All the books I read in 2025
That I can remember/ locate
Happy Advent Sunday! Herewith, my 89 books of the year (technically 91 - I can’t find Careless People or Gone Before Goodbye.) The top picture is the first half of 2025, the bottom picture is the second. I didn’t realise until I shot the bottom stacks today that my reading in H2 is almost half of what it was in H1 - but that’s no bad thing. I’ve mentioned how my reading can tip into compulsion (where I find it quite hard to do anything else, like sleep) and in the last few months, mainly as work has been all-consuming, I’ve been watching a bit more telly, going to sleep earlier and re-discovering my love for a podcast interview, which I watch on YouTube, because I’m 8 going on 108. I’ve liked letting my brain drift a bit.
I’ve written about roughly half of the books on here, but some of them are for an audio documentary I’m working on (very excited, very in the weeds of it all) and a bunch of them are proofs (or ARCs if you are American), so I will write about those later next spring/ summer because I know how irritating it is to read about something you can’t get your mitts on for another 6 months.
I’m not going to hyperlink each title in the stack, because, as I wrote on last year’s round-up, that will send me (even more) insane. But I thoroughly recommend Bookshop.org, which is an online marketplace for indie bookshops, or, of course, your local library. (There’s also Libby, and BorrowBox.) Vinted has a lot of new titles that people appear to read and want to shift pronto, and it’s great for back catalogues, especially when you bundle: I’ve bought stacks of Lily King, Colleen Hoover, Jacqueline Wilson - etc. Abe, eBay and WorldofBooks are also good resources to save your pocket.
As for my favourite books of the year? Coming tomorrow, along with my reading resolutions for 2026!
To end: what’s been YOUR favourite book this year? (It does not need to have come out this year.) What should I be reading? What will change my life and my reading habits irrevocably!? Go wild in the Comments, I love a book rec.
Have you read The Correspondent by Virginia Evans? The cover is totally not my thing but the (epistolary) book itself is GORGEOUS. Like Small Pleasures meets Eleanor Oliphant but with a dash of Elizabeth Strout. I’m two thirds through and don’t want it to end. Other favourites are Slanting Towards the Sea, Brian, James, and Diary of a Mad Housewife (hilarious).
My favorite fiction book was Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These (I’m late to the party but what a perfect read for this time of year) and my favorite nonfiction was Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Bite by Bite, a collection of mini essays accompanied by the most gorgeous illustrations. I’m a library girl but it’s one worth buying and owning!