Finished reading: John Adams by David McCullough 📚
A riveting history of the people and events of the American Revolution from the perspective of arguably our most important forefather. ★★★★☆
Reading
Check out my separate reading blog for an index of book reviews and ratings.
💙📚 How is it I’ve lived in Phoenix for four years and am just now learning about the annual VNSA used book sale? It’s far and away the largest used book sale I’ve ever attended. 600,000 books for sale at ridiculously low prices, and the proceeds go to well-deserved charities.
I haven’t bought a bag of books like this in years. Total cost? $14.00. The best part for me was seeing so many people with pull-along wagons and suitcases and big shopping bags full of books. Books! This warmed my heart. I’ve signed up as a volunteer to help this worthy organization.
If you’re a reader in the greater Phoenix area, mark your calendars: February 13 and 14, 2027 are the dates for next year’s sale. You will not want to miss this.
Finished reading: The Best American Essays 2025 by Jia Tolentino (editor) 📚 Continuing my essay kick with the latest “Best American” collection. A few missed the mark for me, but most were pretty good, and a few were extraordinary. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: The Running Man by Richard Bachman 📚
Published in 1982, Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) envisioned a 2025 America that feels eerily familiar. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s a scary example of King’s uncanny ability to predict future events. ★★★★☆
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. ★★★★★
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. ★★★☆☆
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. ★★★☆☆
Nancy Pearl’s Revised ‘Rule of 50’:
When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number is the pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book … When you turn 100, you are authorized (by the Rule of 50) to judge a book by its cover.
💙📚
Finished reading: On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle 💙📚
It’s Groundhog’s Day but with an existential slant on the meaning of self, time, mortality, sustainability, and the inevitable progression of love and marriage. ★★★★☆