I was tempted thanks to The Book Haze! The end of January might be a bit late to do a retrospective of 2025, I guess, but it did feel like I’d had a bit more time to be objective.
2025 Reading Stats:
Number Of Books You Read: 400.
Number of Re-Reads: 27.
Genre You Read The Most From:Â Fantasy.
Best in Books:
1. Best book you read in 2025:
Ah, starting out with an impossible question! That said, I’m very stingy with five star ratings, even for books I really, really like, with only 14 books gaining such a high rating this year. I think of the assembled books, I’ll have to give it to Cat Sebastian’s You Should Be So Lucky, which I loved and will undoubtedly reread in future.
2. Book you were excited about & thought you were going to love more but didnât:
Annette Kehnel’s The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability. I found some of her conclusions just weird, for example that indulgences were essentially “crowdfunding”, or that the Benedictines and Cistercians lived simple, self-sufficient communal lives. It’s a nice thought, but it just isn’t true. Indulgences were used to profit massively, and both those monastic orders ended up ludicrously, immensely rich.
3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read:
Xue Shan Fei Hu’s The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish. It’s ridiculous, it goes such astounding and bewildering places, but I fell so in love with the series. I’d expected to find it fun, but I expected it to be too silly to be good, yet the romance was actually very sweet.
4. Book you âpushedâ the most people to read (and they did):
John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis. TB is a special interest of mine, which I wrote my BSc dissertation on and studied during my MSc as well, and Green’s book immediately became my go-to recommendation for laypeople — and I learned a couple of things that you don’t learn on the scientific side, about the experience of being treated for TB. Deeply valuable and important, especially given that people don’t appreciate that TB is still the number one killer among infectious diseases (it was briefly dethroned by COVID-19, but took back the top spot within a couple of years), that the vaccine we have is totally ineffective in some countries, and that we could cure pretty much everyone with TB if we could only be bothered.
5. Best first book in a series you started in 2025. Best sequel of 2025. Best series ender of 2025.
Started: Hmm. Let’s go with Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, because it dragged me straight into eagerly grabbing book two and reading the manhwa as well.
Sequel: Jordan L. Hawk’s Into the Dark was really good; I pretty much inhaled it!
Ender: This is kinda tough, but let’s go with Sylvie Cathrall’s A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, because while I didn’t love it as much as the first book, I still loved it.
6. Favorite new-to-you author you discovered in 2025:
Aahhh, so many choices. I wrote about my top ten just this week for Top Ten Tuesday… I guess I’ll say Sally Smith here, because I think I’m most actively looking out for new books in the Gabriel Ward series. I loved both A Case of Mice and Murder and A Case of Life and Limb.
7. Best book from a genre you donât typically read/was out of your comfort zone:
Well. That one’s a tricky question for me! I read things from all kinds of genres… I guess Virginia Evans’Â The Correspondent, being contemporary literary-ish, and a bit of a random impulse buy for me. Normally I seek out genre fiction more.
8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year:
This has to be one of the Solo Leveling series! I read the whole manhwa series in 2025, and it’s hard to pick out individual volumes from an ongoing series, but definitely one of those.
9. Book you read in 2025 that you are most likely to re-read in 2026?
I’ve already been rereading the manga adaptation of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter again, and getting super tempted to reread the light novels too… so probably those!
10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2025:
Hmm, let’s go with Feng Ren Zuo Shu’s The Beauty’s Blade. I love the colours and composition, and Fu Wanqin and Yu Shengyan look so beautiful and badass. As they should!
11. Most memorable character of 2025:
So many difficult questions! I think Jinwoo Sung from Solo Leveling has to take the spot, though Wei Wuxian (from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) did come to mind as well.
12. Most beautifully written book read in 2025:
Beautifully written… I think I’ll have to give that to Nghi Vo’s The City in Glass. A real fever dream of a book, beautifully written.
13. Most thought-provoking/life-changing book of 2025:
I don’t go for a lot of books that I’d put under this heading, so it’s hard to say. Hugh Warwick’s Cull of the Wild caused some reflection around conservation/culls which was useful to consider, so it was pretty thought-provoking.
14. Book you canât believe you waited UNTIL 2025 to finally read:
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation! Given that I knew I’d loved The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System and Heaven Official’s Blessing, it’s definitely surprising that I waited until the end of 2025 to give it a shot. I enjoyed it, though it isn’t my favourite of the three.
15. Favorite quote from a book you read in 2025:
I don’t really save quotes from books, but here’s one I enjoyed from Sarah Caudwell’s Thus Was Adonis Murdered:
Julia’s unhappy relationship with the Inland Revenue was due to her omission, during four years of modestly successful practice at the Bar, to pay any income tax. The truth is, I think, that she did not, in her heart of hearts, really believe in income tax. It was a subject which she had studied for examinations and on which she had thereafter advised a number of clients: she naturally did not suppose, in these circumstances, that it had anything to do with real life.
16. Shortest and longest books you read in 2024:
Shortest: Isabelle Allende’s Lovers at the Museum (25 pages).
Longest: StoryGraph claims it’s Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case, but the page count seems wrong; I would’ve said it was Christopher de Hamel’s The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club.
17. Book that shocked you the most:
Well, this probably isn’t the intent of this question, but John Strasbaugh’s The Wrong Stuff for the sheer bias in it! The “haha, your space program was shit and some of you died, you fucking idiots” attitude toward Russian cosmonauts was grating and gross.
18. OTP, One True Pairing, of the year (you will go down with this ship!):
Li Yu and Mu Tianchi (Prince Jing) from The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, or possible Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. In neither case can I imagine them with anyone else (unlike, say, in The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System where I also ship Liushen, or Heaven Official’s Blessing, where I also ship Fenglian and Huaqing).
19. Favorite non-romantic relationship of the year:
Gil, Lizel and Eleven in A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation. Granted, I think either of them with Lizel would be a good romantic combo too, but canonically they’re just friends. Gil and Eleven have a lot of friendly antagonism between them while both being utterly loyal to Lizel, and backing him up no matter what (even if they punish him for doing something dangerous with a reading ban, which is just mean). I love them.
20. Favorite book you read in 2025 from an author youâve read previously:
Tricky again; maybe Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Drop of Corruption?
21. Best book you read in 2025 that you read based SOLELY on a recommendation from somebody else:
Rachel Harrison’s Cackle, which I read thanks to Books, Bones & Buffy’s review!
22. Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2025:
Eh. Not a thing I go in for.
23. Best 2025 debut you read:
Debuting in 2025, or a debut I happened to read in 2025? I don’t keep good enough track of this kind of thing… I think Molly O’Neill’s Greenteeth might be both, though!
24. Most vivid setting you read this year:
I think that might be A Drop of Corruption again! There’s so much going on in that book, sooo much weird stuff, but you can also really feel the stifling swamp, etc.
25. Book that put a smile on your face/was the most FUN to read:
I think that’d have to be A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation again!
26. Book that made you cry or nearly cry in 2025:
Molly Conisbee’s No Ordinary Deaths. I read it not that long after losing my grandmother, and some of the themes and comments just got under my skin. I didn’t entirely love it (I actually felt excluded by it, since it make certain generalisations about the kind of relationships people have with death), but it was an interesting one, too.
27. Hidden gem of the year:
I’m not entirely sure what to choose here, but let’s go with one of the fashion histories I read which I found really fascinating, and beautifully presented to boot: Chinese Dress in Detail. The whole series from the V&A is good, but this one is particularly well organised, with proper images of almost all the garments (rather than just close-ups).
28. Most unique book you read in 2025:
Ooof, I don’t know. Without an encyclopaedic knowledge of every genre, sometimes it’s hard to say what’s really unique (and in some of the cases of translated fiction, it’s common enough in its original language). Let’s go with Uketsu’s Strange Houses, though, because I love the way his mysteries require you to pore over the images.
29. Book that made you the maddest (doesnât necessarily mean you didnât like it):
Undoubtedly Katherine Addison’s The Tomb of Dragons. I thought things were going somewhere between Celehar and IĂ€na Pel-Thenhior. The way things actually turned out was clunky. This was my #1 disappointment, honestly; there were things I liked about it, which almost made it worse because I wanted so much to like it as a whole… but some plot stuff felt too easy/quick to resolve, while the situation with IĂ€na just made me kind of sad. He felt massively sidelined; I could have kinda got behind his queerplatonic relationship with Celehar if the relationship with him had remained one of the most important aspects, but it felt like Addison went, “oops, y’all ship Celehar with IĂ€na? Better fix that” and threw a love interest in to fill some of IĂ€na’s place in the plot.
My Blogging/Bookish Life
1. New favorite book blog/Bookstagram/Youtube channel you discovered in 2025?
I can’t remember who exactly I “met” in what year, to be fair, but I started doing better at following other blogs, commenting regularly, and participating in the community. I’d say the most influential new follow on my reading was Books, Bones & Buffy, whose reviews not only heavily influenced my reading list but also what I got for my wife for Christmas, ahaha.
2. Favorite post you wrote in 2025?
Two candidates: My Year in Non-fiction, which is self-explanatory and has what I hope are excellent recommendations, and a Top Ten Tuesday freebie theme, Top Ten Reading Spots. My answers are a bit funny at times, and people seemed to enjoy the post!
3. Favorite bookish related photo you took in 2025?
I don’t really do this — I sometimes take a photo for posts on Litsy, I guess, but they’re not particularly memorable.
4. Best bookish event that you participated in (author signings, festivals, virtual events, etc.)?
I really enjoyed the Haunted Shelf readathon on Litsy, with gaining points based on what I read and participation in games and such.
5. Best moment of bookish/blogging life in 2025?
I plucked up my courage and contacted the publisher to ask for a review copy of A Letter to the Lonesome Shore and got one! I’m also on a list now with them which makes it a lot easier to request upcoming books, so that was all really exciting.
6. Most challenging thing about blogging or your reading life this year?
The fact that I was finishing off my MSc and moving house! My wife did a lot of the work for the latter (and so did my parents), but it was still a rough year, even if it paid off (I’m graduating with merit, and the new place is a lot bigger, comfier and nicer).
7. Most Popular Post This Year On Your Blog (whether it be by comments or views)?
Looks like I got the most views on my review of volume three of Heaven Official’s Blessing, which was actually a post from 2024. The post that was actually from 2025 with most views was a Top Ten Tuesday post about the British Library Crime Classics.
8. Post You Wished Got A Little More Love?
Maybe my post about why I (sometimes) finish one-star reads! In part so that the same handful of people stop commenting with surprise that I do that… đ I’ve explained why I do that!
9. Best bookish discover (book related sites, book stores, etc.)?
A great rediscovery was that the Bookloop program at Bookshop.org had started up again! I’d used it before, but it shut down for a while. I do still just donate some of my books, but this is a good way to get some Bookshop.org credit to keep fuelling the reading habit.
10. Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year?
I read 400 books, 102,602 pages, exactly hitting my goal for the number of books read and slightly overshooting my eventually goal for pages read (overshooting the original goal by quite a bit). I also completed a few challenges on Litsy, including several blackouts for BookSpinBingo, which was nice.
Looking Ahead in 2026
1. Book you are most anticipating in 2026 (non-debut):
Volume three of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint light novel in English translation! I think it’s due out in March, and I’m champing at the bit — and slightly worried by the fact that there’s no cover yet.
2. 2026 debut you are most anticipating:
I think Amy Coombe’s Stay for a Spell might be a debut, and I’m quite looking forward to that? It sounds fun. I don’t keep very good track of this kind of thing, though, as I think I’ve already said, ahaha.
3. Sequel you are most anticipating in 2026:
I guess Martha Wells’Â Platform Decay, since I haven’t managed to mention that anywhere else yet! I love Murderbot dearly.
4. One thing you hope to accomplish or do in your reading/blogging life in 2026?
I’m hoping to read even more than 400 books this year, if things turn out right! In the last couple of years I read 400 books despite big life events like my grandmother’s death, moving house, etc, and the final exams of my MSc. This year I’m deliberately trying to get some rest and rejuvenation in, and I’m hoping that will include plenty more reading time.
Okay, that was quite the journey and took me waaaay longer than I’d expected! Oops. But hopefully it was interesting; it was definitely interesting to reflect on the questions!
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