Bookmarks: The Best of November 2025 All in One Place
A data driven dive into the books of the year, a new way to look at the Gilmore Girls reading challenge, how to break up with your phone, and more!
Hi Friday night readers,
It was a busy first half of November for us over here. We just returned from both a work trip for my husband in Napa Valley, California, and my closest cousin’s wedding out of town, where my sister and I served as matrons of honor.
The highlight of the wedding was when the DJ played “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” and we spontaneously broke into the fashion show routine from Gilmore Girls. We’re Gilmores!
As for Napa—I’m a Philly girl, and this was my first time ever in California. Napa’s hype was absolutely lived up to. While I know it’s not Steinbeck Country, I still immediately got some of those vibes in driving through the miles and miles of vineyards and other regional farming and gardening.
Here are a few pictures of the books and wine there— a delightful pairing if I say so myself. Of note, these are better viewed in the Substack app or desktop site, which I’m always recommending anyway, as it’s a (mostly) ad-free, toxicity-free, addiction-free version of social media and inspirational content. Trade those other apps in now, and thank me later!
Speaking of trading in toxicity for value, that’s exactly what the goal of these Bookmarks posts are. It’s irrationally hard these days to stay informed and inspired without giving a lot of your peace and your time in exchange. So, I take on that task as your literary leader! My biggest wish is that you’ll grab your jumbo coffee and peruse at your leisure, savoring “the good stuff” on the internet.
Top 3 Bookmarks
Since I selected 3 Substack writers to share this month, I thought it would be nice to feature them in the free portion of this post. This is my second gentle nudge for you to try the Substack app and enjoy the work of all the other amazing creators on it, too!
If you like best book lists with data to support them, you’ll like Becca Freeman’s updates on the Top 30 Releases of the Year. It puts an objective spin on something that’s often subjective elsewhere on the internet.
You may know my internet friend Larisa from her Eating Gilmore project, which made a recipe from each episode of Gilmore Girls. Now, she’s completed her own reading challenge of a book inspired by each episode. This is a fun, creative way to read like the Gilmores if you don’t want to read what they read. Prompts include things like a book set in high school for Rory’s first day at Chilton.
Jo Piazza never ceases to impress in, well, all spaces of writing and content. I’m grateful for her journalist's instincts. Here, she dives into breaking our phone addictions, and it’s a must-listen. She and her guest remind us that it’s designed to trap our attention like a little slot machine in our pockets, and that the average person spends two full months a year on it. Y’all, tech isn’t going to change this. It’s up to us to take back our lives.
Want more? Paid subscribers get 17 more of the most interesting content pieces I found this month about books, adaptations, Gilmore Girls, and the literary lifestyle. You’ll learn everything from book of the year lists to big authors’ big new releases, an adaptation teaser trailer that made me giddy, the new project from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman Palladino, the literary perfume trend, lots of AI think pieces, budget-friendly Christmas ideas that go beyond the obvious, and more!