⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 This wasn‘t on my radar until I saw @Billypar post about it, but I really enjoyed it. I knew very little about Brandi Carlile before reading it, but enjoyed getting to know her, her family, and collaborators.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ It took a long time for me to get into this—she spent a long time on her childhood and to me that part got bogged down a bit, but once she got to adolescence and adulthood and had more agency in her path and decisions it got more interesting. She seems wise and understanding and like a powerful matriarch, but also doesn‘t shy away from her imperfections. Ended up as a pick from #WPNF25.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Interesting look at the coming of age, education, and early careers of four women in China and the ways they managed their ambitions and passions given the resources and restrictions they faced. Their resilience and persistence were really admirable. A book I wouldn‘t have picked up if not for #WPNF25!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Really great book interweaving the stories of the children and families on either side of a pediatric heart transplant, the providers who cared for them, and the history of the medical breakthroughs required for transplants to occur. My only quibble is that the transitions between the timelines and the inclusion of the history was a little clunky at times, but overall a remarkable book and a strong pick from the #WPNF25 long list.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 I became interested in Bishop Budde‘s work after her comments during the ceremony at her church after the inauguration. There are some calming words of wisdom, but I also found it a bit uneven, with a lot of focus on her specific career ups and downs in the middle. I did think it finished a little stronger. A bit of a softer pick than I expected it to be.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Delightful memoir of a woman who came across a struggling, abandoned juvenile hare and went on to raise it after realizing it couldn‘t be returned to its mother. I really enjoyed both her experiences and the documentation of the hare‘s behaviors, and the interweaving with biological and historical information. The end dragged a bit with the inclusion of some ecological advocacy, but overall a great #WPNF25 pick!

⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was well written, but I just don‘t think I can recommend a book that‘s the aimless young adulthood of a self-absorbed, mediocre white dude. What does he want? Who knows? Mostly just to sh*t on the people in his life who care for him and who actually try for and accomplish things. The writing was good, but there are more interesting stories out there. #ToB25

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Hoo boy… I get what people say about the MC making some… questionable and cringey decisions, but overall I did still like and root for her. #ToB25

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Coming of age story of a woman who‘s ostensibly an alien sent to report about humans and Earth back to her home. It took awhile for me to connect either this—if it weren‘t for #ToB25 I probably would have bailed, but I found it much more interesting once she reached adulthood. I found many of her observations to be quite true and sweet.

⭐️⭐️💫 Unpopular opinion, but I didn‘t connect with this at all. Found the MC self absorbed and as a result just didn‘t really care about his obsession with martyrdom or any of the side stories from the other characters. I kept thinking “I don‘t care!” to myself and bumping up the playback speed to get it over sooner. Glad others enjoyed it more than I did! #ToB25

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Solid pick from the #ToB25 short list. Lots of others have reviewed much better than I can. I loved that James was the hero, both of his own story and for so many others. And I loved that Everett got in, told the story, and let it wrap up—I feel like a lot of other authors would have added a couple hundred more unnecessary pages to the last part of the book and it didn‘t need them.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lots of useful, tactical information about saving, investing, and deciding how to prioritize what to save for and what to leave alone. There are a lot of other ideas for couples having monthly meetings with agendas and scripts that I don‘t necessarily see myself using in the way he recommends, but I did get some useful information and ideas from it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I thought this would be essays about liking big, overdone things in a world trying to praise minimalism. It kind of was that, but in a much more cerebral/philosophical (and less accessible) way, with topics focusing more on gender roles and relationships and societal expectations (and probably a lot I forgot or just didn‘t really engage with) and not so much in praise of venti Starbucks orders. So philosophical that I just didn‘t care much.

I think this is going to be a DNF for me. Library loan is due and I just don‘t care enough to race through it. Not the book‘s fault, but I can‘t really get into the world of a fictional Obama staffer right now… 🤷‍♀️ #ToB25

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ugh, that husband! 😡 This is one of those books where after reading it I thank my partner for not being a narcissistic nightmare. And even though he is a lovely person, this also made me glad to not be married and horrified at the treatment some women are trained to accept as normal. Infuriatingly readable. This one definitely stayed with me. #ToB25

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 A book I never would have picked up if not for the #ToB25 short list! Unique structure of telling the stories if 8 teenage girl boxers as they fight in matches at a tournament in Reno. It was interesting enough while reading, but I finished it a few weeks ago and none of the characters or stories stayed with me. Soft pick.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 I liked this better than I expected. Three teenagers die under mysterious circumstances and are brought back to be part of a magical quest that affects them, their loved ones, and their town. Magic is not something I usually seek out, and this took a little bit for me to get into but I eventually did. I do feel like it was about 25% too long and the same ground could have been covered in fewer pages. Soft #ToB25 pick.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Engaging history of reality TV, from a mid 20th century show about a California family through The Apprentice. It focuses on a subset of particularly influential/pivotal shows and follows the genre‘s evolution and impact on society. I‘m not much of a reality TV person, but this was interesting.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I am not religious but I find Fr. Boyle‘s books and way of approaching religion so comforting and inspirational, and this is no exception. Based on the premises that everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and that we all belong to each other (no exceptions) it‘s an aspirational way of looking at the world and the people in it, especially now with everything feeling so fractured. ❤️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really unique story of the friendship of two people who met in a hospital as kids, reconnected in college, and went on to be professional partners, but told through the sequence of the development and playing of video games. There were things I found frustrating and unrealistic, but I‘ve also never read anything like it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was interesting—a biography of Queen Elizabeth told through more than a hundred vignettes from throughout her life. I enjoyed the author‘s similar book, 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret. This one was long at 20 hours, but the vignettes break it up nicely. A pick for anyone predisposed to be interested in books about the royal family.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Series of essays that make a compelling case for her thesis that people love dead Jews and stories of dead Jews more than they care about the lives of the living Jews. Learned a lot (e.g, that last name changes on arrival at Ellis Island is a myth) and thought about unlit I‘d never really had to confront as a non-Jew. I found the narration a little grating, but otherwise a definite pick.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Stories of a woman and a couple who lived in and renovated the same Paris apartment at different times. Very contemplative, dealing with themes of marriage, monogamy, sexuality, parenthood, and feminism. It felt a lot like a more cerebral and less bananapants All Fours, which I just finished and didn‘t love, so I think that brought my view of this down a bit. Well written but a soft pick. #ToB25 #ToB25longlist

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I didn‘t love this. The writing was engaging and I got through it quickly but I just did not connect with the MC. There were some interesting pieces of commentary about women‘s sexuality and relationship structures and menopause, but by the time they came around I wasn‘t willing to give the MC a pass for being a self-absorbed jerk. #ToB2025 #ToB25

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I‘m torn on this one. The author highlights important areas where boys lag behind girls (rates of maturation, educational attainment) and ways particularly Black boys experience discrimination and the structural issues they face in school and society. He‘s careful to make clear he does not want to improve outcomes for boys and men at the expense of women. He loses me when talking about how now that women don‘t “need” men, ⬇️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Finally read this one. Took awhile to get going but then I mostly enjoyed the separate but overlapping (back)stories of several characters who were important in the lives of a divorced music executive and his assistant. Well written and engaging, but I didn‘t necessarily like or care much about most of the characters, and the last section was a little bizarre. I did enjoy it, though.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 What a trip… Separate short stories of rejection (feminist dudebro no women want to sleep with, woman romantically obsessed with a friend, etc.) that veer into the very explicit, and then into someone creating an online bot universe? Finishes with a “rejection letter” to the author about the book‘s flaws. I liked some, some went maybe farther than necessary, and the end got too navel-gazey for me. Soft/equivocal pick. #ToB25 #Tob2025

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lovely and charming, like Ina Garten herself. It‘s probably exactly what you think it is—Garten telling her story, starting with childhood with emotionally difficult parents, falling in love with Jeffrey as a teenager, and then her paths through school, travel, education, and work all the way to Barefoot Contessa and TV. Perfectly enjoyable, not difficult or surprising.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I enjoyed this more than I expected to. Silver digs into what the calls “The River,” characterized by people who take big, calculated risks in order to maximize payoffs and profiles and interviews professional gamblers, Silicon Valley founders, cryptocurrency inventors and others to illustrate several related concepts. The last few chapters include a philosophical look at the potential outcomes of AI. It was interesting.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Starting to work my way through the #ToB2025 shortlist, and liked this one! I enjoyed following Margo as she navigated financial, legal, family, moral, and personal issues after getting pregnant by her community college English professor. She was flawed but relatable and I really rooted for her. Great overall cast of characters.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Look at fat phobia from a formerly/“small” fat philosopher. The moral philosophy about what we “owe” others in society was interesting, but a lot of the stuff about issues fat people face in society has been covered better by others, like Aubrey Gordon. Her conviction about abandoning diet culture fell a little flat considering she recently lost 60 lbs. and is in a smaller body, and the coverage of GLP-1s seemed hastily tacked on to the end

⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was on the #ToB2025 long list, but it didn‘t really work for me. Set in dystopian version of the Great Lakes, MC and his wife take in a boarder who it turns out is on the run and that sets off a chain of unfortunate events. My issue was that it wasn‘t clear what the MC wanted other than avoiding bad things, so not really compelling. And the resolution seemed to come out of nowhere. 🤷‍♀️ Glad when it was done.

⭐️⭐️💫 Meh. I almost bailed but decided to finish purely to try to catch up on a yearly reading goal I‘m behind on. This felt so much longer than 320 pages. Some of it was that this was just different than I expected. A lot of the friendships profiled really were more profound partnerships even if not sexual. I guess that was partially the point, but I just found this book more tedious and annoying than informative or interesting.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Story of 4 teen daughters of a wealthy Iranian American entrepreneur who were supposed to star in a Kardashian style reality show that was delayed due to COVID. I was initially put off by a very silly opening where one daughter was trying to change her birthday in order to be a different astrological sign. It tended a little vapid, but it eventually got more substantive and interesting.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Been looking forward to #LitsyToB25 but realized I‘ve only read 2 of the #ToBlonglist 😬, so getting started with what‘s easily available. A 4 year old was partly involved in her friend‘s accidental death and wrestles with the mental and emotional fallout from that and its toll on her and her close relationships until she‘s finally able to address her guilt. Got a little slow in the middle but picked back up and finished strong.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 I enjoyed this because I like R.E.M. and enjoyed learning about them and their careers. It didn‘t do a great job of giving a picture of each member‘s distinct personalities, and there was a lot of music review writing, which is appropriate but not my favorite thing to read. But it was also great nostalgia for some music I have loved and that‘s been prominent at different times of my life. Worth a read for R.E.M. fans.

Meh. I was really looking forward to this, but at 38% I‘m thinking it may be a bail. The examples so far are all of pretty young people, and a couple are actually more explicitly partnerships rather than friendships. All of that is fine but not what I was hoping for, and I‘m finding it kind of boring.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I loved this. I found the meditations on why it‘s important to do the right thing because it‘s the right thing to do, even when it seems pointless or hard or when you won‘t get credit for it to be very comforting and inspirational, especially in light of what‘s going on politically right now.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Been in a slump. Came across this while wandering Litsy for the first time in awhile and really liked it! Licking her wounds after her husband‘s affair and subsequent divorce (and a pandemic) Phoebe books a room at a fancy Newport hotel where she plans to kill herself. Instead she connects with a bride, gets folded into to her 6-day wedding extravaganza, and finds new, more honest ways to live, and things she wants to live for.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I was thoroughly charmed by The Guncle, and figured I probably wouldn‘t like this as much, and I was right. I found this one uneven with some sudden plot changes (not twists so much as just odd decision making), and I ended up just being annoyed by the MC for a bunch of it. If this was the first book, I wouldn‘t have sought out a sequel. Between a pick and so so.

⭐️⭐️💫 Meh. I liked Jimenez‘s latest book so I‘m trying her earlier stuff. This was her first and my least favorite. MC is immature and deceitful (for reasons, but still), love interest is nice but also has some toxic touches “bitches be crazy” attitudes early on, and the middle 2/3 was basically manipulative relationship sabotage because MC can‘t have an adult conversation. But I did get through it in a couple of days. 🤷‍♀️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Collection of Lepore‘s New Yorker essays. Unsurprisingly, they were all really well written. I‘m amazed at her mastery of so many different topics related to law, politics, and history. My favorites were the couple of more personal essays at the beginning of. The only downside is that since the topics covered are so broad, they can wander into territory the reader (listener) may not have picked (e.g., waterboarding). Overall great.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 24-year old Cushla is a Catholic teacher who lives with her mother and works in the family pub near Belfast during the troubles. The book weaves her affair with an older, married, Protestant barrister, and also her relationships with the troubled family of a young student. The affair was really predatory, and the story took awhile to get into, but I ended up liking it. Bit of a slow burn for me. Soft pick.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I liked most of this well enough but the last couple of chapters had me rolling my eyes so hard. These were mostly likeable characters that just seemed so immature and dopey (particularly January) toward the end. Why have an actual conversation about this emotional issue that‘s bugging you when you could assume the worst and end up in unnecessary turmoil?? It was a soft pick but the last couple of chapters took it to a so-so.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Probably would never have picked this one up if it wasn‘t for #CampLitsy, but it was a pick! Even right before the end I wasn‘t sure what was going to happen.

⭐️⭐️💫 Frustrating. Background on the development of Semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) was fine, but he seemed to use his experience of being overweight (eating so much KFC employees gave him a card for being their best customer) to paint every overweight person with the same brush. Never attempted to disentangle what health effects were from behaviors that also lead to weight gain from the excess weight itself. Seemed like a big miss.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Great, light palate cleanser after some harder books. Follows the stories of the staff of a newly renovated hotel over their first summer season as they attempt to get an elusive “5 key” review from an anonymous online travel blogger. The characters had more depth than I expected from a beachy read. Definitely enjoyed.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Important, well-researched, and well-written book weaving together the history, sociology, and politics of the crack epidemic with the stories of several people caught up in it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I enjoyed this. I tend to agree with her critiques of marriage and the expectations it places specifically on women‘s labor. Her marriage and ex husband both sound awful, (so much so that I actually thanked my partner for not being a condescending tool while reading it). I totally support finding fulfillment on one‘s own, but it is also possible to find a fulfilling partnership with someone who is not an entitled jerk.

Trite self-satisfied self-help word salad. Did you know that the way to start is to start? I bailed when it got to “do or do not, there is no try.” I just can‘t.