December 2025//Archive #12
December thoughts and books read—Falling out of routine during a season of no routine, two books in translation, a return to a beloved series, and a semi-autobiographical novel.
December and the holiday season came and went this year, and along with it, my ability to focus. I kept myself busy with work and reading slowly, if at times distractedly, something I’ve noticed myself falling into more as the days have grown darker and the winter season has brought a typically busier season. Blah blah, excuses, life, scrolling, etc. I read two books, though, and that’s still something!
On The Calculation of Volume III by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell. What can I say? I adore this series. It’s ended up on multiple end-of-the-year lists, and those who love it don’t seem to be changing their minds as each book is released. I can’t say much about this, as it is the third volume, but you can find my reviews of the first two volumes here. The third book felt like an in-between moment, building towards something bigger in Volume 4, which is being released in April 2026.
(Read on with caution)
Tara Selter is still living through the same day, November 18th, and although much has changed for her, much is still the same. However, this sameness begins to be challenged by newcomers. Where Tara has sought companionship from people outside her loop in volumes I and II, she now shares the loop with other loopers, two specifically, who do not share her sentiments about the repetitive days. Balle is bringing more ideas of consumerism and what characters owe the world outside the loop. Does companionship place you even further from a community, leaving you once again alienated and outside time? Tara is an interior character, which is why the first two volumes worked incredibly well for me. Things are getting a bit stickier in this newest volume, and I can’t wait to see where it goes and how Tara fits into it all.
I like tracking Tara’s obsessions with each volume.
Volume I—Tara is obsessed with love, memory, and artifacts
Volume II—Tara is obsessed with creating seasons
Volume III—Tara is obsessed with sounds turning into empty sounds
An absolute favorite quote from Volume III—“And Tara, she said, she just gazes out of windows, thinking about love.”
A lot of arguing happens in this volume about how to “properly” use the “gift” of the time loop.
He wanted to treat symptoms, she said. She wanted to expose the causes. She wanted to change the system, the structures. He didn’t think that life and death were mere symptoms. They were real events in the midst of the eighteenth of November.
Mourning A Breast by Xi Xi translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Feeley. This book was written in 1989 by the acclaimed Hong Kong writer Xi Xi after being diagnosed in her early fifties with breast cancer, initially published in 1992, with a translation published by NYRB in 2024.
Xi Xi describes her body before diagnosis as one that carried her through life, and gave little thought to because it didn’t cause problems. Diagnosis leaves the relationship with her body flipped. I can see the impact this book would have had in 1992, when it was published.
Cancer, especially breast cancer, still carries a diseased, contagious association with it, and Xi Xi, in writing this, documents her experiences within the hospital’s oncology unit. She takes us through the process of an initial self-exam in the shower, her diagnosis, surgery, proceeding radiology, and multiple conversations with women she knows and meets who had or have breast cancer. Through these conversations, Xi Xi is demystifying aspects of cancer for herself and the reader. Many of the women she speaks with are Xi Xi’s age or younger, and they continue to live their lives, raising their children and working—it isn’t a death sentence for many. I imagine, in the 90s, reading this and maybe even today, as cancer is happening to young individuals, that you can be sick and still survive.
Mourning A Breast is not a story about “getting better,” although Xi Xi’s ultimate goal is to rid herself of cancer, which she does, and goes on to live well into her 80s. This book advocates understanding your body, self-examination, and the medical system. She hopes readers will take themselves and their bodies seriously and, hopefully, save them from being too late.
Xi Xi writes of her experience with a mastectomy, where mourning her breast opens up to activism through writing and documenting her experience. The book reads like a diary. Xi Xi’s level of detail about “medical time” and various treatments she undergoes is written with the tedium of waiting rooms, uncomfortable hospital gowns, and familiar faces. It’s one a patient undergoing treatment will understand deeply, and one I think not many people know exists within the walls of an oncology unit, unless they or someone they love is living through it. Where Xi Xi lost me was toward the end, with her detailed list of foods she considered beneficial for treating cancer. It was interesting to read and consider how, even today, nutrition and lifestyle choices are often used against people who have cancer or perhaps don’t survive. If you are looking for an honest discussion and experience of breast cancer and its treatment, I highly recommend this, as it’s not overly flowery in its language and exact in its communication of a disease that continues to present itself in everyone, young and old.
This year, I also read The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde, which would make a great pairing with Mourning A Breast.
It turned out that disease could also be an opportunity to learn, a mechanism for creation. It was as though I had another body, as though I were detached, having become an observer of myself. I’d also come to practice getting to know myself.
As we say goodbye to 2025, I am going to take the first week of the month to do some deep thinking and reading. I’ll be back with my first post of the year, which will include my reading observations, outlook, and goals for 2026, as well as my goals for this space!
In case you missed my favorite books of 2025!
Reading The Body book club!
Lastly, a few questions for you!
How was your December?
Did you have a favorite book of the month?
Have a Happy New Year, and don’t put any pressure on yourself. Remember, as the clock rolls from 11:59 to midnight, time keeps moving forward—you keep moving forward. You have plenty of time!