Alright, let's do it. Last day of the year!
 |
| 2025: In Books |
Last year was a little tough. Lots of life stuff. This year, despite everything, I somehow managed to do way better in terms of reading. I think having a regular pattern helps, making sure I prioritised reading helped, but also I read some really fucken cool stuff this year. I experimented with Scandi-noir, I read some things I'd been meaning to read for years, yeah. Good things.
Rules
Only physical books count - the rare audiobook or ebook do not - and neither do graphic novels, nor any re-reads. A 'book' is defined as the thing between two covers - so an omnibus of three novels and two short stories still only counts as one book.
I think that for 2026, I'll drop the graphic novels not counting part. Not counting them means that I have a small but growing unread pile - and they take about as long to read as a short novella anyway, and those count.
For the past couple years, I read in a pattern:
- No more than 1-in-5 books can be a franchise tie-in novel.
- At least 1-in-5 books must be authored, co-authored or edited (for anthologies) by a woman.
- At least 1-in-5 books must be in translation.
This results in a cycle of Woman-Translation-Franchise-Free Square-Free Square. It's fun to have a pattern - and ensured I read at least 20% of female authors, something that's challenging when you read books with dragons on the cover - but this year, I did something a little different.
Because January 2025 had accidentally had a theme of 'women and books in translation', I decided that each month would have a theme, mostly with really stupid and painful pun titles. I'm going to put each month below the cut, if you want details.
2025 Results
Everyone loves an analysis. How did we do in 2025? Did dropping the cycle rule make a difference?
Total: 83 books (up from 35 in 2024)Women: 34 books - 41% (up from 37% in 2024) [+1 NB]In-Translation: 25 books - 30% (up from 20% in 2024)Tie-in: 6 books - 7% (down from 20% in 2024)Works in translation: 1 Arabic; 1 Danish; 3 French; 1 Old French; 1 German; 1 Greek; 1 Hungarian; 4 Icelandic; 6 Japanese; 1 Russian; 1 Serbo-Croatian; 1 Sumerian; 1 Swedish; 1 Yoruba; and 1 anthology with various languages of Africa.
So... pretty good. I read more women, I read more translated works (although having a 'noir' month combined with 'get into Scandinoir' made that pretty easy), and I read fewer Warhammers. An excellent result.
Unfortunately, my shelves are now groaning with unread books that either didn't fit into their monthly categories or otherwise have been deprioritised, so I have a feeling that for 2026 I may drop the rules... we'll see...
Okay, who wants to see some truly stupid monthly themes?
