reading

Books I read in 2025

~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments

In 2011, I started keeping a list of books I’ve read in my phone’s notepad, so I could remember them.

Here is my list for 2025 in the order I read them:

“Night Watch” by Jayne Anne Phillips (c2023)

“The Last Train to Key West” by Chanel Cleeton (c2020)

“Florida” by Lauren Groff (c2018)

“The Frozen River” by Ariel Lawhon (c2023)

“Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney (c2024)

“Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan (c2021)

“Foster” by Claire Keegan (c2010)

“James” by Percival Everett (c2024)

“How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir” by Molly Jong-Fast (c2025)

“Savannah Blues” by Mary Kay Andrews (c2002)

“The Director” by Daniel Kehlmann (c2025) 

“Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett (c2023)

“The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese (c2023)

“A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan (c2010)

“The Candy House” by Jennifer Egan  (c2022)

“The Summer Before the War” by Helen Simonson (c2016)

“Ordinary Human Failings” by Megan Nolan (c2024)

“Heart the Lover” (c2025) by Lily King 

Many of these selections I read for my book group, which I absolutely love. We have such good discussions! Three of the four other women in my book club read way more than I do, so it’s sometimes hard to find something that none of them has read before. So this is how we choose our books:

We rotate the job of picking the book. When it’s your turn, you circulate three titles that interest you and the others rank them 1-3. Usually a clear winner emerges without much math needed.

Looking back on the list, I think Florida by Lauren Groff was my favorite. I’m not usually a short stories person, but this collection really blew me away. I read it before heading to Key West for the first time in February. If you’ve spent any amount of time in the Sunshine State, at least one of the characters will resonate with you. There’s a grain of truth in all the “Florida Man” jokes and memes (that’s why they’re funny) and this book goes deep into the truly fascinating and unique characters that seem to be made possible only in that flat, sticky, hot, beautiful, bizarre one-of-a-kind American state.

I read several books by contemporary Irish women authors this year (both before and after my big 60th birthday trip to Ireland in June). Sally Rooney, Claire Keegan, and Megan Nolan are all great. Several of their novels have been adapted for film and TV. I especially recommend “Ordinary Human Failings” by Megan Nolan. I’ve never read a more aptly titled book. Here’s the quote where she uses the exact words. It’s early on in the book.

On one of his first mornings a memo had been sent around from Edward to the desks of the entire editorial staff, which read:

A REMINDER! Reasonable excuses for lateness/missing meetings/not doing something I told you to do etc, include: Bereavement (parent only). Serious illness (life-threatening, your own). Reasonable excuses do NOT INCLUDE ordinary human failings such as hangovers, broken hearts, etc etc etc.

I think it’s the “etc etc etc” that makes this line so good. The story is all about the etceteras.

Hello Summer

~ MaryG ~ 8 Comments

Who would you like to talk to soon?

Not who, what.

Summer.

And the wait is over. It’s here. It starts today. It’s the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and it’s going to be in the 80s.

I’m registered for an afternoon slot at my outdoor pool. I’ll get to swim laps and read my book outside today.

Our current book group selection. I need to finish it by Wednesday.

I cleaned (really scrubbed!) my porch yesterday. It’s looking good and is temporarily pollen-free.

My May delivery from BloomsyBox is spectacular and perfectly pink for summer.

Oh, and it’s Gemini season. My time has come.

Hello Summer.

😄 💓 ♊️ ☀️ 🏊 🌸 😎

Related post:

Monthly delights

Summer is our Glory in New England

Summer Reading

I like my porch

TO READ list

~ MaryG ~ 7 Comments
Daily writing prompt
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
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I’ve read some nice posts from other bloggers this morning referencing famous writers. Their posts reminded me how Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own once affected me. It encouraged me to move into my own studio apartment, when I was just out of college. Living without roommates was a little scary, but somehow Woolf’s words from 1928 helped give me courage to live all by myself. I need to re-read that. I liked I.V. Greco’s post, which mentions Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, a book I’ve been meaning to read since my friend Kathy recommended it while I was in Paris. I was never a Hemingway fan, but I’m going to give his Paris memoir a shot. Also, Rebuilding Rob wrote about Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond in his response to this prompt. Another book I need to read.

Now that I’m unemployed/retired, I need to read more books. Perhaps that will be my New Year’s resolution. In addition to Walden, A Moveable Feast, and A Room of One’s Own, I’ve got a lovely book of poetry waiting for me to pick it up. I can tell by the poems that she’s shared in her blog that Ever So Gently by Lauren Scott will be a treat.

Here are a few photos from my most recent trip to Walden Pond in Concord, MA. It was an unusually warm day in very late October. I wonder if Thoreau ever could’ve imagined his Walden would become such a popular, though still pristine, destination for people from around the world. Less than 20 miles from Boston, Walden is an especially popular spot for city residents who just want to get out in nature for the day. I saw several folks perched in quiet spots along the pond reading books, all by themselves. 

Book group 🩷

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

What book are you reading right now?

I’m about to start reading my book group’s selection for this month: Such Kindness by Andre Dubus III, a local author. He wrote the award-winning 1999 novel House of Sand and Fog, which I read for book group years ago.

One of the HUGE benefits of both Covid and Facebook is that I reconnected with my old wonderful book group from when I lived in my prior home in a different Massachusetts town. We were there from 1995 – 2004 and my book club was one of the absolute highlights of that time period in my life. I love these women.

We started meeting again, via Zoom, last year and I’m thrilled. We have one member who lives abroad so we typically meet at noon on Zoom (6pm her time).

My motivation to read is back, because I know I’m going to have a great discussion with a group of smart, thoughtful, insightful, amazing women.

The first line of Such Kindness is:

“OUR GOOD SAMARITAN DRIVES US THROUGH SOFTLY FALLING snow under streetlamps that have come on early.”

Hmmm…sounds interesting. I’m already picturing New England. The author lives about 30 minutes away from me and teaches at our local university, so I’m assuming some of the New England characters will resonate.

Four out of five members of my book group reunited at The ICA in Boston in July 2022. We decided we should pose with a reader 📚😄

Book Magic

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

What does it mean to be a kid at heart?

As kids, my neighborhood friends and I would play elaborate games of pretend. One game was “Little House on the Prairie,” based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We would turn my friend Carolyn’s bed into a pioneer wagon and pretend we were heading west. Calamities would befall us, especially stagecoach robbers. We were always getting attacked.

Here’s a Halloween photo from that time period that I happened to pull out yesterday. I was a cowboy that year. Thinking back, that would certainly fit with my “Little House on the Prairie” obsession.

Halloween, 1973

The magic of books that transported you to a world that you wanted to recreate and inhabit is something that “kid at heart” conjures.

“Little Women” is another book that we liked to act out. We would pretend we were playwrights and write & perform mini-plays.

I remember being so excited when my son built himself a tree perch in which to read “The Swiss Family Robinson.” I knew he was feeling that book magic.

My son reading “The Swiss Family Robinson” in a tree, with the remnants of a brilliant sunset in the background, November 2010