2025 Year In Review

First, a very happy new year to all!  While part of me can’t believe that it’s already the last day of the year (as it will be by the time I post this), the part of me also can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that this most difficult and exhausting year is finally over (and, more importantly, we survived!).

My initial thought was to wait until the last possible minute to do this Year End recap because I was hoping I would be able to cram a few more books into the last few days of the year, but on second thought, I decided against it.  What’s the point of rushing, especially when the book I’m currently reading is one I’m enjoying immensely (in case you’re curious, the book is about one of my favorite authors, Jane Austen).

So let’s get to it…

Reflecting on my reading life this year, what sticks out most for me is that this year, I read the fewest number of books since I started tracking my reads (which was around 8 years ago in 2017).  I read a total of 23 books this year, which is extremely low considering I usually average around 50-60 books in a year.  That said, the low number of books is not a surprise given that 2025 has been one of the busiest years of my life – not just in terms of work (which I don’t want to get into but will say that using “busy” to describe work is most definitely an understatement), but also having to juggle school, family obligations and some health issues.  It honestly felt as though everything chose to come at me all at once, leaving me feeling both physically and mentally drained (now you know why I used the word “survived” earlier). 

To look on the positive side – given everything I had going on, I should probably be proud of the fact that I was still able to get through 23 books, though of course, I had to be a lot more selective with what I chose to read than I have in the past.  Reviewing my reading log the past couple of days has been an interesting exercise, as it gave me insight into just how overwhelmed I’ve been this year. 

A few observations from my reading log:

• There were 4 months this year (January, April, June, July) where I logged 0 books read (though I must clarify that the books on my log are only the ones I read for pleasure – I read a ton of stuff for school earlier in the year that will not be reflected here). 

•  Majority of the 23 books – 15 to be exact – I had read from September to December, which makes sense given that August/September was around the time that I finished grad school.  At the time, I had resolved to “catch up” on as many books as I could and while I did read a lot, the list was just way too long to get through completely, so I guess many of those reads will spill over to 2026 (which I’m actually not sorry about, since all of them are books that I truly want to read). 

•  One observation that I’m not thrilled about is that, this past year, I totally bombed in the ARC department.  Despite receiving plenty of ARCS from both NetGalley and Edelweiss, I struggled to get through any of them prior to publication date (another area that I used to pride myself on). While I did go back and read some of the ARCs, in most cases, I ended up just getting the finished version after publication and reading that instead.

Overall, the biggest obstacle to my reading life in 2025 was Time – or, more accurately, the lack of time due to the chaotic “busy-ness” of the other parts of my life.

As I plan my reading for 2026, one of the goals I set for myself is to get through the 2025 releases I had missed out on – not all of them, of course, but as many as I possibly can. I also want to refocus my attention on getting to ARCs timely – which I think will be achievable since many of my favorite authors have books out next year (Ann Patchett, Lisa See, Elizabeth Strout, just to name a few) and for some of them, I already have ARCs of their new books queued up ready to go.  With all that said, the list of books “on my radar” for 2026 is already way too long, so I guess I will have some strategizing to do in terms of how to get to all the books! 😊

One strategy is something I actually started already in December: re-discovering audiobooks. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had actually tried audiobooks many years ago, but it didn’t end up working out.  In recent weeks, I finally took the time to figure out my audiobook style (mostly memoirs, essay collections, narrative nonfiction, some mysteries/thrillers, and definitely re-reads), so for 2026, I plan to increase my consumption of audiobooks with the hopes of getting to more books that I probably would not have gotten to otherwise.

Below is my recap of the books I read in 2025 (as mentioned earlier, these are the ones that I had actually logged and wrote reviews for).  For this recap, I decided to follow the format I did last year, which was listing out the books based on how I rated them. 

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Favorite Reads of 2025

 

Books I rated 5 stars:

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen (published 2025)

My Friends by Fredrik Backman (published 2025)

11/22/63 by Stephen King (published 2011)

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (published 2025)

Writers and Lovers by Lily King (published 2020) – this was a re-read for me

Heart the Lover by Lily King (published 2025)

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (published 2010)

How to American: An Immigrant’s Guide to Disappointing Your Parents by Jimmy O. Yang (published in 2018) – this was an audiobook

 

Books I rated 4.5 stars:

The Story She Left Behind by Patti Callahan Henry (published 2025)

The Annotated Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen / annotated by David M. Shapard (published in 2013)

 

Books I rated 4 stars:

The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes by Chanel Cleeton (published 2025)

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson (published 2025)

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler (published 2025)

Run For the Hills by Kevin Wilson (published 2025)

The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King (published 2025)

The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett (published 2025)

What We Left Unsaid by Winnie M. Li (published 2025)

Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane by Devoney Looser (published 2025)

 

Books I rated 3 to 3.5 stars:

The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei (published 2025)

Slow Productivity by Cal Newport (published 2024)

Gone Before Goodbye by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben (published 2025)

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (published 2025)

If You Would Have Told Me by John Stamos (published 2023) -- this was an audiobook