reading + writing

the books I read last year

Earlier this week, strangely now last year, the temps rose, and the very worst thing that can ever happen inside a winter, happened. A thaw. Snow melted fast into slushy puddles over Vermont’s rutted-out roads. And then, of course, freezing rain. The perfect treachery. I was scheduled for afternoon chores and cows don’t care a wink for weather conditions. Their rhythms run far deeper than that.

I live far from the farm. A forty-minute drive when the weather is fine and the roads are clear; just shy of an hour these days. I don’t love winter driving, especially in storms, especially at night. The drive often requires all three. Snows help. Studs help more. But the final hill up to the farm is steep and after nightfall, when the puddles freeze to sheer ice, it is one matter to drive up it and another entirely to consider the way down.

But the dairy herd seldom steps away from its primordial task, and the ones that coordinate the industry of their offering must show up to bring the milk forward. Sports practices, and anything else that could be called off, were, but not chores. It seems a highly unlikely possibility. My boss Paul laughed off my anxiety about my return trip, calling it a real butthole pucker of a drive and suggesting I head down past the creamery on my way home and avoid the bobsled potential of the big hill. That was the right call.

I am not sure how I am managing these winter drives. I just am. It’s kinda part of the process for me. The time alone. The quiet. Even though not a day goes by that I don't fantasize about living on our own farm further out that way. We aren’t moving. We are here. More than we’ve been anywhere ever before. Vermont forever. Vermont or nothing. But if the stars aligned that way… ya never know.

Before setting out too far into whatever this new year has in store, I want to spend a moment with what I read in 2025. Several years ago, maybe three, maybe four, I began making a more concerted effort to up my personal reading volume. I think it probably happened right around the time the Eider and I stopped reading chapter books aloud together. And of course, Freddy and I were not quite there yet so I had this space to fill that I hadn’t really even realized was a thing until that moment. I have always had a book (or two or three) that I am working my way through, but I am a slow reader and an active person who struggles to slow down enough to pick up a book outside of the ten-minute window at the end of the day before the coziness of my bed and bedding has its way with me. The desire required a more concerted effort and that is what I began to give it.

The biggest resource that I finally activated, after years of Maple encouraging me, was to get Libby through my local library. Checking out audiobooks was a massive game-changer. I listen far more than I read a physical book and that has massively increased my volume. I listen to books when I garden, when I knit, in the car, lifting weights, hiking, any old time really. Folding laundry. Naturally. I still love to hold a book and read in the quiet with my own (trifocle-supported) eyeballs, but, ya know.

It is shifting a little bit again now as Freddy and I begin to read chapter books together more and more, and I have made the decision to include some of those in my list this year. I love the exposure that my kids provide me to fiction written for children. Some of my very favorite books of all time fall into this category.

Alright. Let’s get into it. I list these in the order that I read them and not by book type. I make note of where they fall and anything else I want to share about a given title. I think the order is cool as it tells a bit of a story of the year, where my headspace was month to month and so on. I read, on average, about three books a month, so you can map the year in that way, too, as you go through the list. Or not. Whatever floats your boat.