2025 in some numbers

 Thought I'd bring this one back too, just for kicks. 

• 41 books read or 13,566 pages
• 19 movies watched (none in theaters)
• 741 holes of disc golf in 43ish rounds of disc golf at 15 different courses (2 new to me ones)
• 2 aces at Johnny Roberts on hole 8 short and hole 5 long
• 0 unicycle rides without a walker despite several very short attempts
• 438 minutes of slot car racing, many more minutes of slot car playing
• 4 states visited, none new
• Finally made it to Dollywood! 
• 3 foreign countries visited
• 1 Tour de France finish of a stage watched
• 3 Ultimate tournaments played including a GM 9th place finish at Nationals
• 1 mile run in August in 6:45-- not happy about it
• 100* trips to the gym (a few of those were pool visits, but not many)
• 2 concerts: Ben Folds with the symphony and The Oh Hellos
• 2 trips to the ER in a supporting role

Movies 2025

1. The Wild Robot 

2. Saturday Night

3. Dog Man

4. Back to the Future (rewatch)

5. Inside Out 2 (airplane with F)

6. Ratatouille (rewatch, airplane with F)

7.  Goonies (F gave up after 1 hour)

8. Happy Gilmore 2

9. Unfrosted 

10. Rudy (rewatch)

11. The Woman in Cabin 10

12. The Life List

13. A Minecraft Movie 

14. A Merry Little Ex-mas

15. The Family Holiday

16. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (was on while I mostly ignored it)

17.  A Biltmore Christmas 

18. Freakier Friday

19. Back to the Outback

I enjoyed most of the kids' movies. I was quite taken with A Biltmore Christmas and quite annoyed with A Merry Little Ex-mas. 

Books 2025

 I guess we're still doing this. I'm using The Storygraph to track my reading. I read 41 books this year and quit at least 2. I average a book every 10 days and 76% of my reading this year was fiction, slightly above the 68% of the last 19 years. 

1. Roller Girl

2. The Flawless Skin of Ugly People

3. Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation

4. Dear Edward

5. The Game

6. Wellness

7. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. (re-read)

8. The Wild Robot Escapes

9. Uncommon Type

10. Kingdom Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swingin' Cow Town Chased the Ultimate Comeback

11. The God of Woods

12. The Night We Lost Him

13. Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports-- And Why it Matters

14. Great Big Beautiful Life

15. Rental House

16. The Ministry of Time

17. Less

18. All the Water in the World

19. A Different Kind of Power

20. Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives

21. The Sense of Wonder

22. The Woman in Suite 11

23. The Future

24. 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People: A Groundbreaking Approach to Leading the Next Generation for Managers, Parents, and Educators

25. Life Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Discovering Your Goal and Building The Life You Want

26. The Bullet Swallower

27. Girls They Write Songs About

28. It's Elementary (Mavis Miller #1)

29. The Nineties

30. A Girl Like Us

31. Culpability

32. I Hope This Finds You Well

33. Wild Dark Shore

34. The Flatshare

35. French Braid

36. The Teacher

37. Convenience Store Woman

38. Heart the Lover

39. Wreck (Rocky #2)

40. The Anxious Generation: How The Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causign an Epidemic of Mental Illness

41. Joan is Okay 

My favorite was Dear Edward. Heart the Lover was high on my list too. Less was my least favorite. I also abandoned Spice Gate, The Sellout and a couple others. 

Books 2024

1. In the Lives of Puppets
2. Fates and Furies
3. Old Man's War (#1)
4. She-Hulk (#1)
5. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
6. Scattered Showers: Stories
7. Wayward Son 
8. Any Way the Wind Blows
9. The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (re-read)
10. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
11. A Quantum Love Story
12. Bunyan and Henry; Or, the Beautiful Destiny
13. Weird Parenting Wins: Bathtub Dining, Family Screams, and Other Hacks from the Parenting Trenches
14. Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
15. Funny Story
16. One Perfect Couple
17. Before the Coffee Gets Gold
18. Rules for Becoming a Legend
19. The Library
20. Sub 4:00: Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest Mile
21. How High We Go in the Dark
22. Come and Get It
23. City Limits; Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways
24. Just a Couple Of Days
25. How to Stop Time
26. James
27. Erasure
28. Such a Bad Influence
29. Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
30. The Murder on the Links (Hercule Poirot #2)
31. The Dallergut Dream Department Store
32. The Ghost Brigades (Old Man War #2)
33. Remarkably Bright Creatures
34. Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show that Kicked Its Way into Our Hearts
35. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
36. Tooth and Claw (A Longmire Mystery)
37. Holidays on Ice (re-read?)
38. Tietam Brown

James was my favorite. Remarkably Bright Creatures, How to Stop Time and Come and Get It deserve special mention. The Dallergut Dream Department Store conceit deserves mention all on its own. I didn't love the story, but the idea still floats through my thoughts. 

Movies 2024

1. Gran Turismo
2. The Family Plan
3. Up (re-watch with F)
4. Break Point
5. Ford vs. Ferrari
6. The Love Bug (re-watch with F)
7. Muppets Take Manhattan (re-watch with F)
8. The Instigators
9. Curry: Underrated 
10. Twist 
11. Next Goal Wins 
12.  Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
13. The Fall Guy
14. IF (tears)
15. American Fiction 
16. Herbie Goes Bananas
17. The Long Game (airplane)
18. Hot Frosty 
19. Our Little Secret
20. Christmas in Notting Hill
21. Merry Gentleman

A few notes: Car movies are sports movies though Herbie Goes Bananas could have used more racing. I watched American Fiction after reading "Erasure" and the book was better. IF wasn't that great, but it had the themes to make me weep. I'm not that happy with this year's Christmas movies though I'm not sure what I would have done differently. Happy New Year. 

Books 2023

1. Rebecca

2. Anvils, Mallets, and Dynamite: The Unauthorized Biography of Looney Tunes

3. The Captain and The Glory

4. This Time Tomorrow

5. Six Years (accidental re-read of a Harlan Coben)

7. Dark Music

8. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within

9. Our Missing Hearts

10. The Cartographers

11. The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)

12. Real Life (Taylor Brandon)

13. The Amateur Marriage

14. The Dictionary of Lost Words

15. Marple: Twelve New Mysteries

16. K-Pop Revolution (K-Pop Confidential #2)

17. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

18. I Have Some Questions for You

19. Dan versus Nature

20. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

21. To Be Taught, If Fortunate

22. The Verifiers

23. A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World

24. Happy Place

25. The Sense of an Ending

26. The Bolt Supremacy: Inside Jamaica's Sprint Factory

27. The Mythmakers

28. Tom Lake

29. Delicious!

30. The Girl in the Eagle's Talons (Millennium #7)

31. America the Beautiful? One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Roads Most Traveled

32. The Mysteries Affairs at Styles (Hercule Poirot #1)

33. Translating Myself and Others

34. Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades

35. Horse

Gave up: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and Lonesome Traveler

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow was my favorite book of the year and the one I recommended most. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Delicious! and Horse (possible recency bias) are all high on my list of enjoyable reads as well. There were a number that I struggled through this year. I wanted to like The Cartographers so much more than I did. Gator Country was a mess. The Bolt Supremacy didn't do it for me and neither did Translating Myself and Others. 

I have the sense that I could do better at picking books that I'd like before I start reading them, but as I'm making this list I really don't see that many that I could have avoided. Back to the stacks! 

Movies 2023

1. Don't Worry, Darling

2. Ticket to Paradise

3. Champions

4. DC League of Super Pets (theater!)

5. Flamin' Hot

6.Trolls: World Tour (theater)

7. Borg vs. McEnroe

8. Barbie (theater)

9. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

10. meet cute

11. Theater Camp

12. On the Rocks

13. A Turtle's Tale (kinda)

14. Elemental

15. AIR

16. Turkey Bowl

17. Wizards of Waverly Place The Movie

18. Hustle

19. Spirited

20. (most of) Home Alone

I made my first visit to the theater since January of 2020. I enjoyed it, even for the kid's movies. It has become a challenge to watch a movie, especially in one sitting. Barbie was my favorite. A Turtle's Tale is an unbelievably bad cartoon. 

Books 2022

 1. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

2. Please Ignore Vera Dietz

3. Black Buck

4. Ready Player Two

5. The President's Daughter

6. Pumpkinheads

7. A Season of Daring Greatly

8. The Last Thing He Told Me

9. The Midnight Library

10. Jukebox

11. Hell of a Book

12. Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend: Notes from the Other Side of the Fist Bump

13. And Now She's Gone

14. Pashmina

15. Friendshipping: The Art of Finding Friends, Being Friends, and Keeping Friends

16. The Flood Girls

17. The Glass Hotel

18. That Summer

19. We Are the Brennans

20. The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

21. The Husbands

22. Educated

23. The Violin Conspiracy

24. The New One: Painfully True Stories of a Reluctant Dad

25. Frankly in Love

26. Troubled Blood 

27. The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There

28. The 6:20 Man

29. The Pull of the Stars

30. A Key to Treehouse Living

31. American Spy

32. The Borrower

33. The Every

34. The Last White Man

35. Hello, Cruel Heart

36. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

37. The Art of Fielding (re-read)

38. These Precious Days: Essays

39. K-pop Confidential

40. A Psalm for the Wild-Built

41. Writers & Lovers

42. Demon Copperhead

43. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

44. Black Cake

Not A Carnival of Snackery, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Books that made me want to be in a book club so we could talk about good stuff:  Writers & Lovers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Frankly in Love

It was a bit of a rough year for some of my favorite authors as Demon Copperhead, The Last White Man, The Every and Ready Player Two weren't nearly as enjoyable as I'd hoped.

Book I have that I'd most like to loan you: A Key to Treehouse Living

Movies 2022

 

1. Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

2. The Starling

3. Together, Together

4. Cars

5. Palm Springs 

6. Ingrid Goes West

7. Table 19

8. Encanto

9. Senior Year

10. Sing 2

11. Licorice Pizza (1 hour, then quit)

12. It had to be you

13. Rio

14. The Lost City

15. Downton Abbey: A New Era

16. Rosaline

17. WEIRD 

18. Where the Crawdads Sing

19. Falling for Christmas

20. Christmas at the Drive-in 

21. Holiday in Santa Fe

22. Merry Kiss Cam

23. Love Actually (I guess)

24. The Grinch

25. A not so merry Christmas (en espanol)

26. Rumble

Palm Springs was my favorite. Licorice Pizza was the worst. Another year without a visit to the theater. 

Books 2021

1. Genuine Fraud

2. The Stranger Diaries

3. Piranesi

4. Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Lanugage

5. How to be an Antiracist

6. The New Ships

7. Fleishman is in Trouble

8. Endless Night

9. All Our Wrong Todays

10. Snap

11. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

12. Wonderful Feels Like This

13. Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

14. The Starless Sea

15. Art Matters

16. 88 Names

17. American Delirium

18. Neon in Daylight

19. The Partner (re-read)

20. Oona Out of Order

21. The Boy From the Woods

22. The Hundred-Year House

23. Such a Fun Age

24. Where the Crawdads Sing

25. The Gone World

26. The Ballads of Songbirds Snakes

27. This Was Not the Plan

28.  Utopia Avenue

29. Leave the World Behind

30. The Weather Man: A Limitless Pursuit of Happiness

31. The Silent Patient

32. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao

33. Just Like You

34. An Object of Beauty (re-read to my own surprise)

35. The Book Thief (re-read)

36. Charming as a Verb

37. Beacon 23

38. Lanterne Rouge: The Last Man in the Tour de France

39. What Do You Say? How to Talk With Kids to Build Stress Tolerance, Motivation, and a Happy Home

40. The Plot

41. The Guncle

42. Evvie Drake Starts Over

43. Project Hail Mary

44. A Caribbean Mystery

45. The Throwback Special

46. The Very Nice Box

47. The Other Black Girl

48. Beautiful World, Where Are You

49. Death on the Nile

I like reading. Utopia blew me away, but so many of these were fun to read and I'd happily recommend them including The Guncle, Project Hail Mary, Charming as a Verb, Where the Crawdads Sing, Such a Fun Age, Oona Out of Order, The Starless Sea, All Our Wrong Todays, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone...

Movies 2021

1. The Crooked House

2. Herbie: Fully Loaded (re-watch)

3. Just My Luck

4. Gorgeous

5. The Merger

6. Yesterday

7. Tony Parker: The Final Shot

8. Downton Abbey: The Motion Picture

9. 12 Monkeys (Re-watch) 

10. To All The Boys Always and Forever

11. Eagle vs. Shark

12. Bronze

13. Bandits

14. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

15. Wind River

16. Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope (re-watch)

17. What we do in the shadows

18. Worth

19. Dream Horse

20. Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar

21. 12 Mighty Orphans

22. Love Hard

23. A Castle for Christmas

24. Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas

25. Love Actually (sort of)

26. Happiest Christmas

27. Harold and Kumar Christmas

28. Single All The Way

29. The Good Dinosaur 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is my recommendation and "bad" Christmas movies are getting pretty good. First year recorded that I never made it to the theater. Also, I wonder if I forgot to include something from that long plane ride. 

Books 2020

 1. The Tragedy of Arthur

2. Penguins Stopped Play

3. Lay Down Your Weary Tune

4. Murder on the Orient Express

5. The Lager Queen of Minnesota

6. Lily and the Octopus

7. Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie

8. The Summer that Melted Everything

9. The Murder at the Vicarage

10. They Do It With Mirrors

11. Comanche Moon

12. Murder in Mesopotamia

13. Five Little Pigs

14. Streets of Laredo

15. Hickory Dickory Dock

16. Ghosted

17. The Great Believers

18. The Dreamers

19. As If Running On Air: The Journals of Jack Lovelock

20. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

21. An Englishman in Paris: L'Education Continentale

22. The Field Guide to the North American Teenager

23. One Two Buckle My Shoe

24. American Pop

25. Between The World and Me

26. The Hand on the Wall

27. The Age of Magic

28. A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

29. The Office: The Untold Story of Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History

30. The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

31. Almost Midnight

32. Peril at End House

33. The Parade

34. Baby

35. Happy Campers: 9 Summer Camp Secrets for Raising Kids Who Become Thriving Adults

36. Telex from Cuba

37. A Good Neighborhood

38. The Death of Truth

39. The Banker's Wife

40. More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

41. When All is Said

42. Fame Adjacent

43. The Art of Noticing: Rediscover What Really Matters to You

44. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

45. Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry

46. Vexation Lullaby

47. We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy

48. One by One

49. Tell the Wolves I'm Home

50. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

51. Death in the Clouds

52. The Bridge: How the Roeblings Connected Brooklyn to New York

53. Normal People

54. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

55. Tarnished Are With Stars

56. Qualityland

57. In Other Lands

58. The Listerdale Mystery

59. 4:50 from Paddington

60. The Dutch House

None were worse than The Tragedy of Arthur though remembering Baby does not make me pleased. 

There were some good ones this year. The discovery of Agatha Christie was a joy and I read 12 of her books and have plans to read more. Overall, Tell the Wolves I'm Home was my favorite, but The Dutch House, Normal People, and The Great Believers were all tales well told. I also fondly recall The Lager Queen of Minnesota as I review this list. That's the most books I've read since 2015, though I think Christie helped on that front too. 

Movies 2020

1. Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (theater)
2. Marriage Story
3. Journey 2: Mysterious Island (sorta)
4. We are Marshall (re-watch)
5. To all the boys 2: P.S. I still love you
6. Annie (2014)
7. Acceptance (re-watch)
8. Mean Girls (re-watch)
9. Spenser Confidential
10. Zombieland (re-watch)
LOCKDOWN
11. The Big Sick
12. Shawshank Redemption (re-watch in 3 parts)
13. Lady Bird
14. Madagascar (re-watch and first family movie and F's first in one sitting)
Post Lockdown
15. Kimmy Schmidt
16. World War Z (re-watch)
17. All The Freckles in the World
18. The Half of it
19. Focus (re-watch)
20. Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa
21. 13th (tears)
22. BlacKkKlansman
23. Back to the Future (re-watch)
24. The Lovebirds
25. Burlesque
26. Night School
27. Train to Busan (tears)
28. Back to the Future II (re-watch)
29. The Wrong Missy
30. Work it
31. Eurovision
32. Bad Moms Christmas
33. V for Vendetta (re-watch)
34. Love, guaranteed
35. Freaks, you're one of us
36. A Star is Born
37. The F Word (re-watch, called What if?)
38. Late Night
39. Despicable Me
40. Notting Hill (re-watch)
41. Enola Holmes
42. The Lake House (re-watch)
43. Music & Lyrics (re-watch)
44. Hubie Halloween
45. On the Basis of Sex
46. Holidate
47. A New York Christmas Wedding
48. High Flying Bird
49. The Old Man With A Gun
50. Let it Snow
51. California Christmas

I watched one movie in the theater and 15 movies I'd seen previously. Train to Busan was the biggest surprise. On the Basis of Sex got me pretty pumped up. Shawshank Redemption felt like a good choice for Lockdown.