Jólabókaflóð 2025. A day late but wanted to post because it's one of my favorite traditions to participate in!
7 likes
Jólabókaflóð 2025. A day late but wanted to post because it's one of my favorite traditions to participate in!
Squeezing in a bit of reading time this afternoon before heading to the family holiday gathering.
My top books of 2025 a.k.a. my 5⭐ reviews as recorded throughout the year on StoryGraph:
📚 Bread of Angels: A Memoir by Patti Smith
📚 Poyums Annaw by Len Pennie
📚 Diavola: A Novel by Jennifer Marie Thorne
📚 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
📚 Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
📚 My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss
📚 The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
(Last 2 not pictured as they were library books.)
We're ready for an early Jólabókaflóð celebration with friends today. (Edgar was very helpful in the preparation.)
Happy 250th birthday to one of my all time favorite authors! We had a Jane Austen birthday celebration this weekend to celebrate complete with tea and scones.
Checking out this book. Seems like it could be a bit of fun.
“Everybody leaves something out. It‘s a fact of storytelling. Even if we try to tell the whole truth, we can‘t. Because we‘re human, and humans are flawed.”
One of my favorite things about work trips is the reading time in the airport and on the plane coupled with views from above.
Dipping in and out of Braiding Sweetgrass the last couple of weeks. Every time I sit down with it, Seren appears to demand pets.
Evening plans. I'm loving this fantasy novel inspired by the culture of ancient India. Fully invested in this.
October was a good reading month. I was surprised to see the number of book read, but many were on the shorter side. Both Bread of Angels and Poyums Annaw stand out as the top reads.
pickI found this memoir fascinating. Set against the backdrop of her family story, Sally Mann reflects on how she assigns meaning to both her photographs and her life.
“Photography would seem to preserve our past and make it invulnerable to the distortions of repeated memorial superimpositions, but I think that is a fallacy: photographs supplant and corrupt the past, all the while creating their own memories.“
Picture is a favorite from the book
Couldn't resist this manga 😹
Thrilled to have stumbled on an ARC of Patti Smith's new memoir this afternoon and immediately dove in pen in hand. I seriously love her writing!
We're hiding in the basement from all the hammering on the house. Edgar is not a fan of this siding project.
I couldn't resist picking this book up when I saw it at my local indie store this weekend.
pickThis one is a slight pick for me. I almost bailed as the entire first part was essentially a rehash of the events of P&P. I understand why the author did this as she was trying to frame the story from Mary's POV, but it was not pulling me in. I largely enjoyed much of the rest of the book. However, there were far too many borrowed/ripped quotes from JA's P&P towards the end (though reframed) that detracted from Mary's story.
so-soI found an old volume of mystery stories & novels while antiquing a couple weeks ago. The first novel in the collection was The Maltese Falcon, which I have never actually read. It had some good twists but wasn't amazing. Overall this only gets a so-so.
pickThis is definitely a book that'll linger for a while. My mind keeps returning to the story - was it a single story in 2 parts, or was it a dual story? Where does it start/end? The ambiguity feels intentional and IMO makes this book work. I also enjoyed the exploration of a woman's identity - what is gained/lost by choices made? (Also, it's been a stressful day so picture is my stress relief this evening. Ice cream makes everything better, right?)
Just started part 2. Seren's face says it for me. Definitely intrigued and ready to see where this goes.
Edgar and I tried to read a bit this evening but were too tired to get far. Enjoying the diversion so far though!
I'm going to hell. So excited for this one!
pickI appreciated the mix of essays along with the poetry. Definitely going to check out more of Hollie McNish's work.
A solid July in the books! Top read of the month was definitely Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Next up. “...it all started with a podcast.“
On this Saturday afternoon I read, and they watch from above.
Saturdays are for reading in the park. I'm very intrigued by this one!
pickI absolutely love V.E. Schwab's writing, which never fails to hold my attention. With toxic lesbian vampires and themes of freedom and power, obsession, hunger, grief, and control, this one gets all the stars from me. From V.E. Schwab: “Each of my stories can be distilled down to a few important emotional beats... For Bones, each of the women was defined by a word: head, heart, hunger.“
June Wrap. StoryGraph has a cover collage now, or maybe it always did, and I just missed it? Dream Count and I Have Something to Tell You, which bookended the month as my first and last books completed in June, were also my top books of the month. House of Hollow follows closely.
Much needed book and coffee date. Diving into V.E. Schwab's newest!
pickThis book was a slow read. It felt like I was waiting for something to start for most of the book. I do love the lore surrounding Mercy Brown and actually had visited her burial site in RI a few years back. This one is a soft pick me.
“Isn't time strange? Time is not linear but a deck of cards that is continuously shuffled.“
“I think time is better represented as a house of cards, an unimaginably large castle of cards, one in which rooms and entire wings collapse and are endlessly rebuilt. Those collapsed rooms and wings hold memories, both personal and collective. That card house is forever haunted by the lost memories and by the ones that are retained but changed.“
“...seems to me more'n'more that the trick to getting by in this world is to hold to your principles, but not so rigidly that you can't move with circumstance.“
pickI was immersed immediately and enjoyed this one. I've seen many reviews that balked at the loosely connected stories, but I found it works here looking at the book as a whole. I recommend reading the author's note: “Novels are never really about what they are about.“ Also, I think Edgar is glad I'm home.
Visited my mom for a few days this week and spent a fair bit of time playing with these guys. Now I'm home and plan to get a lot of reading time in over the next couple of days.
