Our January 2025 Favorites!

Happy New Year Everyone!

We are trying something new for this year, instead of giving a whole breakdown of every book that was read this month, Allison and I (Maggie) are each going to pick our favorite two books of the month, and will actually spend some time talking about them and giving our rating. It's been quite a month for reading for me (Maggie) as I had a lot of books to get through to review!

What were some of your favorite books of the month? Anything you highly anticipate in February?

Ace, Marvel, Spy by Jenni L. Walsh - Maggie

4 out of 5 stars

I can hear the collective gasp as I add a historical fiction book to my favorites of the month, no one could have guessed it unless you heard me talking about this book. I received the audiobook as an ARC and was immediately enamored by it.

This book follows the story of Alice Marble, a women's tennis player during WW2 who was both great at the sport and wanted to make an impact on the world. Suffering from many health events, and working hard to always bounce back, Alice was goes from being a tennis sensation to taking a small job spying for the US to get information about the war.

Again, this book is historical fiction, so there are obviously parts of it that are dramatized, and even the author brings up taking info from Alice's autobiography, which definitely had a biased narrator. I found the book, and information I found after reading, really great. I loved learning about a tennis player I'd never heard of before, and seeing the impacts she made on the sport overall.

The Breath of the Sun by Isaac Fellman - Allison

4.5 out of 5 stars

This fantasy story centers on a mountain climber named Lamat Paed and her attempt at summiting a sacred mountain with a priestess named Mother Disaine. After the trip, Disaine claims to be the first person to have reached the top alive since the founder of their religion, and Lamat goes into hiding, explaining what really happened to her partner many years later.

Isaac Fellman does a phenomenal job of writing magical worlds that feel as natural as our own. This book was no different. Everything is so grounded- characters, locations, relationships, decisions- that you get lost in the words on the page and feel like a ghost watching the scenes unfold in real time. The pace of the book was slow in the beginning because he had to introduce so many threads of past, present, and future story lines, but the way he weaves them together at the end is fantastic. This is an overall sad, tragic book- certain parts you will feel viscerally while other parts are more mundane? Philosophically sad? It’s hard to describe. But the characters feel so very flawed, and so very real. Their behaviors are not always morally right, but make so much sense for them. And that is a type of reading satisfying in and of itself.

There is a lot of talk around religious excommunication, and while handled beautifully and also handled with a fake religion in this fantasy world, some of the themes may hit a bit close to home for folks. If you’re in a place to handle that, I HIGHLY recommend checking out this book. It was a 4.5/5 for me, but only because I’ve read his other 5/5 works and fell in love with those characters first!

Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto - Maggie

4 out of 5 stars

This book was sent to me as an ARC and at first I wasn't too sure about it, and now it turned out to be one of my favorites of the month!

Hammajang Luck is an adult science fiction novel that has a basis in Hawaiian culture and traditions. The characters are descendants of people who left Hawaii and Earth for a space station that they now call home. Edie is shocked to learn that they are being released from prison early, after a betrayal from their best friend led them there to begin with. When they are approached by the same friend, Angel, to help her with a heist against her boss, the richest man on the station, Edie isn't sure.

But the heist won't work without them, or the ragtag team that Angel has put together . With a lot of fun twists and turns, as well as a deep understanding of just wanting to do better for yourself and those around you, Hammajang Luck was a fun ride of a cyber-punk, heist novel. I really did miss having a science fiction novel like this one in my life. If you want to see my full review, it is linked within the cover image of the book!

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer - Allison

4 out of 5 stars

I didn't know much about moss before picking up this book, but last year, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass book, so I made it my mission to read her other works.

The Serviceberry was her most recent work. It was a nice, short read about the gift economy- a concept she introduced more formally in Braiding Sweetgrass. In her earliest book, Gathering Moss, readers can see where Dr. Kimmerer's thought process began as the start of the gift economy idea takes form.

Dr. Kimmerer is a master at making academic concepts feel more approachable and personal. She gives detailed descriptions of a moss' natural life as well as the physical science principles that impact them. Surprisingly for me, quite a bit of boundary layer meteorology was discussed! It was fascinating!

But the way in which she weaves personal narratives and experiences into the work to take the audience through the "story" of mosses are what really set her work apart. Additionally, the cultural history of moss touched on colonization, feminism, indigenous wisdom, and more. She made me care about a topic I had no previous in-depth knowledge of, and she made me feel like protecting moss is a crucial part of environmentalist thought and social activism. The book was informative in the scientific and social science realms as much as it was a call to action similar to her other works. This book was a solid 4/5 stars, and I encourage scientists as well as laypeople to read it!

What books did you enjoy reading in January 2025?