Life On the Brink
Life On the Brink
Best Books of 2024!
Hello hello, and welcome to Episode 122 of Life On the Brink!
It’s time once again for one of my favorite episodes of the year, the always-beloved “favorite-books-i-read-last-year” episode, where I am sharing 6 of my favorite reads from 2024! Some are brand new, some are old classics, but all of them hold a special place in my heart and have my complete recommendation. I’m also recapping my season of reading while caring for a newborn, and sharing my reading goals for the coming year.
Now’s the perfect time to stock up your TBR!
Plus, this week's Little Joy a recent Christmas gift that has literally changed my daily life, and I'm sharing a superalbum of classical music that never fails- Zoe approved!
For the complete show notes, click here!
For full transcript, click here!
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Anna, welcome to Life on the brink, a lovely little place filled with inspiration and creativity that is dedicated to enjoying life one day at a time, I'm Anna, and together, we're exploring the beautiful things in this world that fascinate us and often discovering something new. Hello, hello. Welcome to Episode 122, of life on the brink. Happy New Year. We're officially in 2025 I can hardly believe that. And I hope that you had a beautiful Christmas season and a start to the new year. I am recording on a snowy morning, which is just the most magical, special kind of morning, especially since I don't where I live, it doesn't snow that often. In fact, last winter, we didn't even get a decent snowfall like nothing stuck to the ground. But it snowed a couple times this year, and I'm waking up to a quiet, white, covered morning, and it's just so beautiful and invigorating. And I'm feeling excited about the new year and about this episode, so I hope that wherever you are, whatever your winter is looking like, perhaps not as magical as mine this morning, that you're staying nice and cozy, and thank you for joining me when I'm thinking about what my life looked like a year ago as opposed to today. It's probably one of the most drastic changes in a one year time span. And I have such things are just so much more extreme, like very high highs and low lows, and they can all be in the same day. And things used to be much more, I guess, not static, but steady, and now they're just more dynamic. But I'm just really grateful for last year and everything that came with that. Most importantly, obviously, you know, my baby, Zoe, is now seven and a half, yeah, about seven and a half months, she is sitting up. She says, dada, she is beautiful. Such a beautiful baby with super long eyelashes and yeah, every day there are moments of just absolute sweetness and joy. I am quite tired still. Some nights she sleeps really well, and it's amazing, and other nights, not so much. So it's really been an exercise in prioritizing sleep like never before and just being patient, going with the flow. But we had such a good Christmas season. It was so special. She, you know, her schedule was thrown off all over the place, but she had the best time. And we just had a really sweet Christmas season. I was really preparing for it mentally, like this is gonna be a lot, like a week or so of many, many family events, but it was great, and then we had some time to decompress as we went into January. So that's just a little, a little recap. I feel like it's been a while. You know, I appreciate your listenership and your community, even as I've gone to just one episode per month. I'm hoping maybe to include a few more mini episodes in between. I think I'm gonna continue as 2025, you know, progresses. I'm gonna get more of a routine down, and we'll perhaps have more opportunities to to record and do that sort of thing. So yeah, just checking in, seeing how you're doing. As far as other updates on my end the school that I work at, my responsibilities have shifted a little bit, and I have become the music director of the School Musical, which is the sound of music this year. So I'm fully immersed in The Sound of Music for the next several months, and it's delightful. And teaching this music to children is very meta, in a way, because it feels a lot like Maria teaching the children to sing. And it's probably the closest I'll get to that moment on the mountain tops with the guitar, you know? And also, I have almost, it's probably 90% done. I have almost finished the library in our home. It is magical. And I'm waiting until it's like. It feels more done like 100% even though I know it will change with time, because I want to do a whole episode about it and take lots of pictures. So maybe next month, we'll see. But it's just, it's probably, it's one of my favorite places in the house. Now I'm so happy with how it turned out and how it's continuing to turn out, so that's been a good project for me since Christmas. I would say I spent some good time in there. And my two main resolutions, I suppose, or goals for this year, um, well, three, really. One of them is to finish as much as we can. You know, my goal is to finish renovating this house in 2025 which means just redoing the staircase, you know, taking up the carpet and doing I believe we're gonna do, well, whatever we're gonna do, we're gonna take up the carpet and to renovate the two bathrooms downstairs, and then everything will have been touched, and it's going to be so good I know when it's finally done, and then I have a few, like, little personal goals regarding myself and like postpartum things. But also, and this leads into the topic of today's episode, I would like to read more books. Obviously, I actually read 17 books last year, and I didn't think I would read that many. I If you recall, last year, I did not set a goal. I've had book goals in the past, but I knew that 2024, was not the year to push myself to read, and I'm glad I didn't, but I still read 17 books, which feels pretty good. So this episode, like every year, is going to be highlighting my favorite books of the previous year. That's how I start off every year. And I follow several people across social media platforms that focus on books and reading, and I've just been watching everyone else's and really enjoying the recommendations. And everyone has such different tastes in the things that they enjoyed. It's I really like building my TBR for the next year from a variety of sources. So that's what I hope to bring you today, and then I'll talk a little bit at the end about my goals for this year. But before we get into that, of course, especially today, make yourself a nice cup of tea. Go ahead and pause the podcast if you want, or just take me with you. Make yourself a really warm, comforting cup of something I usually love hot chocolate on snow days. And today I'm drinking coffee, though, and I'm gonna get more into that when we talk about the little joy, but Tea Coffee something nice and comforting that warms you down to your feet, because today we're talking about books. We're getting cozy. So I have selected six books for this episode, and they're not necessarily like based on a star rating or anything. I just looked through all the books that I read last year, and I looked at those that I ranked highly, but also that really stuck with me, because I think that for me, that's a good measure of of how much a book affected me, and the quality of that writing, etc, is how much I'm able to recall after the fact. And some of these are just so enjoyable, and some are more dense. But you know, we're here for variety, so these are not in any particular order other than chronological and yeah, it goes all the way from like January to December. So these are my top book recommendations of 2024 starting with a little bit of an outlier. It's one that I read for a book club that I was a part of for a little bit of last year called this is how you lose the Time War by Amal tar and Max Gladstone. So two authors, and it's sort of a correspondence between two characters. And so a really interesting thing about this book is that the one character's letters are written by one author and the others by another. And apparently I was doing some reading about it, that they were writing based on like. They really were corresponding and writing based on like their emotional responses to each other's writing, which is a really interesting way to go about it. And let me see, I am gonna like Wikipedia, because I'm like, how do you explain this book? I'm gonna this is how you can describe it. It says agents red and blue travel back and forth through time, altering the history. History of multiple universes on behalf of their warring empires, whose timelines are mutually exclusive. In secret, the two begin leaving each other messages, initially taunting, but gradually developing into flirtation and then love. So the structure of the book is a little bit intense, but the actual point of the story and as things are developing like most of the actual writing is just really beautiful, because neither of these characters are human. They're like, I don't know some sort of cyborg thing, some robot thing of the future. And they are sometimes wondering about humanity and about the other, about each other, because they're different types of beings. And there's a lot of references to a lot of classic literature and things like that that I know I didn't get all of but it's also quite a short book. It's 208 pages, and so it's, it's very impressive how powerful the writing is and how interesting and inventive the story is, yeah, just like really interesting imagery. I just want to read you a little tiny quote from one of the letters. It's just really beautiful language. It says, You have me watching birds, and though I don't know their names like you know them, I have seen small, bright singers puff before they trill. That's how I feel. I sing myself out to you, and my talons clutch the branch, and I am wrung out until your next letter gives me breath fills me to bursting. It's just really beautiful ponderings in this very crazy, conflicting sci fi sort of setting. So it's quite acclaimed. It's won several awards. And I thought it was, it was really interesting. So that's, book one. This is how you lose the time. More you may have heard of it. I think it's worth a read, especially since it's not a large time investment. I really just flew through it. Next is a completely different it's called 52 loaves, one man's relentless pursuit of truth, meaning and a perfect crust, by William Alexander, this is just like my favorite kind of book. Sometimes it's just this man who wants to make the perfect loaf of bread, like a like a peasant loaf, you know, a bull, and it's his journey through a year of making a loaf of bread every week for a year, trying to perfect it. And throughout this year, he, you know, visits people that are making their own ovens, and he learns all about yeast. So I learned all about yeast, and it's like talking about flour, and he grows his own wheat, and he just learns about the whole process of bread. There's a lot of history of bread, and since it's so few ingredients, he goes like all the way to try and make it something beautiful and special. And I just loved it. And more than that, the like the preface or the introduction to the book is a scene of him trying to get on an airplane with a sourdough starter that apparently has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. And TSA is giving him, you know, a hard time. And he's talking about how, like, this is, this is an act of God, like, I'm needed, like, this is God's work. I have to go, I have to bring this to these monks in France. And so there's this talk of monks and like, that's kind of random, but you realize by the end of the book, and this is not spoiling, he ends up working with these monks, and like learning and teaching about the spread. And so all throughout this book, not only is there an ongoing conversation about his his own wrestling with spirituality. But the whole structure of the book is split into chapters or sections of chapters, and each is named after one of the hours. And the hours are like the times of day that monastic cultures will use to divide up the day. So like vigils, lords, Vespers, compline, etc. It's like the tradition of the day. It's the whole the Liturgy of the Hours. And the book is split into this chapters by those names. And it all culminates in this really, really beautiful experience that he has in France, and so I'm not going to give away any more than that, but you also learn a ton about bread. And of course, there's recipes for everything in the back of the book. I definitely read this one slower. Sometimes it's a little bit more dense. You're reading a lot of facts, but. Is also quite witty, as he's making it, and he's also describing his life at home. He's got a wife and two kids and their reactions to this new way of going about every single weekend with him baking a loaf of bread. Yeah, it's heartfelt, it's funny, it's very informative. Makes you love bread a little bit more. I really enjoyed this book. Next you can see where I'm creeping from spring into beginning of summer. I read, of course, funny story by Emily Henry. I am a fan. Okay, if you're not an Emily Henry fan, I'm so sorry, because I am loving the fact that basically every spring we're getting a new release. I think this year is like the third year in a row that a new book is coming out. I mean, she publishes one, and then they put her back at the desk to write another, because she is the queen of contemporary romance. And this one is one of my favorites thus far. I really enjoyed this book. Basically. The premise is that our main character, Daphne, is sort of a buttoned up type. She's a library, a children's librarian, I'm pretty sure. And she moves from Maryland to Michigan with her fiance, and so his community becomes her community. And then on the night of his bachelor party, he gets together with his, like, old best friend, who's a woman, and like it was, was the girl that you're not supposed to worry about, you know? Well, he leaves Daphne for her and calls off the wedding and all of that. And so she's suddenly in a community that is not her own, with friends that are not hers. She has nowhere to live and is heartbroken, and so she ends up moving in with the ex boyfriend of the girl that her fiance got together with. So they are two recently rejected people living together now roommates, and of course, romance ensues. But the thing about Emily Henry, the a couple of things about this girl. One is the vibe, right? So often her books take place near some kind of water. The previous year, happy place. It was like kind of, I don't think it was Cape Cod itself, but it was somewhere up in Maine. And so you get that coastal summer feeling. This one is in Michigan, so it's like a lake town. And there's always some really, really nice descriptions of pockets of community. She forms community at the library where she works. There's other friendships that are made. It's like, even if it's not necessarily a small town, there's always moments of small town feeling. And there's there's one scene that just really stuck with me, where the guy, what's his name miles, love that name. He's showing her around his town because she doesn't know any know anyone else. And he it's like late at night, and they get this particular takeout from this plate, like fast food, and he takes her to this particular beach. And it's just magical. It's like all those summer memories that you remember and that you want to make, those little spontaneous moments. She's got them all throughout her books, and this book is no different. So there's the vibe, but also there's so much more development for both of these characters that has nothing to do with the other there's a lot of non romantic growth that happens between friendships, between family, and I just love that, that there's an actual character development that is even separate from the romance, but then the romance is also there, and it's just really, really great. Love it. I'm can't wait for the next one. I don't remember what the new book is called, but I will be reading it, and the I will say one more thing about Emily Henry is that when I'm reading her books, I always whenever I remember that I have that book that I can go back to, it's like this warm, fuzzy feeling. I know you know what I'm talking about. If you if you've read, if you have a comfort read that, even if the book isn't spectacular, which I thought this one was quite good, you just really enjoy the action of reading it, and you really enjoy when you're away from the book, knowing that you can go back into that cozy place. All her books do that for me, and I love that. Okay, so now we've moved into summer. Now we're like, post Zoe's birth, and so these are books that I read either while nursing her or rocking her to sleep or and then there's an audio book at the end. So up next is the wind in the willows by Kenneth Graham. Oh my goodness, what a delight. This is a classic children's novel. It was first published in 1908 and it follows our four characters. Bad badger, mole rat and Toad. I mean, it is everything that you would want from a book, a book with animal characters. It is so sweet and so endearing. The characters are funny, the writing is so funny, and there's just really beautiful depictions of male friendship as well. Even though they're animals, our two main characters are mole and rat, and to give you an example, when mole is referring to rat, he may call him rat or call him ratty, and the narrator may refer to him as the rat sometimes. And so I've got ready and moly, and Toad is always like, you know, he's mischievous, he's a little bit self centered. He always has to be brought down a peg. And then once he's a little bit back on top, he's haughty all over again. And badger is there to put him in his place. And he's, like, very respected in the community. But the language is so funny, probably just because, to me, it's funny because it was written in 1908 and is also English. So really cute, British humor. But they're always either like, sailing or picnicking or there's a scene when they're trapped in the snow and they find moles, old house underground, and just It's so cozy. Badgers house is, you know, the larder is stocked, and everyone's always hosting somebody else, and they're all just feasting. It's exactly what you would hope it would be. I didn't really know what the wind in the willows was for a long time, but I knew the concept of those four characters. This is just charming. It's just light hearted, but also so heartfelt, like they really care for each other. And it's, it's just so heartwarming. It's wonderful. So this was my book that I read when Zoe was very, very young, and I was up, you know, three and four times in the night to nurse her. I would turn on the tiny little, you know, egg, light the little orb, and read this while nursing her. And it was it made it much, much, much better. And I will also say that the original illustrator for this book, because every now and then there's these very simple illustrations. The original illustrator was Ernest H Shepherd, but I have an edition that was published later, and the illustrations are by Arthur Rackham. Like charming, adorable. This book is hilarious. You should definitely read it. Okay, and then moving into one of the books I read this fall this past fall, again, something completely different Up next is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, I wanted to read more classics in this year, as I always try to do, and I saw this as one that was on a Reading List at the school where I teach, and I had never heard of it, and then I found a copy in a used bookstore and realized how influential it's been. Basically, it is a pillar of Nigerian literature, and apparently, of like African literature as a whole, it's paved the way for many, many things. It was published in 1958 and it basically tells the story of a kind of there is a main character, but on the whole, it is a village, an Igbo village, in Nigeria. And as colonialism is happening there. So much of the book takes place before any white settlers, missionaries, etc, show up, and then it shows what happens as they do. And it's part of a trilogy, but this book is by far the most well known and most studied of the three, and it was also kind of a really big deal that this book was written in English. It was a very deliberate choice that the author made. And it's just, it's fascinating. Not only did I, like, just fly through it, like it was gripping and interesting, and I just wanted to know what happened next. It's, I think, quite powerful because, well, some of the things that stood out to me were the fact that it shows this village basically untouched by any other society, and it shows the way of life and just the beautiful things about the culture and about the family relationships. Sometimes it shows you into the minds of different characters, but it also does share the things that are sometimes disturbing or are basically the good with the bad. Like a lot of the attitude toward the gods resulted in some i. Kind of horrific practices. But then when the missionaries come, and then they just sort of set up legislation, like this is the way we're going to do things. Now, it shows both people that are sincere, that want to share about the God that they believe is real, and are kind hearted and are accepting to everyone, even those that would be outcasts in their own village, their own society, are welcomed. And you see into the minds again, of a couple characters who are just really drawn in by it. And but then also, there are people who are just, they have no concern for the humanity of these villages that have culture and history and are thriving on their own. And the very last chapter, the book ends pretty. I mean, it's powerful, it is sad, so just know that going into it. But it's like the last line is so just powerful, like it sticks with you, like dang. And I also appreciate that the main character is very flawed, and you see it the good and the bad in this character. And I just wanted to read a quote, which was obviously one that stuck with me. It's when a character is banished from his own village because he's committed an act that results in banishment for several years, and he has to go stay in the village of his mother, so where his mother's family is from, and of course, having just become a mother, this, this uh, passage, really stuck with me. So an elder from that village is speaking to him. He says, it's true that a child belongs to its father, but when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's hut. A man belongs to his fatherland. When things are good and life is sweet, but when there is sorrow and bitterness, he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there, and that is why we say that Mother is supreme. Is it right that you Okonkwo should bring your mother a heavy face and refuse to be comforted? Be careful or you may displease the dead. Your duty is to comfort your wives and children and take them back to your fatherland after seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down and kill you. They will all die in exile. Like this is very powerful writing. I was just gripped by it, and I had also never read a book that showed so in such detail, the life of a civilization so different from mine. But like it goes into depth with the festivals and the traditions and the farming. And I felt like, Well, I'm glad that I read it. I am curious to see I if I will read the the other two, perhaps in time. It's definitely a very important book, and I think it was so brilliantly written. So that is, again, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. And finally, we have the last book, a completely different thing, and I read it well, actually, I listened to the audiobook in December. It was recommended to me by a friend. It is Anna gardens memoir, and it's called, be ready when the luck happens, which is a bit of a random title, I'll admit, but in like the last chapter, it makes sense, and it's narrated by her. The audio book is narrated by Anna, and I just loved it. Of course, you know another food based cooking memoir, but I never knew anything about Ina, really, and I think it's a really well written book, and I really enjoyed her narration style as well. I have never been to The Hamptons, but I've never wanted to more than I do now, having listened to this audiobook and watching the Martha Stewart documentary. Actually, I was talking to my sister and drawing some parallels and contrasting Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, because some of their careers look a little bit different, but INA is just such a different kind of person, and I just love her relationship with her husband, and she goes into the rough and the smooth, you know, of her background and of the trials that they went through. And it's just wild, the things that she has done that I never would have guessed she got, like a pilot's license. She was commuting to see her husband in Japan, like once a month for a year or two, like she bought and furnished renovated a Paris apartment, like she bought the first iteration of Barefoot Contessa, which was a specialty food store with basically no idea how to run it, and I just loved. Finding out about her story. She there's so much of her just needing a challenge and needing to, you know, once she succeeded at something, to find something new. And then that led into cookbook writing, and then it led to TV. And she actually was a writer, and was in media for Martha Stewart's company for a while as well, which is interesting, but had a completely different way of going about things. And it's actually very recently published. I think it came out last year, so it goes into, like the pandemic and that sort of thing, because she discovered social media, and it goes into that chapter as well. So I do know that if you have Spotify Premium, it's one of the audiobooks available with that subscription, at least in the United States, but it's available in print as well. So again, it's called be ready when the luck happens. I just find her so interesting and lovely, and it makes me want that coastal summertime vibe. It was a nice little pick me up during my cold winter walks. So that was one of the last books that I read, if not perhaps the last that I finished in 2024 and it was, it was a lovely way to end the year. So those were my top six books from 2024 again, I read 17, not too shabby, but I do have some bigger goals for this year. I am setting a goal for 2025, to read 30 books. I had this goal, I think it was a couple couple years ago, and I think it's doable because I have a little bit more structure than I did when Zoe was a newborn. And I think it's gonna continue to get more and more, you know, like a routine will be established over the course of this year. And also, because I want to get off my phone, that is also the point of this goal, so that in the evenings, when I could just end up on my phone without moving for like an hour. Instead, I could spend that time reading something that I really enjoy and really appreciate that time. So that's the idea. I have a book always at the table by the rocking chair in the nursery, which is kind of near a window, so that even if I'm trying to make it dark in the room, if there's still just enough light that I can read, and I tend to have a book downstairs as well, and then I like to sort of have an audio book going throughout that same time. So I think 30 books is totally doable, but we'll see. But I'm back into that groove. I think sometimes I just I want to read everything. And maybe it's because, like I said, a lot of creators are coming out with their top books of last year, and I'm just inspired by all the good things to read. So if you are interested and would like to set yourself a goal. Josh also has a reading goal, by the way, and he wants to read three books. And that's also great, because last year, I think he read one, you know, start to finish. And so he wants to read three, and they are all some dense books, let me tell you, like science non fiction. But, you know, that's his thing. He's gonna improve his brain, I guess. But whatever those books look like, and whatever your goal is, I just think that reading, reading books is never a bad goal, never a bad idea. And maybe it's not a number goal for you. Maybe it is like a re establishing of a routine, like I was talking about, maybe at the end of the day, instead of time on your phone, if, if you are like me and want to get off of it, maybe it means going to bed and reading with a little lamp light. Maybe you join a book club or start a book club. I I'm not in one right now. Other than one, there's like, a faculty book club at this school, but I feel like I kind of want to start one up now that the library is shaping up to be such a cute space. So we'll see. Maybe that will happen this year, but reading is in and if you need to get started, any of these six books I mentioned today is a great place to start, and there's a little something for everyone, because there's, you know, I don't think any of these books were like another. So all that's wrapped up. Thank you for listening, and I'll be right back with this week's little joy. This week's little joy pertained to my warm, cozy drink, if you recall, and that is because for Christmas, Josh and I received an espresso maker, or espresso machine, I don't know, from my grandfather, and it has been the best ever. I told Josh, I feel like when you're a kid and there's a toy that you got for Christmas and when you're away from home. You're, like, still thinking about it, and you're excited to go back home and play with it. That's how I was feeling about the espresso machine, the exact model I'll go ahead and leave a link to in the show notes. It's not a super fancy one, like it doesn't have a grinder with it, or, you know, it's, it's very straightforward, but it does the job. And so I have been making a little latte every morning, and it's wonderful. I look forward to my morning coffee like never before. And I did receive, separately from someone else, a coffee grinder, so now I can be a roaster girly, and find the preferred beans and grind them up and make the espresso. I'm so excited. And I think also, especially in the summer, when there's a lot of fruits and herbs, I want to make some syrups. It's on. The game is on this year. I'm loving it. Everyone told me when I was in high school, and I firmly did not like coffee. They were like, when you go into college, that's when it's gonna happen. You'll get on coffee and you won't be able to stop. And that did not happen. I've just always been a tea girl, as you all well know, and I still love tea, but I think it was motherhood that was the thing that did it, and it wasn't even for the caffeine, you know, it's just the delight, the joy of it that has come to me. This machine I know is going to save me money, because I no longer have the craving to go to a coffee shop to get a lovely coffee, because I can make a lovely coffee at home. We have espresso at home. I would love to figure out some latte art. I cannot get the milk the correct consistency, but you know, that's with time, I'm sure. So again, I'm gonna leave the the exact machine that I have in the show notes. It's not super expensive, but it would be an investment that is going to be well worth it for me. So in case you want to look it up, it has certainly provided a little joy every morning I'm waking up no later than six o'clock every day, because that's when Zoe wakes up. And it's a really nice thing to look forward to in the wee hours before the sun comes up. So that is this week's little joy. And then lastly, I'll leave you with some music that has been my go to these days, especially when Zoe is awake. What's funny is my Spotify wrapped came out for 2024 and my number one artist was Mozart, because I listened to a lot of piano sonatas. When Zoe was just born, she found them interesting to listen to, so that's funny, and I know that I'm headed in that direction for this year as well, because I've been listening to Haydn's complete string quartets. If you're unfamiliar with Haydn, he was around the same time period as Mozart Classical era, but he he wrote a lot of symphonies and a lot of string quartets. He's sort of known as the father of the string quartet. And so this is like the equivalent of, I think, 10 discs or something. Let me see. It's a very, very, very long album on Spotify, 2121 discs much more full of string quartets in every key imaginable. And Zoe's been loving it. I've been loving it. You can never really go wrong with Haydn. I feel it just it fits in the brain so nicely and is nice to have on in the background, to cook, to to drive to, or to read to, perhaps, if you're someone who can do that. But it's also really interesting to sit and listen to, you know, the way that they were originally designed. So I will leave a link to this playlist, or I suppose it's an album, actually an album that's the equivalent of 21 albums in the show notes, which, as always, can be found at life on the brink. Dot live, l, i, v, e. That's where you can find the blog posts and photos and links for every episode. And it's where you can, of course, sign up for the monthly newsletter, which will be heading out it. The goal is to have it out the first Friday of every month. Sometimes it's the first weekend somewhere in there of every month. But like I said at the beginning of this episode, I'm starting to get a little bit more of a consistent rhythm, and so I'm hoping to be able to make more for this blog and podcast on a consistent schedule, so you can sign up for that free monthly newsletter where there's lots of extra little joys and links to everything so you don't miss out on a single thing. And finally, if you're listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts and you have not yet left a star rating, that would be just. It's so, so lovely. I really, personally appreciate it, but it also helps others find this podcast who would be interested in it, and if you're on Apple, you can also leave a written review saying why you like it, where you're listening from, and why you enjoy the podcast. I really enjoy looking at my stats. I post this podcast through a website called Buzz sprout, yeah, Buzz sprout, and it will show me where it's being listened to. And so I can see that there's, I think, a couple people listening in Frankfurt, Germany, which is crazy that there's people listening in Ontario, Canada and British Columbia and Texas and Australia. It's just so so cool. And so if you are one of those listening and you haven't yet and you're able to leave a review, connect with me. Let me know where you're listening from, and and what you enjoy about this podcast. It's so strange sometimes to speak about the things that I love and then put them out into the internet and and so when there's a little bit of feedback, it just blows my mind. So thank you to those of you who have already done so. I hope that you've had a lovely start to 2025 and that you've got lots of good things to read and drink, that this year brings you new ideas, new projects, new inspiration, and that you have a lovely rest of your January. I'll see you next month, and until then, happy reading. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Life on the brink. If you're enjoying these episodes, please feel free to leave a star rating, or, even better, leave a review on Apple podcasts to help spread the word for podcast show notes and extra inspirational posts throughout the week. Head to the blog at life on the brink. Dot live. And if you'd like a little extra dose of inspiration in your life, sign up for the monthly newsletter, which lights up your inbox the first Friday of each month. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, friends, you have a lovely week. Bye. You