2025 in Review

If you click on only one link in this post, please make it one that helps people survive genocide. Please help continue Alice Wong’s brilliant legacy by helping Palestinians stay online and alive through a donation to Crips for eSims for Gaza. You can also support any of the campaigns the volunteers at the Butterfly Effect Project verified. Volunteers and organizations around the world verify families’ identities with location, secure video calls, and ID documents. I share verified fundraisers on my Instagram.

My Bluesky account, glapointewriter.bsky.social, was permanently banned in 2025 for sharing verified fundraisers from Palestine. Bluesky’s “safety” department is much harsher in banning Palestinians than it is towards people like me from outside Palestine. Still, allies sometimes get banned too. Bluesky and Meta’s complicity in genocide and in suppressing free speech are apparent. I recommend Upscrolled instead, a mobile social media app created by Palestinian developers.

This year, I stopped uploading any of my work (old or new) to Academia.edu. It uses genAI without my consent (for example, it creates genAI “summaries” and “podcast episodes” of my work. Thanks to everyone who reads my writing. The most important work we can do is help people survive.

My 2025 Publications

January

The Best Recent Coloring Books, from Classic Fairy Tales to Streaming Series

February

Genre-Defying Historical Fiction

March

Are We in a Golden Age of Plagiarism?

April

100 Years of Gatsby, Old Sport! (non-paywall version on my Medium blog)

May

The Story Beside the Story: 6 of the Best SFF and Horror Sidequels

June

Why Oppressive Fictional Societies Suppress Reading–and How They Mirror Our Current Culture

August

Why are There So Many Fake Shakespeare Quotes?

and on my Medium blog without a paywall

The Ableist “Mercy Killing” in The Thursday Murder Club

October

Quiz: Can You Match the Children’s Classic to Its Opening Lines?

BR Quiz and International News

November

A History of Sci-Fi Book Cover Trends

Brief Thoughts on Ableism in The Substance

On Frankenstein, Adaptations, and Disability

December

The Best Gifts For Readers (That Aren’t Books)

What Happened to These High-Profile, Canceled Adaptations?

Age Is A Mindset: 6 of the Best New Granny Hobby Books

(cross-posted from WordPress, where almost no one sees it)