Amber's Year in Books 2025 — About IBD Podcast Episode 192

Amber’s Year in Books 2025 — About IBD Podcast Episode 192

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Looking for your next great read? Host of About IBD, Amber Tresca, gives her year-end roundup of books, with brief summaries and reflections on each. The selections cover a mix of genres, from speculative fiction and psychological thrillers to memoir and dark fantasy, often touching on themes of trauma, community, self-acceptance, and chronic illness. Amber shares how the stories resonated with her experience as a GenX mom living with a chronic illness, offering both recommendations and caveats. She also discusses practical tips for accessing books affordably through libraries and apps, and encourages exploring local bookstores or thrift shops to boost your reading journey and sense of community.

Find a list of Amber’s 2025 books at Bookshop.org.

Chapters:

  • 00:05 — Introduction and Episode Overview — Amber introduces herself, the podcast, and the year-end book review episode.
  • 01:08 — Book 1: Beautyland by Marie Helene Bertino — Summary, themes, and reflections on the coming-of-age story of an alien observing human life.
  • 03:35 Book 2: The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult — Summary, dual timelines, ancient Egypt, and personal frustrations with the main character.
  • 06:10 — Book 3: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King — Summary, differences between book and movie, trauma, and post-Shining life for Danny Torrance.
  • 09:57 — Book 4: We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer — Summary, psychological horror, reality distortion, and the challenges of ambiguous endings.
  • 12:23 — Book 5: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig — Summary, alternate lives, regret, self-acceptance, and critique of the book’s premise.
  • 16:07 — Library Resources and Digital Media Tips — Amber shares how she accesses books via library apps and encourages listeners to use library resources.
  • 17:36 — Book 6: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher — Summary, dark fantasy, abuse, coming of age, and resilience in a retelling of Goose Girl.
  • 20:40 — Book 7: Death Valley by Melissa Broder — Summary, magical realism, chronic illness depiction, and reflections on escapism and coping.
  • 24:21 — Book 8: One of Us Knows by Alyssa Cole — Summary, dissociative identity disorder, pandemic context, and unique take on the locked-room thriller.
  • 27:07— Book 9: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman — Summary, community, connection, and critique of the book’s tone and humor.
  • 31:06 — Book 10: A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost — Summary, comedic memoir, personal anecdotes, and recommendation of the audiobook version.
  • 33:44 — Book Shopping, Thrifting, and Community Reflections — Amber discusses supporting bookstores, thrifting, and the importance of reading for community and personal growth.
  • 36:07 — Closing Remarks and Call to Action — Amber wraps up, encourages listener engagement, and provides information about show notes and future book clubs.

Books Amber Contributed to in 2025:

Library apps mentioned in this episode:

Find Amber J Tresca at:

Find Mac Cooney (mix, sound design, and theme music) at:

These show notes may contain affiliate links. If you choose to purchase after clicking a link, Mal and Tal Enterprises, LLC may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

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Transcript

[Music: IBD Dance Party]

Amber 00:00:05  I’m Amber Tresca and this is about IBD. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis as a teen and had pouch surgery ten years later. Now I help people with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis understand their disease and feel seen on About IBD. You’ll get real talk on symptoms, treatment, and life with IBD straight from patients, caregivers, and experts. You’ll learn, feel less alone, and even have a laugh along the way.

Hello and welcome to the About IBD year end book episode. This is where I’m going to talk about some of the books that I read or listen to as audiobooks this year, and take you through them and let you know what I found in them, so that you can use it to inform your own reading journey. This year I have ten books for you, plus a few more that I’m going to put in the show notes, but I’m not going to go through them in this episode, so be sure to check the show notes or go to About IBD where you can find much more information there.

Amber 00:01:08  Okay, let’s get started. The first book I’m going to talk about today on my 2025 list is called Beauty Land, and it is by Marie Helene Bertino. By the way, I am probably going to mispronounce a lot of authors names. I apologize, but I will do the best that I can. Anyway, back to Beauty Land. I read this book because it was the book that was chosen for the one book, one town that my town participates in. It leads to a lot of interesting talks and meetings around the book of the year. And if your town takes part, I really recommend that you find out and get involved. And if not, maybe you can encourage your library or your local community center to take part in one book, one town. Okay. Here’s a summary of Beauty Land. An alien born to human parents observes Earth with wonder and confusion. As she grows, she reports back to her home planet about human beauty and absurdity. A tender, speculative coming of age story.

Amber 00:02:19  I loved this book, but it was a hard read at times because the main character, her name is Adina. She was born in the 70s. I was born in the 70s, so some of the things that she is experiencing were familiar to me. I think the book is sometimes recommended to teenagers, but I would say older teens because there is some content that might be considered adult, but I do think that it is a gateway and offers a chance to talk with older kids about some of the experiences of the teen and the young adult years. Because Edina is convinced that she’s an extraterrestrial. She examines human behavior like an outsider. So as an adult and a mom, I appreciate the different perspective that she had. And it could be an entry into a discussion of handling dating and other social situations with your teenagers. Aside from that, it’s just an interesting idea to show how an extraterrestrial might think about the things humans do. It’s beautifully written and it’s not sentimental, and I found those aspects also really appealing.

Amber 00:03:35  Overall, thumbs up for Beauty Land, and I hope that it leads you to have some discussions with other people and to maybe dig a little bit into the history slash myth of extraterrestrials and UFOs and the Men in Black and all those sorts of things. This year I also read the book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult. Here’s a summary of the book of Two Ways after a near-death experience. Death doula Dawn Edelstein re examines the life and love she left behind in Egypt. Dual timelines explore both the path she chose and the one she abandoned. Themes include destiny, family, and ancient Egyptian beliefs. This story is so beautifully written. It also kept me on my toes because it goes back and forth in time. That’s what that dual reality alludes to. So there are some points where it’s unclear what is actually happening and which timeline you’re in. Also, the main character really frustrated me. She became so upset over something that from my perspective, occurred between her and her husband and in a long marriage, I really don’t think it was a huge issue.

Amber 00:05:03  But then she went and acted out in ways which were major issues and would have been very painful for her husband and her daughter. Although I don’t think those are, that’s fully explored. I also struggled to see how someone could be intelligent enough to be at the PhD level at Yale, which the main character is empathetic enough to be a death doula. And if you don’t know what that is, I encourage you to look it up. And yet, she was so clueless about things in her personal life that were right in front of her. I loved all the imagery. I love the explanation of the tombs and the belief systems of the ancient Egyptians. The main character works in Egypt as a grad student, so she has a deep level of knowledge. There was a lot that was familiar to me there, but also enough that was new and it really kept my attention. But like I said, the characters frustrated me to no end. Which of course, if they were perfect people, there would be no book.

Amber 00:06:10  So of course there has to be some conflict, but I’m still trying to understand what the lessons are from the story, and maybe it’s that we can’t deny who we truly are forever, because it only leads to uncomfortable and painful reckonings. So I recommend it. But I don’t know. Maybe you’ll be frustrated too. Let me know if you read the book and what you think. My next book is Doctor Sleep from Stephen King, which is the sequel to The Shining. I know what you’re probably thinking. There was a sequel to The Shining. Yes there was. I didn’t know that either. People are really divided over the movie adaptation of this book, which is from 2019. First of all, I love the movie, but that’s because the stars, Ewan McGregor and I would watch him read the phone book. So maybe I am not objective. I watched Doctor Sleep the movie all the time, but I did not know that it was a book. So when I found out I got a copy from my library, the book in the movie are materially different.

Amber 00:07:23  I certainly enjoyed the movie more than the book, but I’m glad to have both forms of this story to engage with. Here’s a summary of Doctor Sleep. Adult Danny Torrance battles alcoholism and the lingering trauma of his psychic powers. He finds purpose at a hospice and forms a bond with a girl named Abra. Together, they fight a deadly cult that preys on children with the shine. So like all of King’s books, it’s probably considered to be in the horror genre, but I don’t think it’s truly scary. At least I didn’t find it. So it is disturbing in parts, so it’s not for everyone. But I do think it’s an interesting exploration of post-traumatic stress and how it affects people and their families. There are children that are harmed in this book and in the movie. So if that’s something that you try to avoid, and I usually do too, this story is probably not for you. As a matter of fact, I was just talking with a few friends a couple days ago about how we do try to find media in which children are not harmed, and sometimes it’s difficult to do so.

Amber 00:08:38  Matter of fact, that is my one rule on movie night. There can be no children harmed in the movie that we’re going to watch on movie night. So often that means that we just kind of avoid any movies that have children in them all together. but as I write this, I’m catching up on Stranger Things on Netflix so I can watch the latest season with my husband and my daughter. So there’s lots of reasons that we humans enjoy thrillers or true crime or horror, but we almost never see how the final girl copes with life after she gets away and the movie is over. Doctor sleep instead shows how the events of The Shining affected Danny, his mom, Wendy, and even Dick Halloran as the decades pass. They aren’t able to slip back into life and pretend like nothing happened. So I think it’s also validating because too often popular media glosses over the fact that trauma leaves deep scars that might never fully heal. For that reason, if horror is something that interests you. I recommend Doctor Sleep maybe the movie a little bit over the book, but it’s nice to have both.

Amber 00:09:57  My next book is We Used to Live Here by Markus Clewer, so I have to admit that I had some trouble following this book because it bounced around in time and it bent reality. You go through most of the book not really knowing what’s true and what’s not. It’s officially categorized as horror, but I think it’s really what we might call an old dark house story. Here’s a summary. A couple hosts of family claiming they once lived in the home. The guests behavior grows increasingly disturbing as reality seems to warp around them. A psychological horror about memory intrusion and the uncanny. So at the start of this book, a family shows up at the main character’s door, asking if they can look around the house. The father says he’d lived there as a child, and he brought his whole family with him because they are in the middle of a move. The main character is not thrilled, and she doesn’t know how to handle the situation. With a family at her door. It’s cold, it’s winter, and so she just falls back on politeness and she lets the family in.

Amber 00:11:12  What happens next is a series of incidents that prevents the family from leaving, so they wind up hanging around the house and quite frankly, making a nuisance of themselves. Then things start to get really weird because every character gives a different story. Until we get to the point where time and space completely break down, and what’s true and what’s not is totally unclear. This book is interesting and I didn’t know this before I read it is that it was a serialized Reddit story. And it’s also apparently being made into a movie. It’s a disturbing read, because I think we can all probably imagine ourselves in a place like the main character. You’re being pressured, you’re being gaslit. You don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore. As women were often socialized to be polite and to do things like let people into our homes maybe take advantage of us a little bit. Even though that’s not really what we want. We struggle with boundaries. I may or may not be talking about myself, but the ending of this book is ambiguous.

Amber 00:12:23  So also, if you’re like me and you don’t really love that, sorry. Maybe I’m very American. I like things to be tied up with a nice little bow. You might find this book frustrating, but it is interesting. It’s a new take on the genre, and it was an enjoyable read because you really didn’t know what was happening and what’s true and what’s not. And in the end, you kind of maybe have to decide that for yourself, even though there’s a little bit of an explanation that’s given. My next book is The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Matt Haig is a repeat author for me this year. I read some of his non-fiction, and here’s a summary. Nora Seed enters a magical library between life and death. Each book representing a life she could have lived. She explores alternate paths in search of meaning, a hopeful story about regret, possibility, and self-acceptance. So in this book, the main character, her name is Nora. She experiences a mental breakdown which leads her to the Midnight Library.

Amber 00:13:36  I’m not going to tell you exactly how she got there. pretty unpleasant, but that is the premise of the story. And of course, we have to have conflict in order to have a story. So while she’s there in the Midnight Library, she samples a bunch of different timelines of what her life could be if she’d made different choices. What struck me first about these alternate timelines is that in each of them, Nora is living what I would consider to be an extraordinary life. She’s not ever a regular person who goes to her desk job, and then she just goes hiking on the weekends. She’s a celebrity. She’s an athlete. She’s living something like a wildly alternative lifestyle. That bothered me a little bit, because how is it possible that one person could have so many different possible avenues to incredible success? It really doesn’t seem realistic. Again, You know, that’s maybe beside the premise and we have to have things like that in order to have a story. But it did kind of get on my nerves a little bit.

Amber 00:14:49  The problem that Norah finds with all of her lives is that something is always missing. There’s a crucial puzzle piece that’s not there, and she’s not satisfied. It doesn’t matter how much fame or how much money she has. She comes back to the midnight Library and she moves on to the next possible life. In all these experiences, she finally figures out what’s truly important to her and why she’s been going about it the wrong way in her original life. It takes her a while, and at a certain point, it’s a bit like Groundhog Day where she’s doing the same things over and over without making any headway. I had a lot of second hand cringe because she’s dropped into these new lives and she doesn’t know how to move through the world. She winds up doing a lot of troubleshooting. She makes mistakes. There’s embarrassing situations. maybe not the most pleasant thing for me to read, but it is interesting to see how she solves these different problems. Overall, it was a pretty easy read, but it does have a point of view, so it’s not a piece of fiction that’s just entirely for pleasure, but it’s also not hitting you over the head with anything.

Amber 00:16:07  So if you’ve read some of Matt Haig’s other books and you enjoy that philosophy that he has, you might find this interesting. Hey there. I want to take a minute to talk to you about how it is that I’m able to read or listen to so many books, and I sometimes abandon them like it’s my last day on earth. I am a heavy library user. My town has a robust library system, but even if you live in a place that doesn’t have a branch, that’s easy for you to access, you might be able to take advantage of digital offerings. My library and many others have an e-book app called Libby, a streaming app called hoopla, and a music streaming and downloading app called Free Gal. They’re all free to use with my library card, and I can find a huge amount of media on them. Libby has ebooks and audiobooks. Hoopla has eBooks, audiobooks, movies, TV’s, comics, and music. And Free Gal can be used to stream music, or I can download five songs every week and add them to my personal library.

Amber 00:17:36  This year I was downloading everything from Evanescence to Journey. Take a few minutes to check out your library system and see what they have available. I promise the librarians will help you access everything they have. I will put more information and resources in the show notes and also at About IBD. If that’s easier for you to access the links. I hope you take advantage of these things and that they’re available to you. Okay, back to the show. Dark fantasy is having a moment. And so this year I picked up a sorceress Comes to call from TI Tea kingfisher. It’s apparently a retelling of a Brothers Grimm story called Goose Girl. I’ve never read Goose Girl. Didn’t hear about it until I did a little research for this episode, so I have no comparisons to make for you on that. But here is a summary. A girl named Cordelia lives under the oppressive control of her sorceress mother, Evangeline, after Evangeline moves them into the home of a wealthy squire and his sister Hester. Cordelia finds a sense of belonging and must decide whether to aid her mother or help Hester protect the squire and find her own agency.

Amber 00:19:17  Right off the bat here, we’re in another story where children are harmed. despite my best efforts to avoid those things. Cordelia is, quite frankly, abused by her mother. Her mother, Evangeline, is a sorceress and also a pretty talented grifter. she uses trickery and coercion to get what she wants, usually from men. But she’s getting older and she’s looking for a more permanent situation. Maybe she wants to get off the grift, so they try to pull one over on a local gentleman and his family. They show up at his house acting like they’re displaced noblewomen, and they worm their way into the castle. But everything begins to unravel, and Evangeline is found out as a con artist and a sorceress that sets Cordelia on a path to extricate herself from her mother, which winds up being not only dangerous but also painful. Her mother has been up to more shenanigans than even Cordelia knew. This story also reminded me a lot of Cinderella. There are some parallels in Cinderella, though the abuse is a bit more nuanced, but in this book it’s more detailed, so it might not be a good choice for anyone that is bothered by that.

Amber 00:20:40  It’s also a fantasy. So there’s magic, of course, which is fun. But in the end, the book is about coming of age and resilience. It’s a quick read, and several of the characters are interesting and have some juicy backstories. It might sound like it’s a young adult novel, but I would say it’s actually only appropriate for older teens and adults. A book I read this year with a character who has Crohn’s disease is Death Valley by Melissa Broder. I didn’t know about the connection to IBD. I just picked up the book because it was supposed to be humorous. Here’s a summary. A woman retreats to a desert hotel while her father is critically ill. Searching for clarity there, she encounters surreal symbolic experiences, including a giant cactus, a blend of humor, grief, and magical realism. So this is another book where the story gets murky. The narrator is never named, but she’s a married woman whose father is actively dying at the time of the story. Her husband has Crohn’s disease.

Amber 00:21:54  The description of how she cares for her husband and what his daily life is like is pretty disturbing. He isn’t able to do much, and he spends a lot of time at home, resting and in bed. That depiction doesn’t really gel with me as far as how most people are living with Crohn’s disease today, because we have so many medical therapies available as well as surgical options, and I wouldn’t want someone coming away from reading the book thinking that Crohn’s is so profoundly debilitating for everyone, or that it doesn’t ever go into remission. The narrator is overwhelmed by her husband’s illness. She feels differently toward him now, and she doesn’t know how to cope with that. Those of us who have had partners walk away because they couldn’t cope with a flare up will recognize how IBD can erode a relationship. So that’s troubling, but that’s also not unrealistic anyway. Crohn’s disease is not the focus of the book. I’m not sure why the husband has a chronic illness, because it doesn’t really seem to add a whole lot to the story, but the narrator basically can’t cope with what’s happening in her life.

Amber 00:23:11  Her life is too stressful, and so she escapes to the desert, which is a wild thing to do when people are depending on you. As she spends time in the desert, she loses touch with reality and she goes on a mystical journey where she has to come to terms with the difficulties in her life. This book reminds me strongly of a concept. Wherever you go, there you are. Meaning that you can move. You can change jobs. You can change partners. But at the end of the day, you are still going to be the same person and your problems will come with you. The narrator tries to run away from her life instead of asking for help. That might be something that a lot of us recognize in ourselves. We all need an escape, but running away from things doesn’t really solve anything. There were certainly humorous moments in the book, but I wouldn’t say that it is comedic the whole way through. Even so, I do think that it was an interesting concept and it’s worth the read.

Amber 00:24:21  This year I read a psychological thriller called One of Us Nose by Alyssa Cole. I found this book interesting for a number of reasons, the first being that the main character lives with dissociative identity disorder. This means that she has different personalities or alters that come to the forefront at different times. The identities communicate with one another behind the scenes, and they also keep secrets from one another. Of course, this creates all sorts of problems when you’re just trying to navigate a life. Here is a summary. A woman with a traumatic brain injury becomes the caretaker of an isolated island estate when a storm traps her with a group of strangers and a murder takes place. She becomes the prime suspect. A tense psychological thriller about perception and identity. Something else that I found unusual about this novel is that it actually refers to the pandemic. I don’t think there’s a lot of fiction that takes what we all lived through from 2019 to, well, maybe even today into account. That’s important because the main character in her alters had experiences during the pandemic that changed them and influenced their behavior, as, of course, it did for all of us.

Amber 00:25:49  This book also acknowledges that people treat the main character in particular ways because she’s black as a black woman living with a mental illness. She and her alters are facing a lot of unfair stereotypes and also suspicion. I cannot speak to the accuracy of dissociative identity disorder, so I don’t know if it’s true to how people actually live and cope with that condition, but it’s the only book that I’ve ever read that explores it so deeply. Plus, there’s lots of twists and turns. You are never entirely sure. What is real and what is not. One of Us Knows explores the locked door thriller from a different perspective, and I always love when an author brings something new to a well-established genre. Another book I read this year that was supposed to be comedic but turned out to be what I thought was tragic, is a man Called Ove by Frederik Bachmann. Here is a summary. A curmudgeonly widowers strict routine is disrupted by new neighbors, who slowly pull him back into community. Beneath his gruff exterior lies deep loyalty and love.

Amber 00:27:07  A warm story about connection and second chances. Okay, so that’s all technically true. Frederick Bachman is a Swedish author, and I read this one because it was suggested as my library’s adult Reading challenge for a prompt called Baby is Cold Outside. It was billed as a Nordic humor with winter vibes. It was also developed into two films. I’ve not seen either of them. One is a Swedish film called a man Called Ove, and that was from 2015. And the other is titled a man Called Otto from 2022. I’m not going to watch either of those, and I will tell you why. The book is funny in parts, because the main character is so grumpy, that’s always a ha ha. He is set in his ways and he has a strong sense of responsibility and order. We all know people like this who insist on things being done in a certain way. We may be even related to some of them or be some of them. The main character loses his wife and he becomes isolated until a family moves in next door and they bring all the normal chaos of a young family, and he starts to get involved in their lives.

Amber 00:28:34  They have a stronger sense of community than he does, so they treat him in a way that’s just neighborly, and he has to overcome his challenges with maintaining relationships. I also found this book deeply sad, and it was coincidence that I was talking to somebody and I can’t remember who. Apologies if you’re listening to this right now, but they said they were looking for a lighter read and they read this book and they felt tricked. I don’t want to turn anyone off to reading it, but it’s not humor in the same way Americans think of it. It’s a story about life, really, and so it contains everything. It’s funny in parts, it’s traumatic in parts, and it’s just not completely one thing or another. It does make a point of showing how we all need community, and that community takes different forms. It’s my personal belief that we do have responsibilities to one another, including as neighbors. So to me, it’s selfish to try to opt out of relationships. I don’t believe this concept that we don’t owe anyone anything.

Amber 00:29:49  So just because of finds it difficult to get along with other people, it doesn’t mean he gets to opt out of being in a community. He has to do the work on himself to find a way to take part in community and society. Because to me, that is what we all owe one another as humans. So the end result is that I would not call a man called Ove comedy, but it’s an important reflection on humanity and on community and how we can learn to change. But I do think it’s important to say that it’s not as funny as maybe some reviews would make it out to be, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to be tricked. My last book I’m going to profile this year, and one that I read early in the year and actually is funny, is A Very Punchable Face by Colin Yost. Here is a summary. A Very Punchable Face is a memoir by comedian and Saturday Night Live head writer and Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost, told through a series of humorous and self-deprecating essays.

Amber 00:31:06  The book chronicles his life from childhood on Staten Island to his success in the world of comedy, offering a behind the scenes look at his career and personal mishaps. I listened to this on The audiobook, which I recommend. Cullen does a great job narrating it, and whenever the author is a performer, I think hearing them read their own words is so much more impactful than listening to a voiceover artist. One of the most important anecdotes that he relates is how he didn’t speak when he was a small child. It took a number of years for him to become verbal, so the fact that he’s now a comedian that performs on stage is really very interesting. And I think it shows how we can change and mould our lives as long as we have the right kind of support, which Cullen ultimately did at that time in his life. He has a number of stories which would be almost unbelievable, including how he was infected with bot fly larvae. The bot fly laid eggs in his legs, and it was probably deeply unfunny at the time.

Amber 00:32:24  It makes for a hilarious story in hindsight. Hopefully he doesn’t have any lingering effects from it, except maybe some complex PTSD. Do not search for butterflies. You will not want to see the photos. This is the kind of thing that we would profile in the journals when I worked for a medical publisher, and the photos were, well, let’s just say when I was editing or copy editing, I would usually put a post-it note over them, because looking at them while I was reviewing the lasers was probably the least favorite part of my job. Anyway, Colin has a number of other funny stories from his life, so if you are looking for something that claims to be comedic and it actually is. I recommend a very punchable face because that certainly did the job and that will do it for the books I want to profile in 2025. I read other books this year, of course, and I also contributed a chapter to two different books. I interviewed a number of authors on this podcast as well, so I will include all that information in the show notes.

Amber 00:33:44  When I can provide a link to a independent bookstore, I will do so. But self-published books are usually only available from an online store. It’s okay if you don’t want to shop that way, but just please be aware that there’s no other way to get certain books, especially in the chronic disease space. There’s a push and pull between supporting small creators and supporting big corporations, and I will leave you to make your own decisions about those things. I also recommend going to your local thrift store or used bookstore. I hit the thrift store a lot because I find it oddly relaxing to look through the physical media and find Blu rays or CDs, but the used bookstore, I only make it a few times a year. We make a day of it for my birthday or Mother’s Day. I don’t know, maybe that’s a weird idea of fun, but thrifting and book shopping followed by a great lunch is a pretty perfect day for me. When I was a teenager living in Detroit, I could walk to a used bookstore and a library, as well as a lot of other places, and finding a new book by Stephen King or Anne McCaffrey, Anne Rice, Frank Herbert.

Amber 00:35:00  These were the this was the thing that really kept me afloat during some of my worst times with ulcerative colitis. It’s a tragedy that I only discovered Kurt Vonnegut in my 40s. He could have helped me through those years, too, But I have caught up with him now. The used bookstore or library can be overwhelming, so I keep a list of books. That way I can search for what I’m looking for when I get there, but I also like to just wander around a little bit and see what I can find on vibes. If you don’t consider yourself a reader, or are you falling off your reading journey because social media has broken all of our brains? Connect with your library or a bookstore, because that is a great way to feel part of the community again and reignite your reading journey. If you have any book suggestions for me or if you’ve written a book, get in touch and let me know that you are out there. Book clubs tend to come and go, but if you follow me on social media, I’ll let you know what I’m reading.

[Music: IBD Dance Party]

Amber 00:36:07  And if it’s part of a chronic illness book club that you can also join. Okay. Thanks for listening and happy reading in 2026.

Hey, super listener. Check the show notes to find links and information about the topics discussed in this episode. Plus, get a written transcript and much more on my website About IBD. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with someone else or leaving a rating in your podcast app. Reviews and ratings help me grow this show and bring you more great content. Thanks for listening and remember. Until next time, I want you to know more about IBD.

About IBD is a production of Mal and Tal Enterprises.

It is written, produced, and directed by me, Amber Tresca.

Mix and sound design is by Mac Cooney.

Theme music is from Cooney Studio. 

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