Category Archives: Book Review

2025 Reading in Review – Stats

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Time for some stats! I read 76 books in 2025! For total of 25,000 pages! That was a lot of pages turned. Most of my reading was paperback, so truly pages turned.

The most popular book I read was It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. 7 million people have it shelved on Goodreads.

The least shelved book was Risk: A Life Saved By the River by Susan Norman. Only 57 people have shelved it. I actually really enjoyed it, and I would recommend it. I heard about from The Ready State podcast. It is a true story of Susan (Sue )’s life and how rivers kayaking was a huge part of her life success and grounding.

comfort crisis book cover

2025 Reading in Review – First 75 Days

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At the beginning of 2025, I completed the 75 Hard Challenge, which required reading at least 10 pages of a non-fiction book each day. This wasn’t a challenge for me as sometimes I read my 10 pages (really a chapter or two) and then read a book for pleasure. And honestly, I read a fair amount of non-fiction so it was more about being intentional during the 75 days. I read a total of 16 books 7 of which were non-fiction. The books I read included:

  1. HWPO: Hard Work Pays Off: A Strength Training Book by Mat Fraer
  2. A Runner’s High: My Life in Motion by Dean Karnazes
  3. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
  4. The Heart is the Strongest Muscle by Tia Toomey
  5. Chasing Excellence: A Story About Building the World’s Fittest Athletes by Ben Bergeron
  6. Resilient: The Untold Story of CrossFit’s Greatest Comeback by Brooke Wells
  7. Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan
  8. The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter (finished the day after 75 Hard ended)

I also started the year off reading Along Came a Spider. This is the first novel in James Patterson’s Alex Cross series. I don’t know how it took this long to learn about Alex Cross, but my sister recommended the show Cross on Amazon Prime and that got me hooked! I made it through the first 10 books of the soon to be 37 books in the series. They are relatively quick reads and I enjoy them even if they aren’t high literature!

Salvage the Bones is a book you’ve probably not heard of but I’d recommend. The story is set over 2 weeks as a hurricane approaches and the realities of coming of age in a high poverty area of Mississippi. A variety of twists and turns will leave you feeling all the different emotions.

Of the non-fiction books I read during 75 Hard I would highly recommend The Comfort Crisis.

The River We Remember Cover

2025 Reading in Review – Library Challenge

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I read a lot of books this year. Not as many as some people, but I’ve read 76 books so far this year (with 3 days left). Fortunately, most of them came from the library. I actually checked out 69 books from the library, but a few were books for work (elementary-aged books), and several were cookbooks.

Randomly, at the start of the year, I saw a blog post from the Hennepin County Library of their most checked out books of 2024. I decided I wanted to read all of them!! The list was Top 10 books and Top 10 e-book so there was some overlap, resulting in only needing to read 14 books. I really enjoyed reading outside some of my typical genres, and surprisingly, I hadn’t read any of them yet, though we did have some at home. This project also required doing some pre-reading because you can’t just randomly jump into a series!

  1. The River We Remember: A Novel by William Kent Krueger (also #5 ebook)
  2. The Women by Kristin Hannah (also #1 ebook)
  3. Tom Lake: A Novel by Ann Patchett (also #3 ebook)
  4. Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel by Bonnie Garmus (also #9 ebook)
  5. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
  6. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
  7. Demon Copperhead: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver
  8. The Exchange: After the Firm by John Grisham (also #10 ebook)
  9. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin
  10. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (also #6 ebook)
  11. Don’t Believe It by Charlie Donlea
  12. It Starts With Us: A Novel by Colleen Hoover
  13. Funny Story by Emily Henry
  14. Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez

It is hard to recommend only one of these since they were all so good!! I was surprised that I got into Fourth Wing (read the whole series and anxiously awaiting the next book). Demon Copperhead was powerful in how relatable it is and also the fact that Kingsolver donated proceeds to support the community she wrote about. Okay, fine I’ll go with Lessons in Chemistry with its slightly meta format and engaging story about feminism.

More bookish thoughts to come!

75 Hard – Read

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I love reading. Last year I read over 60 books. I always try to read a mixture of genres, authors, etc so I end up reading quite a bit of non-fiction books. So the idea of reading 10 pages daily of non-fiction wasn’t completely outlandish!

Though some days it would’ve been easier not to read. Or it would’ve been more enjoyable to spend my reading time caught up in a fictional world. I was able to get this part done relatively easily.

At the beginning of the challenge I would read my 10 pages and stop. At some point I realized that I could read more than that and actually needed to so that I could keep up with returning the books to the library on time! 

By the end of my 75 days I’ve finished 16 books total and finished my 17th on the 76th day. And 7 of those were non-fiction, finishing the 8th the day after. I’m also about half way through a big 700 page book too.

I’ll follow up with a list of my non-fiction books soon.

Day 64

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The storm was about as bad as expected! We ended up with about 8 inches of wet heavy snow! And a snow day off from school due to the ice and timing of the storm!

By the afternoon it was sunny, though still very windy! And a great afternoon to walk or sled! The wind made a lot of cool designs in the snow! I realized about half way through my walk that I should’ve counted some of my shoveling towards my 2nd workout! And that I could’ve used snow shoes to make the walk a little different!

With the snow day I also finished my next book. Adrift, is the story about a sailor whose boat sank in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He was able to make into his his life boat and floated for 76 days until finally being saved.

The book chronicles his journey and the many peaks and valleys throughout. Including multiple equipment failures, catching fish, and getting fresh water.

The book was part of Go Ruck’s Tribe n Training group. But really anyone doing 75 Hard should read it! The connection of the number of days is real. A few times I thought about parallels to his experience and mine. Though ultimately 75 Hard is much easier!