My 2025 Year in Books

My current job continues to allow me plenty of time to listen to audiobooks, podcasts and the like. The result is another great year in audiobook ‘reads’.

  • Books Read: 136
  • Pages Read: 60,915 (includes average page length of book versions of audiobooks listened to)
  • Hours Read: 2,075.5 hours or 86.479 days  (currently includes only time spent listening to audiobooks)
  • Authors Read: 103 (this is potentially far less than actual total number as it counts combined authors as a single author, including the many authors from any anthologies read)
  • Oldest Book Read: 4/25/1719
  • Newest Book Read: 9/9/2025
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Secret Sorrow

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion (1839)

The quote originated in Longfellow’s 1839 prose romance novel, “Hyperion”. It reflects the author’s own experiences with profound personal loss, including the deaths of two wives—one following a miscarriage and the other in a tragic house fire.  Everyone carries private burdens, unspoken grief, or inner struggles that remain invisible to the public. Being reserved, distant, or seemingly “cold”—are often misread by others when they are actually defense mechanisms for deep sadness. Approach others with kindness and compassion, as you rarely know the full story of another person’s life.

Related, but not…

Is the Habit of Hope Immoral?

“She wondered, faintly, if it was immoral to raise children in the habit of hope. Was it not, in the end, all the harder for them to adjust to the reality of how the world worked?”
– Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

PERSONAL NOTE: Too cynical? Perhaps. I’ve wondered the same. I think, however, that I’d rather hope than not. Yes, if you don’t maintain hope, you won’t be disappointed; but if you don’t hope, you will also be just as miserable the whole time as you would be for the far shorter periods of disappointment you might experience. Also, I like to believe the positive attitude that Hope provides decreases the frequency with which you will be disappointed, as you will be more likely to make the sacrifices or changes necessary to achieve your goals if you have Hope, versus the cynical expectation of failure and the associated “Why bother?” mentality that goes with it.

Home Is Where You Are Never Forgiven

“Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.”
– Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

PERSONAL NOTE: Holy crap this seems incredibly true from my experience of struggling for acceptance in a relationship with someone who uses guilt in place of love, where the concept of Unconditional Love is a fantasy, versus a reality of Lingering Resentments. I’m not sure if the cost of belonging in such situations is worth it, but I do wonder sometimes the reverse: if deciding to not pay that cost in one person’s case is worth not belonging.

Remember Yourself

“Sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you’ve been and remember the person you were meant to be. The person you want to be. The person you are.”
– HG Wells

PERSONAL NOTE: Commonly attributed to H.G. Wells, but I have been unable to find a definitive source in online searches for this from his published works, letters, or papers. Regardless of whether he actually said it, I believe it holds a deep Truth, as I find this is what meditation does for me.

Cool Retro Space Travel Posters

Came across this cool article sharing an artist’s series of “vintage”-styled travel poster artwork for real and imagined Space destinations. Many are based on reality (the ice-covered oceans of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons), are strongly suspected to be real (the cryo-volcanos of Titan, one of Saturn’s moons), or just the stuff of fantasy (a Venus like that imagined before probes visited it and saw beneath it’s ever-present clouds).

Check out this web page for the artwork:

Vintage Style Travel Posters Imagine Travel to Distant Planets and Moons

“Stool Pigeon” and Mass Extinction

While exploring the origin of the term “stool pigeon”, I happened on this interesting (if sad) article on far more than the the etymology of the saying. It is tied to the history of a massive, largely man-made mass extinction event.

“But while this term might evoke images of someone perched on a stool in a police interrogation room and being made to “sing” like a bird, the actual origins of this term are significantly more horrific, and tied to the greatest manmade extinction event in modern history.”

Check out this interesting article for all the details:

The Horrifying Origin of the Term “Stool Pigeon”