With a talent for losing myself in a novel accompanied by absolutely no capabilities for recalling the name of the author or title, I love using Goodreads to record those for me. The website also tidily bundles your reads up at the end of the year. This look back reminded me that the first book I completed this past year was also both the longest, with 736 pages, and among my favorites – The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.
Other books that that rang five-star for me for varying reasons were: Peace Like a River by Leif Unger; The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff; Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park; The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng; Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov; The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill; The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez; Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia; Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez; My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You I’m Sorry by Fredrik Backman; Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili; Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin; All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker; and Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang.
Two books linked to museums visited during travels were featured in my blog posts.
Above left: Video screen grab from an exhibit in the Museum of Innocence, Istanbul. Right: Tipu Sultan’s automaton in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England.
In Istanbul, Turkey, author Orhan Pamuk actually created an intimate museum as a chapter-by-chapter companion to his book, Museum of Innocence. Displayed in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, a giant mechanical tiger mauling a colonizer in South India sparked the imagination of Tania James, leading her to pen Loot.
Goodreads also recorded that I read 16,265 pages. Gee, I wonder why I haven’t made much progress writing my second novel. Yet still starting 2025 off immersed in The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James.
If you use Goodreads to recommend books to your friends, please invite me to follow you. Or post your recommended reads from the past year in comments.
Burying one’s nose in a book does keep one out of trouble. Best wishes for your 2025 year in books.
Postcards from Barton Springs 