Kass's Kicks : 2025 Nonfiction Review Roundup

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2025 was to read more nonfiction—SciFi and Fantasy is my usual beat, but I wanted to branch out by going in the opposite direction. I didn’t get to read as many as I wanted, but the ones I did I really enjoyed! Before I look for more nonfiction in 2026, I thought I’d share some of 2025’s highlights:

 

The Art Thief by Michael Finkel details the crimes of Stéphane Breitwieser, regarded as one of the greatest art thieves of all time, who stole almost 250 works of art from 172 museums in France and Switzerland. I was fascinated by the sheer boldness of Breitwieser’s heists—he often stole in broad daylight, and even returned to some museums more than once. He also didn’t sell what he stole, keeping it all in his attic bedroom. He claims to be an art lover and romanticizes his exploits, but the book balances this perspective with the real harm he does to the museums, the artwork, and his mother and girlfriend who try to help him.

Brave the Wild River is an account of a 1930s scientific expedition down the Colorado River, when botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter sought to catalogue the plant life of the Grand Canyon. By doing so they also became the first women to survive the dangerous rapids, and Melissa Sevigny’s matter-of-fact narration doesn’t undercut the dramatic challenges they faced. There’s plenty of botanical name-dropping for plant enthusiasts, but this survival thriller also manages to weave in the complex history of the region, from Native American legends to the Dust Bowl.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci was a bit of an intimidating book to look at—even without its many pictures and diagrams, it’s a hefty tome. As it turns out, you need all those pages to describe a person as complex as Leonardo. Drawing from his frantic scribbling across many journals, this book paints the artist and inventor as an eccentric but obsessively driven student of the natural world. The way his scientific curiosity informed his artistic sensibilities was just inspiring.

Pirate Hunters reads like an adventure movie in Robert Kurson’s accessible style. He chronicles the efforts of divers John Chatterson and John Mattera to find the wreck of a pirate ship off the coast of the Dominican Republic. The divers’ search involves high-tech equipment and historical research into the Golden Age of piracy and the ship’s captain, Joseph Bannister, but the explanations feel like an organic part of the story. All three men emerge as fascinating personalities reckoning with the costs of pursuing greatness.

The Mythmakers was particularly fun for me as a comic enthusiast, as well as a fan of its two subjects, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. John Hendrix’s vibrant fantastical illustrations provide a vehicle for the lives of these two fantasy greats and their lifelong friendship. In the back of the book I found mini-chapters called “Portals” where concepts from earlier chapters were expanded on with fully illustrated scenes. I know graphic novels aren’t to everyone’s taste, but I thought this was a great example of how the medium can combine art and language to tell a unique story.

Julie's Journal : What I Read for Plot Twist in 2025

We've just finished up another year of our Plot Twist book club here at Franklin County Library.  The book club idea was conceived by Emily, Library Director Lisa's daughter.  We don't all read the same book - rather each month we have a topic or genre and we read something that fits.  We get together and talk about what we read on the last Tuesday of each month at 6:00.  Everyone is welcome!  My 12 books (or 11 actually - I missed the July meeting) for this year were as follows.

January - Biography - Mistaken Identity, by Don & Susie Van Ryn and Newell, Colleen, and Whitney Cerak.  This is the heartbreaking account of a devastating wreck and its aftermath.  Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak, both young college students, were involved.  Whitney was declared dead at the scene and Laura was rushed to the hospital in life-threatening condition.  5 weeks later, Whitney's family was told the unbelievable - Whitney was alive, misidentified as Laura.  Laura's family learned that the young woman they had been caring for in the hospital was in fact not their daughter; Laura had been buried 5 weeks earlier under Whitney's name.  As I guess is obvious, this is a very difficult book to read.  However, both families use their stories as a testimony for their faith.  

February - Antilove - Not a Happy Family, by Shari Lapena.  Easter dinner at the Merton home is not pleasant, and all three adult children leave the gathering early.  Later that evening, Mr. and Mrs. Merton are murdered in their luxury home.  All three kids have good reason to want their less-than-ideal parents out of the picture.  All three are suspects, both of the authorities, and of each other.  We have the oldest daughter, driven to succeed, but never feeling like she quite measures up.  The middle son has failed to rise to his father's high expectations and has just been turned down for a loan.  The youngest daughter has flaunted all her parents expectations and become a wild child, dancing to the beat of her own drum.  There's also the bitter aunt, who expected to inherit some of her brother's estate, but is shocked to find out that he never changed his will the way he promised her he would.  So... who do you think the culprit is?

March - Science Fiction - Old Man's War, by John Scalzi.  John Perry is turning 75 and he has a choice to make.  He can continue as he is, aging, and finish out his life on earth, or he can enlist in the Colonial Defense Force and receive a new body and a new mission - fighting in an intersteller war against hostile aliens.  It wouldn't be much of a story if he didn't choose the second option and we get to see him go through enlistment, body transfer, training, and eventual deployment.  He meets other guys and girls like himself and lives and learns with them much like living in a college dorm.  I thought it was an interesting concept for a story.  It is a 7 book series, but I have only read the first one.

April - Set or written the year you were born - The Twits by Roald Dahl and The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks.  I was born in 1980 and both these books were published that year.  Both are children's books that I remember reading as a kid.  The Twits isn't the best of Dahl's many kids' books.  It follows a very unpleasant couple to their very unpleasant end.  It has a dark humor that I enjoy in kids' books, but I like Matilda or James and the Giant Peach better.  They have nasty characters, but there are happy, pleasant characters as well.  The Indian in the Cupboard was better.  A young boy is given a magical cupboard and learns how to turn his toys into live people.  He first changes an Indian, then a cowboy, a medic, and an Indian princess with her horse.  Life gets interesting for him when Cowboys and Indians becomes real, in miniature, in his bedroom. 

May - Color in the Title - Black Sheep, by Georgette Heyer.   Georgette Heyer wrote in the early 1900s.  Her stories are mostly Regency romance with an occasional who-done-it mixed in.  In this book, Abigail is in charge of her young niece and is trying to protect her from the schemes of a fortune hunting rake.  She meets the young rake's disreputable uncle and tries to enlist his help to protect her niece. Uncle Miles doesn't care a bit about saving Abigail's niece, but is very interested in liberating Abigail from her many responsibilities.  Heyer's books are witty and fun and I always enjoy revisiting them.

June - Made into a Movie - The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown.  When the ship our robot is being transported on is shipwrecked, one robot washes ashore and is inadvertently powered on by wildlife.  Roz has to learn to adapt to her new wild environment.  She makes friends and adopts an orphaned gosling, but her creators want her back and she has to decide what to do.  This is a very cute book.  Once again it is a series of books, but I've only read the first one.  I haven't gotten around to watching the movie yet, but I plan to soon.

July - True Crime

August - Made you cry - Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer.  This book is about violent religious extremism.  It centers on the murders of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter Erica, by Brenda's brother-in-laws Ron and Don Lafferty.  Ron and Don believe that they have received a revelation from God that Brenda and Erica must die.  The book moves back and forth through time examining the roots of violent religious sects.  Unfortunately, it is usually the women and children who suffer the most.

September - Western - Louis L'Amour Short Stories.  The only Western I had read prior to this was Lonesome Dove, which is an epic length novel.  Short stories are on the extreme other end of the spectrum.  Louis L'Amour is an extremely famous, well respected, and often read author, but his short stories were not for me.  They came to a conclusion too easily with too many coincidences for me to find them believable.  Maybe I would like his long form novels better, but I haven't tried any of them.

October - Horror - Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher.  Hemlock & Silver is very loosely based on the Snow White fairy tale.  It has the elements of the young princess, the wicked stepmother, the poisoned apple, and the magic mirror.  From there though the similarities end.  Anja is a healer, with expertise in poisons, who is summoned to a remote palace to treat the mysterious sickness of a young princess.  What she finds is a princess who knows how she's being poisoned and by who, but who won't share what she knows.  Anja must figure out what the princess is trying to gain and stop the evil that is using her.  T. Kingfisher remains one of my favorite authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

November - Has a Recipe in It - Kate & Frida, by Kim Fay.  Set in the 1990s, Kate is a bookseller in Seattle and Frida is an aspiring war correspondent in Paris.  When Frida writes to a bookstore asking to make a purchase, Kate responds and a pen-pal friendship is born.  Told entirely in letters, Kate and Frida correspond about their lives, their hopes and dreams, their romances, and food.  Frida attempts to make food her refugee neighbors would like and the descriptions are lovely.  This is actually a follow-up novel to Love & Saffron which covers Frida's mother's correspondence with a food-writer.  Both books are gentle, feel-good reads.  I hope that Kim Fay writes more of this type of story.  

December - Local Author - The Twin Stones, by Ryan Shriver.  I wasn't sure what I was going to read in this category, but I saw on Facebook that Ryan, a former resident of Mt. Vernon, had recently written a book and I decided to try it.  I ended up really liking it and have bought the 2nd one in the series. Finn and Cass are orphans.  When their paths cross they aren't sure what to make of each other, but together set out to find out what happened to their families.  When they reach the place their families disappeared, they find a village in ruins.  They spend the night in a falling down house, and find, hidden, a small box with two stones.  The stones have power and Finn is drawn to one, Cass to the other.  They know that the stones can be used to awaken special powers in them, but they need an awakening circle.  The ones in the cities require them to swear loyalty to the king, which they don't want to do, but with the stones is information about a wild circle.  Together they set off on a dangerous journey to awaken and fulfill a prophecy.  

The next meeting of our Plot Twist book club will be at the library January 27th at 6:00.  Our theme this month is Favorite Author.  Hope to see you there!