This year, more books.

I read 73 books in 2025.

Lest you think I’m bragging, let me say, I am bragging! I read 73 books last year!

And yet, that’s nothing compared to the number of books I used to read. Before smart phones, before email, before television apps, I read everywhere—on the bus, in waiting rooms, even in line at the store. My oldest friend will attest that I would walk home from school reading. (Oh, young eyeballs, how I miss you!)

Where did that reading time go? Most recently, to funny dog videos, Scrabble GO, checking the weather, and sifting through my email. Most of that isn’t making my life better.

Books, on the other hand, are good medicine.

Besides entertaining us, reading lowers blood pressure, heart rate, and stress and improves sleep, memory, and concentration. All great reasons to reach for a book. (Now if you’re about to tell me books are expensive, think about the last overpriced cocktail/coffee you bought. And get to know your local used bookstore and library.)

Books also expanding our knowledge, depth of the human experience, and reserves of compassion, which are essential to being human, now more than ever.

My first book of 2025 was Whose Names Are Unknown by Sonora Babbs (which had a heartbreaking, 65-year publication delay for being too similar to The Grapes of Wrath from Steinbeck, who used her notes to write his book).

My last book of 2025 was Between Latitudes by Michelle Latvala—a gift from a neighbor at her New Year’s party. I stayed up until almost midnight reading it. (Yes, I left a party to go read!)

In between those two, some of my 2025 favorites were:

Nonfiction
Everyone Who is Gone is Here by Jonathan Blitzer
A Truce That is Not Peace by Miriam Toews
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Fiction
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Colored Television by Danzy Senna
Still Life by Sara Winman
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Poetry/essay
44 Poems on Being With Each Other edited by Paidraig O’Tuama
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin
Still Life with Remorse by Maira Kalman

Wishing you peace, joy, and reading in 2026!