Happy Year in Books! Dragon's Library Year in Review 2025

It's not quite New Year's but it's close enough.

This year I was much more intentional about reading even though I'm still addicted to my phone. And I don't know what it is about the month of August that seems to have made me forget that books even exist lately. I'll probably read at least one more book this year, but likely one I've read before and I try not to double blog books. So actually, I've read more than 80 books this year. Plus often I read picture books at work and they don't strike me enough to think about blogging them later. 

Books I Blogged in 2025

Picture Books                4

Middle Grade/YA         19

Nonfiction                     6

Graphic Novel              21

Memoir                         10

Novel                            13

Poetry                           1

Short Stories               5

Total                            80

Aside from all the graphic/middle grade/YA novels (which I go through a lot of because I'm in a children's library 5-10 hours a week) I read a surprising number of memoirs. There were actually more than 10 because some of the memoirs I counted under graphic novels. Most of these memoirs were about complicated relationships between mothers and daughters. I eat that stuff up. 

Something in the Woods Loves You

Written by: Jarod K. Anderson

First line: In Ohio, winter is landscape poetry.

Why you should read this book: Magical and heart wrenching, these essays braid the poet's childhood memories of Ohio's plants and animals with his intentional present day reconnection with nature, and its evolution as a tool in his arsenal against depression. This book touched me on a deep level, probably because it resonated with so many of my personal experiences, both beautiful and terrible, but the prose is  also a luscious dive into the wilderness, an immersive experience of midwestern flora and fauna through the lenses of nostalgia, depression, and recovery. This book is for anyone who has ever loved the woods. 

Why you should read this book: You hate the woods. 

Animalia & Fantasia: The Magical Worlds & Fantastic Creatures of Professor Anton Seder, an Art Nouveau Bestiary 1886-1903

Written by: Thomas Negovan

First line: The first Anton Seder Artwork that I remember seeing was a welcome shock.

Why you should read this book: Mere words cannot do justice to the luscious, full color universe depicted in the pages of this oversized art book, based primary on a fin de siecle folio of animal illustrations by a largely forgotten master of the decorative arts. A series of short essays locate the work within its historical, geographical, and artistic contexts and describe the career and philosophy of Professor Seder and his innovative Ecole superieure des arts decoratifs de Strasbourg. Most of the folio pages include multiple close-ups to offer the reader insight into the absolutely insane level of detail of these astonishing illustrations, including numerous dragons. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The main barrier here is the price, which is about what you'd expect to pay for a 10"x13.5", 200+ page full color coffee table book in 2025, but it's a shame that starving young artists might not have access to this work. 

Music Theory for Ukulele

Written by: David Shipway

First line: Hello and welcome to Music Theory for Ukulele.

Why you should read this book: This book is absolutely perfect if you play the ukulele and want to understand why music is the way it is. After 10 years of playing the ukulele, it turned out I had already intuited some of the information here, but this book really put together everything a beginning or intermediate student would want to know about music theory for ukulele. Chords, keys, triads, progressions, and mini quizzes to test your knowlege, it's all in here, plus 5 appendices with extremely useful charts and tables.

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you're not really musically gifted, it's kind of like studying a foreign language; I think I understood most of this book, but I didn't assimilate all of it.

Microfiction

Edited by: Jerome Stern

First line: A short time ago I got a phone call from a men in New York who say the announcement of Florida State University's World's Best Short Story contest.

Why you should read this book: Microfiction, flash fiction, or short short stories are stories that are a lot shorter than you would expect. Some people might use the label for anything under 5 pages, but the stories in this anthology are all under 300 words! These are the winners and finalists from FSU's World's Best Short Story contest, and they contain multitudes. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: I think I read it originally as an undergrad, and I was trying to find some stories that were suitable to help me explain the concept of flash fiction to my elementary students, but there is really nothing in this book that I would share with someone else's 10-year-old. 

Jabberwocky: a Pop-up Rhyme from Through the Looking Glass

Written by: Nick Bantock and Lewis Carroll 

First line: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe/All mimsy were the borogroves,/And the mome raths outgrabe.

Why you should read this book: It's a tiny volume comprising the famous nonsense poem, illustrated in a delightfully nonsensical and 3-dimensional style by the inimitable Nick Bantok. The poem's narrator is kind of drawn like Santa Claus and the young hero takes with him on his quest a tiny green monster for no discernible reason, and the vorpal blade goes snicker snack. It's just how you remember, although possibly not how you imagined.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Pop-up books are notoriously fragile and this one was published 35 years ago.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Written by: Toshikazu Kawaguchi

First line: Oh, gosh, is that the time?

Why you should read this book: This novel (or 4 linked novellas depending on how you want to count) about a magical basement cafe where, if you follow the rules and respect the ghost and don't expect too much from the trip, you can travel to the past or the future for the exact space of time it takes for a cup of coffee to get cold was a bestseller in Japan. Even though the characters who take these journeys are aware that they cannot change the present by traveling to the past (they can't even leave their seat, or communicate with anyone who wasn't physically in the cafe on the day they arrive) they still feel strong compulsions to go back and say the thing they didn't say the first time around. And even though they can't change events, they can still change emotions and expectations and use this magical gift to improve their lives.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It may lose something in translation; it's a very "quiet" kind of story with very little action, but an awful lot of exposition. 

Fresh Start

Written by: Gale Galligan

First line: You thought you had a plan, your life was set in stone...but then you made a tiny friend who taught you how to grow. 

Why you should read this book: Weird, gender-nonconforming kid Ollie Herisson is the daughter of a diplomat, so she's never taken friendship seriously, because her family moves every two years, and so do most of the kids she meets at international schools, so she never expects those relationships to mean anything. With this mindset, she really hurts her best friend on the last day of school in Germany, and she doesn't make a great impression on the first day of school in America. Then her parents tell her that they've decided to stay in one place until she and her sister finish school, and now she has to reexamine her entire belief system, including her prejudices about the kids she meets, and her relationship with her cultural heritage, and the way she interacts with her sister, along with how she thinks about anime, cosplay, storytelling, and apologies.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You think anime, cosplay, and friends are stupid. 

The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest

Written by: Aubrey Hartman

First line: Clare was dead.

Why you should read this book: Clare the undead fox is an Usher, a gentle, folksy sort of psychopomp whose job is to help any confused souls in the area find their way to the most appropriate afterlife in one of four realms: Peace, Progress, Pleasure, and Pain. Clare takes pride in his work, and comfort in the solitude of his free time, spent amidst his beloved mushroom friends, but has little use for company and zero interest in badgers, until the day that a dead badger called Gingersnipes turns up, completely unable to access any of the possible realms, but brimming over with nonstop questions and exposition and completely destroying Clare's job satisfaction. This is a lovely and deep story for children about death, loss, and grief, but also about love and life, and what we owe other people, and ourselves. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Might be a bit heavy for those who are not prepared to read a children's book about death, loss, and grief. 

The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

Written by: Shari Franke

First line:

Why you should read this book: In many ways, Ruby Franke was no different from millions of other abusive narcissists whose deranged worldviews and behavior make life hellacious for their families, but there was one way in which she distinguished herself and stood out enough to gain notoriety and reprobation, which is that she filmed herself being a terrible mother, posted the videos on YouTube, and monetized them to the tune of millions of dollars before the world turned on her. As the eldest daughter, Shari Franke was the first of her family to see her mother clearly and understand that what was going on in her house was not normal, or healthy, or, eventually, legal. These are Shari's Franke's memoirs, from her earliest childhood, of what it was like to grow up under the influence and control of an absolute monster who somehow managed to hide her crimes behind the mantle of respectable Mormonism for almost two decades before Shari was able to break away and eventually seek justice for herself and her younger siblings. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: There's some lurid stuff in here.