Reading Update

So I'm going back to work today. We had visitors over our Christmas break and stayed quite occupied. Nevertheless, here is what I've managed to read so far this year.

 

Book #1 of 2026 was The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans. I noticed this turned up a lot on people's favorites lists for last year, and sure enough, it was a good one. I enjoyed it immensely. 

 

Book #2 was Jodi Picoult's 2007 novel Nineteen Minutes. It was painful watching the teachers in the novel ignore bullying every chance they got. Let's hope we're doing a little better in 2026.

 

Book #3 was Among Friends, by Hal Ebbott. Again I'll use the word painful, as this story looks at family dynamics, friendships, and what we're willing to tolerate from those we love.

 

Book #4 was Some Bright Nowhere, by Ann Packer, a heartbreaking novel about death. 

 

 

 

What I Read in 2025

Here's what I read this year:

 

Book #1 

Books #2-4 

Books #5-12 

Books #13-26 

Books #27-40 

Books #41-50 

Books #51-61 

Books #62-72 

Books #73-81 

Books #82-87 

Books #88-105

Books #106-113 

 

Book #114 was The Names, by Florence Knapp. I loved the three possible ways this story played out, each with its own sadness and tragedy, but each with its own redemption too. 

 

Book #115 was Wreck, by Catherine Newman, whose Sandwich I enjoyed last year. Again, this is a book about a life that's far from perfect, but still full of love and purpose.

 

Book #116 was a reread that I recommended to my book group, How Far to Bethlehem?, by Norah Lofts. I last read this as a teenager. I wish I knew what I made of it then! It's the Biblical Christmas story told from many different perspectives, and I enjoyed it again.

 

Book #117 was The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, by Christine Rosen. This was thought-provoking and readable, and it encouraged me to think of ways to live an analog life going forward.

 

Book #118 was Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, by Camille Dungy. (I shared one of Dungy's poems here in 2020.) This was a fascinating meditation on gardening, the pandemic, race, environmentalism, family life, and other matters. I bought it on deep discount for my Kindle recently, and since I own it, I'm sure I'll be rereading it. 

 

Books #119 and 120 are two I've read every year for a while:  Savor, by Shauna Niequist and You are the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen.  

 

 

Reading through these posts again as I was compiling the year's reading, I was impressed by how many times I said "I loved this book." I had a lot of great reading experiences in 2025. At the end of 2024 I said I wanted to read more paper books, and I didn't really do that. Again this year I want to attempt it. I honestly don't see much difference in the reading experience, except that I often don't remember titles of books I read on my Kindle, because I don't see the title every time I pick up the book to read it. But I do want to read paper books because they are accumulating, and they take up room, unlike the digital ones. Another note: thumbs up to reading with my book group. I've enjoyed that enormously this year. 

 

I'm glad I got in the habit almost 20 years ago of writing down all the books I read. I wish I had a list of all the books I've read in my whole life. This year I read some discussion online among people who were wondering if their habit of tracking their reading was actually detrimental to their reading. Some felt pressured to have high numbers of books finished; some felt they chose their books to be impressive or to read the shiny and new, or for some other purpose other than just wanting to read that book. I do sometimes wonder what a blog reader might make of my bizarre combination of choices, but then I tell myself that nobody is following that closely or caring that much. There's generally a reason I pick something up - maybe it was recommended by someone in person or online, maybe it's a topic I'm interested in or an author I love, maybe it was just available at the library without waiting.  But I can't always trace what the reason was, after the fact. I do resent slightly how controlled I am by my library holds; because they only last a short time, I hurry to read them first before they disappear from my Kindle. And that means less time to read books I actually own, whether digital ones or paper ones. I keep thinking I should stop putting so many holds on books, but then I keep doing it. As I'm writing this in late December I have 15 holds, plus nine books checked out on Libby (three of them already read). 

 

Reading Update

Book #106 of the year was Boleyn Traitor, by Philippa Gregory. I have been reading novels about Henry VIII and his wives since I was a teenager, so this story was familiar to me. It's about Jane Boleyn, who was married to Anne Boleyn's brother George. She survived her much more famous sister-in-law and lived to be a lady-in-waiting to several of Henry VIII's later queens. I always enjoy Gregory's books, and this terrible, tragic tale was no exception. 

 

Book #107 was a book group pick, the "fluffy" book I teased at the end of my November Reading Update. It was my first Karen Kingsbury novel, The Christmas Ring. I can't say I'm eager to read more Kingsbury, but the book was fun to read and discuss with my lovely book group. We even got together for pizza and Christmas cookies to watch the movie!

 

Book #108 was Hazel Says No, by Jessica Berger Gross. I enjoyed this one. In the first chapter, Hazel is propositioned by an adult who should know better. The rest of the book deals with the fallout of Hazel saying no, on her family, her dad's new job, her senior year of high school, and Hazel herself. 

 

Book #109 was The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World, by John Mark Comer. Comer gives lots of practical suggestions for how to be more focused on what matters and less addicted to what doesn't. I found it worth reading.

 

Book #110 was a reread, The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. I still found it brilliantly written. And it brought back the circumstances of when I last read it, which I wrote about here. 

 

Book #111 was The Heart of Winter, by Jonathan Evison. It's the story of a long marriage and all its ups and downs, starting with a difficult diagnosis of one of the partners and flashing back to moments all through their life together. I couldn't stop reading it. 

 

Book #112 was Audition, by Katie Kitamura. This was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and lots of people loved it. I hated it and wished I hadn't kept reading. I kept thinking it was going to start being worthwhile. It did not.

 

Book #113 was another family saga like #111, The Bright Years, by Sarah Damoff. The first part of the book was just OK. I almost stopped reading because it seemed predictable. But I was very glad I hadn't. It ended up being a beautiful and satisfying story about a family that struggled, but eventually found ways for love to break through.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Silence

 

This month's host, Jone, shared this quote with us from Thomas Merton: "The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living." 

 

My life has a lot more silence in it than a few years ago, when we were a busy household. Now it's just my husband and me, and right now he's out on a bike ride as, in silence, I contemplate the idea of silence. There's a fan going in the room where I am, but other than that, there's very little sound. 

 

It's exam week, so it was a quiet day overall at school. Most days aren't like that, but today was. It's the calm before the storm. There are concerts coming up, and the Drama Club is performing, and Project-Based Learning, and lots of end of semester noise. But it's good to get a little break from that, to spend the day writing report card comments and grading exams, like I did today. 

 

This Advent song, with lyrics from the 5th century,  imagines a moment of silence as Jesus descends to earth. But like my quiet day, it's a brief moment, because the song ends with the whole heavenly host singing, "Alleluia, alleluia!" 

 

 

Check out Jone's blog to see what everyone else has posted! 

Reading Update

One of the reasons I read is to learn about other lives that are very different from my own. This post is full of examples of that! 

 

Book #88 of 2025 was Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy. This near-apocalyptic climate fiction is readable and relatable, since it's about love and loss. But it's also about a very different world from where I live, since it's set on an island near Antarctica, and it's full of shivery descriptions of cold weather. It's also fast-paced and suspenseful. (I want to read another McConaghy book, Migrations, that's about Arctic Terns, so I'm putting it on my wish list.)

 

Book #89 was Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World, by Bob Goff. This was my first Bob Goff book, and I picked it up because my Bible study group was discussing some videos he'd made. He has lots of great stories to tell, and since he's spent some time in Uganda, many of them are of special interest to me! Goff has such an open, enthusiastic style and I enjoyed his voice in this book.

 

Book #90 was Mad Honey, by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. I don't want to say too much and give away the surprises of this story, but suffice it to say I was curious enough to find Boylan's memoir She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, which became book #91. I also read Boylan's new book Cleavage: Men, Women and the Space Between Us (book #92). Boylan writes well and these books gave me a lot to think about.

 

Book #93 was The Likeness, by Tana French, as I continued to read the Dublin Murder Squad books. Also from this series were book #94, Faithful Place, book #95, Broken Harbor, and book #96, The Trespasser. These books are so absorbing and full of twists and turns. 

 

Book #97 was a book club pick, The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn. Spies, torture, Nazis: this isn't for the faint of heart. 

 

Book #99 was a sequel to a book I read back in 2015 (and reread this year as book #98), Orbiting Jupiter, by Gary D. Schmidt . I recently found out that the sequel existed, and I waited weeks for a copy from the library. Once I got it, it was a quick read. It's called Jupiter Rising. Like the earlier book, it's a YA book with tough themes. I'm a big Schmidt fan, and I keep hoping he'll win the Newbery some day.

 

Book #100 was Awake, by Jen Hatmaker. This book has been getting a lot of attention since it came out recently. It's about the end of Hatmaker's marriage, but it's also about much more: her Christian upbringing and the way it affected her, her struggles with codependency, how she managed to start a new life after everything she knew fell apart. I'd like to discuss this one with a group. And speaking of codependency and discussion, I hadn't decided whether to read book #101 or not, having read lots of reviews of it. It's All the Way to the River, by Elizabeth Gilbert. While I dithered, a friend asked me to read it so that we could talk about it. Whew! It's intense, and full of extreme and illegal behavior. One of the reviews I read kind of mocked Gilbert's efforts to present her story as relatable to everyone, but it is true that we all are looking for what she says the recovery movement calls LAVA: love, appreciation, validation, and acceptance. 

 

Book #102 was Now is Not the Time to Panic, by Kevin Wilson. I read Wilson's book Nothing to See Here, back in 2020 and here's what I wrote about it then. This one is weird, too, and hard to categorize. 

 

Book #103 was Say You'll Remember Me, by Abby Jimenez. While at first glance this seems way lighter than most of what I've written about in this post, since it's a rom-com, it also deals with difficult issues, like remembering and forgetting, and how aging brings both into focus. And then it was right back to murder and mayhem with If We Were Villains, by M.L. Rio (book #104). This one is about a drama school and the Shakespeare-obsessed students who study there. Lots of substance abuse, unhealthy relationships, and oh yeah, murder. 

 

Book #105 of the year was a book club book, The Fisherman's Gift, by Julia Kelly. This one was so sad; I cried. But there was a lot of hope and healing in the last few pages. Our next book promises to be a lot more fluffy, so tune in for my next Reading Update if you want to know what it is. 

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Doubts

November's SJT host, Patricia, shared this article with us and asked us to reflect on doubts. The article is called "The Drawer Where I Keep my Doubts," and the author, Jeff DeGraff, writes:

 

"THERE’S A DRAWER IN MY STUDY that doesn’t close all the way—jammed, as if by conscience—with old notebooks, foreign coins, expired IDs, and one letter I never sent. I keep meaning to clean it out, but I don’t. Not because it’s precious, but because it’s honest. It’s where I keep things I don’t yet know what to do with. Which is to say: it’s where I keep my doubts. . . . I sometimes think of this drawer as a sort of reliquary—not of faith, but of suspended belief. It holds the relics of times when the world didn’t quite make sense, and I didn’t quite insist that it should. Times when I let the mystery remain mysterious." (Follow the link to read the rest.)

 

I don't have a drawer like this, but I do have sleepless hours in the middle of the night spent ruminating. The ends that happened in a way I didn't choose. The people I thought would always be my friends. The whys. "Things I don't yet know what to do with." Will I ever know?

 

In Jan Richardson's book The Cure for Sorrow, she writes:

 

Let them come: 

the questions

that haunt you

in shadowy hours,

 

the questions

that visit

the deepest night...

 

You can read the whole poem here. 

 

 

Questions and doubts are part of being human, especially at 2 AM. I don't think they are going anywhere. It's comforting to know I can let them come, and that God can handle them. 

 

 

Here's Patricia's post! Head over to see what everyone else has posted. 

Birdtober 2025: All the Poems

Day 1: Banded Penguin (African Penguin)

Day 2: Venezuelan Troupial 

Day 3: Boreal Chickadee

Day 4: Wyandotte Chicken 

Day 5: Javan Green Magpie 

Day 6: Green Pigeon 

Day 7: Common Loon 

Day 8: Diamond Firetail Finch 

Day 9: White-crested Helmetshrike 

Day 10: Kalij Pheasant 

Day 11: Arctic Tern 

Day 12: Gyrfalcon 

Day 13: Gray/Grey Heron 

Day 14: Costa's Hummingbird 

Day 15: Ringed Kingfisher 

Day 16: Pygmy Nuthatch 

Day 17: Great Gray/Grey Owl

Day 18: Crowned Parrot 

Day 19: Red-footed Booby 

Day 20: Golden Plover 

Day 21: Eurasian Tree Sparrow 

Day 22: Tree Swallow 

Day 23: Northern Waterthrush 

Day 24: Olive Warbler 

Day 25: Acorn Woodpecker 

Day 26: Pacific Wren 

Day 27: California Condor 

Day 28: Sultan Tit 

Day 29: Varied Bunting 

Day 30: Gallirex 

Day 31: Artist's Choice (Bat Hawk) 

 

 

 

Poetry Friday: Birdtober Day 31: Artist's Choice

 

There's only one Artist's Choice in the whole month of Birdtober, so it's hard to pick the bird to write about (this is supposed to be a series of prompts for visual artists, but this is the fifth year I've been using them for writing instead). This month I had four lifers, plus I saw the Shoebill for the second time (here's what I wrote the first time). But I had to choose my most special lifer of the month for today's post: the Bat Hawk.

 

 

Our friends invited us over 

to see a bird they had in their backyard.

We ate first,

yummy beans and posho on the porch,

with the baby hollering companionably 

in her high chair.

After dinner we headed out back,

four adults and four kids 

armed with binoculars

and a flashlight to illuminate the branches.

There aren't lots of these birds anywhere,

and certainly not in the city,

but there they were, swooping at bats

as night came.

Our crepuscular visitors

rounded out our evening splendidly:

dinner and birds. 

Not just any birds, either.

Bat Hawks, 

#610 on my life list!  

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

 

Here are links to all my Birdtober posts this year. Jone is our Poetry Friday host this week.

Birdtober Day 30: Gallirex

 

Gallirex is not a species; it's a genus containing two species, the birds in the videos above: the Rwenzori Turaco and the Purple-crested Turaco. I haven't seen either of these, but we do have turacos where I live; here's a post I wrote about one of them.

 

Wild and wonderful coloration

Fills the beautiful Gallirex nation

Birds like paint chips thrown at random

Turacos building up a fandom!

Filling trees with bright delight

Then spreading wings in gorgeous flight. 

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey