A Mood Reader's Almanac 2025
38 pages, 136 books, a year's worth of great reading
Today’s post is long so is best viewed in the app or in a browser. If you are already a paid subscriber, scroll to the bottom of this post to access A Mood Reader’s Almanac 2025.
One thing I hear from readers all the time is that they are overwhelmed by book recommendations. We get recommendations from Instagram, Substack, podcasts, our IRL friends, and legacy media publications. Readers just love hearing about books! So even when we know we’re at capacity, we can’t look away.
As somebody who recommends books as part of my job, this constant churn of recommendations can be disheartening. As much time and thought goes into a review or a reading guide, I know firsthand how easy it is to take one glance and then move on. Just like the news cycle, the recommendation cycle moves fast!
But in spite of this, I want to keep putting together these sorts of projects, both because I enjoy putting good books into the hands of other readers and because I love considering the way books are in conversation with each other. Guides are fun to create because they allow me to put books next to each other in interesting ways, offer book bundles that are better read together, and recommend books based not on story or synopsis, but on particular reading moods. I also want to keep shouting about the books I love, giving them second, third, and fourth lives beyond my initial recommendation.
With all of this in mind, I’ve created A Mood Reader’s Almanac to serve as a way to circle back to previous recommendations, remind you of the books you may have missed, and provide a resource designed to last.
For the most part, the books in the Almanac are not new recommendations. Most of these are books I’ve reviewed in this newsletter or included in other reading guides. Rather than books you’ve never heard of (though there are sure to be some surprises for most folks!), my intention is to reframe the books I read and reviewed last year in new ways that will help you decide if and when you want to read these books.
The Almanac contains 136 books—all of which I read in 2024. (Overwhelm, I know! But deep breaths!) At the front of the Almanac, you will find a list of every book included and a method for marking whether you have read or want to read each book. You can print out these pages or use the fillable PDF checkboxes to keep track—or you can ignore them all together! From there, the books are organized in a variety of ways. You’ll find my favorite frontlist and backlist fiction, as well as recommendations for each reading season. Most of the books are organized by theme or mood. Thematic groupings like “Money Matters” or “Epic Love Stories” tell you about what is inside the book—these can also be viewed as bundles that are even better when read together. Mood groupings are designed for those moments when you think to yourself “What I really need is a quick win” (or a great audiobook, or a slump buster, on and on). These categories don’t so much tell you what’s inside the book, but about what reading craving these books will satisfy.
But the crown jewel of the guide is what I’m calling the “special pages.” These are the extra fun ways of getting a book onto your TBR. This year’s Almanac has three special pages: a world map filled with novels with a strong sense of place, a scatter plot matrix organizing 2024 releases by plot heavy vs. vibes heavy, and a flow chart for finding the 20th century classic that’s right for you.
Mostly, I hope A Mood Reader’s Almanac is fun. Yes, I want to help you find a great book or three, but I also hope that reading through its pages reminds you how much you love books and just how many great stories are out there waiting to be found. This is my love of reading made visible on the page, and I hope it speaks to what you love about reading too.
There are three ways to get A Mood Reader’s Almanac 2025:
Upgrade to a paid Substack subscription. If you’re already a paid subscriber, simply scroll down to find your access link. Not only does an upgraded subscription grant you access to the Almanac, you’ll also be able to access every piece of previous paid content and guides. If you love exploring the archives, I hope you’ll stick around for all of the exciting things I have planned for the year to come.
Join the Patreon Literary Society. If you’re already a Patreon subscriber, you have access the the Almanac right now on the Patreon feed. In addition to access to the Almanac, a Patreon membership gives you access to every piece of previous Patreon content and guides, as well as Book Club membership for the duration of your subscription. If you’ve been looking for a book club that really gets into the weeds of what makes a book work, this is the community for you.
Purchase a standalone Almanac. If a subscription is not right for you, you can purchase A Mood Reader’s Almanac 2025 as a standalone product for $15 dollars.
Whether or not you choose to explore A Mood Reader’s Almanac, thank you so much for being here. I’m looking forward to another year of reading alongside each of you, sharing the books that matter to me and what I learn along the way.