Finished reading: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe 📚
A meticulously researched history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, the book is a tale of tragedy and woe for both sides of a pointless war. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Foster by Claire Keegan 📚
Another masterpiece from Claire Keegan, the master of the emotionally-charged short novel. The language is economical, yet lyrical. And moving. I did not want this one to end. ★★★★★
Finished reading: Vera, Or Faith by Gary Shteyngart 📚
Set in a near-future NYC, we follow Vera, an exceptionally gifted yet anxious child, through a dystopian landscape of far-right extremism, absentee parenting, cultural diversity, and hilarious yet ominous technology. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 📚
A warning that the corruption of power, the awful propensity for human barbarity, and the refusal to address legitimate grievances can lead to catastrophic consequences. This old classic offers modern day lessons. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday 📚
Important lessons here on leading a better life, but not a lot of depth. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell 📚
How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child? How is it possible to find two pennies and rest them there, in the eye sockets, to hold down the lids? How can anyone do this? It is not right. It cannot be.
★★★★★
Finished reading: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester 📚
This second volume of William Manchester’s epic Winston Churchill biography covers the years preceding the Second World War. ★★★★☆
My Year of Reading in 2025: robertbreen.com 📚
Wednesday, December 31, 2025 →
Finished reading: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi 📚
Timeless literature masquerading as a children’s story. ★★★★★
Finished reading: My Friends by Fredrik Backman 📚
I loved A Man Called Ove, but this one missed the mark for me. ★★☆☆☆
Finished reading: Chess Story by Stefan Zweig 📚
A good chess story, but an even better story of the psychological dangers of extreme isolation and single-minded focus. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin 📚
What a fun, creepy book! I loved the slow build of suspense and the unexpected twists. And the ending … Whew. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald 📚
A professor with a background in amateur falconry retreats from public life after the death of her father to train a goshawk. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li 📚
A heart-breaking memoir about losing two sons to suicide. There’s often little you can say to parent who’s lost a child. But sometimes the words from a fellow sufferer can get through. This book was one of those. ★★★★★
Finished reading: The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll 📚
Yes, it’s about bullet journaling, but also how daily reflection can help you make time for those important but not necessarily urgent things in your life. ★★★☆☆
Wednesday, November 19, 2025 →
Finished reading: A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker by New Yorker Magazine Inc 📚
I’m wanting to read more short stories and what better source than this mammoth treasure of short fiction from the New Yorker Magazine’s first hundred years? Some terrific stories here. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: New York Sketches by E.B. White 📚
A collection of witty commentaries, short stories, poems, and essays, all originally published in The New Yorker, and each an ode to what I’m sure White would agree is the greatest city on earth. ★★★★★
Finished reading: The School of Life by Alain De Botton 📚
A crash course in emotional maturity through art, literature and philosophy. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: Bag of Bones by Stephen King 📚
A reread of a classic ghost story set on a remote lake in western Maine. Like most King novels, the true horrors are all too human. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner 📚
I’ve read four Stegner novels, saving this one, his Pulitzer, for the last. I thought Crossing to Safety was his best, and Big Rock Candy Mountain absolutely gutted me. Still, this one will stick with me for a long time. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates 📚
Joyce Carol Oates might be the least likely person ever to write a book about boxing. And yet she did. Like me, she developed a lifelong appreciation for the sport, ultimately growing to love it, by watching fights with her father as a child. But it’s clear that she feels a natural disquiet with her own fascination with the sport, and the essays in this book circle and dance around that central premise: why, in our modern, civilized society, is boxing still a thing? ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson 📚
What a treasure. I’ve read most of these essays before, but never so deeply or with such illumination. Emerson’s wisdom is simple to understand, yet difficult to practice in a world of popular opinion and distracted thinking. Trust in your own thoughts; be yourself; don’t try to impress or copy others; cherish your friends. Most of all: be present, here and now. ★★★★★
If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.
— Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
Finished reading: We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough 💙📚
The premise and setting had terrific potential, but one-dimensional characters, plot holes, and poor editing hobbled the story. It felt like a book written under the pressure of an unrealistic deadline. ★★★☆☆
Thursday, September 25, 2025 →
We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wednesday, September 17, 2025 →
This is the way.
There is nothing so often condemned, and so deeply loved, as the past.
— Will Durant
Finished reading: The Best American Essays 2024 💙📚
I’m on an essay kick, and the latest “Best American” series provided a wide range of thought-provoking takes and introduced me to some new voices. I share my five favorite essays in the full review. ★★★☆☆
Rats are invading strollers in and around Central Park:
They’re bold. You can stomp your foot all you want, but they’re New York City rats. They are not afraid.
Those many years on an island in Washington state taught me all about rats. But here in NYC? They really are something else.
Wednesday, September 3, 2025 →
What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders he yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content — all the great things in life are done by discontented people.
Christopher Morley