunchtime

30-minute full body strength workout with dumbbells

10-minute for better posture

Tuesday, December 30

10-minute yoga for lower back mobility - My office mate sent me this via our messaging system at 12:52pm. So I stopped working and did it. 

45-minute body blast class at the community center after work

Wednesday, December 31

15-minutes shoveling off some light snow from last night

10-minute posture workout

10-minute standing abs

60-minutes restorative yoga

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*Our local healthcare organization does free stretch classes virtually three times a week. Sign up here! It's free. It's fun. She has the sign-up through June, so you can basically register for half the year at one time.  We regularly talk about candy and what's for lunch. It's a delightful break in the middle of the day. You do not have to have your camera on. 

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Total: 26/31 (83.9%) of days

Cardio/strength: 17 days
Yoga: 11 days

Short stretch classes at lunchtime:  6 days

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Well, at least I ended the year strong. How did you do in December? 

December 2025 Books

12/1: The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt by Chelsea Iversen (library, 2025) - Last book club pick of 2025. Lots of traumatic events happen to Harriet Hunt and there's a magical garden. So much trauma. 3/5 stars

12/4: Charlotte's Web by E.B. White (library audiobook narrated by E.B. White himself, 1952) - You guys, this was a truly delightful listening experience. There is a reason we all read this book in elementary school. The author's narration was perfect. It's so great. 5/5 stars

12/6: The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen (library, 2019) - You know what? I am not the target audience for YA. Boring, safe, and a character who was so unaware of her own privilege that it made me want to scream. Maybe that's fine for teen readers, but I was frustrated. 3/5 stars

12/14: The Secret Garden by France Hodgson Burnett (library, 1911) - Still lovely. It hurts my heart a little to read it and think about how much I connected with Mary Lennox as a child, though. 4/5 stars

12/15: Moby-Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville (own it on Kindle, 1851) - Look, if you're a person who likes to get in-depth on a topic, this book might be for you. I thought Ishmael was  hilarious and didn't mind all the whale stuff. 4/5 stars

12/16: Chain-Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (library audiobook narrated by Shayna Small, Aaron Goodson, Michael Crouch, and Lee Osorio, 2025) - Sometimes I don't know if I'm not smart enough for some books. I honestly thought at about halfway through that I should care if some of these people die, but I did not. My biggest critique is that if you want to talk about prison conditions, you need to make me care about how poorly these people are treated, not provide them with better food than I eat. I think the point of this entire book was lost on me. 2/5 stars

12/17: When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén (library, 2025) - So sad. So beautiful. I cried a lot.  5/5 stars

12/20: The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen (library, 2004) - Great Sarah Dessen book. The main character is fully developed and I like that she's not perfect. 4/5 stars

12/24: Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Sea #2) by TJ Klune (library audiobook narrated by Daniel Henning, 2024) - Cozy fantasy with low stakes since you know it will all work out. Klune is fairly preachy though. I agree with his message, but I don't need it to be lectured at me. 3/5 stars

12/25: I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane (library ebook, 2023) - Read this for a Pop Sugar Reading Challenge for a "dystopian book with a happy ending" and I'm not sure it really met the mark for me. 3/5 stars

12/26: What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (library, 2025) - Dystopian academic mystery. It should have been perfect for me, but it was not. 3/5 stars

12/30: Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey (library audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, 2012) - The Earth is a toxic poisonous place, but a few fortunate humans live in underground bunkers and everyone must do their job and only their job or they will be sent outside. You know how in A Game of Thrones, you just get to know someone and then they are killed? I thought a lot about that book as I was reading this one. 3.5/5 stars

Total: 12 books
Average star rating: 3.54/5 stars

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DNF:

The Princess and the P.I. by Nikkie Payne - I hardly gave this one a chance, but I was on page 60 and couldn't imagine reading 400 more pages because I was bored and done with it all. DNF at 13%.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy - This is a well-reviewed, buzzy book, but I did not have the patience to wade through the scene setting and when the father left his three children at home with an unconscious stranger, I just noped out. DNF at page 42 (13.9%). 

Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous, edited by Gillian Anderson - I am too much of a prude for this. DNF at 7%.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai - I hardly gave this one a chance. I was bored and confused by the family backstories. DNF at like page 12. 

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Who's mad at my DNFs? Don't hurt me, please. I saw at least two of those books appear on other people's favorite books of 2025 and I felt bad, but at least I'm honest about it. Maybe someday I'll come back to them. 

2025 Reading Stats

2024 Reading Stats
2023 Reading Stats
2022 Reading Stats

Another year, another roundup of how I spent all my free time reading. I don't think I'm going to finish another book in 2025, so this should be relatively accurate. Everyone should account for the fact that this 100% assumes my spreadsheet is correct, so....who knows?! Stephany sent me her spreadsheet template a few years ago and I have been following it ever since, so blame her for the nitty-gritty details below. This is ridiculously long, so feel free to skip this if the number don't interest you.

Total number of books: 105

Total number of pages: 38,303 pages (about 3190 pages/month) - If I take out audiobooks, this goes down to 29,061 pages (2420 pages/month)

Average star rating: 3.55/5

Format: 22.9% audiobooks, 49.5% physical books, and 27.6% ebooks

I was curious if format changed my star ratings and it really did! That's interesting. I think I DNF physical books more because I always have another one to read, but I almost never have an audiobook or ebook lined up. 

Format	Average star rating
audio	3.44
ebook	3.2
physical	3.8

Audiobook stats: I listened to 24 audiobooks this year. That seems like a lot. That was nearly 319 hours of listening. (Yes, I'm basically always listening to audiobooks or podcasts.)

Book source: As with previous years, the vast majority of books I read are from libraries. I borrowed 99 of these books from the public library (94%) and owned/was gifted 6 (6%). (Interesting that none of these were borrowed from the university library. I have two holds at the university library now!)

Genre: So many genres this year! I'm pretty proud of myself for this. 

The Big Five Genre:

Genre	Percentage	Average star rating
dystopia	10.5	3.68
contemporary fiction	11.4	3.54
romance	13.3	3.32
fantasy	13.3	3.5
historical fiction	16.2	3.52

Dystopian fiction really saved me this year. Hmmm..I wonder what that says about me or the world we live in. It also probably brought down my fantasy/sci-fi numbers because if I didn't have that classification, most of those books would end up in SFF.

Star rating breakdown (out of five stars):

Money spent: I spent $26.36 to get an audiobook for my IRL book club. That was it! I went to the library on Monday to check out some books and I think that will be my last receipt for 2025. Here's what I saved!

Lord knows I can't afford my own reading habit. Yay for libraries!

Books by month:

I just figured out how to change the fill color in a chart in Google sheets. I feel like a fucking genius. 

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Historical data

I now have enough years to be able to track some patterns. First up, my overall reading is going down. I still read a lot, though. I'm never going to be able to read as much as I did when I was under/unemployed. *sigh* Those were the days, weren't they? (No. No, they were not.)

My average star rating is pretty consistent through the years.

Year	Average star rating
2022	3.5
2023	3.56
2024	3.67
2025	3.55

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Bits & Bobs

• I mostly read women (80%). I did read 18% men and 2 books (2%) that were written by a husband and wife pair.
• The shortest book I read was The Most (135 pages) and the longest was, of course, Gone With the Wind (1037 pages). 
• The oldest book I read was Moby-Dick! So much whaling!

I legitimately can't stop looking at Moby Dick memes. Should I be worried? 

• There's a lot of recency bias in my reading. 

• I DNFed 24 books this year. Or at least 24 made it to the spreadsheet. Just because I gave up on them doesn't mean you have to!
• I read 21 debuts this year. The average star rating for them was 3.43, so it's slightly below my total average. 
• The lowest star rating I gave was 1.5 and that was to The Berry Pickers, which was a book I should have DNFed, but stubbornly thought was going to get good. Sorry, fans of that book. 
• I'm still over here tracking what countries authors come from. It's still mostly the US. Do I sort of hate that? Yes. Is it going to change? Probably not. (NOTE: Some books have multiple authors, so this has more than the number of books I read this year.)

Australia	3
Belgium	1
Canada	5
France	1
Ireland	2
Japan	3
Malaysia	1
Morocco	1
Soviet Union	2
Spain	1
Sweden	1
UK	11
USA	78
Jamaica	1
Vietnam	1

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Hats

The average number of hats was 9.27 per book.

An American Tragedy (137) had the most hats - even more than Gone With the Wind (86)! But the book with the most hats per page goes to News of the World with a hat every four pages on average (the next was An American Tragedy, but that was only about a hat every six pages). 

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And that's it, folks. Are you dying for a stat I didn't include? Burning hat questions? How was your reading year this year?

Five Star Reads of 2025

Here are the books I read in 2025 that I gave five stars to. I know it bothers Sarah endlessly that most of these were not published in 2025, but I'm not sure why she doesn't want to know that I found a book from 1952 to be excellent. 

I had thirteen five star reads this year. Last year I had nineteen, but I reread a bunch of Harry Potter and I read some fabulous Ken Follett books, so it's hardly a fair comparison. I guess there's a slight chance I'll read another five star book in the next two days, but that's not looking likely, to be honest.

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Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (I had a three part review because how else do you talk about this masterpiece?) - What can I say? This book is absolutely wonderful. There's so much to talk about when you talk about this book, but all I can say is that Mitchell made me care about truly horrible people and that's something special. 

The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop - What a life Bishop has had. I listened to the audiobook and she narrated it, which was fun. 

The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan - This book had some tropes I normally don't like, but I loved every second of this book. 

Back After This by Linda Holmes - Holmes knows how to write a romance that appeals to me. 

Ministry of Time by Kalianne Bradley - This was a book I read for my IRL book club and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. 

How to Read a Book by Monica Wood - Maybe it's a bit sentimental, but this book about second chances and found family really hit the mark for me. 

The Favorites by Layne Fargo - A sports book I could not put down! Not too much sport in this. 

Night Film Marisha Pessl - I still think about this mixed media book. Super fun to do the investigation on my own. 

Feed by Mira Grant - Zombies! Bloggers! What more could I ask for? 

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans - I am just like everybody else. I love Sybil.

Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? by Tina Cassidy - We named our new car Lucy after Lucy Burns. 

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White - There really is a reason everyone reads this in elementary school. What a lovely book.

When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén - Do you want a good cry? This is a good option!

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I had another ten 4.5 star reads. 

The Blue Castle L.M. Montgomery
Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom
Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
Kate & Frida by Kim Fay
Heartwood by Amity Gaige
How to Read Literature Like A Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Her Many Faces by Nicci Cloke

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Have you read any of these books? What was your #1 book of 2025?