Last year, I decided in my final blog post of the year to reflect on my reading over the year rather than just list my 5-star books, in an effort to not just focus on data. I’m going to do that again, though ironically one of my endeavours this year involved creating a spreadsheet, so maybe not avoiding data that successfully. My resolutions from last year’s post were to read more pre-2005 books, to reread some books, and to work on my physical to-read pile, so we’ll see how those went as well.
Balancing recent and older books
In an effort to read more pre-2005 books, I decided that I would try to alternate between review copies of books and other books, as I can get stuck reading a lot of review books in a row. I stuck to this pretty well for most of the year, reading a lot of books borrowed from library apps and ones I physically own, but by the end of the year I’d managed to amass a backlog of digital review books thanks to a hectic few months at work, meaning that I did have to stop the alternating for a bit (I’m back on it now, though).
In terms of books newly out this year, I have to mention Torrey Peters’ Stag Dance, probably my favourite book of 2025. I went down to London to see her talk about the book and it was a delightful experience. I also loved Woodworking by Emily St. James, You Weren’t Meant To Be Human by Andrew Joseph White, and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Despite not being a huge reader of young adult books, I also loved One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller and Fawn’s Blood by Hal Schrieve, both of which are trans YA that I wish I could’ve had as a teenager. Both A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton and Basilisk by Matt Wixey hit my novels-depicting-tech need in different ways. And I had a lot of fun with R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis, even if I might be somewhat loath to admit it.
For other books, I’ll split into pre- and post-2005 so we can measure against that goal. Pre-2005, the big hitter was The Hellbound Heart, my first Clive Barker and a book I’d been waiting for a good way to source for ages. In a book that is either incredibly old or very recent, I finally read Emily Wilson’s Iliad translation, which I very much enjoyed. Pre-2005 poetry-wise, I liked The Ink Dark Moon, a collection of love poetry by two different Japanese female poets from the Heian period. I also read more Junji Ito this year and whilst none of it surpassed Uzumaki for me, I had a good time with his work nonetheless.
Post-2005 but from before this year, some of my favourites were A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett, A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt, This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno, and Minor Detail by Adania Shibli—all very varied, but good. Minor Detail in particular was a book I saw people talking about and was very glad I read. Maybe strangely, I’d also add Granta 169: China to the list, as the pieces in that issue of the literary magazine really opened my eyes to some contemporary Chinese writing, which wasn’t something I expected to be part of my year in books.
Reading habits
My rereading plan failed completely this year, as the only rereads I did were the first two Her Majesty’s Royal Coven books in preparation for the final book of the trilogy (I technically reread the story Rage by Stephen King the other day, but as I have no recollection of the first time I read it when I read The Bachman Books, it barely counts, and I’m not counting reading a different Iliad translation). Basically, I just ended up with so many new-to-me books to read that I never even thought about rereading anything much.
Some books that I’ve wanted to read for a while and finally got around to included The Exorcist, Fluids by May Leitz (who is also a YouTuber whose videos I enjoyed this year), Making Love With The Land by Joshua Whitehead, and Drawing Blood by Billy Martin (Poppy Z. Brite). I tried to catch up with my physical to-read pile, but the combination of digital library loans and digital proof copies made that difficult in the later part of the year.
Most of my nonfiction reading this year fell into two camps. Partly for work and partly for interest, I read more of my usual diet of technology books, mostly about the history of tech companies and the current state of AI. Karen Hao’s Empire of AI was perhaps the most useful. The other strand of non-fiction I read this year was about the deep ocean, which I became fascinated with by accident (said accident being watching part of a Blue Planet II episode about the deepest parts of the ocean).
As with last year, I didn’t have a number in mind for a reading goal. It’s looking like I read a few books fewer than last year but basically the same amount (just under 200). Maybe one year I won’t be tempted to look at the number at the end of the year, but it is hard not to. I like to try and read at least three books a week, but I also need to remember that sometimes books take longer or shorter and that’s okay.
Books around the world
Out of nowhere, one day I decided I wanted to track which countries I had read authors from. This involved a bit of spreadsheet wizardry to get a suitable list of countries and some nice conditional formatting. I set myself some loose guidelines—each author should be from the country or have close heritage from there, but the book could be set in other places, and the book could be fiction or non-fiction—and I used an Around the World reading challenge list to help me work out which places I’d already covered. I log one book from each place as an example and I also have a column for potential book(s) from unread countries to help me remember books I’ve clocked as something to read.
So far, I’ve read books from 67 countries (not all this year) which is about a third of the list. I think seven of those were books I discovered from starting this project, including the great African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou and Michel the Giant by Tété-Michel Kpomassie, which I would’ve never read otherwise because I don’t tend to read travel writing. I also discovered Prabda Yoon’s short stories after realising I’d never read anything from Thailand, which gain the rare accolade of being short stories that I immediately really enjoyed.
Looking ahead
I don’t want to make resolutions or set anything in stone, but the first thing I’d like to do next year is to continue my books around the world reading. I originally was going to give a percentage goal here, but no, I’m fighting against data, so I’m just going to say that I want to read from more countries. I’ve got a good few books earmarked for particular countries, but I’m also going to have to do some research to find books written in or translated into English and published in a way I can access them for some countries.
I plan to continue alternating between upcoming books I’m reviewing and other books, as that really broadened my reading this year. I will aim with a bit more determination to do a few rereads, which will rely on me not getting overwhelmed with digital library loan return dates. And I sort of hope that I find another random topic to get into nonfiction about, in the same way I love deep dive YouTube video essays.
And to finish up, my final book of the year was Terry Dactyl by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. We’ll see what 2026 brings…
Fiendfully Reading 