My favorite posts of 2025

At the beginning of the new year I love to look back on where we’ve been, and blog happenings are no exception. I used to share both the most popular posts and my personal favorites of the year but in recent years decided to nix the numbers-driven popular post roundup. (If you’d like to see an example of what “most popular” looked like, check that out here.) But I still wanted to share my decidedly more subjective, uninfluenced-by-algorithms favorite posts. 

These are the posts of 2025 that I personally liked the most, the ones that mean a lot to me, and the ones I find myself often thinking about many moons after their publication. I picked them for different reasons: because I remember the inspiration, because I’m fond of the idea or the writing, because reading it put a big smile on my face (especially likely with our posts penned by team members), because the comments section is fabulous.

Please enjoy this year’s superlatives!

Book lists

Sail away with these 17 novels set on a boat. We’re taking to the water for this buoyant book list.

Take yourself out to the ballgame with these 11 baseball books. Team member Leigh put together this list of her favorite fiction and nonfiction baseball books. I enjoyed the fun assortment and personal storytelling.

Hit the road with these 10 road trip romances. Forced proximity leads to love in these road trip romances. This was delightful to put together. I really enjoyed getting more into the SRG theme: 2025 was a road trip state of mind.

2025 Minimalist Summer Reading Guide. Our annual abbreviated summer reading guide for minimalists and decision haters. I love every book in this list so much!

What worked for me in 2024

I do a simple reflection at the start of every year about what worked and what didn’t and always enjoy this practice. It’s interesting to look back to see what I chose. The 2025 edition will be coming soon! I share my annual list of what didn’t work in the newsletter. Sign up here if you’re not on the list as I’ll be sending out the 2025 reflection in early January.

Quick Lit

I always enjoy putting together Quick Lit, the monthly book list about what I’ve been reading lately. January was particularly good in hindsight, as was June, but I REALLY loved February when our team shared their recent new and notable reads. We’ve never done that before so it’s no wonder that stands out in my mind.

What’s saving your life right now?

Our longstanding February practice of sharing the things—big or small—that are saving us during the midpoint of winter. It’s helpful for me to put this together each year and I always get so much out of your amazing comments.

The Books That Shaped Me series

In 2025 we rounded out this series with a few more team members sharing the books that made them who they are:

• The books that shaped Holly
• The books that shaped Will
• The books that shaped Ginger

Raving Fans series

I get a disproportionate amount of joy in seeing what our team members choose to write about for this series, in which we share our inordinate love for things that might not strike most people as anything special. This year included Shannan raving about Blackwing pencils and aloe vera, and I loved Ginger’s ode to her emotional support lap desk (which happened to generate an especially good comments section).

Favorite Glasses

Inspired by a recurring topic of conversation at our team meetings, Brigid put together Favorite readers, eyeglasses, and sunglasses. I enjoyed the participating in the whole process by which this came together, and loved reading Brigid’s result, plus Leigh’s corresponding social media post.

Little things I’m loving lately: kitchen edition

I enjoyed sharing the (mostly) small things that brought me a disproportionate amount of happiness in the kitchen. I love those kinds of posts and can’t believe I didn’t do more of them in 2025!

Things I haven’t been instagramming

This fall, after noodling on the idea for months and maybe years, I sent out a “things I haven’t been Instagramming” newsletter this fall—which was both a little newsletter filled with reflections on reading and life and what I’d been up to lately, and a little newsletter shared with the kinds of things I would share on instagram, if I was actually opening the app these days.

I loved everything about putting this together—assembling a newsletter the old-fashioned way for the first time in ages, deciding which moments and photos to share, then handwriting and then typing out my thoughts, reading your email replies. I intend to send these out occasionally in 2026: if you’re not on the list, sign up here to get those in your inbox.

Thanks so much for reading, friends!

P.S. For more superlatives: check out my favorite books of 2025 and my favorite audiobooks of 2025.