It's the Most Wonderful Newsletter of the Year

We did it, fam!

We wrote a year’s worth of newsletters! And since it’s the end of the year and I’m a librarian, let’s break down some numbers.

Just the facts, ma’am

This newsletter currently has:

• 28 active subscribers.

• 1.4K total impressions (how many times the newsletter appeared on a screen).

• An 81.85% open rate overall.

  • The March newsletter had the lowest open rate at 65.38%.

  • But July had the highest at 88.89%.

• A 20.23% click through rate overall (the percentage of recipients who clicked on links in a given email).

• And has earned me a whopping $0.00

Don’t scoff at that 28 total number of subscribers either, because I am pretty sure at least three of you are total strangers who found me through referrals and links. I really did not expect my writing would appeal to people who don’t actually know me IRL, let alone three separate individuals. Hello, new friends! Glad you are here. And 22.68 of you (81%) are actually opening and reading this newsletter!

In total, I have written:

• 13 newsletters, including this one (the first issue was a Dec 2024 sneak peak)

• About 15,000 words

  • The shortest newsletter was March. I totally forgot to write a conclusion.

  • The longest was the inaugural edition, January.

• 15 tags (I like to tag the type of noodle eaten and which cat is mentioned)

• And I designed all of the Cats! Noodles! Books! banners and logos in Canva, which is why they are so janky charming.

I always include at least one book review per newsletter, and occasionally up to three or four. So that’s at least 13 books reviewed this year. According to Goodreads, I’ve read 190 books so far in 2025. That’s a dismal ratio of books read to reviewed. But I’m not going to put in more effort because, well, I don’t want to.

How about some superlatives to close out the year?

The Best List of 2025

Best Album of the Year: Florence + the Machine, Everybody Scream. I was just really in a place where I needed to listen to Florence + the Machine over and over again this year.

Best Book of the Year: Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell. It’s so good, I still haven’t read the sequel because I’m worried it won’t live up to the hype (the hype machine being my own brain).

Best Candy of the Year: BUBS Banana Toffee Ovals! I ordered a bag of Swedish gummies from Amazon and discovered BUBS.

Best Food of the Year: The spaghetti with burrata I ate at Olivero for my birthday, followed very closely by the bulgogi burrito from Banh Sai.

Best Media that Made me Cry of the Year: A tie.

• Wicked: For Good had me crying so hard, my nose got all stuffed up and I had to breathe through my mouth in the movie theater. It’s about the friendship, ok?

• The Long Game by Rachel Reid: I cried until the skin under my eyes got all red and irritated. Gay hockey rivals falling in love really moves me.

Best Movie of the Year: Sinners, definitely.

Best Outfit of the Year: This cable knit sweater dress from the Gap with black leggings and these ankle boots from Clark. I was so cozy and also could have murdered someone just like Chris Evans in Knives Out.

Best Prescription of the Year: Paxlovid, even though it is actually a terrible drug that caused me to have a horrible, disgusting taste in my mouth the whole time I was taking it. But COVID is worse.

Runner up: methocarbamol for taking away my lower back pain and leaving me feeling just a little groovy.

To the Books!

This month is all about holiday romance, murder ballads, and vampires.

Books Added to my Wishlist

Murder Ballads: Illustrated Lyrics and Lore by Katy Horan and Sinéad Gleeson: Illustrated murder ballads. What could be better?

Carmilla, An Illuminated Edition by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (Author), Rosemary Valero-O'Connell (Illustrator), Poppy Z Brite (Introduction by): Again, it’s illustrated. Art! I love it! 

Books Read

How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow: In the wake of a bad breakup, Shani is supposedly focusing on her internship at the Museum of Natural History but instead finds herself falling for her neighbor May. Is her heart ready for another relationship so soon?

Everything about this book just hit all the right notes. I kept thinking, “ok, when will all this cuteness become annoying?” but it never did. It was just so. Damn. Cute. The amazing chemistry between the main characters, the wintery DC holiday setting, the corgi. Everything was perfect. And the vulnerability and emotional depth that Shani and May brought to a coming-of-age, falling-in-love story was just ***chef’s kiss***. If you read one holiday romance this year, let it be this one. 5 stars. 

If You Give a Grump A Christmas Tree Farm by Nicole James: JJ and his brother’s widow Rebecca unexpectedly inherit the family Christmas tree farm and of course, fall in love while trying to manage their new business. 

Ugh, nothing worse than a boring biker romance. I mean, I get that it’s a holiday romance too, but could we at least get one bad guy to root against? A small shoot out? Maybe a minor motorcycle crash? This was cute-ish at first, but the lack of any kind of tension made it quite dull. 3 stars. 

Books I Gave Up On

Merry Me by CR Jane: I dislike second chance romance. I prefer watching two strangers fall in love, starting with an epic meet cute. But I especially hate when an author writes about the past using italic text. And second chance romances have higher rates of pages upon pages of italic text, since so much of the story concerns what happened in the past. I bailed out of Merry Me within the first 50 pages, once the italics started. 

The Christmas Tree Farm by Laurie Gilmore: A viral tiktok cozy yet supposedly spicy holiday romance that I didn’t find either that cozy or sexy. Mostly, I was bored. And there wasn’t even a single to biker present to keep my attention!

Cat Pic of the Month

Wallace loves to sleep on top of pillows, on top of other soft things like beds, couches, or chairs. He’s definitely the king of this apartment.

I went on vacation for Thanksgiving and left the cats in the care of a family friend. She said the first two days, Wallace mostly hid. By the third, he followed her around the apartment, hissing. Poor friend! Denied the glory of a kind and loving Wallace. And poor Wallace! He must have been so upset. Although, if I am gonna be so real right now, there is a secret part of me that is absolutely thrilled that he is only loving to me.

Show Me the Noods!

I like to set attainable, fun resolutions each new year, something a little more interesting than “go to the gym.” This year, to combine my love for noodles with my desire for some self improvement, I decided my New Year’s Resolution is going to be eating at least 6 new-to-me pasta shapes.

I’m stealing this idea from the romance author Roxie Noir, who did a similar pasta challenge in 2024. And this is going to be a challenge because, as a noodle lover, I’ve had all the typical ones: spaghetti, linguine, fettucine, angel hair, rotini, ziti, penne, etc., and some of the less typical shapes: ditalini, orrecchiette, casarecce, farfalle… We all know how much I love bucatini. I’m going to have to venture past the grocery store and find recipes for pasta dishes I’ve never tried. Oooh, I am so excited!

In Conclusion

My end-of-year holiday wish is that nothing much happens, we all get a chance to rest, relax and spend time with family, friends, our cats, or even just by ourselves, and we enjoy the important stuff, like noodles. Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! See ya in 2026.

Love, Marcella