by Marie Kondo and Yuko Uramoto

It’s the life-changing magic of tidying up – in manga form!!! Adorable manga-fairy Marie Kondo helps the protagonist tidy according to the KonMarie method. Organize by category! Not by room! Storage is not the answer! You must discard! Thank all your possessions before letting them go. Keep your remaining possessions tidy so they can be happy and ready to serve you!

by Virginia Evans

It was gripping. SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW.

I enjoyed the twists & turns, particularly in the middle of the book, where I felt Sybil may actually be becoming a bit unhinged and possibly an unreliable narrator. Her illusion that some customer service representative she exchanged email with was a personal relationship, her near-stalking of a college English department that didn’t allow auditing of courses – she was apparently quite a loony.

But alas I was wrong. She becomes BUDDIES with the head of the college English department and the random customer service representative (who commits a tremendous breach of law and propriety by divulging the personal address of someone who had deactivated her account with his former employer!!!). We were deep into the fairy realm of what I’m starting to call Storybookland – when a work of fiction becomes so invested in its own unlikely narrative as to leave this planet entirely.

OK, but as far as Storybookland novels go, this is one of the better ones.

Personal resonations that I cannot help but disclose –
– Adoption, ambivalence about resolving biofamily identity
– Older gay brother
– Preference for dealing with people via writing rather than voice
– Feeling like a fraud

The biofamily resolution was a little bit Storybookland, too, but not as bad as most. It’s a little bit ironic that Sybil praises Larry McMurtry for letting his characters suffer and not find peace and resolution. Yet Sybil’s loose ends are all quite tied up, aren’t they.

I only read 48 books in 2025. This is low. There were some long ones, and about the usual number of abandonments. There were some fun novels, but none I think I’ll remember forever. For non-fiction, I came off 2024 having finished The Master & His Emissary which spun my head around; this year I followed it with McGilchrist’s humongous The Matter with Things which did the same to my soul. It has intensely changed the way I think about music, God, nature, and … things.

The Annotated Autobiography – Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill (re-read)

I decided to give this a re-read after re-reading Little House on the Prairie which I decided to re-read after wanting to remind myself about the depiction of Native Americans. So after Little House I wanted to remind myself what years Laura actually lived in Indian Territory – I had remembered it being at something like age 2, which made me wonder how she could write such vivid memories of the experience, or any memories at all. Turns out she was there from age 2 up to age 4 or 5 – age when memories can definitely be recollected, especially when probably reinforced by other family members later in life.

by Marie Kondo

Marie Kondo is truly a hero to me. She was a shy young Japanese woman, afraid of speaking in public, when she was catapulted to fame and the top of the best-seller list; yet she believed so thoroughly in the life-changing magic of “tidying”, she traveled the world and moved to America to spread her message. For Kondo, this is not about organizing or merely discarding; it’s spiritual, and about respect for all the world, inanimate as well as animate creation. This book is about those aspects of Japanese culture that inform her mindset.

by Alan Siegel

It’s about the SIMPSONS, but more than that, about the SIMPSONS’ golden era – the early to mid-90s. Because IT STOPPED BEING GOOD after that, people. Worst. Downfall. Ever.

But the SIMPSONS through most of the 90s was just awe-inspiring. I remember calling it “God”, which was ludicrous, but I remember distinctly actually saying that.

It was impactful. It was meaningful. It was really moving.

Yet this book… wasn’t that great. It was about the writers, and it was hard to keep track of all the different writers; I wasn’t made to care about them or even really like them much.

Stupid book!! Be more better!!

by Barbara Kingsolver

Amazing writing! It just keeps coming at you. I could pull worthy quotes from every page. Such as: “My mind had only one thought in it as regards childhood. For any kid that gets that as an option: take that sweet thing and run with it. Hide. Love it so hard. Because it’s going to fucking leave you and not come back.” I felt like she wasn’t writing, she was channeling someone.

by Laura Ingalls Wilder (re-read)

I picked this up to re-read after reading something about the ‘problematic’ discussion of and portrayal of Native Americans, and the stripping of Wilder’s name from what is now called simply the Children’s Literature Award.

Indians play a prominent role in this installment of the Little House series. They are sometimes threatening and thieving. Ma, Mr. Scott, and Mrs. Scott are scared of them and full of dislike; but Pa feels that Indians are surely just ordinary folks who want to be left alone. Laura, about 6 or 7 in the book, is full of questions. Why is the family even here in Indian Territory?

This is a book about the 1870s. The characters have the attitudes of the 1870s. Pa and Laura are enlightened for their time.

I notice I have an expurgated version. When Pa talks Ma into resettling in Indian Territory, the original book said that there were no people in the territory; only Indians lived there. This was changed, appropriately, to say that no settlers lived there; only Indians lived there.

by C. G. L. Du Cann

I forget why I even had this in my Kindle. But it was a quick read. Run-of-the-mill self-help exhortations from the 1950s.

by David Hepworth

Worth it for the quote.