"It's the End of the World as We Know It...."

…And frankly, I’ve been better. I feel as though I’ve been keeping my head down and praying for daylight since mid-January. I signed up for Substack sometime in February, thinking that I’d add some sort of pithy notes about life in America as things continued to devolve. What this looked like in reality? I opened that page approximately every two weeks for the better part of a year, and didn’t write a damn thing. 

So what did I do instead? I doom scrolled. A lot. I relocated to Alabama with my tiny dog in the name of love. I learned to cohabit with another human after honestly thinking that would never happen again. I got a job with a national law firm. I protested. I had the honor of reading of two dear friend’s manuscripts and giving them some edits. I worked on developing my musical ear (a necessity if you live with a musician). I got to spend some time with my nephew.

And I firmly retreated into the written word. I read 95 books this year, mostly about history and income inequality and politics. I suppose this was my way of trying to understand what is happening around me. All this reading made me realize that’s what I’ve been missing this year. I used to talk to people about books. I used to write about what I’d read. My creative writing has always been influenced by what I was reading. This year, I read books that gave me important context, but then I didn’t really talk to anyone about what I’d read. I didn’t write about what I’d written. And while I started a very dystopian story mid-year, I felt nearly paralyzed by all the possible trajectories my story could take, given everything I was learning. 

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I got out of that game years ago. But I have set myself a goal for 2026: I am going to read 25 “classics.” Things I read nearly 30 years ago, or never got around to at all. Then, if you’re still at all interested after reading this post, I’m going to write about what I’m reading. I’m sure there will be parallels to be drawn, and applications to be made to life today. I came up with my list this afternoon, and put it on the refrigerator. I’ll post it up here on January 1. I know that I’ll end up reading more than these 25 books that I picked, and I’ll write about those, as well. 

Meanwhile, I will leave you with the ten books that I found most impactful in 2025 (in no particular order):

• Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
• Number Go Up by Zeke Faux
• Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America by Bridget Read
• It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
• The Haves and Have-Yachts by Evan Osnos
• Sister, Sinner by Claire Hoffman
• Bad Company by Megan Greenwell
• Fools on the Hill by Dana Milbank
• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow
• Murderland by Caroline Fraser