starfishstar

How many books read in 2025?

How many fiction and nonfiction?

68 fiction, 7 nonfiction

How many male authors, female authors, nonbinary authors?

48 by women, 18 by men, 5 by nonbinary authors, 4 by mixed author teams

How many books by people of color?

27 books (36%)

Oldest book read?

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin (published in 1971)

Longest and shortest book titles?

longest title:
The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon

shortest title:
Flip by Ngozi Ukazu

Longest book?

Probably Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (399 pages)

Any translated books?

5 translated books: 3 from Japanese, 1 from Spanish, 1 from Icelandic

Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?

No contest; it's Martha Wells ;-) She's on my list this year a whopping 10 times, because not only did the Murderbot TV show plunge me into a full Murderbot series reread, but some of the books I then reread again. It was an extremely Murderbot summer.

Followed up by K. J. Charles (5), Nghi Vo, (4), and Rex Ogle (3, with one of them being under his pseudonym, Rey Terciero).

Any re-reads?

Uhhhh a lot of Murderbot. Also a couple of Alexis Hall. And The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (first book in the Singing Hills Cycle), because I'd originally listened to it as an audiobook and I had a sneaking suspicion I'd missed a lot of nuance. So this year I read-read the book and indeed found it so intricate! So when I've read sequels in that series, I've also read them rather than listening to the audiobooks.

Which books wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?

Many! As always, I'm forever pecking away at my enormous list of recommended books.

The Wild Book by Juan Villoro was a recommendation from a friend, because her kids enjoyed it. A number of books I read were recommended by librarian colleagues, librarian conference presenters, or teacher colleagues. We Could Be So Good was almost certainly a rec from a friend who's obsessed with Cat Sebastian! Several recommendations came from Ask a Manager and/or her comments section. And The Book of Fatal Errors by Dashka Slater was a sweet sort of sideways recommendation: I was listening to an interview with Kevin R. Free (the EXCELLENT narrator of the Murderbot books; he also plays Kevin on Welcome to Night Vale) and he talked about some of the books he's most enjoyed narrating. He spoke so fondly about The Book of Fatal Errors that I looked for the audiobook, and then even though I couldn't find the audiobook (and thus wouldn't get to listen to Kevin R. Free read it, which was originally the point), I still read the book on the strength of his recommendation!

And Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World by Jessica Slice was kind of the opposite of a personal recommendation, in that I happened to be browsing the New Books shelves at my library and the topic grabbed me. (I almost never do this, just browse at the library and pick things up that look interesting, because I'm always so busy trying to get to all the books on my recommended list! Maybe that's something I should work on...)

Did you read any books you’ve always been meaning to read?

Quite a few of the books I read had been lingering on my recommended list until I finally got to them, but I don't think that quite qualifies as “always been meaning to read.” So let's say The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin – I read the first of the Earthsea books years ago and unfortunately bounced hard off of it. I'd reached a point where I was just So Done with books where only the male characters matter, and the few female characters that even exist are only there to 1) be evil witches or 2) pine after the male main character for no apparent reason except that he's male and the main character. But someone mentioned recently that the second book in the series, The Tombs of Atuan, focuses on female characters and I should give it a try, so I did.

Also, I finally read a book by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Although not her famous one, Braiding Sweetgrass; I read Gathering Moss).

Favorite books of 2025?

The best and hardest part each year!

As mentioned in my recent “quarterly (well at this point more like semesterly and that's if I'm lucky) books” post, when I went back to look at my year's worth of reading, I was surprised to find that no obvious favorites jumped out. Which isn't to say I didn't read plenty of books that were good, just that nothing really grabbed my heart in the way books often do. Regardless, here are ~15 good books I enjoyed:

Bright Red Fruit by Safia Elhillo (YA, in verse)

Punching Bag and Road Home by Rex Ogle (memoir)

Brownstone by Samuel Teer and Mar Julia (YA, graphic novel)

Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World by Jessica Slice (nonfiction)

the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo (fantasy)

Flip by Ngozi Ukazu (YA, graphic novel)

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers (science fiction)

Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee (adult/literary/whatever we call the default that isn't a specifically named genre?)

Proper English by K. J. Charles (romance)

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (fantasy)

Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice (science fiction? literary?)

We Could Be So Good and You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian (romance)

The Robber Girl by Franny Billingsley (middle grade/YA)

Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley (YA)

Twelfth Night by Alexene Farol Follmuth (YA)

plus of course...the entire Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells! It was a reread this year, but gosh I still love this series a whole lot. The audiobooks by Kevin R. Free = the best.