December Reading Log

My reading year draws to a close not with a bang, but with a whimper—you'll find multiple books on here where the majority of my time spent reading actually happened in previous months. But I count it as a win, because as of December 28, my Goodreads "Currently Reading" category is FINALLY empty...at least for a few hours.

Here are the books that I finished 2025 with!

SERMONS FOR ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS DAY by Martin Luther

Having bought this on sale a year or two ago, this seemed the appropriate season to dive back into the writings of the Father of the Reformation to see what he had to say about expectation, God's fulfilled promises, and the Christ child. The verdict: boy did Martin Luther hate the pope.

I kid (sort of). This collection of six sermons (one four each Sunday of Advent and then two for Christmas Day) does contain some inspired exposition related to the coming of Jesus. Indeed, the closer Luther sticks to the text, the more enjoyable I found his sermons. Particularly in the book's final sermon, which explores the theology of John 1, there was some solid insight.

But, like all preachers, Luther does have his hobby horses. Any chance to emphasize faith over works is seized with gusto. When the opportunity is there to call the pope the Antichrist, he never watches the pitch sail by. Luther was both preacher and polemicist, and you rarely forget that when reading these sermons.

As a historical artifact, these sermons are worth a glance. As a commentary or Advent devotional, they can be skipped.

ULYSSES by James Joyce

My youngest brother, a librarian by trade, told me years ago, "Life is too short to read Ulysses." And yet, for reasons that are best sorted out by a licensed therapist, I have now read it twice. May God have mercy on my soul.

Following a trip to Ireland in 2024, I determined to make 2025 the year that I figured out James Joyce. After all, he is widely hailed by literary critics as the greatest writer of the 20th century, and Ulysses is often named as the best book ever written (on such lists it's NEVER outside the top 3.) Yet, whether I was reading Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Ulysses (the first time), he has always left me cold. Sometimes I admire his intellect while not especially enjoying his writing. Other times I'm so baffled that I just despise him altogether. James Joyce generally and Ulysses specifically has the power to tap into my deepest insecurity: they make me feel stupid.

The book is ostensibly the story of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a Jewish Dubliner who is being cuckolded by his wife Molly. Using Homer's The Odyssey (which I read in preparation for this book) as an outline, Joyce takes us through Bloom's day from beginning to end, when he returns home to Molly.

But the book is not about plot, nor about the characters—not Bloom, Molly, Stephen Dedalus, Buck Mulligan, or any of the other figures in Bloom's orbit. It is about Joyce putting on a literary fireworks show, dazzling intellectuals throughout the ages with his mastery of stream of consciousness, his allusions, and his ability to weave in and out of different styles. The writing is not a vehicle for the story in Ulysses, the writing is the point. It is post-modernism at its most post-modernist.

And maybe if you're an English professor, this counts as fun for you. Maybe you read because you want to feel like the smartest person in the room. Truly, honestly, maybe you're just a lot more intelligent than I am.

But for me, this book remains a cipher. It is incomprehensible to me that someone could pick it up and understand it without aids. It is unfathomable to me that anyone could enjoy the experience of reading it.

I am not going to promise I will never read this book again. I am a fallen creature, and the knowledge that this Very Important Book is practically indecipherable to me continues to bother me. So at some point before I die, I'll probably wade through the murky waters of Ulysses again. But I stand by what I said in 2017: "If your book needs a decoder ring just to be comprehensible, that's not entirely the fault of the reader."

ULYSSES ANNOTATED by Don Gifford
A GUIDE TO JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES by Patrick Hastings
THE NEW BLOOMSDAY BOOK by Harry Blamires

To aid me in my trudge through Ulysses, I was at least smart enough to enlist aids beyond what's freely available at SparkNotes.com. Every morning that I cracked Ulysses open, I had these volumes right next to it.

Ulysses Annotated is exactly what it sounds like, a line-by-line reference work that provides context for everything from the geography of Dublin to literary references to biblical allusions, all of which Joyce employs constantly to show how smart he is tell his story. I would not consider this an essential aid to understanding the book, but, especially in the denser sections, it was useful to see what Joyce was up to.

A Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses was my favorite of the three works. Originally published for free online, it aspires to demystify Ulysses for the common reader, walking you through each chapter summarily and providing context where necessary. I won't pretend it helped me enjoy Ulysses, but it did help me understand it better. If I were to recommend one of these books, this would be the one worth purchasing.

The New Bloomsday Book is similar to Hastings' work, but more dated in its approach and less helpful overall. I admit that there were times I was skimming this more than reading it carefully—while respected by Joyce scholars, it is not as useful to the novice as the other two books I used. Of the three, this is the one I'm most likely to offload to Half Price Books.

DANGER IN ZION NATIONAL PARK by Aaron Johnson

Our journey through this planned 10-book series continued the last two months with Danger in Zion National Park, where author Aaron Johnson seemed to grasp that he was going to need more than the formula he'd incorporated in the first three books to get this thing to the finish line. If you're not a monthly reader of this log, then I'll catch you up on the series, which my two oldest kids and I have been reading together periodically at bedtime: Jake, accompanied by his cousin Wes and family friend Amber, are on a scavenger hunt through America's National Parks, one set up by Jake's recently deceased grandfather but which has ties dating back to the 1800s. Ancient treasure awaits, but there are mysterious antagonists out for the same prize our heroes are.

In the last book, Aaron Johnson introduced tension between Jake and Amber. Having been resolved before the end of that volume, there is no more internecine drama in this one. Instead, Johnson ramps up the conflict between the protagonists and their mysterious enemies, as our heroes find their movements trailed by flying drones throughout this story. It adds an air of menace to the proceedings that is welcome in a series that is mostly pretty chummy.

If this book has a weakness, it's that Johnson bounces back and forth between the present day and the story of Jake's 19th century ancestor Abraham—and, for the reader, Jake's story is considerably more compelling. I noticed that in this book, Johnson (perhaps inspired by feedback from readers) gave about 2/3 of the book to Jake and only 1/3 to Abraham, as opposed to the previous 50-50 split. It was a welcome change.

All in all, these books remain part mystery, part after-school special, but my kids enjoy them (especially Andrew). It's hard for me to imagine these stretching into 10 books, but the author showed with this book he's willing to make some adjustments along the way. Tune in soon to see us reach the halfway point with book #5, which takes us to Yosemite!

ESSENTIAL IRON MAN VOL. 3 by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska, Johnny Craig, Don Heck, et al.

The Bronze Age is a period in comics' history that fans look back on with some fondness, but not a lot of respect. Coming out of the Silver Age of the 1960s—when characters like Spider-Man, the Justice League of America, the Fantastic Four, and more had come into being—the Bronze Age was marked less by innovation than by stagnancy. Storytelling beats that felt fresh ten years earlier now felt rote, attempts at "relevant" stories (what we'd call "woke" today) which felt earnest in the '60s now came off as clumsy. Most importantly, where the Silver Age had been led by the creative talents of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and other legends of the industry, the Bronze Age was defined by a so-called "house style" at both Marvel and DC, where editors and fans alike came to expect everything to look and sound roughly the same. To summarize, the Bronze Age, which unofficially began with 1973's "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, was a time when comics rested on their laurels instead of daring to try new things.

Based on what I read in Essential Iron Man Vol. 3, the Bronze Age came early for the Armored Avenger.

While this volume starts in 1969 with issue #12, the signs are all there that Silver Age dynamism has already come to an end. Stories are self-contained more often than they are soap operas (a brief editorial mandate across Marvel based on the idea that new readers would be confused by serial storytelling). The writing from Archie Goodwin and then George Tuska is a pale imitation of Stan Lee's bombastic style. The art is workmanlike, but basically just a John Buscema knock-off, the aforementioned house style that Marvel preferred in the 1970s.

The result is a collection of stories that I barely remember reading, so minimal was their impact. From issue to issue, Tony Stark foils some new villain, usually one trying to sabotage one of his factories (though one change from earlier stories is that the Cold War propaganda has been ratcheted way down.) Occasionally old foes like Titanium Man and the Mandarin resurface, but rarely does it seem to matter much. Characters are added to the supporting cast, but none pop the way Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan—who had been shuttled off the stage in the previous volume—did in the early '60s.

It all makes for very disposable stories, which is pretty much what the Bronze Age was all about. Don't get me wrong, these aren't bad comics, exactly. They're just not good. Welcome to the Bronze Age of Comics, Iron Man.

BATMAN: HUSH by Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, and Scott Williams

In 2002, DC Comics' editorial team came to Jeph Loeb, writer of the beloved Batman: The Long Halloween, with a proposal: write a yearlong, in-continuity Batman story featuring as much of the Caped Crusader's supporting cast and rogues gallery as he wanted. Loeb agreed, especially upon learning who his artist would be: Jim Lee, whose art on X-Men #1 helped make that the bestselling comic book of all time, a title it still holds today. Reading between the lines, that means DC talked to Lee before Loeb—and that makes sense after reading Batman: Hush, because make no mistake, this book is the Jim Lee Show.

Hush is a story about a mysterious new villain (the titular Hush) who exploits and manipulates various people in Batman's life, from Joker to Superman to the long-dead second Robin, Jason Todd, in order to get at Batman. In the background, the comic also features the first real attempt at a romance between Batman and Catwoman after decades of flirtatiousness, with Batman going so far as to reveal his secret identity to his former foe. It all culminates in a final twist ending that, while a little predictable, is satisfying enough.

But honestly, the story is not the reason this book is beloved by Batman fans of a certain age. The reason for that is simple: this is the best work of Jim Lee's career. Given virtual free reign, Lee offers now-classic splash pages of countless Batman characters, to say nothing of the Dark Knight himself. If you've seen a poster of Batman printed in the last 25 years, there's an excellent chance it's from this book.

I first read this comic more than 20 years ago in a Barnes & Noble, and was speedreading because I didn't know when we'd have to leave. Turns out I didn't miss much: while Loeb's writing is fine, the point of Batman: Hush is to look at the pretty pictures. I was happy to do so again this month.