A few years ago, a colleague recommended I read Silvia Federici for my scholarship. At the time, I tried her Caliban and the Witch, but it was not what I was looking for. Fast forward to now, and I Federici’s Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women is what I was looking for! This past fall, it was finally time. I started learning more specific history about the European witch hunts and started reading more theory about it. Federici’s Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women offers an interesting Marxian feminist lens to the phenomenon, which helps inform my study.
While typical academic texts may not be for everyone, Federici’s Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women may be the exception. I think the book may have a wider readership. The concepts are fairly accessible. And, it’s short!
I didn’t really intend for this to happen, but Heart the Lover by Lily King was my first book of 2026! This book is a plot-driven piece of popular fiction, so it is not my typical go-to book. However, I read so many rave reviews of it that I decided to add it to my list.
My conclusion is that this is an excellent book for the nostalgic English major. In this book, college feels rich and heady, the best it could be. This book probably gets its best reviews from those nostalgic English majors (and I am one!), who recall college warmly. In the book, characters develop, the plot weaves, and meanings deepen.
Because it is so plot-based, literary prose readers may not be deeply interested in this one, no matter how nostalgic they are for days of yore. However, meanings don’t beat you over the head and conclusions are fairly subtle and I find that all to be very likable. For many, this will be an all-time favorite. At the very least, I think most readers will like the book.
As I look back on 2025, what stands out most is the increased flexibility in my schedule. I had more time to move freely, to travel solo, and to hear myself think. I need this quiet time to thrive, and so 2025 was a step in the right direction–with even more schedule flexibility coming around the bend.
Last spring was marked by a bumper crop of new baby Shetland lambs, in so many colors! It was a charming time to shear and sell fleeces and to watch the sheep grazing in lush green pastures. I am so grateful for my little farm, for the renewing cycles of living with livestock and for the peace that the animals bring.
Professionally, I’ll also remember that spring as simultaneously deeply successful and deeply stressful. A promotion process went sideways, and it took months to resolve (thankfully, it did resolve positively in my favor). There was also amazing book news. This is the year that I saw my first book begin to populate on all major bookselling websites. 2026 is shaping up to be another big year for reading and writing, with my first book expected to be published in spring and my second book to follow shortly thereafter in the fall. Not one, but two books in one year?!?! I have to pinch myself. It’s truly a dream come true. And there are more projects in the works too, in addition to the books. Look for more birth work, birth classes, and more writing projects from me! Although all of this takes time, years even, these projects are now well underway.
The summer was spent in pure bliss–I spent my days writing hard toward daily goals and my afternoons reading outside on the porch where the weather was perfect for months on end. The weekends were spent on tiny adventures, and, of course, more work, because I still love my work. It was hands down one of the most productive AND restorative summers I’ve ever had, and I hope to repeat that schedule in years to come.
The highlight of the fall was a solo trip to Louisiana to celebrate 10 life-changing years with my love, and that was truly a transformational trip. I felt my old self again. I felt possibilities opening up. I felt freedom and satisfaction. It was also something I hope to replicate in years to come–finally breaking away from old routines and rigid “to do” lists. To be fair, those routines and “to do” lists have also saved my life over the past seven years, so I’m grateful for those too, and they will certainly continue!
Despite neglect and precarity, in the fall my garden produced a bumper crop of pumpkins and zinnias, along with the usual jungle of colorful hollyhocks, which I love. I also traveled to San Francisco for a work conference in the fall. These conferences usually feel less like work and more like rejuvenation and inspiration too. I returned in time for the avalanche of holiday activities and “to do” lists and I felt deep gratitude for my family and this season and tried to savor the swim lessons and holiday concerts and artwork–all of those unique and fleeting hallmark moments.
The big theme in 2025 was stretching my wings a bit more than previous years allowed, and it felt so good. I felt more myself again, more room to breathe, more room to move. I am looking forward to so much more of that in the years to come. It sometimes seems counter intuitive, but I feel that I have more to give to my loved ones when I also have time to care for myself. In numerology, 2026 is a 1 year for us all and turns into a strong 2 year for me personally, which is supposed to be about connection. I look forward to it!
At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll get through any more books from my tbr pile, so Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh might be my last book of 2025! I found this little gem in a little free library awhile back. Mostly these little libraries are full of throw away titles, but there’s one a few blocks from the house that is carefully curated, and I’ve found several high quality children’s books and decent literary titles over the years.
I took a quick glance at this book and saw that the writing was literary-quality and that the author was female and that it was old–all good signs–so I grabbed it. Here’s why they are good signs: there were not a lot of women writing 100 years ago, so those who were published tended to earn their place, and secondly, this book was a reprint from the original, which was published in 1955. The fact that publishers are still putting effort into keeping the book in publications is a good sign!
The book itself is, perhaps, not the feminist anthem that some hope it would be, but the message is important, if not too class-based, and that message is the fact that a woman should have the opportunity not just to have a room of one’s own, but also to have an annual two-week vacation of one’s own. And I agree!
After reading a chapter, I got curious and looked up the author. I quickly realizing that the author is also the mother from the famed Lindbergh kidnapping! I read on.
The book’s setting is lovely, in rustic a vacation home on a tropical beach, admiring the sea and the seashells it offers to the shore. How idyllic! The insights are not inconsequential and demonstrate an understanding of social class and the social movements of the time, which was before second wave feminism.
This book is worth reading for those interested in tracing feminist thought over the last century because I do think the author’s writing adds to that opus. However, the writer is also cautious and relatively safe with her ideas. I would have loved a deeper sense of place, and a deeper sense of self. Instead, it read more like theory in that regard. As a reader, I found myself wanting more specific personal reflection, one that pointed to a unique person (Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s life on paper was fascinating!), but she reveals none of that and instead mostly sticks to pairing insightful platitudes with observations inspired by nature–in this case on the beach during her two week vacation–which is a worthwhile endeavor.
My research has recently lead me to the learn more about the horrendous witch hunts that took place, especially in Europe, circa 1400-1700s and about the book that was used for those persecutions, the Malleus Maleficarum. That research process lead me to read Erika Mailman’s book, The Witch’s Trinity. The book is not my typical genre, but it was an engaging read that helped inform my understanding of that time in history. Here are a few things that stood out:
Mailman’s scene setting in the book was phenomenal. The consistent tone and language throughout was effective. The details of village life and the beliefs of the time were captivating and really helped set the scene for the terrifying witch hunts of that time.
The book takes place in a village that is experiencing famine, and the reader can easily see how the intensity of starvation completely skews people’s ability to think straight, to be reasonable, or to act with justice. I also recently learned that people with anorexia begin to loose their reasoning abilities due to lack of calories, and that lack of reasoning only exacerbates the problem. So too could I see the role of starvation and suffering in the witch hunt accusations.
Next, in reading this book, and having recently reading through the Malleus Maleficarum, I was struck by just how dangerous these books can be, how dangerous it can be to so completely trust a perspective or an interpretation that disadvantages and even outwardly harms certain individuals. As I read, I thought of all of the good people I know who might be accused just because of their differences. In the end, nobody is except from the dangerous mob mentality that can plague human thinking.
The Witch’s Trinity is an engaging, plot driven book that is expertly told by the author. It’s an interesting read for those interested in this place, time, and circumstances.
Now this was a fascinating book! In Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, Dederer offers monstrous male artists (in every form) and analyzes their audience. As an avid reader, and citizen of the world, I am somewhat interested in the question, especially in the wake of the “me too” movement and subsequent “cancel culture.” Dederer wrestles with the question and avoids simple soundbites and quick solutions.
As a reader, I was interested in our similarities and differences. We both love Woody Allen movies, but she loves Polanski and I can take or leave his work. She has a distaste for Hemingway, and I still think his work is extraordinary. We both love Carver.
However, what was most interesting to me was in the last half of the book, when she turns her lens toward herself: “Am I a Monster?” and “Abandoning Mothers.” As a mother and an intellectual and an author, and, maybe above all else, someone who delights in deep focus, the questions Dederer asks are those that I share.
A question arises, “Do my children matter as much as my writing?” Dederer seems to have a good relationship with her children, seems to have balanced it all in some kind of positive way, but it was not without struggle.
However, for me, this is not the question, but rather an adjacent statement, which is that I matter too. Contemporary motherhood culture has women give of themselves so completely that there is no space for exploration, creation, for the self of the mother/person. To me this is intolerable, and I find myself needing to claw out a space for myself within the rigid expectations of motherhood within my culture, also still while the other thing is true: I love my children and feel deeply grateful for them. Plus, they inspire a greater depth of work in me that I otherwise could have created. And, amid all of these realities, I matter too.
This is the first book I’ve read by Katie Kitamura, and I thought it was great! This is a 2025 release. I rarely read brand new books. In fact, this might be the only 2025 release on my reading list this year.
Audition is a very concept-y book. I assume this is Kitamura’s “thing” because it’s quite unique–this specific type of concept-driven prose, I mean–but can’t say for sure since I haven’t read her other works yet.
The book is, without doubt, very carefully and artfully written. The pacing is like a dictionary, and yet the characters all feel very human and knowable. The book’s takeaways and insights, always shown with subtlety, are profound.
I can’t remember how Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder got on my reading list, but about half way through the book, I realized I was vaguely familiar with Snyder’s work from NPR. I could recall some of difficult human rights stories she reported on, especially surrounding women’s rights abroad.
In that regard, this books nearly reads like two books. First, there is the story of Snyder’s traumatic and tumultuous childhood. Then, there is her life and journey to motherhood, and finally there is the story with Barb at the end. To me these all feel like a cohesive whole.
This is an important book, with a main character that grapples with tough cultural questions, chief among them have to do with women having a right to understand and have control of their own bodies. The painful stories she recounts illustrate these issues and bring to light the ways in which social controls take away basic bodily autonomy.
At times I thought some of the details were strangely specific, without being clear as to why, the book too lengthy. By the end, I was convinced that most of it was necessary. The books is a beautiful and important book. Next, I’d like to see her write more about the middle part, about her life abroad, about motherhood and marriage. About relationships. I hope she does.
I read somewhere that Wendell Berry (and I mostly like Wendell Berry!) was one of Margaret Renkl’s influences, and I could definitely see that as I read, especially in the attention to and elevation of the natural world.
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss is a beautifully written book that does so many important things: it captures the lifespan intimate family relationships, the landscapes that hold them, and the socio cultural aspects of these southern spaces as well.
It is also very clear that Renkl is a trained poet, as this makes the prose beautiful to read. I always love it when writers are able to produce unconventional structures in books AND also get published. Overall–a bittersweet, but life affirming book.
Alexandra Fuller’s book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight offers beautiful writing and insights on living in Africa through the 1970s-90s, amid war and revolution, amid those complicated social dynamics, but also amid the personal dynamics of family, of alcoholism, of mental illness, and parents who offer their children a childhood that is at once amazing and also, probably, negligent.
Fuller’s writing is consistently beautiful throughout. Even in its sometimes stark depictions, the book is infused with a contagious love of Africa. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi have not necessarily been places I’ve ever wanted to visit. I’ve grown up in wilderness areas, and so the great safaris that have drawn others have less pull for me. However, this book made me see some of the other beautiful aspects of the country. After reading the book, I wouldn’t hesitate to go.
This year there’s a new movie out based on the book. From the trailer, it appears that the film follows the book closely. I hope I get a chance to watch it.
SHEREWIN 