What’s On My Mind (and My Reading List) — December 2025
The Women Writers Who Will Define My End-of-Year Reading
The roller coaster ride that is 2025 is coming to an end. And with the end of the year comes an end-of-year reading list.
It has been difficult for me to narrow a concrete theme that perfectly encapsulates where my mind is going as this year wraps up, as I wrap up holiday shopping, as I try to sort through Thanksgiving leftovers, and as I sort through potential articles for this newsletter. I think what makes most sense for me is to keep this month’s reading list brief.
So I’m going to include a much shorter list of works than usual. Some are new. Some have been sitting on my shelf for quite some time. The following books are what I will be devoting my winter break and the early weeks of 2026 to.
Lately, I have been reengaging with the works of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. I first read To Kill a Mockingbird in 10th grade, and it was around that time that her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, was published for the first time.1
So you can imagine my surprise when, while walking through a local bookstore, I uncovered yet another published volume by the late author, containing a series of essays and short stories.
The publication of The Land of Sweet Forever has left me rather conflicted. The act of publicizing works after the passing of an author is a sensitive subject in literary spheres.2 Many great works of Western literature — such as Anne Frank’s diary and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations — were written without any intent of ever being published, and they are routinely praised for the historical context they provide. And yet, there are even more troubling cases, such as the recent mass publication of Joan Didion’s psychiatry notes, that feel so personal and intimate as to be downright invasive of the author’s personal life and their legacy.
So I’m approaching The Land of Sweet Forever with a degree of hesitation, both for the potential moral grey area of engaging with posthumously published works and for my personal opinions about the time period in which Lee sets her narrative works.
As of writing, I have already finished Go Set a Watchman, and I am rereading, for the first time in over a decade, To Kill a Mockingbird. And if I have any words of prominence to offer on Lee’s newly published works, then I will be sure to do so.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
The Land of Sweet Forever by Harper Lee
Outside of this, I have been engaging with the works of bell hooks. After reading a collection of her interviews a few months back, I’ve dived into her vast body of work on feminism, beginning with All About Love and proceeding with her corpus from there.
The study of feminism, sexuality, and gender studies is an area that I often do not cover both in my personal reading nor on What’s On My Mind, but it is core to understanding many of the authors whose work I also actively engage with — James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin being among them.
And so I’m beginning this journey with bell hooks, knowing that I will be (and currently am) continuing this study with many more writers who will fill in my intellectual gaps in this subject area.
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks.
And lastly, I am continuing to read more poetry. The following are poetry collections I’ve picked up in the last couple of weeks. As I become more familiar with this literary medium, I hope to offer more insightful language and commentary as I continue this pursuit.
Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning by Alice Walker
Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful by Alice Walker
Once by Alice Walker
What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer
And with that, I am going to get back into the trenches and continue reading my ever-expanding library. I have really big plans for 2026, for myself, for this newsletter, and for my writing beyond it. If you want to get an early taste of what’s to come, I encourage you to subscribe to the What’s On My Mind newsletter, gain access to our subscribers-only community chat, and be at the forefront of the discussions to come.
Until then, happy reading!
Socials:
Substack: whatsonmymind.net
Twitter: twitter.com/bryceallenreads
Threads: threads.net/@bryceallenreads
Glasp: glasp.co/#/bryceallen
For more articles on reading, writing, and the creative process, subscribe to my free Substack newsletter!
You can support my writing by buying me a coffee!
You can also show support by purchasing from the affiliate links in this article.
Go Set a Watchman, published in July 2015, was Lee’s last work published before her passing on February 19, 2016.
The essays in The Land of Sweet Forever have been published in various outlets previously. The included short stories have never been published elsewhere.