What I'm Reading in December 2025
Updated 11 December 2025.
Books
- A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols - Thanks again for letting me borrow this book, Grant! This is a super slow burn of a read for me, mostly because I know jack about sailing and can 't make it through a single chapter without feeling compelled to take notes on something or other. It doesn't help that I was ill around the end of November and stopped touching this book at all until I was confident I wouldn't be making a fomite of it.
- Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood - This book also went untouched during my illness. I mentioned in November that "...I'll only be reading in bed before my wife gets so sleepy that the lights go off." That statement stayed true, even during my brief spell of sleeping in the study so as not to make Linda sick. I'm excited to get back to this being my nighttime read!
- Our Hideous Progeny: A Novel by C.E. McGill - e-book. I've begun December in a place where this is becoming one of my favorite reads of the year! It moved rather nicely from the bedroom to the study with me, and has started to take spins on the AirDyne with me, too!
- Eco24: The Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction edited by Marissa van Uden - saw me through not only sick time in the study, but also waiting, masked, in the Mazda while my wife went shopping. This book will end up being a sentimental favorite just because of that!
- The Natural History of Unicorns: An Intellectual Detective Story Tracing the Legend to Real Animals by Chris Lavers - ebook. My fresh in-the-dark read after finishing Our Hideous Progeny. It mentions Herotodus early on. Any book that mixes natural history with the father of Gabrielle of Potidaea is good with me!
Short Fiction
- "Flowerkicker" by Stephen Graham Jones, published in Uncanny Magazine Issue 45. Read Wednesday, 12/10/2025.
Articles
- Penguins ‘starved to death en masse’ as food supply collapsed. Alex Morrison. University of Exeter News. 5 December 2025. Read Friday, 12/05/2025.
- Creating the Orton Effect Using The GIMP. XingfuMama. 11 November 2024. Read Thursday, 12/11/2025. (I remember either a plug-in or a built-in filter that used to do this for me. The article came in handy when I was editing a photo this morning, though, and it's nice to know the actual workings of the effect.)
Bonus: What I'm Listening To
Music
- Christmas in My Hometown by Charley Pride. My favorite Christmas album, originally released the year I was born. Listening all month along.
Podcast Episodes
- Philosophize This! Episode #001: Ionian Presocratic Philosophy, 6 June 2013. Heard Thursday, 11 December 2025.