Books I read during December 2024 and January/February 2025

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Greetings! The winter quarter of the year is coming to an end over. Though, it hasn’t really felt like winter in NorCal and technically the calendar year says spring doesn’t start until March 20^th (Hi!!! That was just the other day!). We have had some bouts of rain, which I’m so thankful for. (And we’re getting more later this week!)

The holidays feel like forever ago at this point. It was a good Christmas season. I ended up with the weirdest stomach flu ever (#daycareteacher). We did all the holiday things—saw lights, went Christmas Caroling, Friendsgiving and then Ant and I went to the Lights Parade. We both had the week off between Christmas and New Year’s Day and it was delightful.

In January, the celebrations continued with the seester and niece’s birthdays (Harry Potter party for her 9^th birthday!!!), Azzie’s winter dance recital, Voyles White Elephant gift exchange with the extended family. I’ve also started working four days a week at the daycare and visiting family every other Monday. I’m working out my adapting muscles and when it comes to work and writing they’re rusty, but I’m focusing on the time I have available and thankful I can contribute more to our monthly income and financial goals.

February feels like it flew by! It started off with the virtual retreat for my writing group, another cold. (This time, both Ant and I got it). I submitted a story for Havok’s February character prompt. We celebrated Valentine’s Day (“celebrated” used loosely haha since we don’t celebrate it) by going to Coldstone Creamery, walked around Barnes and Noble, and then went grocery shopping at WinCo. I love our movie nights, but it was a nice break from the routine. I also led a workshop for my writing group and we had a NorCal Hedgie meetup—four of us from Quill & Cup live in NorCal, so we planned an escape room, meal, writing day and it was the coolest! We played games and visited family.

It’s been a really full, beautiful season. And the reading adventures have taken a surprising turn as well!

I read10 books this season. Here they are in the order I read them:

• Bravely by Maggie Stiefvater (2022)
• Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers by Michael Connelly (2004)
• Eragon (Inheritance Cycle #1) by Christopher Paolini (2003)
• 1890 Philadelphia Book by Katy J. Schroeder (To Be Published)
• The Black Echo (Bosch #1) by Michael Connelly (1991)
• Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habek (2023)
• Lion of the Sky by Ritu Hemnani (2024)
• Monster Therapist and the Warlock’s Citadel by Paul Regnier (2/28/2025)
• Eldest (The Inheritance Cycle #2) by Christopher Paolini (2005)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (??)

Of the 10:

• Completed: 8
• Still Reading: 2
• Did Not Finish (DNF): N/A

Books by the numbers:

• Own: 5
• Library Books: 4
• Borrowed elsewhere: N/A
• Books published in 2024/2025: 2
• Ant’s Shelves: N/A
• Rereads: 1
• eBooks: 2
• Audio: N/A
• ARCs/Beta-read: 2

By Readership and Genre*:

• Fiction: 9
• Non-fiction: 1
• Contemporary: 1
• Anthologies: 0
• Poetry: 1
• Fantasy: 5
• YA: 3
• MG: 1
• New Adult: 0
• Thriller: 1
• Writing: 1
• Memoir/Biography:

*Some of these may be double counted

My favorites of the season:

• Rereading Eragon was a dream come true! And a friend of mine also reread it, so we’re reading the rest of the series mostly together and will call after we finish each book.
• Shark Heart! I loved this book. I’ve added it to my to-own list.
• Lion of the Sky was a complete surprise—in a good way!

Spoiler warning: There could be spoilers! It’s on my list of things to learn how to hide them, but until then you’ve been warned 🙂

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#40/30 // Bravely by Maggie Stiefvater

This is my second time reading this book. I love this book. Similarly to The Scorpio Races, I thought maybe it wouldn’t hit the same, that the ache wouldn’t be there, that Merida’s struggle would be less relatable, but that wasn’t the case. It felt like coming home to DunBroch. It’s a beautiful post-childhood story and it’s so fulfilling to see Merida figure out what being an adult is like.

Thoughts about that substack I read about how literary fiction/women’s fiction(??) talks about how the story is told to us rather than shown??

Content Courtesies: Themes of death and loss, grieving, violence

Buy the Book | Meet the Author

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41/30 // Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers by Michael Connelly

This book is divided into three sections—“The Cops”, “The Killers”, and “The Cases”. The sections then are divided up into chapters made up of news articles written on various cases from The Sun Sentinel  and The Los Angeles Times. The articles were written in the mid-80s through the early 90s. I guess I was expecting more of an essay-type book, but I liked the article take on it. Michael Connelly wrote all of these (some contributions of other writers on two or three I believe) while he was at these papers. Some of the information is redundant because some chapters include more than one article on the same crime.

I loved the Introduction; it was so cool to learn when and where Michael Connelly learned he wanted to write about crime and write for newspapers. And then, how he took years of journalism experience and applied it to the fictional homicide detective of Harry Bosch.

One of the most interesting chapters was “The Family” – never thought before about the taxpayer impact of an ongoing, long term court case. And this spanned YEARS. I can’t imagine what it would be today in 2025.

If you’re curious about the Bosh series or how the character of Harry Bosch adapated to the screen, I’ll link both the book series and the TV series below. I’ll be starting the first ever Bosch novel soon.

Content Courtesies: Acts of violence

Buy the Book | Meet the Author | The Book Series | The TV Show

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And we’ve reached the end of the 2024 reading year! It was quite an adventurous year—with reading my first 7-book series in like eight years and loving 11/22/63. It’s always so fun to look back on what I read. I love these posts so much.

I kiiiinda have specific reading goals this year:

• The Inheritance Cycle so I can finally read Murtagh!
• The Shining and Under the Dome for Stephen King Summer
• Work my way through Dr. John Delony’s Own You Past Change Your Future book
• The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I’ve been borrowing them for quite a while now from our friend Rob. It’s also seven books long!
• Read Andrea Renae’s where darkness dwells and the sequel there bleeds the light, the first two books in the Song of Solas series.
• Reread Taking Charge of Your Fertility because I want to be preemptive about my cycle and not reactive. I want to learn to listen to my body
• And a handful of Middle Grade novels: Not Nothing by Gayle Forman, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, reread The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo, and Pax by Sara Pennypacker

Here’s to the new reading year! *cheers*

#1/35 // Eragon (Inheritance Cycle #1) by Christopher Paolini

Oh my gosh! Did Christopher name the herbalist that Eragon meets in Teirm after his sister?! He did!

This series was everything when it first came out in the early 2000s. I was 12 when it came out. I don’t think I read it right away. I have this mostly distinct memory of one of the smartest kids I ever went to school with (Shoutout Brian Wells!) reading this book in our 7^th grade Language Arts class, and I think I remember thinking (hahaha) that I still needed to read it haha. Sooo that was only like a year or two later, depending on when I actually read it.

I can’t remember, but I’m sure I’ve read Eragon at least twice before this. This might be the first time as an adult though *shrug* I can tell where some parts are told instead of shown, but it’s still a great adventure book. I’m so excited to reread the rest of the original four books.

I remember I received Inheritance as a Christmas gift from our cousin gift exchange way back in 2012 when Ant and I were dating (the memory popped up on Facebook as I write this in early January), and I didn’t read it (officially concluding the series) until summer of 2015.

So I was very happy to return to this novel, this world. It was like seeing old friends reading about Eragon and Saphira (especially!), disgruntled Brom, Solembum (love this werecat!) and Angela—all at the start of this journey.

Content Courtesies: Death of a loved one early one, grief, battles/war

Buy the Book | Meet the Author

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#2/35 // 1890 Philadelphia Book by Katy J. Schroeder

I read this draft for a writing friend of mine. She started querying to agents/editors last Spring or Summer and she made some changes to the one of the main character’s timelines, putting him in closer proximity to the villain and wanting to make the villain even more villainous.

I’ve heard about this story on and off since I joined Quill & Cup, our writing community, and it was so exciting to read it and provide feedback on certain aspects of it.

It’s told between alternating perspectives of the main characters, Etta and Will, who live in two different areas of 1890 Philadelphia and don’t meet each other until Will seeks out magic to try and talk to his sister. Etta helps out her family’s dressmaker business in The Mourning Market.

Katy J’s writing is beautiful and I can’t wait for you all to read this one day!

Content Courtesies: mild time-period ableism/medical gaslighting, internal ableism, depictions of grief, mild violence, death of a sibling (off the page)

 Meet the Author | Quill & Cup Writing Community | Meet the Artist of the Book Art

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#3/35 // The Black Echo (Bosch #1) by Michael Connelly

This book was ready to be picked up from the library right as a I started All Things Unsaid, but I forged ahead in checking it out because I knew I’d want to stay off my screen at night, since I’ve gotten in the habit of reading before bed. Also, I picked this book up at the Colfax Library, just 15 minutes up the freeway from me. I usually go to Auburn’s library (15 minutes down the freeway from me), but at the time of writing this (1/13/25) they’ve already closed for renovations. And, about a month ago, they stopped taking holds requests, until they’ve relocated to their temporary space. The Colfax Library is cute! I’ll definitely have to go visit it again.

Content Courtesies: language, department biases

Buy the Book | Meet the Author

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#4/35 // Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habek

I love this book. I had it on hold on and off throughout the year last year on the Libby App and it was never the right timing. I remembered to put it on hold again and the timing was finally right! This is a book that I’d love to read again as a paperback. The formatting and the structure of the story was creative, as was the premise of the story.

The story starts with Lewis and Wren getting married and within the first year of marriage Lewis begins transforming into a shark. I went into the book thinking this was an anomaly in the world of this story, as it’s set in the contemporary world—even straddling Covid in 2020 for a bit—but it is an accepted fact of this world that some humans mutate into animals. Emily Habek handles this so well; I never once questioned it.

The journey of Lewis and Wren throughout this story are hard and beautiful, and the writing captures some profound emotions. I’m looking forward to reading this again.

Content Courtesies: Grief, loss, animal death (one scene, easily skippable), body horror, child death/death, confinement, domestic abuse, sexual content, suicidal thoughts/suicide attempt, Terminal illness, forced institutionalization, death of parent, terminal illness, alcoholism.

Buy the Book | Meet the Author

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#5/35 // Lion of the Sky by Ritu Hemnani

I was not expecting to love this story but love it I did. I picked it up on whim at the Colfax Library when I was checking out The Black Echo. One of my low-key reading goals is to read more of the Middle Grade books that have been on my list for forever and this one stood out to me. It was most likely the two boys and the kites on the cover, making me think of The Kite Runner; this story, however, takes place in India.

Raj is a 12-year-old Hindu, and his best friend is Iqbal, a Muslim. This takes place when British India is in talks for their independence and the Partition happens, causing the Sindh community to become a part of Pakistan, meaning Raj and his family are forced to move based on their religion.

This novel is written in-verse from Raj’s point-of-view, and I loved seeing a young kid process this moment in his country’s history. Every line and poem moved the story forward, completing in a beautiful story.

Content Courtesies: death, poverty, violence, discrimination

Buy the Book | Meet the Author

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#6/35 // Monster Therapist by Paul Regnier

I read the ARC sign-ups for this the last week of February when I got the Paul’s newsletter, and then a friend’s Instagram Story reminded me a couple days later. Did I pause my rereading of Eldest to read this before its release date of February 28^th? Yes, yes I did. But in my defense: Paul’s Fantasy novels are literal magic. They’re Dungeons and Dragons in novel form and they’re so funny.

And the premise: A retired adventurer now counseling ogres and such—what’s not to love about this? So on this adventure I went!

Buy the Book | Meet the Author

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What I’m looking forward to reading next season:

• Eldest by Christopher Paolini
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Not Nothing by Gayle Forman

Closing question(s):

• How was your Winter?
• Favorite book you read?
• What are you looking forward to reading this Spring?

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See what I read in Fall 2024

Check out all the posts I’ve written on books and reading.