“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” –“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
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My top 10 favs of 2025: A year spent reading, watching and listening to stories
Ok, my friends. It’s time to share my annual list of pop culture wonders. Over the past year, I consumed 60+ books, 70+ TV shows, 40+ movies and 40+ podcasts. These were my favorites.
(Note: Not all were released during the past 365 days.)
MY FAVORITE BOOKS – FICTION 
1. “Never Flinch” by Stephen King2. “Dreams and Shadows” by C. Robert Cargill
3. “Any Lich Way” by Michael La Ronn
4. “On the Run” by Kerry J. Donovan
5. “Blood and Treasure” by Ryan Pote
6. “On the Rocks” by Kerry J. Donovan
7. “The Book of Purrs: Everyday Thoughts from Your Feline Friends” by Luis Coelho
8. “Departure 37” by Scott Carson
9. “The Man of Legends” by Kenneth Johnson
10. “The Night Guest” by Hildur Knútsdóttir
(Honorable mentions: “The Blonde Identity” by Ally Carter, “The Society of Unknowable Objects” by Gareth Brown, “A Drop of Corruption” by Robert Jackson Bennett, “When the Moon Hits Your Eye” by John Scalzi, “Too Old For This” by Samantha Downing and “Killers of a Certain Age” by Deanna Raybourn)
MY FAVORITE BOOKS – NONFICTION 
1. “Memorial Days” by Geraldine Brooks2. “Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation by Jamie Thompson
3. “New Hampshire Trivia” by Rebecca Rule
4. “Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection” by John Green
5. “Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way into Our Hearts” by Jeremy Egner
6. “The Carpool Detectives: A True Story of Four Moms, Two Bodies and One Mysterious Cold Case” by Chuck Hogan
7. “18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics” by Bruce Goldfarb
8. “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich
9. “Things to Look Forward To: 52 Large and Small Joys for Today and Every Day by Sophie Blackall
10. “The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story” by Pagan Kennedy
(Honorable mentions: “Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic” by Emma Goldberg, “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: The Mysterious Death of What’s My Line TV Star and Media Icon Dorothy Kilgallen” by Mark Shaw, “My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me” by Caleb Carr, “Lay Them to Rest: On the Road with the Cold Case Investigators Who Identify the Nameless” by Laurah Norton, “A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune” by Noliwe Rooks, “Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing” by Abigail Thomas, “Homer’s Odyssey” by Gwen Cooper, “Bringing Up Beaver: Two Orphaned Beaver Kits, Their Humans, and Our Journey Back to the Wild” by John Aberth and “Joyride: A Memoir” by Susan Orlean)
Overall reading ratio: I read 19,000+ pages. Books were split 53% fiction to 47% nonfiction and 39% female authors to 61% male authors.
MY FAVORITE TV SHOWS 
1. The Great British Baking Show2. The Great British Baking Show: Holidays
3. Ambulance UK
4. The Diplomat
5. Escape to the Country
6. The Repair Shop
7. Stranger Things
8. The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy
9. Celebrity Escape to the Country
10. Critical: Between Life and Death
(Honorable mentions: Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, Mid-Century Modern, Attack on London: Hunting The 7/7 Bombers, Homicide Hunter: Joe Kenda, Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders, See No Evil, Murder in the 21st, Somebody Feed Phil, Last Week With John Oliver, Man on the Inside, The Daily Show, Gardener’s World, Reacher, Ghosts, Elsbeth, Karin Pirie, Lynley, Murderbot and Paradise)
MY FAVORITE MOVIES 
1. Sinners2. The Last Observers
3. Nonnas
4. Flow
5. The Wild Robot
6. Katrina: Come Hell and High Water
7. Grenfell: Uncovered
8. Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror
9. The Twister: Caught in the Storm
10. John Candy: I Like Me
(Honorable mentions: The Lie: The Murder of Grace Millane, Heads of State, The Gorge, The Thursday Murder Club, Deep Cover, The Accountant 2, Mike Birbiglia: The Good Life, The Accountant, Brett Goldstein: The Second Best Night of Your Life and Roy Wood Jr.: Lonely Flowers and Conclave)
MY FAVORITE PODCASTS 
1. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe2. Small Town Dicks
3. Break in the Case
4. Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
5. Cold Case Files
6. Bear Brook
7. Dear Hank & John
8. Eating Out With Eric & Steve
9. Sea of Lies from Uncover
10. Casefile
(Honorable mentions: Law & Order: Criminal Justice System, Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Naked Lunch, Criminal, Smartless, Paul Giamatti’s Chinwag with Stephen Asma, Something Wild, Homegrown NH, New England Legends, American Homicide, The West Wing Weekly, Fresh Air, Radiolab, 99% Invisible, Sidedoor and BBC Woman’s Hour)
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10 years of silent reading
The Silent Book Club launched in 2015. Since then, it has grown from a small idea among friends to a global movement of more than 1 million members and 2,000 chapters in 60+ countries.
To celebrate its first decade, the Silent Book Club published a feature about the 10 longest-running chapters — and one of them was mine. Or, more accurately, the one I launched in Manchester, N.H. The article included an excerpt of an interview I did. Here’s the full account:
“The Silent Book Club chapter in Manchester, N.H., launched on Sept. 6, 2017. I was new to town, and loved the concept. When I noticed there wasn’t a single SBC chapter in the entire state, I decided to start one. I created the Facebook page, booked a table at the local Barnes & Noble and hoped people would show. About six people did, and nearly all of them continue to do so to this day.
“As the Silent Book Club has grown in popularity worldwide, so has our chapter. What started as an initial gathering of eight people (my husband and I, along with six strangers) has blossomed into an online community of over 860 members. Seven other chapters have popped up in the state as well, which thrills me to no end.
“The Manchester, N.H., chapter met at the Barnes & Noble twice a month until the pandemic. At that point, we switched to virtual meetings with the occasional in-person gathering (when it was safe to do so). We’ve continued to meet online so that members who are disabled, immunocompromised, elderly, limited by transportation options or have moved away can remain a part of the group. It’s also proved useful during New England’s winter storms. Why risk going out in the snow and ice when you can stay home by the fire with a book and a cuppa and still connect with your reader friends?
“That said, we held an in-person book swap in May and have another planned this fall; all leftover books were then donated to Little Free Libraries. At the invitation of the Currier Museum of Art, we convened for a special night reading in the museum’s cafe in August. For several years, our chapter also joined forces with the city library to rescue unread books. One of the librarians created lists of fiction and nonfiction books that were about to be culled because they had not been checked out for a few years. Then, members of our group borrowed the titles from these lists and “saved” hundreds of them from being removed from the library’s shelves.
“Thankfully, the core members of our chapter — the ones who show up for nearly every meeting — has remained at a manageable 12. In the years since the group’s formation, these people have become some of my dearest friends. We swap presents during the holidays (books, of course), occasionally meet up for tea, share funny jokes/memes in a private chat and help each other when life becomes unmanageable.”
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The dream of carrots
It can be eaten raw and appreciated for its orange beauty,
but only rabbits see it as a meal.It can be shredded to decorate a bed of greens,
but it’s just one note in a larger salad.It can be squeezed into juice,
but the taste is more appealing with citrus or ginger.It can be roasted, boiled, glazed and pureed,
but still, it is just a side dish.It can be stored for long periods of time,
frozen, pickled or kept in a root cellar,
but when it’s retrieved in winter,
the cook offers appreciation rather than love.This humble, useful veg aspires for greatness,
and I aim to help its dream come true.It must be transformed into cake.
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Honoring those who came before us
Today is National 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion Day, a tribute to the only all-Black, all-female battalion to serve overseas during World War II. As mentioned in last week’s issue of A Bit of Good News, these extraordinary women successfully processed millions of pieces of backlogged mail under grueling conditions, restoring morale to American troops abroad.
A movie about their military experience will soon be in theaters and on Netflix. Here’s the trailer:
To date, nearly 5,000 people have signed a petition to urge the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee and the U.S. Postal Service to feature the 6888th on a Forever Stamp. If you support such an honor, feel free to add your name.
