2025 excuse: My dog ate 2,000 pages?

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A vintage stamp featuring two individuals, one adult and one child, reading together, with the text 'A Nation of Readers' and 'USA 20c' below.

Wait, that won’t fly. I have no dog.

My annual summary from Goodreads reveals I completed 2,000 fewer pages this past year than the previous one. Sliding from 49 books in 2024 to 40 in 2025 does not represent a good report card.

Who’s to blame? Not a dog nor I.

It’s the fault of the San Antonio Spurs. A subscription to FanDuel makes most games available for watching in the comfort of my living room in Austin. This loyal fan has not enjoyed access to this many basketball games in years. But the schedule’s heavy, consuming my normal evening reading hours.

Below are books I completed in 2025. I left my personal ratings and reviews for most on Goodreads. Among the ones that rang the five-star bell for me were: The Mystery of the Crooked Man by Tom Spencer (no relation); The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr; How to Read a Book by Monica Wood; Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty; The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins; and A Small War at Close Quarters by a close friend, Vic Hinterlang.

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Time to spread Bottlecap cheer

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“I Guess It’s Christmas,” Bottlecap Mountain

A holiday classic from Austin-based Bottlecap Mountain that you’ll want on your playlist year after year.

Postcard from Paris, France: Chefs blur borders

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Illustration of a chef's hands arranging a plate with colorful vegetables and a small dish, featured on a French stamp labeled 'Gastronomie'.

Above: Mushroom tarte at Pristine

People who do not accept the new, grow old very quickly.”

A Guide to Modern Cookery, Auguste Escoffier, 1907

We’re already old. We arrived at this stage in but the blink of an eye and certainly have no desire to accelerate the aging process. This is the excuse I offer for not sticking to French food in France.

My hero chefs are those unafraid to pluck ingredients and fuse ideas from many cultures. The evolutionary development of European cuisine as a whole has been speeding along ever since those first traders sailed eastward to discover an explosion of spices and westward to find revolutionary crops – such as tomatoes and cacao.

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