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• What I've been up to this week, including my top reads of 2025.
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Dear Inklings,

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For those new here, this is The Windup, my monthly newsletter that includes:

• a round-up of everything I published
• 7 recommendations of books, articles, films/TV shows, or anything else I think you might also enjoy
• personal life and writing updates/announcements

CHRISTMAS FOR THOSE WHO GRIEVE | 15 Dec 2025

Christmas is not always a joyous time for everyone, particularly for those of us who are grieving. I write this letter for you.

FOREVER IS A SERIES OF MOMENTS | 22 Dec 2025

An essay on impermanence, quiet love, and the daily work of choosing to live—from childhood memories to the reasons that keep us tethered here.

WAYS I AM SIMPLIFYING MY LIFE IN 2026 | 29 Dec 2025

From the Notebook Rule to slow reading, here's how I'm choosing intentionality over productivity in 2026—plus why I'm reading fewer books

(* indicates a reread/rewatch)

📺 Wake Up Dead Man (Rian Johnson, 2025)

Knives Out is a movie franchise, of which "Wake Up Dead Man" is the third standalone film. This may be my favourite one. It's surprisingly relevant to the divisive times we live in, but without beating us over the head with its messages too much (something I really, really, really hate).

Of course, this series also isn't super subtle about where its creators stand. I find that a lot of media isn't, unfortunately.. However, at least the main character, Father Jud, is somewhat nuanced.

At the least, these movies are good in the way that Agatha Christie is. They follow a similar formula: a cynical detective tries to solve what seems to be an impossible murder mystery.

In this one, questions of genuine faith mingle with some commentary about what happens when the same faith turns some into angry, intolerant people. On some level, I was reminded of Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass (which, while far superior, asks similar questions of faith).

📖 The Mythmakers by John Hendrix (2024)

First of all, what a gorgeous book! This is a mix between biography and imaginative mythology in the form of a graphic novel. It tells the story of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis's friendship, walking through their early lives to the forming of their bond, and its dissolution.

While some aspects are fictionalised, the book did a wonderful job of blending facts with fantasy—an ode to the sense of wonder that these two authors gave their readers. One can tell that Hendrix genuinely admires Lewis and Tolkien, and sought to honour their work and friendship with this beautiful book.

📖 Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (2025)

Katabasis is only the second book I've read by Kuang, and I got the signed edition when I attended a live interview in San Diego.

As in Babel, this book felt like Kuang showing how smart she is, with its multiple references to ancient philosophers and a firm grasp on mathematics. She did, in fact, discuss how she learned hyperbolic geometry in order to write the book in an interview. Her intellectual prowess shows in her writing. While I can appreciate a clever book, what I most enjoyed about this one was the allusions to greats who have come before.

I think some readers forget that many of the classic authors we now consider great essentially wrote other writers, philosophers, and scholars into their books (Dante, for example, and Milton—what we'd call fanfiction today, when it really comes down to it).

Or that many classics make nods to older books, and that together, they form the canon of English literature. The greatest books are written in conversation with those that have come before, so contrary to some reviewers, I found this aspect wonderful.

Beyond what I perceived to be a love letter to Dante's The Divine Comedy and even Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, there is a love story at the heart of this book. It's cute that Kuang based the main characters on herself and her husband.

It's not perfect, by any means. Similar to Babel, I feel that Kuang is a bit too blunt, which can make a reader feel like she thinks they're dumb unless she spells things out explicitly, but I enjoyed reading this book for what it is.

It's about the will to live, and what makes life worth living—not the eternal validation of accolades and a famous name, but the small pleasures of looking at the stars with someone you love.

📖 Ivy & Ixos by S.E. Reid (2025)

I should have known better than to read this book when I'm already emotional and grieving, but oh, what a book. It brought back nostalgic feelings of the wonder I had when I read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe for the first time, and The Secret Garden. These beautiful books that taught me, as a child, that magic existed in my ordinary world, if only I had the curiosity and eyes to look for it. The introduction talks about these books as inspiration, and it comes through in a wondrous way here.

The way S.E. Reid managed to craft this story from the eyes of a ten-year-old child is awe-inspiring. Her writing is always whimsical and atmospheric in the best ways. It transported me right back to those days when I was young and just wanted to be heard, to have a grown-up who would have a real conversation with me, to feel belonging somewhere. And of course, now that I'm a parent myself, I felt the ache from Pete, who was just trying to be the best dad he could be.

Ivy & Ixos is a master work in such a small book. It made my heart ache. I loved it. When my best friend came for a visit, it was the first book I handed her. She immediately sat down and read it in one sitting, concluding that "It's so good."

There is magic and wonder in this little book, a balm for a weary soul.

📖 Deserts to Mountaintops: Out of the Ashes Anthology (2026)

I had the privilege of reading an early copy of Ruhie Vaidya's chapter in this anthology. If the rest of the book is as powerful as this chapter, it's well worth picking up. It features stories from twenty women who have risen despite incredibly difficult circumstances.

Grief is a threshold all of us must cross at some point, beyond the point of which there is no returning to who we were prior to the loss. For those of us who grieve, one of the worst aspects is how lonely we can feel. In the chapter, “Lit by Fire,” Ruhie Vaidya walks the reader through the multi-varied layers of grief by sharing her own experience losing her father to ALS, including the inability of friends and bystanders to understand, and the subsequent need to present a strong front. She writes about the pressure to “move on,” when in reality, this is something one can never move past.

“I know what it’s like to measure yourself against some invisible timeline. To wonder if your grief has become too prolonged, too big, too visible. We live in a world that treats grief like a wound meant to scab over nicely, quietly, on schedule. But it doesn’t work like that. Grief doesn’t go away. It stays. Settles in. It weaves itself into the very fabric of your being.”

Six years after her father’s death,Ruhie continues to mourn him. There is no smoothing over such a crack in the foundation of your being. And yet, she also writes about carrying on the memories to her children, only one of whom was able to meet Ruhie’s dad while he was alive. These moments are wrought with bittersweetness, even as Ruhie admirably speaks about her father openly to her children. A poignant conversation about what death means will spark a resilience in her kids—an ability to face the ugly parts of what it means to love—and treasure moments with them all the more.

Something we learn after the death of a loved one is that time is not guaranteed. And in Ruhie’s conclusion, she writes about this with beautiful poignancy.

“After all, this is it. This is what we get—a handful of people to love, a few fleeting decades if we’re lucky, and moments like this to hold onto. I don’t want to miss them. I don’t want to sleepwalk through life.”

Because coming face to face with mortality forces us to value what truly matters. It opens our eyes to the brevity of life, how precious and short it is. Grief breaks you open in ways that will alter the foundation of your being, but it forces you to stop wasting the limited time you have left with those you love.

That is the power of Ruhie’s writing here—rising from literal ashes to seize life completely.

The anthology comes out in January 2026, and is available for preorder here.

📖 Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell (2020)

I'm not usually one to read books that are hyped as much as this one was. In fact, I'm actively suspicious of them. But, a good friend has been hounding me for years to read it, saying she's sure I'll love it. You know what? She was right, though I'm not sure "love" is the correct term. I admire it.

Not much is known about Shakespeare's family, his wife, Agnes, or the son he named the famous Hamlet on. This reimagining by Maggie O'Farrell is worthy of the great author. It doesn't focus on him as Shakespeare the playwright, but an unnamed, struggling husband and father. The way he's never named humanises him.

I liked the way O'Farrell portrayed Agnes—a slightly feral, independent woman that others around her perceive as strange. She has a strong affinity with nature; perhaps some may whisper she's a witch, even as they gather at her window for healing concoctions. But for all Agnes's perception, she's still powerless against life and death.

The writing style is such that it keeps the reader at some distance from the characters. I was personally happy with that, considering my own experience with child death; I never felt like Agnes's grief triggered or overwhelmed me, despite it being shown in depth throughout the second half of the book. Instead, it was a meaningful and thoughtful exploration of what a child's death can do to a family, the surviving children, and a couple's marriage—all things I've wrestled with in my own life.

📖 Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (2025)

Yiyun Li has quickly become an author I admire. I read three books by her this year after meaning to read her work for a long time. Her well-known novel, The Book of Goose, closed out 2025 for me, and it was a good one to end the year with. More thoughts to come, I hope.

Nevertheless, Things in Nature Merely Grow is a memoir and her tribute to her son, James, who died from suicide at 19, six years after her first son, Vincent, also died from suicide at age 16. To say that she can bear such losses wouldn't be fair or accurate; I don't know that anyone can say such a thing. Yet, there is an interesting emotional distance in the writing style that also keeps the heavy subject matter from being too overwhelming.

But this isn't really a book about James or why he killed himself, though Li does speculate a bit. It's primarily about how to carry on living after unspeakable tragedy, and how to relinquish the inevitable guilt that comes with being a survivor of suicide—infinitely more devastating as a mother. How to live with the fact that she did everything possible to keep a child alive, and yet they died anyway.

It speaks to her tenacity of spirit that she can still live and write.

One quote that particularly resonated with me was where she explains why she doesn't like the word, grief:

Marking time after a child's death is not about overcoming grief or coming out of a dark tunnel—all those bad words sound to me as though bereaved parents are expected to put in a period of hard mental work and then clap their hands and say, I'm no longer heartbroken for my dead child, and I'm one of you normal people again, so now we can go on living as though nothing had happened and you don't have to feel awkward around me.

As Li says, there is no such point. "The death of a child realigns time and space. If an abyss is where I shall be for the rest of my life, the abyss is my habitat. One should not waste energy fighting one's habitat."

Inkling Highlight:

Haley Larsen's leading a reading through Wuthering Heights!! You don't want to miss this. It's one of my favourite books of all time, and Haley has been guiding read-alongs for a long time. You'll find a reading schedule, thought-provoking prompts, discussions, a full novel guide.

Find out more here.

I was at my annual retreat in the mountains with my family for the last week of December. It was a time to unplug and fully focus on each other, and this year, it was extra needed. The last two months have been a blur.

In writing news, I'm excited to share that an essay I wrote will be published by Chicago Story Press. It's my first acceptance for a nonfiction piece after many, many rejections haha. I will gladly share the link once it's published.

I got my first blurbs for The Constellation of Forgotten Things from Ai Jiang and Heidi Wong, and I felt so seen. What a privilege to be endorsed by people I admire so much.

THE CONSTELLATION OF FORGOTTEN THINGS is a tender collision of melancholy and hope, a heartache in words, filled with tales of forlorn travelers, wayfinding, and journeys unrealized. At its core, this anthology explores the true magic in the connections made between people, the way the stories we write hold shards of our souls laid bare so we may be seen, heard, felt, how stories may change when passed between the remembered and the rememberer, and how they are continued.

— Ai Jiang, Hugo Award-nominated author of Linghun

THE CONSTELLATION OF FORGOTTEN THINGS hooks you right from the introduction. You can tell from the beginning that it’s a truly heartfelt piece of work, unique from any other. I particularly enjoyed how there were shorter pieces as well as longer ones, and the shorter pieces create an evocative space within themselves—they’re like small snippets of poetic art that shows you just how honest and heartfelt this piece of work is. This is definitely worth the read!

— Heidi Wong, Forbes 30 Under 30, author of Turning to Wallpaper

Interior illustrations from Patricia are also complete, and they're gorgeous. When I tell you I got goosebumps seeing them for the first time.. I'm so excited to include them in the final book!! Patricia was wonderful to work with, too, in case any of you are in the market for a truly talented illustrator. Check out the rest of her art here: https://patriciagutierrezart.carrd.co/ and https://www.instagram.com/pgm.99/

This book has taken me over five years to complete. By the time it launches, it will have been six. To say it has been an emotionally grueling task would be an understatement, yet I'm proud of how it's coming together. I think Ren would be, too.

The special edition has so many pages of bonus material that it's now 300 pages long lol. I'm calling it "A grief memoir in fairy tales," which it leans toward. Think something more like Jami Nakamura Lin's The Night Parade than a straightforward short story collection. There are photos and screenshots that give a glimpse into who Renley was, a tribute section written by those who knew him, and book club/discussion questions.

Don't forget to sign up for updates here. The Kickstarter will only run for 17 days, which will be your only chance to get the special edition.

With Love,

About Me: I’m Tiffany, a literary fantasy, and memoir author. My writing has been published by The Cultivation Project and Renewal Missions. I’ve been writing this publication since 2023. All words are 100% human-generated by me without AI assistance. Order my books here or here.

As always, thank you to my patrons for sponsoring this newsletter. And thank you to each of you who reads my words. If you liked my recommendations or anything else in this post, please leave a tip or upgrade your subscription. It truly makes a difference in keeping this publication going!

Extra gratitude goes to my council members: Joanne L., Tiffanie C., Joanne Yi, Stanley Sze, Endora, Albert L., Matthew Long, and Mary Roblyn.

Thank you!