My year in books: 2025

* 234 books (absurd)
* 66 by men writers (28%) (a considerable increase from 2019 when I had gone off men writers completely)
* 37 rereads

My categorisations:
* 19 fantasy, 17 SF, 14 Memoir, 24 How-tos
* 56 romance (of which most in the last 10 weeks of the year; I didn't think to parse into m/m, het, contemp, historical, etc but may do anon)
* 14 children's (I didn't do a count of YAs)
* 60 non-fiction (26%)
* 10 landscape theme books: Rainforest (was last year's landscape)
* 1 in Italian, 1 in French, 20 in German, 27 in translation


My reading challenges:
* The 'Something Bookish' Reading Challenge
* The 52 in 52 Challenge
* Rereading challenge 
* Diverse Reading
* 12 Books of Holiday Romance
* Exploring Romance
* My own Diversify Your Decades

* I added 10 new countries to my quest of 'reading the world'.

Authors I read most by:
* KJ Charles (mostly rereads)
* AJ Demas (mostly rereads)
* Ursula K. Le Guin (mostly rereads)
* Lisa Henry and JA Rock (the Lords of Bucknall Club series)

Best five:
* Non-fiction:
Ben Rawlence, City of Thorns
Siddharth Kara, Modern Slavery
* Fiction:
Lee Welch, Mr Collins in Love
AJ Demas, The Boy Bride
Robert Jackson Bennett, Leviathan series


This post is brought to you by the comments section of tamaranth where it initially appeared.

120 books in 2026?

Once again, I have set 120 books as my reading goal for 2026.

I mean.

Whom am I kidding?


(Last year, I read 234. /runs away)

I do enjoy the permanent confetti on Goodreads, though, which showers one as soon as one has passed the goal. 

Vague plannings for 2026

1. Send book proposal to Princeton University Press.
2. Finish revising academic manuscript.
3. Draft a regency romance novel, inspired by my November novel writing month of 2025. (Or, more accurately: scrap 90% of wot i wroted and redo.)
4. Plan for early retirement.
5. Think of my motto for the year (2025's was "luxury").
6. Get window quotes.
7. Get John Lewis kitchen quote.
8. Claim my Henry Moore bid. Finally.
9. Prep for son's wedding.
10. Write fanfiction.