Tag: Grad school

Pop Culture, Reading and Book Reviews

My Year in Books 2025

Chrys Buckley
cover of Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell
cover of The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
cover of Who Killed One The Gun? by Gigi Little
cover of Blazing Eye Sees All by Leah Sottile
cover of Imagine a Door by Laura Stanfill
cover of Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch
cover of Cekpa by Leah Altman
cover of Where We Call Home by Josephine Woolington - winner of the Oregon Book Award
cover of Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
cover of The Winter Sister by Megan Collins
cover of The Likeness by Tana French
cover of The Love of My After Life by Kristy Greenwood

This hasn’t been a banner year for me in number of books read. Grad school will do that. So will managing two departments of a press. So will having your own book in the works—I’m pretty sure I reread my book 9 times this summer for editing purposes. So will the state of the world.

I didn’t read as many books as I typically would. But, in all the chaos (internal and external) and busyness, I did read some excellent books. It was a banner year for quality, so I thought I would highlight some favorites.

My original intention was to post about books as I was reading them. I had that “I want to tell everyone in the world about how great this book is!” feeling, but then the list of books I wanted to post about but hadn’t found time for grew and grew. My next intention was to get a big Best Of list together by the end of 2025…and that obviously didn’t happen either.

So, time for a next next intention. I’m announcing it so I have to do it, this thing I’ve been wanting to do for months now. I still really want to share and exalt the great books I read and tell as many people as possible why I think they’ll love these books.

Over the next several weeks, on Sundays, I will post about my favorite 2025 books by category—completely made up by me—and write up about book in the gallery at the top of this post. I want to give each book its due, and share my excitement for each one.

In all cases except for one, these are books that I read in 2025, regardless of when they were published. Some of the books came out this year, and some definitely didn’t.

The order that book covers appear in the gallery at the top is randomized so that I wouldn’t play favorites with my favorites.

See you next Sunday!

Chrys

P.S. I also read some great manuscripts last year in my role at Ooligan Press and in independent editing work, books that are on their way to being out in the world but aren’t yet. Maybe that will be the next post series after this one because there are some incredible books in the pipeline that I think you’re going to want to know about.

Image Description: A gallery of book covers displayed in a 6×2 grid in randomized order: Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell, The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, Who Killed One the Gun? by Gigi Little, Blazing Eye Sees All by Leah Sottile, Imagine a Door by Laura Stanfill, Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch, Cekpa by Leah Altman, Where We Call Home by Josephine Woolington, Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow, The Winter Sister by Megan Collins, The Likeness by Tana French, and The Love of My Afer Life by Kristy Greenwood.

Education, My Books, Writing

Putting My Game Face ON

Chrys Buckley

Goodbye, 2025. Hello there, 2026. New year, new me. All that jazz.

a person covered by post-it notes

It’s a wildly intense time in my life, and on Monday I go back to grad school for winter term. I’m gearing up for a doozy of a course load. And oh yeah, I also have a book coming out ten weeks from today. So there’s that, too.

Yesterday, I did a lot of my calendaring for the term, made a weekly template of when I’ll do work for which class, when I’ll fit in book promotion work, when I’ll work on ebooks and audiobooks for my manager roles at Ooligan Press, when I’ll shower, when I’ll check my email, when I’ll pee. Okay, that last one, and only that last one, was a joke. I’m scheduled to the hilt is the deal.

Every term for the last several, I’ve made a mega Master Plan google doc that lists every due date, every reading assignment, every discussion post due in Canvas, every project, every paper. Some of it’s very granular, like preparing for two weekly Ooligan meetings each week, teaching a department lesson at Ooligan every week, and recurring reflection assignments for classes. Others are big projects.

This document is in a grid, so that on the left are the weeks of the term, and across the top are the classes. It’s not a spreadsheet, but it’s close, with everything in checkable boxes to cross off when they’re completed. You can take the type A planner med student out of medical school, but you can’t take those organization instincts out of the former med student, I suppose.

While creating this Master Plan of Winter Term Domination, I had two thoughts swirling through my mind over and over.

Continue reading “Putting My Game Face ON” →
Writing

Predictable Post-Term Energy Curves

Chrys Buckley
A red saucer chair surrounded by bookshelves

A little over a week ago, I finished my second (of three) year in my grad program in Book Publishing. As with so many things, it went by both quickly and slowly.

It was often a frenzy. Especially this past spring term. I can say definitively it was the most intense term I ever experienced. And yes, that includes med school. I’m sure I’ll get more into the details of the term before too long on here, but now, in the more immediate aftermath, just thinking about it makes me too tired to function.

Since the term ended, I’ve gone through some swings in energy. And I’m remembering and realizing that it’s almost always this same pattern. The terms and the workloads may change, but this after-pattern is pretty constant.

I wonder, does anyone else have this same pattern too?

Continue reading “Predictable Post-Term Energy Curves” →