Hello, pretty people!

Dave and I eat big salads almost every day for lunch. Our go-to is romaine and spring mix, with cucumbers, red peppers, scallions, tiny cubes of pickled beets, and banana peppers with oil and vinegar. Not because these are the only things we like, but because I’m a lazy cook, and I can make that salad with my eyes closed.

However, now that we’re moving into fruit-and-veggie season, I’m remembering some other salads and dressings we love.

Exhibit A: Blueberry Pie Salad

I threw this salad combo together one day during recipe testing for our most recent cookbook Well Fed Weeknights (download a free sampler with recipes). After his first forkful, Dave dubbed it ‘Blueberry Pie Salad’ because a bite of pecan and blueberry together kinda tastes like pie.

Throw together:

• spring mix, baby spinach, and/or romaine

• diced cooked chicken

• sliced scallions

• thin green bell pepper strips

• thin cucumber half-moons

• blueberries

• toasted pecans

Then toss with Champagne Vinaigrette. Put the following in a pint-sized Mason jar:

• 1 clove garlic

• 1 large egg yolk

• 2 tablespoons champagne (or white wine) vinegar

• 2 tablespoons light-tasting olive or avocado oil

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

• 1 teaspoon dried chives

• 1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon leaves

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Blitz with a stick blender, then with the blender running inside the jar, slowly add another 1/2 cup of the oil.

Mediterranean Chopped Salad

I also recently learned that I love diced nectarines in a salad. Try this one: Chop everything into 1/2-inch dice, then toss with Tahini Dressing.

• cooked chicken

• red bell pepper

• celery

• cucumber

• chick peas

• nectarines

• scallions

Tahini Dressing
Put the following in a pint-sized Mason jar and blitz with a stick blender:

• 1 clove garlic

• 1/3 cup tahini

• 1/3 cup water

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

• pinch salt

• pinch ground black pepper

• pinch ground cumin

• pinch smoked paprika

  

Pro Tip

To help prevent salad dressings from separating in the fridge, mix everything except the oil in a jar first, then add the oil in a slow stream while either whisking vigorously with a fork or with a stick blender running.

A New-to-Me Vinaigrette

I got this recipe from a rando on insta, and it’s delicious:

• 1/4 cup olive oil

• 1 tablespoon dried chives

• 1 clove garlic

• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 1 tablespoon maple syrup

• 1 generous teaspoon Dijon mustard

• pinch salt + pepper

Spill the tea: What’s your favorite salad stuff? An unusual topping? A fabulous dressing? Your favorite crunch? A recipe you treasure? PLEASE SHARE.

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Hello, beautiful readers!

Last week, we talked about bookish green flags: the elements of a book that will make you want to read it immediately.

Today, let’s let loose with our pet peeves! I want to know about the things that will make you slam a book shut faster than you can say ‘Wuthering Heights is not a romance.’

My list (today) includes:

• cruelty to animals

• cringe-y writing (I once had to stop reading a book because a first-person narrator said, ‘I picked up my voluminous skirts and ran.’ Has anyone in the history of the world ever thought to themselves, my voluminous skirts?!)

• novels that begin with dialogue, especially if it’s not attributed to a character

• related: author’s attempts to recreate a dialect on the page; it always pulls me out of the story as I try to make it sound right in my head. (Although, this technique can sometimes translate well to audiobooks.)

Spill the tea: What’s an automatic ‘no’ for you in a book?

NOTE: Please don’t bash entire genres or authors, but do feel welcome to vent about a plot turn or writing quirk that makes you want to throw a book across the room.

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Hello, readerly pals!

Let’s talk about bookish green flags: the elements of a book that will make you want to read it immediately.

What’s a characteristic in a book’s description that makes you super-excited to try it? Maybe it’s location, a style of writing, a particular type of character — whatever it is, it’s the thing that makes you want to snatch a book off the shelf and start reading.

My list (today) includes:

• a non-human narrator — like Flames by Robbie Arnott or When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà

• a very voice-y narrator that breaks the fourth wall — like Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth or The Bookseller of Venice by Giovanni Montanaro

• footnotes in fiction — like Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros or A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

• a manor house setting — like all of this. (I know! Too obvious.)

• an unusual object that kicks off an adventure to a far-flung destination — like The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova (lost urn of ashes) or The Salt Road by Jane Johnson (mysterious amulet) or The Last Watchman of Old Cairo by Michael David Lukas (portentous letter) or The Trick by Emanuel Bergmann (vintage vinyl LP)

Spill the tea: What’s an automatic ‘yes’ for you in a book description?

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Hello, friends!

Food in fiction is such a powerful way to give us insight into characters and their culture. I mean, Bonjour, Proust’s madeleine, and who can forget the meaning layered in the Count’s commitment to making a pot of bouillabaisse in A Gentleman in Moscow. There’s the Turkish delight in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Paddington’s Marmalade sandwiches, the seed cake in Jane Eyre, and every exotic morsel in Babette’s Feast.

As I think most of you know — because I cannot stop writing about it — we’re going to Saint-Malo, France (and Paris and Berlin) to celebrate my birthday next month. We have many fun plans, but the one I’m most excited about is a picnic by the sea with a baguette and butter from Maison Bordier. I recently informed Dave that we must also have strawberries and chocolate, ‘so it’s like when they go to France in The Historian.’

The relevant quote from Elizabeth Kostova’s book:

At farms along the road, we stopped to buy picnics better than any restaurant could have made for us: boxes of new strawberries that gave off a red glow in the sun and seemed to need no washing; cylinders of goat cheese weighty as barbells and encrusted with a rough gray mold, as if they’d been rolled across a cellar floor. My father drank dark red wine, unlabeled and costing only centimes, which he recorked after each meal, carrying with it a small glass wrapped carefully in a napkin. For dessert we ravaged whole loaves of newly baked bread from the last town, inserting squares of dark chocolate into them. My stomach ached with pleasure and my father said ruefully that he’d have to diet again when we returned to our ordinary lives.

There is so much food in The Historian (and in another of her books, The Shadow Land, set in Bulgaria). Other novels that I love (love love) with food as a character include:

• Still Life by Sarah Winman (Italy)

• A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib (Egypt)

• Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi (Nigeria)

• The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb (Vietnam)

• Listen Slowly by Thanhha Lai (Vietnam)

• Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li (American Chinese restaurant)

• Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber (American Lebanese restaurant)

• The Dishwasher by Stéphane Larue, Pablo Strauss (translator) (Montreal restaurant)

• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (translator) (Japan)

• The Great Passage by Shion Miura, Juliet Winters Carpenter (translator) (Japan)

• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, Carol and Thomas Christenen (translators) (Mexico)

• Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi, Laurie Thompson (translator) (Sweden)

• Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (Jamaica)

• Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown (Pirate tale at sea)

• City of Thieves by David Benioff (Russia)

• Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram (Iran)

• Take-Out: And Other Tales of Culinary Crime by Rob Hart (around the world)

• The Last Cruise by Kate Christensen (Luxury cruise ship at sea)

• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Magical circus)

For cookbooks that read like travelogue/memoir, here are 12 Inspiring Cookbooks That Will Transport You Around the World — and here’s the archive of recipes inspired by our book recommendations.

Spill the tea: Share a favorite food-centric book!

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Hello, friends!

Mel’s under the weather this week, so I’m filling in.

We’re a full quarter of the way through 2026, which feels like a good moment to check in. I’m currently juggling Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Nine Tailors for our close-reading book club, Richard Kadrey’s Kill City Blues, and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See — which I’m reading in preparation for our trip to France in a few weeks.

All of it is going… slowly. In my defense, I recently acquired an AYN Thor handheld gaming device, and if you know, you know.

But I want to hear about you.

Spill the tea: What’s your favorite read of 2026 so far?

Extra credit: Is it one you’d press into someone’s hands, or more of a “you have to be me” situation?

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The soundtrack of my morning walk is the Eurasian jays, Eurasian magpies, and great tits1 (heh) calling out to their birdie friends. Small flowers — daffodils, crocuses, violets, and tiny yellow-and-white ones I call ‘giggle daisies’ — are poking their heads out of the ground in all the corners of Vyšehrad. Perhaps most exciting to me, the café menus now list homemade lemonade (limonada) — ginger-lemon, forest berry, strawberry-mint — and my favorite riverboat Tajemství Lod’ is opening on Thursday.

I’ve already had my first limonada of the season (forest berry), and I’m looking forward to my next, two days from now, right here:

Spill the tea: What’s your favorite sign that spring is coming?

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Hello, friends!

I recently read and loved the novel Nonesuch by Francis Spufford, which smashes together detailed historical fiction and fantasy in a very appealing, entertaining way.1 It was (for me) an unusual combo, and it got me thinking about other mashups I’ve enjoyed:

• historical fiction + romance + mystery (Veronica Speedwell series)

• epistolary + historical fiction + vampires (The Historian)

• espionage thriller + found family (the early Gabriel Allon books)

• coming-of-age story + travelogue (Listen Slowly, Looking for Transwonderland)

• crime novel + fantasy (The Manual of Detection, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Rivers of London, Rosewater)

These are all cases of ‘too much is just right.’

Spill the tea: What are your favorite genres to mash together?

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Hello, friends!

I suspect the comments on this post are going to be a treasure trove for building a great TBR. I can’t wait to see who your completist authors are and which series are a consistent must-read for you.

I think you know from our show that I am on my way to being a completionist with:

• Marie-Helene Bertino (I loved Beautyland and 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas.)

• Rachel Harrison (I’ve devoured her comedy-horror novels built around female friendship, including Black Sheep, Play Nice, So Thirsty, Bad Dolls1, and Cackle. )

• Hilary Mantel (I’ve read the Wolf Hall trilogy three times and would love to make my way through her back catalog.)

• Natasha Pulley (Her genre-blending mix of unsentimental love story2, sci-fi, historical fiction, and adventure is irresistible to me. My faves are The Bedlam Stacks, The Kingdoms, and The Mars House; I need to read her latest The Hymn to Dionysus.)

Must-read series for me:

• Inspector Lynley mysteries by Elizabeth George (dark, British)

• Veronica Speedwell mysteries by Deanna Raybourn (Victorian+romance)

• Gabriel Allon espionage novels by Daniel Silva (spy found family)

• All of the horse racing mysteries by Dick Francis (salt-of-the-earth heroes)

• Phryne Fisher mysteries by Kerry Greenwood (1920s lady detective)

Spill the tea: Which series or author’s complete works are you/do you want to read?

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Hello, friends!

As I was making our salad for lunch — chicken, chickpeas, pickled beets, red pepper, cucumber, romaine lettuce and this carrot-ginger dressing — I was daydreaming about going out to lunch somewhere else.

The somewhere I landed on was the Habana restaurant in Austin, a little Cuban place around the corner from where we used to live. My favorite thing on their menu is plantana loco, a pulled pork sandwich with cheese that uses a fried plantain in place of bread. Sorta like this:

When I asked Dave where he would go, he said Victoria’s Vintage Tea Room on the island of Unst in Shetland. That’s the place that introduced us to the idea of a savory scone platter: scone, roast lamb, cheese, and soup on the side.

Our salad was good — great, even. But was it as good as a platano loco or a Scottish scone (eaten while overlooking a snowstorm on the North Sea)? <insert shoulder shrug>

Spill the tea: If you could teleport anywhere (and anytime) for a meal, where and what would it be?

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Hello, friends!

It’s been a while since we asked this question, and it always generates excellent titles to add to our TBRs.

Yesterday, I finished two Victorian stories: A Dark Night’s Work, a suspenseful novella by Elizabeth Gaskell, and Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë’s first novel about a governess.

A Dark Night’s Work is a weird little book! The beginning was a bit slow — interesting, but without urgency. But then A Thing Happened, and it got a little fraught. At about the 2/3 mark, it went bananas in a good way. If you like the elements of Victorian fiction — coincidences, the collision of propriety and common sense, the peril caused by delayed letters — you might like it.

I don’t think Agnes Grey is as impactful as Anne B’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but it’s a good peek inside the life of a governess (minus the Gothic trappings of Jane Eyre). There are a few places where Anne lets her character Agnes get sassy (!), which I like to pretend are Anne’s real personality peeking out from the pages. (Also, it was fun to highlight the similarities to Jane Eyre.)

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the 19th century, and/but now I’m ready for something entirely different.

I’ve chosen the historical sci-fi Nonesuch by Francis Spufford, described as ‘dark magic, fascism and romance in blitz-stricken London’ and ‘a popcorny delight.’ I love those blurbs, but I was also moved by what the author wrote in The Guardian about fantasy stories: ‘I’d argue that, as well as expressing our frustrations with the disenchanted world, [fantasy] is also our best means for capturing the ways in which the world remains enchanted.’

I have it on good authority that Dave is reading The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, described as a ‘grown-up magic school story’ and ‘dark academia fantasy.’

Spill the tea: What are you reading right now — and would you recommend it?

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Hello, friends!

I’ve been on a streak of excellent podcast listening lately. I know it’s a good one when I’m on my morning walk, and I think: I have to remember to share this on Substack!

Here are a few episodes that have been really excellent and why I think you’ll like them, too.

History Extra — Pompeii
My favorite history podcast recently did a 4-part series on Pompeii, and I found it extremely compelling and entertaining. In large part because the expert guest Dr. Jess Venner is ridiculously charming — and a first-rate storyteller. If someone had asked me, ‘Mel, are you interested in Vesuvius?’ my response would probably have been lukewarm. But I was riveted to these four episodes. Dr. Venner brings the story to life with astonishing details and delivers the sad bits with remarkable tenderness. The four episodes are: Before the Volcano: Life in Ancient Pompeii, The Final Days of Pompeii, How Ancient Pompeii Was Rediscovered, and Why Pompeii’s Tragedy Still Captivates Us Today.

The Book Club — Wuthering Heights
There’s a new book club in town — and it’s (annoyingly) called The Book Club. (OMG. There are so many book podcasts with book club in the title.) Issues of creativity aside, the first episode of this new show is a banger. In Wuthering Heights: Passion, Violence, and Revenge on the Moors, the hosts get into the book through a historical lens. It’s hosted by Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitah Syrett from The Rest is History. They have different opinions about literature, which makes for lively conversation, and their history of working together give them great chemistry. I am steeped in Brontë lore and found this to be a fresh, informative take on their lives and work.

In Our Time — The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg hosted the BBC show In Our Time for 26 years with intelligence and a manner that could be sharp in a way I find very endearing. He is prickly and proud to be so. There’s a new host for the show, which is great! And/but the classic episodes about the Brontës remain some of my favorites. The one about Wuthering Heights is great (as is the one about Jane Eyre), but if you’re burnt out on the two most popular Brontë creations, the episode about Anne and her second (and final) novel is a gripping, informative 50 minutes. I’m re-reading five Brontë novels this year, and the In Our Time episodes are like mini college seminars.

Your turn!

Spill the tea: Recommend a specific podcast episode (please)

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Hello, friends!

This month, it’s been nearly impossible to escape the brouhaha around the new film version of Wuthering Heights.1 Whether you love it, hate it, or will never see it, you can find many, many (many) people who agree with you.

Book adaptations are tricky business, and/but it’s hard to deny their allure. It can be so much fun to see our favorite characters and fictional worlds out there, in living color.

So pretend you’re a writer/producer/director with an unlimited budget and exquisite taste…

Spill the tea: What book would you love to see on screen?

Extra credit: Who stars?

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Hello, friends!

Prior to starting Strong Sense of Place, I didn’t have much experience with family sagas. My personal reading tended toward mystery series, classics, and whatever seemed appealing when browsing at Half-Price Books.

This project has required me to be more deliberate in my choices. I’ve learned that family tales are often imbued with a very strong sense of place. The dynamics among siblings, parents, and extended family members play out against a backdrop of culture and history. And no matter how different the specifics can be, the underlying feelings are remarkably similar across cultures — and that makes them very relatable.

This has been on my mind because I’m thinking about re-reading The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht. It’s a fairytale-esque story set in the aftermath of the ‘90s Balkan Wars, the kind of book that weaves a spell and whisks you away to another place and time.

I’ve collected sixteen family sagas with a strong sense of place in this post. (Ooooh, Disoriental. That’s another really good one!)

Spill the tea: What’s a family saga you love?

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Hello, friends!

I’m a big fan and Patreon supporter of Scottish writer and YouTuber Willow Heath. She’s the author of Managing and Other Lies: A Queer Horror Collection, and the creator of the YouTube channel Willow Talks Books.

Willow is very lively and, thanks to her teaching background, is very good at talking about books without spoiling them. She’s also quite opinionated, and while I don’t always agree with her hot takes, she always has something interesting to say.

Her reviews are mostly sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books with a ‘big focus on international, queer, and women writers’ — but she’s also a reader of literary fiction and is well-informed on the latest news in the world of reading. (Her favorite novel is Frankenstein, and in the Jane Eyre vs. Wuthering Heights debate, she’s firmly Team Emily.)

Last week, she posted this question on her Patreon:

If you were forced to read ONLY ONE BOOK on repeat for the rest of your life, what book would it be?

I immediately knew in my heart what my answer is; I suspect you know what it is, too. Here’s the video Willow made about people’s responses, including my pick.

All of this made me curious about you.

Spill the tea: What is a book you could re-read forever?

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Hello, friends!

This is a difficult week (in a series of difficult weeks). Dave and I hope that if you’re in one of the places that got hammered with snow, you’re warm and the power is on. I’m always grateful for books, but when the real world feels like too much, I’m especially thankful for the characters who keep me company on the page.

I’m sure this will come as a surprise to exactly no one who knows my favorite book, but I felt compelled to start re-reading Jane Eyre this morning. For most of my life, Jane has been my go-to when everything feels overwhelming. As I wrote in this post from April 2020 (deep sigh) about literary role models :

Throughout all of her many difficulties — abandonment, hunger, cold, poverty, isolation — Jane somehow maintains a vise-like grip on her own self-worth. From the start, when all of the people around her openly disdain her, she believes in her own value. That belief sustains her through every privation. But she’s not without humor or a little bitterness, which makes her all the more relatable. When happiness is snatched from her, and she finds herself alone, again, in a humble one-room schoolhouse, another character asks her: ‘What will you do with your accomplishments?’ In true Janian fashion, she replies, ‘Save them till they are wanted. They will keep.’

I have two other comfort characters I love: Sid Halley from the horse-racing mystery Odds Against by Dick Francis is a salt-of-the-earth hero who overcomes physical and emotional setbacks to win your heart and solve the crime. You can hear me talk about him in our podcast episode Detective Agency: Discreet Inquiries, Mysteries Solved.

And Veronica Speedwell, charming star of the Victorian series of mysteries by Deanna Raybourn. She’s armed with wit, a sharp hatpin, and dangerous curiosity. All of the books in the series are fun; reading from her introduction in A Curious Beginning takes you along on her evolutionary journey (although you won’t be lost if you simply pick up the title that appeals to you. My favorite is Veronica-in-a-Gothic-manor house: A Dangerous Collaboration).

I’m currently reading the new installment A Ghastly Catastrophe, out March 3, and it’s delightful. As I told Dave this morning, this book has everything: Roma culture, a secret society, allusions to other literature, possible vampires, a glamorous maybe-witch, and romantical hijinks.

Whenever I ask Dave about a specific book — all-time favorite, best audiobook, beloved character — he says the same thing. To our long-time podcast listeners, this will also not be a surprise: Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov from Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow.

This is how Dave described him in our podcast episode Russia: Revolution, Hope, and Vodka:

The Count is an iconic hero and in the wrong hands, he’d be so off-putting… He’s rich. He’s upper-class. He knows all there is to know about wine and music and Russian politics and all of that. But Towles makes the Count an iconic hero of the spirit. The Count is a good man. He does good things. He changes the world around him for the better. He takes a bad situation — barely even recognizes that it’s a bad situation — and he’s already on his way to improving the lives of the people around him. And he does that over and over because he has a code, and he knows who he is. And while he’s doing that, he’s also charming and funny and delightful… There aren’t that many heroes where I read the book, and I think, ‘Man, I wish I knew that guy. I wish he would show up. I wish I could call him and be like, Hey, what should I do about this thing?’

So, that’s us…

Spill the tea: Who’s your favorite literary character for difficult times?

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Hello, friends!

In our podcast episode France: Mostly Here for the Butter, I talked about my then-overwhelming desire to visit Saint-Malo to eat the butter made by Maison Bordier. Specifically, I wanted to try their seaweed-studded butter, eaten on a baguette by the sea. (Although, TBH, the truffle and smoked salt flavors also seem dreamy.)

Anyway, life being life, that trip got postponed in 2024 and 2025. No more! Last week, Dave and I booked tickets on the European Sleeper train1 to Paris for my birthday in May. Then we’ll head to the coast for the legendary butter and traipsing around Brittany.

This is my mood board:

(Obvs, I don’t want to be caught in that splashing tide, but I do love the idea of it. So dramatic!)

If you’ve visited Brittany and have tips for us, please share in the comments.

And now, the reason we’re all here…

Spill the tea: Where do you want to travel in 2026?

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Hello, friends!

Cards on the table: I had a pretty lousy reading year in 2025. If my reading journal were a third-grade report card, it would be marked with a big, red U for UNSATISFACTORY. I didn’t read as much as I’d intended, and aside from the books I loved and recommended on our podcast, I wasn’t as swept away by great stories as I wanted to be.

My reading resolution for 2026 is to DNF more quickly. If a book’s not working for me, it’s out! And somewhat paradoxically, my other intention is to savor what I’m reading more — to slow down, pay attention, luxuriate in the prose, get lost in the story. (BTW, my intention is to embrace the notion of savoring all aspects of life: food, travel, conversation, walks, yoga… everything.)

So, that’s me…

Spill the tea: Do you have any reading resolutions, intentions, or goals for 2026?

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Hello, friends!

Welcome to 2026! Don’t you love how your reading life is all possibility here at the brink of a new year?

I know lots of members of the Strong Sense of Place who’ve joined this slow read of War and Peace — and I’m doing a close read of Wuthering Heights hosted by (the fab) Haley Larsen. (The schedule for which is very manageable and is an excellent way to prep for Emerald Fennell’s… exuberant? provocative? colorful?… adaptation of the novel, coming February 13).

On the first morning of 2026, I was wrapping up Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. My body was tucked into my favorite corner of the couch under a blanket, but my imagination was in 1930s Montana and WWII-era London in the company of a prickly-but-still-lovable aviatrix and her lifelong friends. It was a glorious reading experience.

Then I jumped directly into Shetland with Ann Cleeves’ murder mysteries starring Jimmy Perez. The 2018 installment Wild Fire was meant to be the finale, but last fall, she published a new one: The Killing Stones. I’m reading them back-to-back and enjoying my time with the compassionate, driven detective (and the brutally beautiful Shetland settings).

Yesterday, I (re)read the first chapter of Wuthering Heights, going as slowly as I could, investigating the sentences with an imaginary magnifying glass. Sometime this week, I’ll read it again, per the instructions for the close-read group. No surprise: Healthcliff has already revealed himself to be ornery, and/but I have some thoughts about Lockwood.

So, that’s me… But! I want to know what you were reading on January 1!

Spill the tea: What is/was your first read of 2026? And how is/was it?!

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Hello, friends!

Dave and I have a long-standing tradition of picking out holiday movies and making a schedule for what we call the Couch Christmas Film Fest. It’s very prestigious — with a strict dress code of comfy pants, warm socks, and a sweater you don’t mind being festooned with crumbs. A blanket and an ornery cat are recommended, but not required. All changes to the schedule must be annotated in red and witnessed by two people (us).

This is what our movie list looks like this year:

We did, in fact, watch A Very Jonas Christmas — even though neither of us can name a Jonas Brothers’ song — and it was surprisingly cute and entertaining. And yes, the 2025 Couch Christmas Movie Film Fest schedule is decorated with coloring book images I colored. You can’t tell from the picture above, but that’s four different pages, cut up and sort of decoupaged together. (‘Retro Holiday Art Coloring Pages’ here. I also have this one of Nordic-inspired holiday cheer. Coloring holiday pictures is a great way to listen to more audiobooks.)

We just finished watching the third season of the Netflix show Home for Christmas, a charming story about family, love, and friendship in a perfectly Christmas-y Norwegian town. Fair warning: Season 3 ends on a cliffhanger, so if that’s not your thing, watch S1 and S2 and stop right there. (Although S3 was great! But, really? We have to wait a year — or maybe forever — for resolution. That’s not holly jolly!)

The Christmas episode of our podcast will be out this Friday (YAY!), and in it, you’ll hear us talk about the one movie we always watch: Scrooge, the 1970 musical version of A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney. It’s not Christmas for us until this happens:

Spill the tea: Share a holiday movie you love.

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Hello, our bookish friends!

It’s just 15 days until Christmas Eve — which means it’s only 15 days until Jólabókaflóðið (pronounced like yo-la-BOKE-a-flode). I wrote about the Icelandic tradition in detail on our Strong Sense of Place blog, but here’s the gist: On December 24, you snuggle up with books — perhaps given/received as a gift — and chocolates.

And once the holidays arrive, Nicelanders will typically describe the pinnacle of enjoyment as lying in bed eating konfekt [chocolates] and reading one of the books they received under the tree. Later, at the slew of Christmas parties that inevitably follow, the Christmas books will be a prominent topic of conversation, and post-Yule the newspapers are filled with evaluations of which books had the best and worst titles, best and worst covers, etc.— Alda Sigmundsdóttir, Icelandic author

We’ve got a box of See’s chocolate set aside for the occasion, but we’re still deciding on our final picks for what we’ll read on the big night — although I think Dave is leaning toward a stack of graphic novels he’s been saving for the end of our podcasting season. The two at the top:

• Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy by Bill Griffith

• Wrath of Fantomas by Olivier Bocquet and Julie Rocheleau

That last one ‘plunges the reader into the Paris of the 1910s and provokes terror and fascination by resuscitating Fantomas, the evil character with a hundred faces.’ (!!!)

I had a rough reading year, so I’m torn between re-reading a book I know I love — Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley — and something new. In consideration for new-to-me:

• Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

• The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer

• God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines

• Love, Sex & Frankenstein by Caroline Lea

For Jólabókaflóðið, I’m always looking for one of those books that’s completely immersive and transports me to a different world. If you’ve read any of these, let me know what you think in the comments!

Spill the tea: Are you celebrating Jólabókaflóðið? What are you reading?

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