A Final Post for the Final Day of 2025

Well, we made it through another year. With the way things are going in the world, and the barrage of nonsense that comes out of our presidential administration on a daily basis, that's no small feat. Here's hoping we all survive 2026, too.

I have spent the bulk of today reading as much as possible to get my 2025 book total to a modest 30 titles. (Several of those are children's books that I've read while at work--so it's even less...well... "impressive" is not exactly the correct word. Maybe, "more pathetic"?) It's certainly paltry compared to people I know who routinely crank out 75+ books every year. When I see them post those statistics, I wonder what exactly they're reading and whether they do anything else in their lives other than read books. Then I can't help but ask how many of those are audiobooks. It all concludes with me feeling like an underachiever who should resolve to watch fewer movies and less television. But who am I kidding?

Anyway, it's quality over quantity. Right?

I suspect I might have a stress fracture in my ankle, so when the pain basically woke me up at 5:30 AM, I decided to finish reading Carrie Brownstein's memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. She is a fabulous writer and the book flew by quickly. (My only disappointment is that she didn't discuss the brilliant show Portlandia that she made with Fred Armisen). I finished the book by late morning, and then decided to blast through a roughly nonfiction graphic novel I'd checked out of the library called Black Arms to Hold You Up by Ben Passemore. It's a tough book to describe. Basically, it's a survey of Black resistance to white oppression in the U.S., wherein the author, Ben (or a somewhat fictional version of Ben) finds himself in the middle of these events in history, often appalled by what he's witnessing. While this description probably makes the book sound serious and gloomy, there is dark humor sprinkled throughout. But there's no doubt the subject matter is heavy. I recommend the book.

By the time I finished that book in the early afternoon, sitting at 29 books for the year, I thought, "why not shoot for an even 30? This York Minster guidebook has been sitting here since our European vacation, and it's only 64 pages! And at least 1/3 are photos!" So I knocked that book out in about an hour. It was a reminder of how stunning York Minster is--and how much work has been done over the years to stabilize it and maintain it. Being a guidebook, the text is rather dry and the author used too many exclamation marks, which is a pet peeve of mine.

So reading is done for the rest of 2025, all seven hours that remain. I'll hobble around for the rest of the evening and see if I can stay awake beyond 11:00 PM.