December Reading Wrap Up
And then we were at the end of the year! I’m proud of all I’ve achieved in 2025. I started this website and blog in January. Then there was the Ace Book Club Stories Project in April which has brought several people to our cosy book club in the months since, and was enormous fun to put together. 2025 was also my first year in a romantic relationship which continues to be wonderful. I also strengthen some platonic connections, expanded my work contributions at the library, and read more books than ever in one year!
December has also been eventful in itself. The Christmas break brought much joy. I travelled the country to see everyone and got to see some fab reactions to the gifts I brought people (often my favourite part).
My solo adventure this month was to Southwark Playhouse theatre (Borough) to see Cockfosters, a romcom about two people forming a connection on the Piccadilly Line. Although mocking the tube and its passengers, it was clearly put together by creatives who love the London Underground. I was pulled into a minor role of audience participation (pre-show) which got me giggling, and I had a blast of an afternoon. At the time of writing, the show is still on for another few days (and I believe it will come back at some point too). It’s funny and the ending is so sweet – I recommend!
.
Tales of London Town by Joan Aiken ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is a collection of children's short stories written by Joan Aiken between 1972 and 1997, which were originally published as separate novellas, but are all connected by their fictional London setting and bizarre characters.
I was gifted this book by my mum for, I think, my last birthday. It's been on my shelf for too long, and I'm glad to have now picked it up.
My favourite of the stories is The Happiest Sheep in London about the Sculpin family (including Melba the sheep) and when Rumbury Town had an "unwanted rainbow".
I admire Aiken's imagination and had fun exploring her London Town.
The Full Nest by Fiona Gibson ⭐️⭐️
I was aware of this book from processing it at the library earlier in the year. As I often do with our new books, I had a read of the blurb, and the premise of this one sounded good.
We follow Carly and her husband, Frank, parents of three about to become empty-nesters. Except that doesn't last long. Their eldest doesn't want to find a job or leave home, then when he does he gets into some trouble and moves back in, this time with a family of his own. And on top of that, Carly's dad needs extra support and moves in as well.
I went into this interested in a story about three generations of adults living together. We are mostly hearing Carly's perspective, but get occasional chapters from other family members too.
The person I would have liked to have a chapter is Lyla - the pregnant woman moving in with the family of her one-night-stand - but we do not get that. I also found all of the characters annoying at least once, and couldn't get behind their weird decisions because, even though we're in their heads, they never give proper reasons for their actions.
Some parts did live up to my intrigue, but mostly it fell flat.
Double Booked by Lily Lindon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Another library book I spotted while shelving. This one caught my eye because Laura Kay, a favourite author of mine, is quoted on the cover. And like Kay's books, this is not a romance like the cover may suggest, but a women's fiction story. There are romance beats, but this is not the focus of the book.
Georgina is in a long-term relationship with a guy, Doug. They have synced, predictable calendars, good communication, and work well together. But Doug is a member of a band that Georgina - Gina - quit years ago. She is now a piano teacher, but it's clear that she wants to perform again and this, amongst other things, causes tension in their relationship.
Then Gina's best friend drags her to a queer bar on a night out which causes Gina to start to question her sexuality, where she belongs, and what she wants from life. Her solution is to lead a double life, continuing her schedule as Gina, but also joining a queer pop band (a member of which she may have a crush on) and becoming George in secret. Things then, inevitably, start to fall apart.
I liked following someone in their mid/late twenties discover their queer identity. We so often follow young adults or those still in education, but this explores how it can alter an adult's life. And I really liked the music teacher scenes and seeing Georgina form connections with the kids and find meaning in that work.
The first half of this book was even giving me the five-star feeling, but then our main character kept making bad decisions despite vocalising/thinking about better options. This gave me second-hand embarrassment at times and lost that feeling for me. But I still think it's a great book! It had good discussions around open relationships, the reason why Gina originally quit the band was slowly revealed at what I deem the right pace, and the ending was satisfying (and not how I predicted it would go).
All sex scenes are fade-to-black, which makes it easier to recommend this book to others.
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is a lecture given by Woolf in 1928 to an audience of women. There are some parts that I thought were wordy or that lost me, but, although almost a century old, I found these 100-odd pages easy to read and surprisingly modern! The phrase "higgledy-piggledy" is used at one point, which I loved.
Woolf explores why women have not been able to write like men in the recent (and not so recent) past and comes to the conclusion that women, without money and a space to be uninterrupted (a room of one's own), have been denied the same intellectual freedom of men.
"For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet"
I loved the concepts of women being a looking-glass for men to sustain their importance; the inversion of the narrative - "suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of [other] men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers" - and the story of, as created by Woolf, Shakespeare's imaginary sister, Julia.
Woolf's love of writing and reading shine through. She speaks of how much women have to say and encourages you to "write what you want to write" because "it would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men", and that removing women and their voices removes truth from stories: "[with] the accumulation of unrecorded life [...] novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie."
Reading this has inspired me to write, much like, I'm sure, it inspired the women in the audience of this lecture.
In that lecture, Woolf is sharing the news that, although there may be few women writers in history (that have lived on), it is possible today (1928) for women to write because of this new-ish access to materials including income and privacy.
The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I took this book home over the break for the Christmas vibes. Not because it's anything to do with Christmas, but because I thought it sounded wistful and dreamy. And for the most part, that was the case.
This famous children's author, Jack Masterson, hasn't written a book in the popular Clock Island series in years. Then, he writes a new one but there's only one copy in existence and he invites four of his biggest fans (those who wrote to Jack as kids and found their way to the real Clock Island when they once ran away) to compete for the new book.
The story is told from two perspectives: Hugo, the illustrator of the Clock Island books who lives on the island with Jack, and Lucy, one of the lucky competitors. The first third of the book was about Lucy, a teacher's aid, and her mother/son relationship with a student at the school, Christopher, as she is trying to raise enough funds to adopt him. Later on we do get the backstory for why these two are so close, but without that previously, Lucy's unprofessionalism made me uncomfortable. I also wanted to hear more about the other three invitees!
I did really like discussions about the power of reading throughout and also the games themselves. I particularly liked when we, the reader, was able to join in and try to figure out the puzzles too! I definitely wanted more of this (several of the games don't happen on the page).
I'm not the biggest fan of the ending here, and I could have done without the romance, but I did enjoy this story. It's a 'children on an island having to solve puzzles and answer riddles for a prize' story, but with adults, and that was fun.