Winter-End of 2025 Book Marks
I looked around a crowded subway car recently and spotted only one person bent over a paperback. The rest of the car was a sea of work-weary zombies, scrolling through social or playing solitaire. Maybe some were reading a book on their phone.
Of course, our phones have all the information we need in our pocket. But I recently read that fewer people are reading books. What happens to our world…to us, if we stop feeding our heads with stories? If we stop imagining and only consume?
I’m stealing an idea this new year from my friend Sandy. She chooses one word to represent something she wants to apply to aspects of her daily life. I loved that idea. My personal word for this coming year is “Books” – both ones I want to write and everything I want to read.
Whatever you intend for 2026, may it be filled with stories that expand your mind, widen your world and make you use that incredible imagination inside your own head.
Memoir:
Unplugged – Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu by Tom Freston
Tom Freston has lived life out loud. Born in the years before the upheaval of the 60s, he straddled major changes from the world of Mad Men to today’s demise of traditional media. He was there for the creation of MTV, helping to introduce and accelerate demand for music videos, rising to the CEO of Viacom, until he was summarily fired by Sumner Redstone, a story in and of itself. Freston’s memoir weaves a wonderful tale beginning with his love of travel, which led to founding a successful clothing brand during the 70s of fashion company in India. Hanging out with some of the biggest names in music with some of the biggest influencers in the 20th century from Bono and Jagger to Oprah and Dylan and everyone in between. It’s a memoir of living life to the fullest, risk taking, rule breaking and a journey through the world lived on his own terms. Stay tuned for some of his interesting insights, such as accompanying Sumner Redstone watch live sex shows in Bangkok. But on top of it all, Freston is simply a nice guy— not a common adjective in the C-suite.
Memoir:
My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns and High Heels by Tom LeNoble
Growing up in the 1960s in a Florida shack without hot water, Tom LeNoble knew there was something different about him, something he needed to hide from the world. In his first explorations with men, he came of age in a time when the only words that existed to describe his sexuality were cruel. Finding his true passion as “Rita,” a performer at clubs, he began to throw off the shackles of expectation and judgement that all gay men experienced. Despite the lack of a college degree, he entered the business world at a time when technology was beginning to rapidly change everything. From a first humble job, he climbed the ladder and helped build some of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies, from MCI, Palm and Walmart.com to being the adult in the room at a nascent Facebook. Along the way he loses his brother and many friends to AIDS, contracting the disease himself and being given six months to live. After that unfulfilled prophecy, he receives a prostate cancer diagnosis, surmounting that challenge with his indomitable spirit. This memoir is about resilience, love and taking risks. It’s a reminder for all of us to make bold choices.
Thriller:
Gone Before Goodbye by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben
Take two storytellers, put them together, sprinkle with plot and dialogue and you’ve got one hell of a thriller. Especially when those people are Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon, Queen of the book club picks. Army combat surgeon Maggie McCabe has lost her medical license and is forced to take a secretive job treating an ultra-wealthy client. That relationship catches McCabe in a deadly web of conspiracy that involves her missing husband, a revolutionary artificial heart technology that they have created and a worldwide network of corruption that send her on a journey to find the truth. In true Coben fashion, each page bleeds into the next until you realize its past your bedtime.
Fiction:
ESCAPE! By Stephen Fishbach
Kent Duvall is a washed-up reality show winner. All he wants in life is to get back on top and get another chance at glory. He used to be “the guy” and now he’s hustling at events in small hotel ballrooms off the beaten track, a faded memory on TV. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, Kent suddenly has a chance to re-boot his life and get back in the public eye through a shot on a new jungle survival show with seven other contestants. Each person has been typecast: from the bully, the nerd, to the love interest. But on the set, when the shooting begins, nothing is as clear cut as that and everyone is more than they appear. The contestants’ goals are to survive the wild, build a raft, and win the treasure. But Beck Bermann, a reality producer who suffered her own public shaming, sees them all as pawns in her own redemption arc. As the story deepens, strategies and schemes appear and rivals sabotage each other to control the story line. At the end of the day, it’s about who will make it out alive.
Fiction:
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
While this blog features largely new releases, I stumbled on this earlier book by Powers in an airport bookstore. Being a huge fan of his award-winning writing, I picked it up and found myself down a neuroscience rabbit hole story about a family in Nebraska whose lives were changed in an instant. On a remote winter road, 27-year old Mark Schluter survives a horrible car accident but receives a traumatic brain injury. How did he get there? What mysterious events led up to his going off the road and who left a message on a piece of paper for him? His sister Karin returns to their hometown to care for her brother, but when he emerges from his coma, he believes she is an imposter. Karin contacts a famous cognitive neurologist who diagnoses her brother with Capgras syndrome, where the patient believes someone they know of love is an imposter. The damage done and the convergence of the characters threatens to upend everyone’s life and Powers weaves it all together with incredible prose.
Historical Fiction:
Canticle by Janet Rich Edwards
Sixteen year old Aleys is bright, smart and prone to religious visions, something unusual for a girl in 13th century Bruges, with its warren of canals and markets. She’s studying Latin with her friend, Finn, in secret, but when her father promises her in marriage to a merchant she doesn’t love, she runs away, finding shelter with a group of religious women who refuse to answer to the church. Among this hardworking community, Aleys begins to experience the joys of belonging. But when a sudden rash of miracles draws attention to the colony from a bishop, Aleys and everyone she loves may be in danger, which forces her to make some sacrifices and tough decisions. This book is inspired by the author’s experience as a Peace Corp volunteer, working in a maternal and child clinic during the Ethiopian famine.
Historical Fiction:
The General’s Spy – A Revolutionary Adventure in Leadership by Colonel David Sutherland and Paul McKellips
With a big birthday for America coming up this year, this book offers an engaging tale about the birth of our nation, as well as an inside look at the how real leaders possess and demonstrate behaviors that motivate others. The protagonist, Samuel, evolves over time from a humble family man to a patriot and entrepreneur who is the kind of person that builds communities. In his work for Colonel Stark during the Revolutionary War, he discovers his own innate ability to lead through his determination to fight for the independence of his native land. He uses the various skills he has been born with, as well as those learned from his Native American friends to become an expert tracker. Despite a series of setbacks and obstacles, Samuel’s journey through the course of the book is a reminder that in order to win, we must step up to the plate and learn how to thrive.
These are books I genuinely love and am thrilled to recommend to my friends. These are Bookshop.org affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I get a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Alternately, if you prefer to rent books at your local library or buy from your local bookstore, I very much support that!
