November 2025 Reading

Another month is over.  I read 6 books in November.

The total is a little low because the books I want to listen to via Libby at the library are on hold with waits.  I listened to one book, The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander this month.  It is a favorite of mine.  I’ve read it multiple times, read it out loud to my kids, and now I’ve listened to it as well.  I am currently waiting for the next book in the series to get to me from the library.

 

I mentioned last month that it is frustrating when not all the books in a series have audiobooks.  I read Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken because I couldn’t listen to it.  It’s a fun book and I’m glad I now own it, but I wish I could have listened.  It is a book full of plots and skullduggery and hijinks.  Highly recommend.

 

The new Louise Penny book, The Black Wolf, is good.  Penny’s work has shifted away from cozy murders set in Three Pines and toward high-stakes political thrillers.  She addresses the feelings of her readers in her afterward, saying that she understands that many of us just want to hang out in Three Pines, but that as a writer she needs to grow and stretch rather than write the same book over and over.  I do like the cozier murders better, but I will continue to buy and read as she writes.  This one gets bonus points from me because it is the Year of Water and water plays a central role in the plot (don’t think this counts as a spoiler).

 

Speaking of Year of Water, I read two nonfiction books in that category.  The first was a re-read, Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water.  I remembered it being better than it was, but I think this just means I’ve grown since I last read it.  The book is, in theory, a discussion of the intersection between faith and art.  Mostly it is about being a good artist, which is about being authentic to one’s creative self.  That requires a fair amount of faith, whether conventional or not.  In any case, it was a pleasant few hours of hanging out with a smart person, even if we didn’t always agree.

 

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s book, Theory of Water, on the other hand, was a good stretch for my mind.  Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg thinking is different than my own.  I am enriched by the indigenous perspective on pretty much everything.  The European consumer culture is not serving most of us and we need to think better.  Turning to those who understood from the beginning that there was a better way seems plain smart, as long as white folks can manage to let our indigenous cousins take the lead.  White folks have some work to do to repair relationships and restore what we have usurped.  It was a privilege to learn from Simpson.

 

Finally, my book group is reading My Friends by Fredrik Backman.  I made it one week at book group pace and then gave up and read the rest of the book.  It is both heartwarming and heartbreaking.  Better, it’s funny at the same time.  There are characters to love, deep thoughts about art, fart jokes, abiding friendships, and spray paint adventures.  Read it.

 

November total:  6

Fall to date:  25

2025 year to date:  75.5