Book Empties (winter/spring '25)

Complete with arbitrary ranking system...and spoilers!

Hello! In the Friday Dispatches of the past few weeks, I have briefly mentioned the books I’ve been reading. But what if I wrote about them more in-depth? What if I included spoilers? And what if I maybe had a little bit of an attitude about some aspects of certain books in here?

To make things more interesting, I decided not to rank these books, in the conventional sense of “my favorite” to “my least favorite”. I picked different criteria and put the books in an order which seems arbitrary, but is, in fact, meaningful and reflective of my reading experience!

In a VERY particular order, here are the books I’ve read since January:

1. My Murder, Katie Williams

2. We Do What We Do in the Dark, Michelle Hart

3. The Caboose Mystery (The Boxcar Children #11), Gertrude Chandler Warner

4. Evvie Drake Starts Over, Linda Holmes

5. Modern Poetry: Poems, Diane Seuss

6. Chéri, Colette

7. The Troop, Nick Cutter

8. The Houseboat Mystery (The Boxcar Children #12), Gertrude Chandler Warner

9. Mountain Top Mystery (The Boxcar Children #9), Gertrude Chandler Warner

10. The Lighthouse Mystery (The Boxcar Children #8), Gertrude Chandler Warner

11. Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life, Shakti Gawain

12. The God of the Woods, Liz Moore

13. Summer Romance, Annabel Monaghan

14. Schoolhouse Mystery (The Boxcar Children #10), Gertrude Chandler Warner

15. My Lovely Wife, Samantha Downing

16. All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns, Betty Gilpin

So, what is the system I’m using? How did I choose to list these books in this order? Why is a single Boxcar Children book ranked SO MUCH HIGHER than the others?!