Good morning from me and my ginormous matcha—today I’m officially pretending I’m a booktuber for a day. After the first chunk of December being fully consumed by the holiday rush (packing orders, fulfilling everything from Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and stressing about packages arriving safely), the shipping cutoff finally passed and I felt this actual weight lift off my shoulders. I still had to get Vlogmas up, so I gave myself a strict one-hour editing limit (because it’s amazing what you can do when you stop letting it take eight hours), and then I got to do what I’ve been daydreaming about: a bookish little date with myself. I go through my personal library and share some of my 2025 favorites—like my top non-fiction pick, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, plus fiction I flew through and genuinely loved. I also talk about how I read (library + Kindle Unlimited, and why fantasy on Kindle isn’t always my favorite), and what I’m craving next: a cozy romance/romantasy and a non-fiction that feels like storytelling. Then I hit an indie bookstore (Labyrinth Books in Princeton) and Barnes & Noble (it will never be “Barnes” to me), grab a local hot chocolate + treats, and do a full book haul. It’s cozy, it’s thrifty-ish, it’s very “end of year reset,” and it’s basically my dream Friday night: dinner, reading for five hours, and falling asleep mid-chapter.