What I’m Reading

December 2025

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1. The Great Believers

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SUMMARY

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

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MY REVIEW:

In my own life, I feel there are two types of important historical events: those I lived through, and those I understood through a secondary source, often book or movie. I wasn’t there when JFK was shot, but I know exactly where I was when 9/11 happened. I can only learn about the Vietnam protests or read heartbreaking novels about the Holocaust, but I do have a memory of watching the Challenger explode on a TV in my elementary classroom. While the AIDS epidemic was technically a part of my childhood, I have very little memory of it IRL (as kids these days would say). I know Magic Johnson shocked the world when he confessed he was HIV+, but no one I knew in my life or my community was directly impacted by it.

Makkai writes a beautiful story of what it might have been like to live the life of a gay man in the 1980s. The fear, the stigmatism, the temporary relief of a negative test result, the inevitable death sentence of a positive test result. But it’s also a story of community as family, of the deep love of friendship. She throws in a side story about art and a “present day” tale set in Paris, which make the overall novel even lovelier.

Makkai doesn’t shy away from describing the gay life, so that might disinterest some, but her retelling of this decade in American history feels like an important one that should be told.

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2. Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

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SUMMARY

Ever since a man was found dead in Vera’s teahouse, life has been good. For Vera that is. She’s surrounded by loved ones, her shop is bustling, and best of all, her son, Tilly, has a girlfriend! All thanks to Vera, because Tilly’s girlfriend is none other than Officer Selena Gray. The very same Officer Gray that she had harassed while investigating the teahouse murder. Still, Vera wishes more dead bodies would pop up in her shop, but one mustn’t be ungrateful, even if one is slightly…bored.

Then Vera comes across a distressed young woman who is obviously in need of her kindly guidance. The young woman is looking for a missing friend. Fortunately, while cat-sitting at Tilly and Selena’s, Vera finds a treasure Selena’s briefcase. Inside is a file about the death of an enigmatic influencer—who also happens to be the friend that the young woman was looking for.

Online, Xander had it a parade of private jets, fabulous parties with socialites, and a burgeoning career as a social media influencer. The only problem is, after his body is fished out of Mission Bay, the police can’t seem to actually identify him. Who is Xander Lin? Nobody knows. Every contact is a dead end. Everybody claims not to know him, not even his parents.

Vera is determined to solve Xander’s murder. After all, doing so would surely be a big favor to Selena, and there is nothing she wouldn’t do for her future daughter-in-law.

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MY REVIEW

After reading the original Vera Wong book back in March, I was quite excited to read more about the unique and loveable character that is Vera. She’s nosy, she cares deeply about others, and she’s an amazing cook.

Unfortunately, the very characteristics I loved about her in the first book became wearisome in the second book. The basis of the plot of both books is the same: someone is dead and Vera takes it upon herself to find the murderer. It was cute and laughable in the first book, but it became overused and annoying in the second book. Vera’s son is dating a police officer who continually tells Vera to stop poking her nose into police business, and I as a reader couldn’t agree more. Additionally, the crime revealed at the end of the book was much darker than I would have expected from a novel which generally likes to keep things light and humorous.

Vera Wong’s first book is entertaining, but I would have to suggest passing on the second book.

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3. Small Things Like These

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SUMMARY

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

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MY REVIEW

I believe this is exactly what the holiday season needs: a short novella that reminds its readers of the goodness of humanity. Even though this book was published back in 2021, I feel that it became “the” book to read this year, I was deep in the line of holds at the library, so imagine my excitement when I learned that this book was available for me during the month of December!

It’s a quick read because of its short length, but the reader cannot help but slow down, take in all that Keegan has to offer. Through her main character Furlong, she challenges her readers, asking “was there any point in being alive without helping one another?” It is my hope that at Christmas and every other time of the year, our answer is a resounding “no.”

The Washington Post writes in its review: “A classic…get two copies: one to keep, one to give.” I wholeheartedly agree.

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4. How to Winter

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SUMMARY

Kari Leibowitz moved above the Arctic Circle – where the sun doesn’t rise for two months each winter –expecting to research the season’s negative effects on mental health, only to find that inhabitants actually looked forward to it with delight and enthusiasm. Leibowitz has since travelled to places on earth with some of the coldest, darkest, longest and most intense winters, and discovered the power of “wintertime mindset”— viewing the season as full of opportunity and wonder. Impactful strategies for cultivating this wintertime mindset can teach us not just about braving the gray, cold months of the year, but also the darker and more difficult seasons of life.

Inspired by cutting-edge psychological and behavioral science research as well as cultures worldwide that find warmth and joy in winter’s extremes, How to Winter provides readers with concrete tools for making winter wonderful wherever they live and harnessing the power of small mindset changes with big impact to help readers embrace every season of life.

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MY REVIEW

This book was recommended by a trusted reader (thanks Shelly!) last winter but I didn’t get around to it until now. I’m such a fiction lover, I don’t read nonfiction as much as I should. And then I went ahead and downloaded it as an audio book, something I almost never do. But I could not face another winter with my self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder. I was already dreading the cloudy, dreary, neverending month of January; when I need an excuse to avoid tasks I don’t want to do, I instead get on the internet and research warm, tropical places where I might want to retire.

In short, this book was a game changer for me. It might go down as one of the most impactful nonfiction books I’ve ever read. It’s akin to Mindset by Carol Zweck. Leibowitz builds her ethos by living for one year in the arctic; she defends wintertime and then explains how our experience with winter is mostly based upon our mindset and attitude toward it. Instead of fighting it, we should find ways to celebrate and enjoy cold temperatures, snow and darker days.

She poses this question in the novel: “What would it take to make your fall in love with winter?” For me, it only took listening to the first chapter for me to begin my list of things I enjoy about the winter: Christmas lights, soups, cozy clothing, fireplaces, candles, puzzles, going to dinner in heated outdoor spaces. She argues that we need to specify things that are only a part of winter; that way, we can actually begin to look forward to this season. And maybe it’s because I’m just coming off my gratitude journal, but I’m aware that if you look for it, you will find it. So I’m trying to appreciate how the light reflects off the snow at night, how the crisp, cold air fills my lungs, how cozy I feel inside snuggled under a blanket with a mug of hot tea.

And then, a few pages from the end, Leibowitz smacks the reader between the eyes: “Rethinking our relationship to winter is practice imagining what could be instead of what is…we begin to wonder what else we could reimagine, what else could be different.”

I’m accepting the challenge. I’m trying to experience winter with a different mindset, with positive language, with celebrating season-special activities and rituals.

This book gets two thumbs up, way up for me. I’d even recommend you download the book and listen to it while enjoying a few good winter walks.

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5. The Secret Christmas Library

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SUMMARY:

Mirren Sutherland stumbled into a career as an antiquarian book hunter after finding a priceless antique book in her great aunt’s attic. Now, as Christmas approaches, she’s been hired by Jamie McPherson, the surprisingly young and handsome laird of a Highland clan whose ancestral holdings include a vast crumbling castle. Family lore suggests that the McPherson family’s collection includes a rare book so valuable that it could save the entire estate—if they only knew where it was. Jamie needs Mirren to help him track down this treasure, which he believes is hidden in his own home.

But on the train to the Highlands, Mirren runs into rival book hunter Theo Palliser, and instantly knows that it’s not a chance meeting. She’s all too familiar with Theo’s good looks and smooth talk, and his uncanny ability to appear whenever there’s a treasure that needs locating.

Almost as soon as Mirren and Theo arrive at the castle, a deep snow blankets the Highlands, cutting off the outside world. Stuck inside, the three of them plot their search as the wind whistles outside. Mirren knows that Jamie’s grandfather, the castle’s most recent laird, had been a book collector, a hoarder, and a great lover of treasure hunts. Now they must unpuzzle his clues, discovering the secrets of the house—forming and breaking alliances in a race against time.

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MY REVIEW:

If I can help it, I try to read one Jenny Colgan novel every December. I’m not one of those naturally festive, December-cheery people, so I need to find outside forces that make me appreciate the holiday season more. This year it was a weekend getaway to Chicago in December (which was frigidly cold but full of lights and holiday festivity) and a purchased copy of Jenny Colgan’s new book. I can’t exactly explain what she does for me, but I might describe her as my version of a December beach read. Her plots are simple, her characters are enjoyable, all of them take place in the UK, and all novels I have read take place around Christmastime. Her novels are like a mug of a favorite warm beverage; sippable, and they leave you feeling warm and cozy on the inside.

The holidays were so hectic this year I didn’t finish The Secret Christmas Library until New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this one was not my favorite. I wasn’t enraptured with this plot and didn’t fall head-over-heels in love with her characters as I normally do. I was entertained, but I wanted more. And her 2-3 pages of a fully descriptive bedroom scene just didn’t fit on par with her normally PG novels.

Next December, I strongly recommend reading a Jenny Colgan novel (or two). Just maybe not The Secret Christmas Library.

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