📖 Reading List: March 2025 📖

Facts, Fiction and Existential Crises

Before we begin: paid subscriptions keep the team paid and keep the podcasts, book giveaways, and writing going in the face of a very tumultuous media market where advertisers want more, more, more while paying less, less, less. There will always be plenty here for free, and just like Tommy Boy, I will absolutely accept no as an answer!!!! I mean that!!!

March is not a month.

I am not the only one who is Struggs To Func right now. Mercury and Venus are in retrograde (never sure what that means aside from the hour I spend with my astrologer when it all makes sense).

March. Is. Not. A. Month! It is a way station between seasons, a black hole where dates swim in my mind and nothing quite adds up. I have been running late, missing things, losing my mind and making other people crazy while also wondering if I am going crazy (I’m not going crazy. I’m already there!!!!).

But March is — thankfully!!! — almost over, and somehow I did manage to read, even though it felt like I had no time to do it and I still want a solid 6 weeks to do nothing but read, like the summer vacation after fifth grade when they finally opened the new library less than a mile from my house with a special reading bench overlooking Minnehaha Creek.

📖 Sandwich by Catherine Newman might be my favorite book of the year.

Caroline Moss

was reading this in Mexico, and laughing so hard I downloaded Newman’s We All Want Impossible Things as a consolation prize when the Libby line for Sandwich was 5 months long. But oh, was it worth the wait. I’ve recommended it to every woman I know, and most of them have already read it, proving that I am always tardy to the reading party. It’s a short novel, one week on summer vacation with the protagonist’s family. Her kids are grown, her parents are old, and she is contending with all of these changes against the unchanging backdrop of the cabin and town they’ve rented in for years. It’s so poignant and yet so so funny and a book I will keep on my shelves forever in case of emergency.

---

I closed my eyes in the car, put a hand on my belly inside of which was our stilled child - a withered little peach, the blush of its cheeks. There was something in my brain like a dial tone, and I wondered if I would die. But I wouldn’t, of course. I’d get home and boil noodles like every grieving mother everywhere.

-Catherine Newman, Sandwich

---

📖 Start Making Sense: How Existential Psychology Can Help Us Build Meaningful Lives in Absurd Times by Steven J. Heine has been on my TBR for literal months and IT WAS EVERYTHING I HOPED IT WOULD BE. I am going to get this man on the podcast and bring this wisdom to your ears, because we need this refresh on Philosophy 201 (a class where I left a review on RateMyProfessor.com saying I had a crush on my professor’s brain not thinking he would ever see it). I have been reading passages out loud to my family as I go, and taking my time with each chapter even though it’s incredibly readable for an academic author.

📖 🎧 The Hammer: Power, Inequality and The Struggle For The Soul of Labor by

Hamilton Nolan

is truly fantastic. I started with the hard copy, but switched to audio for a weekend road trip with the kids, who are now fully educated on the power of the working class and the importance of unions. I fell in love with Nolan’s writing at Gawker (RIP) and proudly support him on this platform, and his book did not disappoint. It’s engaging, educational, realistic and energizing. I bought a copy for my niece, whose corporate coffee shop named her “assistant manager” but keeps her hours under 40 so they don’t have to give her benefits, and hope it further radicalizes her. At the time of this writing, the ebook is only $3 on Bookshop.org and I’d love to get this guy on the podcast, too but more importantly I want you to buy this, read it and get ready to discuss with me!!!

🎧 Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford is a funny book, but as an audiobook? I literally peed my pants on the drive to LA. If you want to LOL about OCD, depression, suicidal ideation and other things that aren’t funny until they’re funny, listen to this. I immediately forced my cousin and SIL to download and listen along with me, and had it playing on a drive to LA so the kids could live, learn and lol along with me¹.

🎧 Everybody Says It’s Everything by Xhenet Aliu was randomly available on Libby and recommended by my local librarians and that’s all I needed to see before I downloaded it². It follows a family built by adoption and secrets and trauma; twins who grew up Albanian adoptees in an Italian family, and the parents who raised them. We jump between the 70s and 90s and also get an education on the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo, which I only vaguely remember from headlines. The narrator’s delivery was oddly staccato at times but then I did a two-second search, learned that she herself is Albanian and realized she was telling the story in the voice it needed and maybe not everything is designed for the audio preferences of a middle-aged woman with long Midwestern vowels! Highly recommend, especially for the way it comes together at the end, which is so touching I have not stopped thinking about it.

On My TBR

There are a LOT of books I have piled up around the studio, but I’m sharing these so that I’ll be pressured to get them read and recapped for you! What can I say? Potential judgment works on me!

Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness by Jamil Zaki was on my TBR last month, and while I started it this month I did not finish it and therefore, we will get to it NEXT month!

Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Resistant Treatment by Laura Delano is at the top of my pile for April, and again, I’m putting it here because it has been on the list for too long!

Book Giveaway Time!

If you’re new here, we do this every month. Leave a comment with what you’d like, and I’ll choose winners at random and message for your address³. Sadly, this month’s reads were mostly audiobooks and the physical books I read I am unwilling to part with, so you’ll have to make do with a giveaway of my own books!!!

• It’s Okay To Laugh (Crying is Cool, Too) by me…I HAVE SO MANY OF THESE! I’ll send out, say, 3 this month?

• No Happy Endings is my second book, and I’ll send out 3 this month, too!

❤️ I was asked for bra suggestions for tiny boobs (not offended, these are the facts of my life, I am built like my handsome father!) and I rounded up my favorites.

❤️ Caroline Moss and I are collaborating on a weekly show that we haven’t officially named yet but is about our favorite thrifted treasures. It’s simply for fun, and even though my internet colluded to ruin our last recording session, WE DID HAVE FUN!

❤️ Save The Date: I’m joining CEBV Weekly (which I wrote about here) in conversation on April 8. It’s free and non-partisan (though I think you all know which way I lean).

❤️ Let’s (Not) Go, Girls: This episode about burnout and life beyond productivity is a good listen for anyone who is on the verge right now!

❤️ I get 8+ hours of sleep a night because of these THC gummies. The DREAM ones conk me out for 8-9 hours, and the UPLIFT ones make me chill and fun. Code NORA gets you 15% off! My other sleepy girl things are here.

❤️ I’m still Bricking my phone for most days and this link gets you 10% off. If the link doesn’t auto-apply 10% off, use code NORA.

XO,

Nora

1. probably not appropriate for most children but I am a different kind of mom and I’d rather my kids hear this kind of stuff with me, from people I admire!

2. I often read/listen to books without reading the description first. I know this is insane to most people.

3. Book giveaways are a perk for paid subscribers! If you can’t comment, you aren’t a paid subscriber and need to upgrade your subscription!