2025 Top Ten Posts

 

Image from
Boston Public Library
via Creative Commons

It's that time of year where many are taking a backward glance over the concluding year. 

Over the last year, I have been focused on building community in the small town (population just under 6,000) where I moved about two years prior.  I have two part-time jobs while running three book clubs. I also exercise at a few different venues and volunteer at a few places. I am still have trouble with focus and memory from being a little overbooked. Being busy while aging led to a challenge with fatigue once fall semester started. I had to reflect on how to increase my stamina. 

Because I tend to talk too much about my accomplishments, I chose "Meek" as my word of the year in an attempt to keep a lower profile. Oh, that was a complete failure. Now I have a very strong understanding of my chief weakness. Isn't "Recognition" the first step of the repentance problems. 

Despite stepping away from teaching gerontology classes or volunteering with older adults as I did in Indiana and Kansas, I still think about issues related to aging from midlife through late life and post about them here from time to time. Next week I will celebrate my 14th blogoversary, and I want to maintain this project even if I am not as prolific here as I was initially. 

I read over 100 books this year, and about a half dozen featured characters who were in midlife or late live. Only two landed in the Top 10, but that is probably because I read most of those books in the second half of the year. 

Here are the ten posts written in 2025 that received the most views this year: 

1. More Community Building. Link

2. Tom Lake: Book Review.  Link

3. Cognitive Overload. Link

Memorial Days: Book Review

Published
29 January 2022

I have read three other books by Geraldine Brooks (People of the Book being my favorite), and I had the chance to meet her at a book signing at Watermark Books and Cafe in Wichita, Kansas. Consequently, when I saw that she had a nonfiction book out, I picked it up. 

The occasion of Memorial Days is heartbreaking: her husband Tony Horwitz died unexpectedly on Memorial Day 2019, and this was obviously devastating form Brooks. As many writers do, she worked through her grief by writing about him, his work as a journalist and book author, and their relationship. Additionally, this caused her to stop writing for a time. However, Tony had expressed the importance of her work in progress, so she finally pushed herself to finish the book--which was Horse, which she managed to publish in 2022--despite her persistent grief. 

Remember: Book Review

 

Published
23 March 2021

I had the opportunity to read Lisa Genova's novel Still Alice prior to the release of the film based on her fictional account of a woman living with early onset Alzheimer's. Because she has a doctorate in neuroscience, Genova's novel was informed by science.  

I make an effort to read books about cognition -- fiction and nonfiction, expected age-related changes in cognition and disease-related changes. My octogenarian step-father is living with Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, which includes dementia, and my octogenarian step-mother is living with dementia (vascular? Alzheimer's? mixed?). Consequently, when I saw that Genova wrote a nonfiction book about memory--Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting (2021)-- and then bought the hardback so that I could reread parts if not all of her description of how human memory works. 

Three Days in June: Book Review

 

Published on
11 Feb 2025

I have been reading Anne Tyler's novels since the 1980s, and I am delighted that she is still publishing. Her main characters are often middle aged adults or older. I have joined several online sites for discussing books, and most of the novels have protagonists who are 12 to 30.  I have to overtly look for novels featuring protagonists who are midlife or older. (I am very helpful when someone in these Facebook or Instagram groups asks, "Do you know of any books featuring older protagonists?") 

Here is a novel that features a 61-year-old protagonist.