Happy 2026! I read some books last year - unfortunately I also fell out of the habit of tracking them, so it took a while to work out what I'd actually read across various libraries, bookshelves and apps. I have definitely still forgotten some, but I've decided this is close enough. Details under the cut!
In 2025, I read at least 98 books, roughly two thirds of which were audiobooks (mostly listened to on my daily commute and all borrowed from my public library #libraryhasitforyou) and one third were print or ebooks. Of the total number, 85 were new to me and 13 were rereads. This year was definitely the year of Realm of the Elderlings for me; I entered a real reading slump after finishing it and had to go back to some old favourites to salve the pain.
I really don't like rating books because it never captures the nuance of how I feel, so here's a very broad ranking of some of the things I liked in the past year.
My top books that I read for the first time in 2025 were, in no particular order:
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
The Tawny Man Trilogy - Robin Hobb
The Library of Babel and other stories - Jorge Luis Borges
The City and the City - China Miéville
Honourable mentions (also in no particular order) go to:
Fantasy, Sci-fi & Horror
Our Hideous Progeny - C. E. McGill
A Pilgrimage of Swords; The Kraken's Tooth; City of Songs - Anthony Ryan
On a Sunbeam - Tillie Walden
The Last Gifts of the Universe - Riley August
Private Rites - Julia Armfield
Service Model - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Uprooted - Naomi Novik
The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon
Other genres
After You Were, I Am - Camille Ralphs (Poetry)
Daisy Jones & the Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid (Drama)
Now Conjurers; Empty Heaven - Freddie Kölsch (Young Adult; Horror)
[I forgot to add Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë!]
The year wouldn't have been complete without my rereads of the Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud; Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells; and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. I never got round to my Mosca Mye reread, so maybe that's something for this year.
In 2026, I have a few reading goals:
I'm going to try real hard to actually track what I read.
I'd like to read some more classics, literary fiction and non-fiction.
I'd like to find something I love as much as my top books this year.
As I'm also trying to play more video games this year, and watch more films and TV, and listen to more music, and do more arts and crafts, we'll see how this goes!
