a year in lists

best purchase of the year: tickets to San Diego for Tessa and Jamie’s wedding, leading to the best picture taken of me in 2025, which I shamelessly include below:

Favorite books of the year, in no particular order:

Here In Avalon by Tara Isabella Burton
I read this in a single sitting, while sick in bed with a fever. It’s a novel about the longing for an enchanted life and the different ways people sublimate that desire. It’s also the only book I’ve ever read that really captured my experience of being on the World Race, in a way that is certainly leading to a longer essay eventually.

Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose
Sometimes feminists got it right the first time, ya know. A book that is able to look clearly at the failings of heterosexual, monogamous marriage as an institution while also avoiding the current strain of ‘heterofatalism’ in 2025 marriage writing. Phyllis Rose believes in the possibility of real heterosexual love! ²

The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
A book made for me: an interrogation of the legacy of colonialism in the formation of modern gay identities; a slice of London gay life written and set just before the AIDS pandemic descended; a narrator who is an unrepentant posh asshole; perfect prose. My first Hollinghurst read, and I’m excited to go through his other novels in 2026.

Things In Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
Li, whose other memoir is about her own experience with suicidal ideation, lost both of her sons to suicide within years of each other. This memoir becomes almost a work of moral philosophy, as she tries to parse her sons’ actions and her own, and relates the many ways people failed to meet her in her grief, as well as some of people who did.

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck
Unfortunately, I have an MFA and love a gimmick, so I did think the structure of this linked story collection worked—essentially, each story is paired with another, so that each reveals details about its partner. Set in a patch of New England woods but ranging in time over about 300 years, this was a perfect escape from a North Carolina summer that wouldn’t break. There is one story, about a logging camp in winter, that creeped me out so much I couldn’t sleep after I read it! ³

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny O’Dell
This year I have been thinking deeply about the finite resources of time and attention, and how to steward the time and attention I have. O’Dell argues that to make serious change in our society—to combat climate change, be better neighbors, and be more human—we need to overhaul our relationship to time. A book I will be revisiting.

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
Each story of this book is in a different genre, and yet each story is gripping—there were moments in “The Chaser” that made me want to throw the book across the room. (I did not, because I was on an airplane.) The title story is written entirely in 19th century lumberjack slang, which should not have worked, but really does. ⁴

Beings by Ilana Masad
Combines some of my favorite topics: archives, queer history, and aliens.⁵ A queer archivist is reminded, out of the blue, that they had an encounter with aliens as a child—which they don’t remember at all. This leads them to an investigation into the history of both alien abduction stories in America and into the archives of a queer science fiction writer, with surprising, sweet results.

favorite re-reads:

• Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

• The Secret History by Donna Tartt

• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

• The White Album by Joan Didion

favorite knits:

• This tiny bear: Tsutsu Bear

• This cardigan (a super-interesting construction!): Reluctant Homeschooler

• This scarf (for the guy who transitioned and has weird gender feelings about wearing a little triangular scrap of cashmere but does want a chic way to stay warm in winter; just for example): Vineyard Scarf

a year in moves:

• number of moves: 2

• number of book boxes packed and moved (twice): 20

• number of times I cried from logistics overwhelm: [redacted]

• number of times I decided to finally hire movers: 1

best purchases that weren’t plane tickets:

• a flip phone

• an e-bike⁶

best trip of the year: London, in June, in the middle of a heat wave; a trip so perfectly timed and restorative it felt like a miracle

Links (with recency bias) of some things I’ve read lately (to read while avoiding your family for a second): 

• on Chicago under federal occupation: I Want You to Understand Chicago 

• On fairness in sports: What Does A Great Trans Athlete Deserve? | Defector 

• “Writing indistinguishable from doomscrolling. I don’t want to read that shit!” 

• Report on a Victorian grave symbolism tour in West Virginia. (weirdly, I later confirmed with the author that this is the cemetery where my ancestor, the very first Surbaugh, is buried)

• Someone actually got mean about why all the celebrity plastic surgery sucks: The Anti-Cosmetic Surgery Essay Every Woman Should Read

• Mesha Maren gets a little unhinged with a bot and then has a very interesting conversation about the state of modern publishing.

• We should not, in fact, do a repeat of the 2000’s ultra-thin-celebrity-body “trend,” but it’s here.

If you’ve made it this far—
Merry Christmas and love always,
CJ

1  I have now been to California twice, both times for weddings, and so I will continue to think of southern California as exclusively magical and delicious.

2  Not my lane, but from what I’ve been reading it seems like even a lot of straight women don’t believe in this anymore. Get this to the girlies, I suppose.

3  The title story is not the best story in this collection btw, though I think it is what the new movie is based on? either way I will be seated because I love Paul Mescal

4  Bit of an unintentional logging camp theme for me this year

5  I watched The X-Files at a formative age.

6  I’ve become so bike-pilled…