YEAR END ROUNDUP of BESTS (and WORSTS)

This decidedly odd year 2025 is almost at an end.

What stood out for you in your reading in 2025?

Did your reading change over the year in terms of theme, intensity, or volume?

Was it one of your better reading years, one of your worst, or just ho hum?

Let your fellow readers know.

This is my snapshot

Best classic
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Middle aged (?? what would you call it?)
The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

New
Audition by Katie Kitamura
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
Clear by Carys Davies

Nonfiction
A Backward Glance: An Autobiography by Edith Wharton
The Secret of Life: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and the Discovery of DNA's Double Helix by Howard Markel
Jane Austen's Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney
William Blake vs the World by John Higgs

>2 dchaikin: Middle aged (?? what would you call it?)

Modern classics?

Best novel: Lessons in Magic and Disaster, Charlie Jane Anders
Best debut: Woodworking, Emily St. James
Best anthology: Best of Uncanny, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, eds.
Best non-fiction: The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told, Keith Richotte, Jr.
Worst reading of the year: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft

>3 ELiz_M: i think you’re right. Seems a high bar though, to me. All though I certainly think these three should qualify…

>5 dchaikin: >3 ELiz_M:

Goldilocks books? :) Too new to be "Classics", too old to be "New".

>6 AnnieMod: hmm. Implies a just-rightness that maybe doesn’t apply.

I've read more books this year than any since I switched to Club Read in 2017 (partly because half of "read" was really "listened to" so I could multitask while walking) though the count is still low for LT. No super standouts, but a fair range of non-fiction topics: climate change, birds and turtles, cryptocurrency, tech companies, social justice investigations, retirement, assisted suicide, several biographies and memoirs. Got to some fiction that had been sitting around for awhile; the one I most enjoyed was The Voyage of the Narwhal.

Laurel's Best of 2025:

poetry: The Lost Spells - I was enchanted by this, and bought a hard-cover copy for myself.

memoir: Sugar and Slate

nonfiction: Ciao, Carpaccio!

graphic novel: Watership Down: The Graphic Novel

literary fiction: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,
Gilead (reread)
Clear

historical fiction: The Lady Flirts With Death and Her Majesty's Mischief
The Frozen River

new to me author: The Lady of the Tower

best cozy (and I read a lot this year): To Fetch a Felon

classic: Fireside Tales

Volume seems about normal, with 134 books read so far, two or three more before the year ends, perhaps.
I’m struggling to find any system in what I read, but there are a few patterns coming out, possibly.

- Composers: I started the year with a couple of books about Handel, Every valley by Charles King (don’t bother) and The master musicians: Handel by my sometime teacher Donald Burrows, which was great. Then there were the Mémoires de Hector Berlioz, which turned out to be great fun, if a bit long. And Ned Rorem’s salacious Knowing when to stop. Plus as a bonus entry The definitive biography of PDQ Bach, and Roger Scruton’s take-no-prisoners seminar on Wagner, The ring of truth

- America: I spent about a third of the year on the left side of the water this year, so I tried to gather some ideas about the place from other people. Baudrillard’s America and Terry Eagleton’s Across the pond gave jaundiced European intellectuals’ views; Daniel Immerwahr’s How to hide an empire and Kurt Andersen Fantasyland gave American views on the delusions of their own country. And Barbara Tuchman's The march of folly mercilessly took apart the delusions that brought about the Vietnam war.
Then there were Great American Writers — i took time to (re)visit Mark Twain, James Thurber, Sinclair Lewis, John Updike, Jack Kerouac, Randall Jarrell, T C Boyle and Paul Auster, amongst others, and read Ruland & Bradbury’s From Puritanism to postmodernism : a history of American literature.

- LGBT stuff still figures: I read The gay canon, The gay crusaders (a lovely period piece from just after Stonewall), The memoirs of John Addington Symonds, A little gay history of Wales, Judith Butler’s Who’s afraid of gender and a few fun little gay novels, among others things.

This year I have been slowly moving back from almost 100% comfort reading to a more typical mix of fantasy, romance, nonfiction and "serious" literature. I finished (provisionally I hope) reading the Liaden series that I discovered last year, and that proved to be consistently good from its beginnings to the latest volume, published this year.

I enjoyed quite a few of KJ Charles's Victorian romances, and had a lot of fun with Rosemary Wood's Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series (now reading number 6).

I enjoyed some SFF classics, starting with a reread of Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time trilogy, followed by Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg. I then chased up a short story I had read many years ago, and discovered Joan D Vinge's original and thoughtful stories in Eyes of Amber and Other Stories. I liked that so much that I followed up with Psion, and I can't wait to start on the sequel, Catspaw.

I also came back to nonfiction with Didier Le Fur's François Ier, which sent me down a renaissance rabbit hole involving visits to the Saint Étienne du Mont church in Paris and the Fontainebleau castle, plus several other books. I'm still reading up on this subject.

I feel like I've had a good reading year, in both quantity and quality. I don't think I've had any significant reading slumps this year, and a lot more books rated 4-5 stars than in recent years (although of course it's always interesting to look back at those ratings and think, hmm I liked it that much? or see gaps where books that have stayed with you weren't rated that highly at the time).

My reading goals for the year were to read more non-fiction, particularly history (achieved! although more so at the start of the year than the end) and to read all of Austen in her anniversary year (I only got to 2, in the end, but will carry on reading her novels in chronological order). I also enjoyed group reads of Middlemarch and Giovanni's Room, but didn't manage to get organised enough to join others (including Pnin, which I literally had a copy of on my bedside table while the group read was going on, and somehow just didn't get to).

New-to-me authors that I want to read more of:
Brigid Brophy (I own Hackenfeller's Ape and have asked for In Transit for Christmas)
Alba de Cespedes (I own Her Side of the Story, which I think is the only other one that has been translated into English)
Magda Szabo (I own Abigail)
...and I'm going to include Barbara Pym here because although not new to me, this year is the first time I felt that I 'got' her, so I'd like to try more

I'd also like to try one of Eliza Clark's novels (She's Always Hungry was my favourite book of short stories this year), and The Ministry of Time and The Mountain in the Sea were interesting enough that I'd like to read what those authors do next. Nine Coaches Waiting was my favourite page-turner/genre read and although the other Mary Stewart I read was nowhere near as good, I will try another one or two to see which one of these was an outlier.

Top five books from this year:
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy
There’s No Turning Back by Alba de Cespedes
The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger
Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes

Best non-fiction:
The Anglo-Saxons: the making of England, 410-1066 by Marc Morris
Giving up the Gun: Japan's reversion to the sword, 1543-1879 by Noel Perrin
Stranger in the Shogun's City: a Japanese woman and her world by Amy Stanley

My reading goals for 2026 both come from the fact that I will be moving back to the UK (from Japan) at some point in the year - when exactly is a bit up in the air at the moment. So I would like to read the rest of my non-fiction books about Japan (because if I don't read them while I'm living here, when will I ever read them?!), and I would also like to read my largest physical books (to reduce the volume I have to move).

Favorites of 2025:

Graphic Novel: Grave of the Fireflies by Akiyuki Nosaka

poetry: Into the Forest and All the Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo, Satan's Sweethearts by Marge Simon & Mary Turzillo , Choking Back the Devil by Donna Lynch


Fiction Hard Mountain Clay by C.W. Blackwell

Translated fiction: Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan

Horror: Rekt by Alex Gonzalez

Nonfiction: Why I Love Horror by Becky Siegel Spratford

Since October 2019 I have been steadily reading science fiction books published in 1951. A year selected at random, but it came within the so-called golden age of science fiction writing, when many of the American science fiction magazines were still doing good business. I managed to find 67 books, easily available, most of which were free to read on the internet. Most of the writers had stories or novels serialised in the pulp magazines such as; Amazing stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy science Fiction, Planet Stories, Startling Stories and others. Some of the novels serialised in the pulps were later tidied up for publication in book form and some of the books published in 1951 were collections of stories from an earlier era. I decided not to be too precious about this and used the internet speculative fiction database as my guide.

Most of the books were quite short; 1951 was well before the advent of the sometimes overly long fantasy novels and most fell in the range of 120 - 250 pages. They covered many of the sub genres of fantasy and science fiction such as: space operas, invasion from and visits to planets in our solar system, earthbound stories, time travel, alternative time lines, fantasy adventures including sword and sorcery and short story collections. There was a noticeable absence of hard science fiction which was not surprising because of publications in the pulp magazines. I was quite surprised by the lack of dystopian novels, but then again many stories were pessimistic in outlook, there were certainly no utopias.

I rated and reviewed all the books that I read and did this with an eye to the genre in which I was reading, so although four of the books got a five star rating they could not be considered as literary masterpieces. The average rating was three stars which I thought was good enough for publishing in the pulps and so anything above that was worth a read in book form. So here is the list:

5 Stars
Ray Bradbury - The illustrated Man
John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids
H P Lovecraft - The Haunter of the Dark
Arthur Koestler - The Age of Longing

4 Stars
Hal Clement - Ice World
Philip Wylie - The Disappearance
Jack Williamson - Dragon's Island
Frederic Brown - What Mad Universe
Cyril Judd - Sin in Space
Eric Frank Russell - Sentinels from Space
Arthur C Clarke - The Exploration of Space
L. Ron Hubbard -Fear

3.5 stars
Robert A Heinlein - The Green Hills of Earth
Robert A Heinlein - The Puppet Master
Clifford Simak - Time and Again
Lewis Padgett and C L Moore - Tomorrow and Tomorrow & Fairy Chessman
Stanley Mullen - Kinsmen of the Dragon
Raymond F Jones - Renaissance
Edmond Hamilton - City at Worlds End
Groff Conklin - Possible worlds of Science fiction
Arthur C. Clarke - The Sands of Mars
Manley Wade Wellman - Twice in Time
John Taine - Seeds of Life
Mack Reynolds - The Case of the Little Green Men
Wilson Tucker - The City in the Sea
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories No.13 1951
L. Sprague du Camp - The Undesired Princess
Wallace West - The Memory bank (Dark Tower)
Leigh Brackett - Starmen of Llyrdis 29

3 Stars
Isaac Asimov - Foundation
L Sprague du Camp - Rogue Queen
Arthur C. Clarke - Prelude to Space
Robert A Heinlein - Between the Planets
Leigh Brackett - People of the Talisman
Fritz Leiber - Gather Darkness
Robert Spencer Carr - Beyond Infinity
Jack Williamson (Will Stewart) - Seetee Ship
L. Ron Hubbard - Typewriter in the Sky
Sam Merwin Jnr - The House of Many Worlds
Jack Vance - Son of the Tree
Raymond F Jones - The Alien
Groff Conklin - In the Grip of Terror
August Derleth - The Outer Reaches
John D Macdonald - Wine of the Dreamers
George O. Smith - Pattern for Conquest
Clifford D Simak - Empire
James Blish - The Warriors of Day
Vargo Statten (John Russell Fearn - The Devouring Fire
Vargo Statten ( John Russell Fearn - The New Satellite
E. E. Doc Smith - The Grey Lensman
Daniel R Gilgannon - Stopwatch on the World
S. Fowler Wright - The Throne of Saturn
Raymond Z Gallun - Passport to Jupiter
Kendell Foster Crossen - Adventures in Tomorrow
Fletcher Pratt - The Seed from Space

2.5 stars
Austin Hall - The Blind Spot
Malcolm Jameson - Bullard of the Space Patrol
Lord Dunsany - The Last Revolution
John Brunner - Galactic Storm
Poul Anderson - The Virgin of Valkarion

2 Stars
Isaac Asimov - Stars Like Dust
Sterling Noel - I killed Stalin
Hal Annas - The Longsnozzle Event & Maid-to-Order
Gerald Heard - Is another World Watching
Manly Wade Wellman - The Devil's Planet
A. A. Craig - Witch of the Demon Seas
Vargo Statten - Cataclysm

Two of my five star reviews were re-reads which did not disappoint: Ray Bradbury was a master of the short story and the Illustrated man is a very good collection of some of his inventive tales. I read The Day of the Triffids during the world wide covid pandemic when nothing was moving on the road outside and Wyndham creates a perfect scenario with his Triffids. H P Lovecraft's the Haunter of the Dark is a collection of horror stories written in the 1920's and 1930's, but I loved the atmosphere of impending doom that permeates this collection, Arthur Koestler's The age of Longing is the most literary of the books read and is an alternate time line story, which imagines that after the second world war, Western Europe is in danger of being swallowed up by Russia.

The four star reads were well worth the time spent on them. Hal Clements Iceworld was an imaginative look at a totally alien world. Philip Wylie imagines that all the women disappear from the world in the blink of an eye and explores psychological themes and ideas. Jack Williamson's novel is a story about mutants and genetic engineering on earth in the near future and has a strong female character. Frederic Brown's short story collection is full of fast paced inventive stories. Cyril Judd's luridly titled Sin in Space tells a story of the hard work of setting up a new colony on another planet. Eric Russel's Sentinels of Space is another mutant story where mutants on Venus and Mars combine to free themselves from Earth's colonial rule. L. Ron Hubbards Fear is a psychological horror story with a good twist at the end and Arthur C. Clarke's exploration of Space manages to induce a sense of wonder as he explores the solar system and beyond.

So thats most of 1951 in science fiction, there are a handful of books that I found too expensive or unavailable for me to read and I drew the line at reading all 16 of John Russell Fearn's books published that year. It was an interesting experiment in reading, but I am not sure I learned much from limiting myself to one particular year. Some acknowledged masters of science fiction were just getting going that year: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Clifford Simak and Leigh Brackett and so their best books were still ahead of them. I did uncover a few gems, but there were too many disappointments. I don't want to read any more.

>14 baswood:
A fantastic project and wrapup, thanks for sharing! I can't imagine out tired you must be after all that so hopefully your 2026 reading is a bit more relaxing.

>15 lilisin: Wow. Yes, fantastic. What a breakdown. This is six years of intermittent reading? It’s impressive and really fun to see. And unique! I might be inspired to read those top four.

I’m updated my list with a two-part year favorites. First favorites (slightly updated), then also a bunch of other good stuff i read.

——————-——————-
PART 1 - 2025 Favorites
——————-——————-

Best classic
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Favorite “modern classics” (some from the older Booker-Prize lists)
The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

Favorite New fiction
Audition by Katie Kitamura
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
Clear by Carys Davies

Favorite Nonfiction (the best of the many good ones)
A Backward Glance by Edith Wharton
The Secret of Life by Howard Markel
Jane Austen's Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney
William Blake vs the World by John Higgs

——————-
PART 2
——————-

Here is the other good stuff I read. I read the Booker Prize longlists (there are two - The International Booker Prize for translation into English, and the regular Booker Prize for works written in English), filled in some good older Bookers, hit some good classics, and stumbled across some wonderful nonfiction

2025 Booker Prize longlisted personal favorites (not listed above)
On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle
Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu
Endling by Maria Reva
Flesh by David Szalay
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga

older terrific Booker Prize listed books:
A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner

Classics:
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner
Piers Plowman by William Langland
Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Antigone by Sophocles

Other really good nonfiction:
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller
The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV by Helen Castor
A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin
The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke

I read 68 books last year, which must be one of my lowest ever reading years I had a reading slump in the hot summer months and only made the total respectable because of the 29; mostly science fiction books, I read in November and December.

5 star reads
Shakespeare - King Henry IV part 1
Shakespeare - King Henry IV part 2
James Baldwin - Another country
James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room
Richard Seymour - Disaster Nationalism
Adrienne Rich - Diving Into the Wreck
Victor Serge - Memoirs of a revolutionary
Edmund Spenser - The Faerie Queen
Richard Beck - Homeland : The War on terror in American Life
Alice Munro - Selected stories 1968-1994
Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
Homer - Iliad (translation by Richmond Lattimore)

That is over 17% of my reads this year.
Three classics from the Elizabethan era: the two Shakespeares featuring Sir John Falstaff, (but he could not quite pull it off again in the Merry Wives of Windsor which I rated at 4 stars) and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen which is quite extraordinary. Homer's Iliad as translated by Richmond Lattimore took me back to the 8th century BC and what an experience. Peter Carey managed to transport me to a life of a 19th century bushranger in Australia with his many layered story of the Ned Kelly gang. James Baldwin's marvellous prose and evocation of Paris in the 1950's is a real winner, but the power of his writing manifests itself in the uncompromising Another Country. Alice Munro's selected short stories, shows a writer who can pack so many thoughts and ideas in the short story format that you think each one is a novel in itself. Adrienne Rich's 25 poems contained in Diving into the wreck (of her life) are living testimony of the oppression of women and lesbians. Richard Seymour' disaster Nationalism, Richard Beck's Homeland and Victor Serge's Memoirs of a revolutionary are non fiction books that got five stars because I could agree with almost everything that was said.

2 Star reads (the lowest rating I would give a book; one star is something unreadable)

Thomas Lodge - A Margarite of America
David Goodis - Cassidy's Girl
John Brunner - Galactic Storm
Gerald Heard - Is another world watching: the riddle of the flying saucers
Manley Wade Wellman - Devil's Planet
Poul Anderson - Witch of the Demon Seas
Vargo Statten - Cataclysm

Thomas Lodge's Elizabethan cut and paste job A Margarite of America is almost unreadable. The alcohol infused violence in Goodis' Cassidy's girl left me begging for no more. John Brunner's Galactic storm reads like a science fiction novel written by a 17 year old, which it was. Hiding yourself under a pseudonym like Vargo Statten does not mean that you will write a coherent novel. Manley Wade Wellman's Devils Planet and Poul Anderson's Witch of the Demon Seas should have remained buried in the pulp magazines and Gerald Heard managed to make the riddle of the flying saucers as dull as ditchwater.

>18 baswood: “(but he could not quite pull it off again in the Merry Wives of Windsor which I rated at 4 stars)”

In the Bard’s defense, there is some evidence that he may have only had like two weeks to write the play and get it ready for performance for the Queen. 🙂

Very impressive stuff. Love what you’ve been reading.

For some reason I found it hard to commit to long books last year. Ended up reading 70 something not too long books, which is a lot for me. Anyhoo, here are my highest rated in 2025.

5 stars
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 by George Chauncey
Corazón tan blanco by Javier Marías
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson ----- Nobody reads Johnson like Will Patton.
Stay True by Hua Hsu

4 stars
One the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle
D.V. by Diana Vreeland
Looking at Giacometti by David Sylvester
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil ----- Spent about two decades in my tbr pile. Bought a used copy and found a marihuana leaf as bookmark.
Paseos por Londres by Virginia Woolf
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves
The Emigrants W.G. Sebald
Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
All Fours by Miranda July ----- Not sure I like this one so much now.
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin
The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut ----- I like it even more now.
Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
Las batallas en el desierto by José Emilio Pacheco
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux
My Death by Lisa Tuttle
The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti ----- Most pleasant surprise of the year.
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson ----- All-star cast of readers for the audiobook version.
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Mundo cruel by Luis Negrón ----- For sentimental reasons I guess. I know the period and the community.
How to Focus by Thich Nhat Hanh
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker
The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists by Naomi Klein
The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History by Isaiah Berlin
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue
The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger ----- A must for plant lovers

Honorable mentions:
The Roulette Player by Mircea Cărtărescu
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Invisible Ink by Patrick Modiano

My lowest scores? Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I know it has a lot of fans but, it just wasn't for me. Seven Empty Houses by Samantha Schweblin.

>20 mejix: gosh, I love Songlines. It's like sacred to me. I enjoyed Stay True as well. And I also read A Month in the Country. Fun list!

>20 mejix: Lots of good stuff there! Enrigue, Marías and Modiano would be on my desert island list, I’m sure, and A month in the country is a treasure, as Dan said. I loved The great railway bazaar when I got it for Christmas in 1975 — I hardly dare to go back and see how it’s stood the test of time…

>20 mejix: Always happy to see another Denis Johnson fan.

I organized my reading into categories this year and here are my favorites from each.

Favorites by Category
New Releases (goal 12, read 13)
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Isola by Allegra Goodman
Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Nonfiction (goal 20, read 21)
Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Path Between the Seas by David McCullough
Triangle by David von Drehle
The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts by Gregg Hecimovich
Shifting Sands by Judith Scheele

Classics (goal 10, read 11)
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes

Rereads (goal 5, read 6)
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Special Publications (goal 8, read 9)
The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning
The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart

Off the Shelf (goal 10, read 12)
Ancestral Voices by Etienne van Heerden
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Off the Libby/Amazon List (goal 15, read 15)
The Safekeep by Yael van der Waal
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Off the kindle (goal 5, read 5)
The Spare Room by Helen Garner

>24 japaul22: A perfect score. 🙂 Finding Margaret Fuller and The Mandarins appeal a lot. I’ve come across a lot of complimentary talk about Helen Garner recently

>24 japaul22: your category system really worked for you -- meeting every good almost exactly!

>25 dchaikin: >26 ELiz_M: I didn't have to work too hard to get those categories complete (only reading off the kindle shelf was a little hard), but it makes me feel more content with what I'm reading to have a concrete way to see that I am reading a variety of books.

>21 dchaikin: I was just blown away by the idea of mapping through song. Loved it.

>22 thorold: I can relate. There are a few books, like Hopscotch by Cortazar, that are very dear to but probably wouldn't enjoy now.

>23 SassyLassy: Only started reading Johnson in the last couple of years after hearing Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith raving about Train Dreams. Love his stories.

Another strange reading year for me. It started off up and down, but the last month or two really picked up, as I went back to favourite authors, and to books in translation. Sadly, I haven't reviewed the last three months' reading as yet, but I'm still working on it.

Favourites in order read:
Flatlands by Sue Hubbard - a quiet novel of memory and youth
The Garden against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing - a nonfiction book that made me consider so many aspects of garden history which continue into the present, as well as convincing me to read W G Sebald
The Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald - a solitary walk through history which sort of defies description
Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson magnificently translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton - the first in a trilogy by a new to me author whom I will keep reading and rereading

Funniest Book of the Year
God's Teeth and other Phenomena by James Kelman - a novel about the writing promotion industry, in Kelman's own inimitable voice, made all the funnier by reading it in Glasgow

Strangest Book of the Year
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder - a novel which I would never picked up on my own, which was horrifying and strangely compelling at the same time

Worst Book of the Year, and of a Long Time
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride - don't take my word for it - others have loved it

DNF
We Keep a Light by Evelyn M Richardson - a first person account by a lighthouse keeper of life on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia, interesting enough, but she was just not a writer
The Case of the Murderous Dr Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer by Dean Jobb - this was a real disappointment, as I love Victorian literature and had hoped to find out more about this bogeyman, but it was written by a reporter, and was fact after fact, nothing but facts, with no attempt at interpretation. I got as far as his arrest and trial, but couldn't see him through to his end

I managed forty-some books this year, less than one a week, my fewest in a long time.

My best for the year:
James, my only five-star book; the best I've read in a couple of years
Orbital
Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph, my best NF of the year
The Universe in Verse
The Correspondent

plus some very good re-reads, including Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy.

I'm wishing all y'all a much better new year.

>29 SassyLassy: McBride slayed! I loved The Color of Water. It's powerful. I'm really interested in that Kelman, or any Kelman. I must read him!

>30 Jim53: James is brilliant, and the Keats book is pretty darn special too. I don't worry about numbers, but I do worry about reading joy. I hope you enjoy your reading this new year.

I read more this year than I have since 2014, and if I hadn't had a big four-month slump late summer, early fall, I would have perhaps had my best reading year since I joined LT. I listened to a lot of audiobooks this year, also lots of books by women, and works from 25 different countries.

Favorites of 2025

Notable Nonfiction (all memoirs):
Cold Crematorium - a Holocaust memoir by Hungarian journalist, József Debreczeni
Solito - the account of Javier Zamora's migration from El Salvador to the US at the age of 9
Gender Queer - a memoir by Maia Kobabe

Fantastic Fiction: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Hellava Historical Fiction: All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski
Super Science Fiction: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
Fabulous Fantasy: The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Great Graphic Series: Children of the Resistance by Dugomier
Awesome Audiobook: Redwall by Brian Jacques, narrated by author and cast
Nifty Narrators: Juliet Stevenson and Simon Vance
Terrific Tome: The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje
Notable Norwegian Narratives: The Barrøy Chronicles
Disappointing Dud: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Classic Authors of the Year:
Jane Austen (listened to all six novels)
Emile Zola (four novels read)
Charles Dickens (listened to two tomes)

>32 labfs39: Housekeeping slayed! 🙂 (it’s, of course, one of my favorites from this past year (and month))

>33 dchaikin: Yup, it seems to be one of those books that people either love or hate.

>30 Jim53: You made up for quantity with quality. I loved the Winternight trilogy.

A bit late on this, I guess, but here's the list of my best reads of the year (rated 4.5 or 5 stars):

James by Percival Everett
The Art of Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Paul Kidby
Adulthood is a Gift! by Sarah Andersen
Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders
Is Math Real? by Eugenia Cheng
The Memory Palace by Nate DiMeo
The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson
Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Huh, that's a slightly longer list than I thought it would be.

>36 bragan: James! 😍 I loved Orbital too. Inspiring list, Betty.

>13 stretch: Have you watched the movie version of that if you haven't and you want to it's incredible Just make sure you have lots of Kleenex with you because it's a tear driver It's very well done

>20 mejix: Felt the same way about Pachinko about a third of the book I just was tired of it I never finished it So you're not alone

>39 cindydavid4: I changed the audiobook speed to finish faster. Hehehe.

>38 cindydavid4: I did and it’s a heavy one, very well done for such sad story it does not flinch away.

I am bummed. this afternoon I spent over an hour trying to get my list ready in order trying to but as soon as I was getting there and I almost had it all done somehow something happened and I just lost it and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do it this time but I'll try again tomorrow

>42 cindydavid4: I hate it when that happens. Cyber gremlins

>38 cindydavid4: >41 stretch: The Grave of Firefly animation is really special and powerful

>42 cindydavid4: oh, i hate losing posts. Sorry Cindy.

I'm having trouble sorting out this list between topics so I'm just gonna list all four quarters and you can a number and tag next to the title

1st quarter

caedfael series 5 21 books

colored televisionf 4

the books in the world nf h 5

severenceF 5 ling ma

sorry about your dragons fan 3 peter beagle

2nd quarter

an african history of africa nf 4

a hat full of sky fan 5

peony HF 5

polish boxer hf 5

love, queenie merle oberon nf bio 4

all the books in the world h 5

the correspondence HF 5

we free men fan

invention of clouds 4 nf sci

3RD QUARTER

Stone blind myth 4

Town in Bloom coming of age 3

merasci fi 4 How can we feel that That's probably why

Yellow face F3

Loved and missed F 5

the history of sound ben shattuck s.s 5

Shepherd's crown fan 4

4TH QUARTER

Big sister little sister red sisternon f h 4

The nine tailors myst 4

Strong poison myst 4

vera wong Advice for murder myst 2

Joy Ride susan orleans nf mem 4

the enchanted greenhouse fan 4

katabasis fan 4

gracie mem 4

We did OK kid bio 4

all the beauty in the world NF memoir 3

I only read 50 books which is lowest since HS.this was a hard year i was disstracted by family and personal worries and the news. hope to be able to read more next year

DNF

big little lies

house of odessey

the long view

the violin conspiracy

hope land

my judy garland

I had missed this thread. These were the books I read in 2025 that I look back on most fondly:

The Ice Beneath Her, Camilla Grebe (Swedish crime)
Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson (Canadian Indigenous literature)
Mindful of Murder, Susan Juby (Cozy Canadian murder mystery)
The Uninvited Guests, Sadie Jones (popular literature set in Edwardian England)
Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty (new to me Australian author)
Pretty City Paris, Siobhan Ferguson (non-fiction)
Jamaica Inn, Daphne Du Maurier (early 20th c classic English lit)