2025 Books and Gifts for the Close Reader
Shop on Bookshop.org to support your local bookstore. Check out Goldberry Books & their big IRL event Monday 12/8! (And don’t forget those December birthdays.)
Okay, readers, I meant to get this out by yesterday, St. Nicholas Day, but it was an extremely busy day, with a poetry workshop, a car that wouldn’t start, a trip to a Filipino holiday market, and a very-last-minute evening out with my sister. It was also her namesake’s day, since her name is Nicole, and I realized that I should have paid for dinner because her birthday is coming up. It is so easy to forget December birthdays in the run up to Christmas.
Speaking of December birthdays, yesterday was the birthday of my friend, David Kern. He and his wife Bethany own a bookstore in Concord, NC called Goldberry Books. Their store recently celebrated their 5 year anniversary which is incredible. However, most of this time they struggled to stay open while massive construction was going on outside their door. Now that construction is finally over, their landlord has hit them with a 70% rent increase! In an effort to help them out and cheer David up on his birthday weekend, I thought I would write something about the work they do in this wonderful literary corner of the world.
Daniel Nayeri Book Event Monday, December 8!
This post may be too late for St. Nicolas Day, but it isn’t too late for this special book launch and signing event Goldberry is hosting with Daniel Nayeri and Vesper Stamper on Monday, December 8 At 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM EST. If you love books and are anywhere near Concord, NC please stop by their shop at 12 Union Street, Concord, NC 28025.
As many of you know, Daniel is a celebrated children’s book author who recently won the National Book Awards 2025 for Young People’s Literature for his book, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story.
Two other writers who have read their work in person at Goldberry Books in the past are personal friends of mine. Sally Thomas co-edits the wonderful Substack, Poems Ancient and Modern, and is an excellent writer in her own right with books that hit the genre trifecta with Motherland (a poetry collection),Works of Mercy (a novel), and The Blackbird and Other Stories (a short story collection). Back in 2023 Sally had done a reading at Goldberry with Marly Youmans, another poet and fiction writer I admire. The first word that comes to mind when I think of Marly’s fiction and poetry is “magical”. Marly’s books include Glimmerglass, Charis in the World of Wonders, Seren of the Wildwood, and more. (Turns out she’s written quite a bit!)
If you can’t visit Goldberry in person, you can support them the way I do: by making purchases through Bookshop.org and choosing them as the affiliate bookstore. Here is my referral link if you want to use it, but no worries if you don’t!
David Kern is the main host of a podcast bookclub I’ve been a member of for several years: Close Reads.
Throughout the year David, Heidi White (who has a new book out, The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life) and Sean Johnson (the host of The Daily Poem Podcast) read a variety of books and discuss them. I started listening to the show for a number of years, back when the great Tim McIntosh was part of the line up, and over the past few years I have become a better reader and writer by being part of their community.
Here are the books I’ve read with them over the past year: The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Piranesi, The Princess and the Goblin, The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, Much Ado about Nothing, O Pioneers!, and Wuthering Heights.
For 2026, the podcast will be reading Little Women, Crossing to Safety, Beloved, Our Man in Havana, The Grapes of Wrath, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Feast, This Is Happiness, and The Age of Innocence.
Here’s the page where you can purchase the 2026 book titles:
Sometimes the show has guest speakers like Karen Swallow Prior, who discussed Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter, and Tess of the D’Ubervilles on the show. She has a new book out called, You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful. (Note: Karen has a wonderful Substack called The Priory.)
If you want to read even more books, you can join the paid subscription list, which I have. That gives people access to the mystery book club, the monthly poetry reading which a delightful close reading of one to two poems, and the another selection of books, many of which are long. They’ve done East of Eden, The Lord of the Rings triology, and C.S. Lewis’s The Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Plant, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength but I will say that my two favorite books they covered were:
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni (trans. Michael F. Moore)
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (trans. Tiina Nunnally)
Other Books that I Like…
Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets
This is my favorite poetry handbook. I’ve read a lot. I don’t know why I love this so much but I do.
Timothy Steele ‘s All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification
This is the basically the poetry handbook we use in my MFA program’s Craft of Poetry class. I wouldn’t have been able to understand meter without it, and believe me, I tried! (I have told Tim that he is “my poetry hero” — and it’s true.)
Zena Hitz’s Lost in Thought: The Pleasures of an Intellectual Life
This book is a wonderful memoir of an autodidact. Zena is the founder of The Catherine Project, of which I’ve taken many courses (and sometimes I am a group leader with my friend Andrew Schulman).
Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage
My copy is so heavily marked up in pencil and colored pencil I think no one could read it except me at this point.
Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture
I have a very worn out paperback copy with an introduction by T. S. Eliot and another essay, The Philosophical Act. I read it over and over, and how it hasn’t fallen apart is some kind of miracle.
DANIEL McINERNY’s Beauty and Imitation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts
A fairly new acquisition on my shelf, but after having gone through a philosophy course in aesthetics this fall, I appreciate what Daniel has done with this book. (He was also a speaker at my MFA’s summer residency, and he read from his novel The Good Death of Kate Montclair.)
Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being
This is a fun and easy read on the nature of creativity and living an artist’s life.
Maryann Wolf’s Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World
As a special education advocate who has helped students who have language based learning disabilities, I loved Wolf’s Proust and the Squid: The Story and the Science of the Reading Brain. Reader Come Home is a great follow-up to that book. I highly recommend both.
Poetry books I have mentioned on social media in 2025
Jane Greer’s The World as We Know It Is Falling Away and Love Like a Conflagration1
A. M. Juster’s Wonder and Wrath and his children’s book Girlatee (for which my youngest even wrote him a fan letter)
Rhina Espaillat’s translation of Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz’s The Liquid Pour in which my Heart has Run2
Christopher Childers’s The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse
I don’t think these are all the books, but these are many of the one’s I’ve mentioned this year.
And the BAG my IRL friends ask me about…
If you follow me on Substack or if you are in my local “poetry salon” (organized by the intrepid Jack F.) you know that I have this huge book bag that my mom got me from Levenger.
Yes, I lug it around to people’s homes so I can dive in once in a while and retrieve something. For much more reasonable people, Levenger makes a half-pint version of it. Here’s one with a National Book Foundation design. I assume that it is just as sturdy as the big one.
That’s it! If you feel called, go out and buy books from Goldberry or whatever places you want to patronize. You know, patrons are the breath that fans the flames of culture. You are important!
WITH MUCH LOVE! —AND—
Always with the music,
Zina
Bonus: These are the books by Dana Gioia I wanted to buy in 2025 but didn’t because I ran out of money. If you become a paid subscriber you can help me buy these books, which you probably want for yourself as well:
Jane was the first poet to come to mind because she had just passed away in July. I had been re-reading her latest two books. I’m also editing a mini-issue of New Verse Review that honors her work and legacy. We were Facebook friends. I miss her.
I chose this book because I wanted to feature at least one book of translations, and Rhina has been an incredible friend and mentor to me. I also love her translation of St. John of the Cross’s poetry.
“Wondrous” is one of my favorite poems of all time, and it is the one that concludes this collection which was the winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize. It is also, most notably, it’s all free verse. I wrote about “Wondrous” in this Substack post, and it might be the most “viral” poem in any of the collections mentioned here.
I love your list. Joshua Mehigan’s Accepting the Disaster, Geoffrey Hill’s Broken Hiérarchies, Alexis Sears Out of Order, and Christopher Childers The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Verse are some of my favorite books too.
Wow. Thank you so much for this! 🥹