Fifteen
Currently reading:
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
Out There Screaming, edited by Jordan Peele
An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo
Books finished this week: 2
★★★★☆
Where this book came from: Picked up at Astoria Bookshop before a Reading Rhythms event in December.
Why this book: It came highly recommended by Sabrina (hi, Sabrina!).
Thoughts: As a note to future!Katie, I finished this one in December, in the last few days of the year, so this is technically still a 2025 read (and is thus included in the count for last year). To be completely honest, though I trust Sabrina’s recommendations, once I looked up what this one was about, I really didn’t think it was for me. I figured I’d add it as a want-to-read on Goodreads and then forget about it. But during a break at the event, they encouraged us to shop, and I figured, one, this is a signed copy, so it might be nice to have, and, two, I’d be supporting a new-to-me indie, so I might as well go for it. And I’m glad I did, overall! The single sentence that makes up the novel worked for me as the metaphor it was meant to be, that relentless, ongoing slog of an awful, useless war. I docked a star because it did get a little too flowery and dense for my tastes at some points. But I was happy to follow Bagger into no man’s land.
★★★★☆
Where this book came from: Old reliable, ThriftBooks.
Why this book: I signed up for a reading group because I had genuinely never heard of this book and it sounded like a great book to dig into with other (smarter) people.
Thoughts: This was my last official book of 2025, and I was glad to close out the year with this! I read the bulk of it in one day, and not just because it’s a short novel. I’m not ashamed to say that I was hooked, for better or worse. Are there plenty of outdated norms and mores represented here? Yes, of course. But was I pleasantly surprised by the blatant feminist and largely progressive stance Gilman took? Also yes! I recommend this one, and I look forward to discussing it with the group soon.
Library updates:
I was so proud of myself for going to Book Club on Friday morning and making it out a couple hours later without even looking at the books. It really seemed like 2026 was off to a great start, that I was turning over a new leaf! And then . . . well, you’ll see below.
Nothing too exciting to report this week otherwise. I got back to Queens last Sunday afternoon after the holidays, did laundry Monday, did absolutely nothing Tuesday, and then utterly failed in my objective of staying up reading until sunrise to ring in the new year (I blame 1am spaghetti alfredo, my very comfy couch, and at least one too many manhattans). All that to say, it’s mostly been a quiet, restful start to 2026, which I think was needed. I hope you’ve also gotten what you needed in these first four days of the new year, and that you’ve started off the way you intend to live the next twelve months.
Closing thoughts:
Rest when you need it, even if it means missing that one particular sunrise. You’ll see another.
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 190
(Total books added to the Moratorium Library: 405)
Okay, so, remember how on Wednesday, as part of my year-end wrap-up, I said that one of my 2026 goals was to buy only twenty-five books?
Well, I hope I only come across ten more I like this year, because the Book Barn wrecked me this weekend.
(I also got these comics, but I’m not counting these toward the overall count because they aren’t books, SO THERE.)
(Is 2026 the year of my comics renaissance? 👀)
