2025 Totals (so far):
Number of Books: 46
Pages: 11,514
Audiobooks: 81 hours, 12 minutes
New Favorites: The Ogress and the Orphans, A Marriage at Sea, The Complete Brambly Hedge, Isola, We Solve Murders 🎧, The Impossible Fortune 🎧
Old Favorites: A Gentleman in Moscow, The Silence of the North
Favorite Vocab Words: To sit below the salt: comes from old European dining customs, especially during medieval times. It means to be of lower social status or less important in a group. In medieval dining halls, salt was a valuable commodity, and a large salt cellar was placed in the middle of the table. Important guests sat above the salt (closer to the host and the best seats), while less important guests sat below the salt, farther from the host and with less prestige. So, if someone says today that you “sit below the salt,” it’s a figurative way of saying you have lower rank or influence in a particular situation.
46. Born This Happy Morning (re-read, 2025.12.22)
By: John Bytheway
Pages: 112
Published: 2014
Genre: Religious nonfiction / Christian devotional / Christmas
Bex Rating: 9
I read this book two Christmases ago and it was such a great devotional to get me in the Christmas frame of mind. It was just as good the second time. I love the idea of having a "Level Three Christmas. Level One is Santa Claus, Level Two is Silent Night, but Level Three is Christ the Risen Lord.
45. Hamnet (2025.12.18)
By: Maggie O’Farrell
Pages: 320
Published: 2020
Genre: Historical Fiction / Shakespeare / loss / love / plague
Bex Rating: 10
Pages: 320
Published: 2020
Genre: Historical Fiction / Shakespeare / loss / love / plague
Bex Rating: 10
Oh my, this book was so good. Trigger warning: it is about losing a child, and it was heart-wrenching. But beautiful, and real, and relatable. I was so moved.
- People would say these words, to each other, Did you ever hear about the girl who lived at the edge of a forest? as they sat around the fire at night, as they kneaded dough, as they carded wool for spinning. Such stories, of course, make the night pass more quickly; soothe a fractious child, distract others from their cares. At the edge of a forest, a girl.
There is a promise, from teller to listener, concealed in that opening, like a note tucked into a pocket, a hint that something is about to happen. Anyone in the vicinity would turn their head and prick their ears, their mind already forming a picture of the girl, perhaps picking her way through trees, or standing beside the green wall of a forest. (39) - She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, two unruly, two opinionated, two silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she has merely tolerated, and irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she has to be married. She grows up, too, with the memory of what it meant to be properly loved, for what you are, not what you ought to be. (49)
- Her brother does not appreciate being pressed or rushed. He is someone who must be approached sideways, with caution, as with a rest of horse. She must gently probe him and, and that way, she will likely find out more. (65)
- How frail, to Agnes, is the veil between their world and hers. For her, the worlds are distinct from each other, rubbing up against each other, allowing passage between them. She will not let Judith cross over. (109)
- Whatever differences Agnes and Mary have, and there are many, of course, living at such close quarters, with so much to do, so many children, so many mouths, the meals to cook and the clothes to wash and mend, the men to watch and assess, soothe and guide dissolve in the face of tasks. The two of them can gripe and prickle and rub each other up the wrong way; they can argue and bicker and sigh; they can throw into the pig-pen food the other has cooked because it is too salted or not milled finely enough or too spiced; they can raise an eyebrow at each other's darning or stitching or embroidery. In a time such as this, however, they can operate like two hands of the same person. (109)
- There is so much to do in a family of this size, so much to see too, so many people needing so many different things. How easy is it, Agnes thinks, as she lifts the plates, to miss the pain and anguish of one person, if that person keeps quiet, if he keeps it all in, like a bottle stopper too tightly, the pressure inside building and building, until – what? (159)
- He needs to find his mother: amazing how strong this instinct is, even now, as a great lad of 11. He recalls the sensation, this urge – just – from when he was much younger: the driving need to be with his mother, to be under her gaze, to be by her side, close enough to be able to reach out and touch her, because no one else would do.(167)
- She now knows that it's possible, more than possible, that one of her children will die, because children do, all the time. But she will not have it. She will not. She will fill this child, these children, with life. She will place herself between them and the door leading out, and she will stand there, teeth bared, blocking the way. She will defend her three babes against all that lies beyond this world. She will not rest, not sleep, until she knows they are safe. She will push back, fight against, undo the foresight she has always had, about having two children. She will. She knows she can. (202)
- She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thoughts, like fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare. From habit, while she sits there near the fireplace, some part of her mind is tabulating them and their whereabouts. (220)
- fossick: to rummage, to search
44. The Book of a Thousand Days (2025.12.10)
By: Shannon Hale
Pages: 320
Published: 2007
Genre: YA fantasy / fairy tale retelling / adventure
Bex rating: 9
I got his book at our annual Christmas book club book exchange, and it was so great! I haven't read any Shannon Hale for a while and this book was so well done--kind of a Rapunzel story with a twist, set in Mongolia.
- Why can’t my lady dip her hands into the wash water and give the clothes a good scrubbing or mend a rip or make a pot of something worth eating? I’d be pleased as anything if I never had to haul a bucket of water up the cellar ladder again, but some work isn’t so bad, not when you have naught else to do but star at a candle flame or into the shivering dark. (84)
- I’m a stubborn mare sometimes and must dangle my own carrot. (119)
- That boy Osol who winked at me, I saw him today winking at one of the cutter girls. I guess he’s just a boy who winks. It doesn’t matter, not in the least. And I’m not goin to think about him anymore. (152)
- A bit of my mama awakened in me, a bit of the stubborn mucker soul, the stuff that keeps you alive when all the world is frozen and the food sacks empty. (168)
43. The Ogress and the Orphans (2025.12.07)
By: Kelly Barnhill
Pages: 400
Published: 2022
Genre: fantasy / middle grade / community / kindness / social commentary
Bex rating: 10
What a lovely story. I got this book at the DI in May because I recognized the author from The Girl Who Drank the Moon, a Newbery winner a few years back. In my opinion, this book is much better! I loved the characters, the narration style, and the beautiful, timely story. It was just a pleasure to read.
- In those days, townspeople lounged in the promenades and the public square, discussing literature or politics or philosophy or art. All roads in town then led to the Library, which had wide windows, tall shelves, and deep cushions on the sofas, and which welcomed everyone. There were hand-bound books and modern books and ancient scrolls, and even texts carved into stones. The librarians bustled this way and that, sorting, preserving, shelving, and shushing. Even their shushes were lovely. (6)
- There is a power in a book that suppresses even that of a dragon. (67)
- The reason for the kindness is never as important as the fact of the kindness. Someone was kind. We need that kindness. Therefore, we are grateful. We can choose to be filled with suspicions, or we can choose to accept grace, and then continue to extend kindness to others. Which do you choose?(91)
- It was the game of it, the trick, his paw tingled at the very thought. For to trick another creature – to give them a version of the world that was upside down inside out and too then let it all come crashing down with delightful chaos – well, that was power indeed. Delicious power. And the dragon was hungry for it. (167)
- They remembered that a story, in the mind of the reader, it’s like music. And discussing stories among other minds and other hearts feels like a symphony. They remembered how Adidas make their own light, and how words have their own mass and weight and being.(327)
42. If We Were Villains (2025.11.28)
By: M.L. Rio
Pages: 400
Published: 2017
Genre: fiction / thriller / mystery / campus life / drama / tragedy
Bex rating: 8.5
Pages: 400
Published: 2017
Genre: fiction / thriller / mystery / campus life / drama / tragedy
Bex rating: 8.5
I couldn't put it down, but it's not one I will be freely recommending. Lots of F-words and drinking and drugs and promiscuity. Definitely in the vein of The Secret History by Donna Tartt, which I read waaaaay back in 2004 or 2005.
But the SHAKESPEARE. I was sucked in. And it doesn't hurt that Allen and I have tickets to see Julius Caesar next week!
