{"id":4876,"date":"2025-12-31T20:32:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T01:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=4876"},"modified":"2026-01-04T17:44:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T22:44:58","slug":"december-2025-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2025\/12\/december-2025-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"December 2025 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Tarot for Beginners: A Holistic Guide<\/em> &#8211; Meg Hayertz, 2018. Pretty good.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Curtain<\/em> &#8211; Agatha Christie, 1975 (supposedly written 30 years earlier.) Massachusetts Center for the Book challenge, &#8220;Another book by an author you\u2019ve already read.&#8221; I wrote &#8220;I was intrigued that Christie wrote this decades ahead to release as &#8216;Poirot&#8217;s last case&#8217; &#8211; it&#8217;s a classic country manor cozy, but fine-not-great in my opinion.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Member of the Wedding<\/em> &#8211; Carson McCullers, 1946. Second Monday selection; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss<\/em> &#8211; Margaret Renkl, 2019. Nature Enviro selection, quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Memoirs of Moominpappa<\/em> &#8211; Tove Jansson, 1950. Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Proof of My Innocence<\/em> &#8211; Jonathan Coe, 2024. An <a href=\"https:\/\/www.askamanager.org\/\">Ask a Manager<\/a> commentariat suggestion. I loved the idea of the genre parody (cosy mystery, dark academia, autofiction), and I enjoyed the twists, but I don&#8217;t think Coe captures what he&#8217;s aiming at. The cosy especially felt tone-deaf.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>American Pastoral<\/em> &#8211; Philip Roth, 1997. Great Books selection, quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Telling<\/em> &#8211; Ursula K. Le Guin, 2000. I audited a great class on Inka and Aztec art, reminding me of this &#8211; one of my favorite Le Guins.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You&#8217;re Too Scared to Watch<\/em> &#8211; Emily C. Hughes, 2024. I don&#8217;t remember where I stumbled on this. I love books that summarize movies almost as much as I love books-about-books, and I don&#8217;t love horror but I&#8217;m intrigued by it, so this was perfect. Each chapter on an iconic movie ends with book recommendations as well, so this might lead me to others.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Little White Horse<\/em> &#8211; Elizabeth Goudge, 1946. I&#8217;ve been meaning to read this for ages and finally got around to it. I would have loved it even more as a child, but it&#8217;s decent classic British fantasy.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Food Person<\/em> &#8211; Adam D. Roberts, 2025. Another Ask a Manager rec, this time <a href=\"https:\/\/www.askamanager.org\/all-of-my-2024-and-2025-book-recommendations\">from Alison herself<\/a>. I enjoyed it quite a bit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Short stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>I didn&#8217;t love <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2025\/11\/24\/laras-theme-fiction-madhuri-vijay\">&#8220;Lara&#8217;s Theme&#8221;<\/a> by Mahuri Vijay (2025), but I looked things up: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thanjavur_painting\">Tanjore painting<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Veena\">veena,<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/organicwayllc.com\/products\/shikakai-powder\">shikakai<\/a> for hair<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;Babette&#8217;s Feast,&#8221; Isak Dinesen (1958) &#8211; The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Babette%27s_Feast\">film<\/a> generated a great Far Out Film discussion, which led me to the story. I was surprised how very faithful an adaptation it was.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Year in Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Only 88 books in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/user\/year_in_books\/2025\/1472686\">Goodreads recap<\/a> &#8211; that&#8217;s a new low, but it makes sense because I was so busy. 27,477 pages. Most shelved: <em>The Hunger Games<\/em> (12 million others!); least <em>The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle<\/em> (only 1 other person!). I didn&#8217;t even attempt to keep up with the blog this year, beyond the monthly lists and quotes from library books I had to return. But I haven&#8217;t fallen as far behind as I feared. 403 published posts and 222 drafts, and a total word count of 411,504 &#8211; wow. I read more on the ereader (PocketBook Basic Lux 4, replacing a series of old Nooks &#8211; I love it!) so there&#8217;s definitely a backlog of quotes to transcribe from there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short stories Year in Review Only 88 books in the Goodreads recap &#8211; that&#8217;s a new low, but it makes sense because I was so busy. 27,477 pages. Most shelved: The Hunger Games (12 million others!); least The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle (only 1 other person!). I didn&#8217;t even attempt to keep up with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists","category-year-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4876"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4905,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876\/revisions\/4905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}