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

2024 Year in Review

Happy New Year!!!

As I type up this post literally 20 minutes into the start of the new year, I recognize that this is the latest that I’ve ever posted my “year in review” recap since I started tracking my reading a few years back.  Another first for me this year (2024) in terms of my reading life is that I was way off the mark with my reading goals – at the beginning of the year, I had planned to read between 50-60 books, which is the range that I had been averaging the past few years, however I ended up having to revise my reading goal in the middle of the year when I realized I was nowhere near being able to make the number I had initially planned.  I ended the year with 31 books logged and read* according to Goodreads as well as my reading log (though as noted with the *, there is a caveat which I will explain later in this post).

 

My reading life this year has been an interesting one. I would say that the best way to describe it would be a “quality over quantity” year.  Sure, I didn’t end up reading as many books as I usually do, but nearly every book I read (with the exception of 3) fell into the 4-5 star range, which is, of course, a rare occurrence, even for a reader like me who is highly selective about what I read (mostly due to time constraints with having to juggle so many things going on in my life).

 

Another thing I realize as I reflect on my reading life this year is that I have been less of a stickler with the “mechanics” of reading – for example, religiously logging and writing a review for every book I read and not allowing myself to move on to another book until I do so – and instead, let the reading experience speak for itself.  Now I have to be honest in saying that I didn’t plan it this way – as the year started, I was just as determined as I’ve been in the past to log and review every book I read, but halfway through the year, the plan kind of fell apart because both work and school became increasingly busy – that coupled with additional responsibilities at home that placed further constraints on my time made it difficult to stay with the plan…once I started falling behind with my reading, it was nearly impossible to catch up. 

 

And here is where the caveat comes into play.  For school especially, I had a few classes where we had to read entire books (there were a few months where I actually read 1 book a week) and given that we had to write extensively about these books for class (including, in some cases, academic papers), I felt like it would be overkill to write reviews for these books on top of that (plus I was in a time crunch), so I decided to forego that process.  I would estimate that there were around 10-12 books I had read this year that fell into this category.

 

Overall, I would have to say that, despite not meeting my reading goals this past year (in terms of actual numbers, that is), I’m still quite happy with my reading life, as I was able to read more high quality, meaningful books this year than in years past.  Of course, being the perfectionist that I am, I will probably set an overly ambitious reading goal again in 2025 (and end up falling short of the number and having to adjust it mid-year), but given what I experienced this past year, I am not going to worry about it and see how things play out.

 

So without further ado, here is my recap of the books I read 2024 (again, these are the ones that I had actually logged and wrote reviews for).  Note that after ditching ratings for my recap last year, I decided to go back to listing based on ratings, mostly because I’m already late with this post and ratings was the easiest way to go…

 

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Favorite Reads of 2024

 

Books I rated 5 stars:

 

-        The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri (published 2024)

-        Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (published 2010)

-        The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (published 2024)

-        The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer (published 2024)

-        And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (published 2013)

-        Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (published 2015)

 

 

Books I rated 4.5 stars:

 

-        Mercury by Amy Jo Burns (published 2024)

-        The Women by Kristin Hannah (published 2024)

-        After Annie by Anna Quindlan (published 2024)

-        Real Americans by Rachel Khong (published 2024)

-        Only the Beautiful by Susan Meissner (published 2023)

-        Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (published 1814)

-        The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (published 2024)

-        Rental House by Weike Wang (published 2024)

 

 

Books I rated 4 stars:

 

-        Atonement by Ian McEwan (published 2001)

-        River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure (published 2024)

-        The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan (published 2024)

-        Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg (published 2024)

-        The Twilight Garden by Sara Nisha Adams (published 2024)

-        The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean (published 2024)

-        Shelterwood by Lisa Wingate (published 2024)

-        Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen by Jon M. Chu (published 2024)

-        Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (published 2024)

-        Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty (published 2024)

-        The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz (published 2024)

-        Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia (published 2011)

-        Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (published 2024)

-        Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney (publishes 2025)

 

 

Books I rated 3 to 3.5 stars:

 

-        The Other Side of Disappearing by Kate Clayborn (published 2024)

-        The House on Biscayne Bay by Chanel Cleeton (published 2024)

-        Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger (published 2024)

2023 Year In Review

Wow, it's hard to believe that we are already at the end of another year!  Time certainly seems to fly by faster than anticipated!😊

The last couple weeks of the year have been particularly busy for me.  In addition to the usual exercise of reflecting on the past year, tying up loose ends, and preparing this year end reading recap, I’ve also been busy trying to stay ahead on my assignments for school, which started back in September (I’m working on an MA in English Literature so there is quite a bit of academic reading and writing involved).  While I love the back-to-school experience so far (especially the part where I get to read and learn about so many different things), the downside is that, now having to juggle the demands of work, school, and family, I’m left with much less time for “leisure” reading.  Indeed, when I look back at my reading year for 2023, one of the first things I notice is how few books I read in the last few months of the year that weren’t related to my studies in some way.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing of course, since I’m still reading a ton, plus I’m finally getting to some backlist titles that have been on my TBR (and my bookshelves) for years.  Another thing that I did more of this year is re-reading – this was mostly out of necessity, as a few of the novels for my classes were classics that I last read 20+ years ago, so I had to re-read in order to refresh my memory.  Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against re-reading and would actually love nothing more than to engage in re-reading more often, except for the fact that there are just way too many books out there that I haven’t yet read (and want to read) and there just isn’t enough time in the day for me to get to everything.  This last point is something I’m particularly aware of this year given all the 2023 new releases that, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find time to squeeze in (more on this later).

I actually decided to do this recap differently this year, since my reading has been a bit all over the place, especially in the latter part of the year.  Instead of recapping a list of “favorites” based on star ratings, I am going to list out books I read based on categories.  This year specifically, I found myself struggling more than past years to rate books according to the traditional star rating system.  To be honest, I have never really been fond of ratings systems because I feel they are too arbitrary and limited in scope, which renders them ineffective in painting an accurate picture of a particular experience.  As such, assigning ratings becomes even more of a challenge for people like me who prioritize “the reading experience” (basically, how a book made me feel) over the technical elements (such as writing style, pacing, plot, etc.).  For instance, I may have a book that is brilliantly written, nails all the technical elements to near perfection, is widely read and beloved, and from a literary/scholarship perspective, absolutely blows me away, however I find all the characters in the story to be exceedingly unlikable to the point that I can’t bring myself to root for anyone -- so overall, the reading experience for me was unpleasant / frustrating / miserable.   What would be the “fairest” way to rate such a book?  On the one hand, giving it a low rating would appear to signal that I dislike the book or that I’m discounting its literary merit (neither of which is my intention), while on the other hand, giving it a high rating would appear to delegitimize my own feelings and experience with the book (which also is not my intention).  After much agonizing, I eventually chose the “happy medium” rating (though with the caveat to read the actual review rather than go off the rating alone).  All this is to say that a reader’s experience of a book can be shaped in a myriad of ways that can’t be simply explained on a 1-5 rating scale. 

So for the purposes of this post, I am going to ditch the ratings!  Instead, I’m going to focus on whether I fulfilled my reading goals this year as well as what my reading experience was like overall.  In terms of the reading log stats that I usually include in these year-end posts, I will still include some stats in my write up below, but I won’t be doing screencaps of each section as I’ve done in the past.

Ok, so let’s get to it…

At the start of the year, my reading goals for 2023 were as follows:

-       Read as many books as possible from my own shelves:  Based on my reading log, out of the 57 books I read this year, 25 of them were books I own.  While it’s true that some of these books were newly bought this year, quite a few were ones I already had sitting on my shelves but never got to them – book club and school gave me a chance to finally pick these up.  So yes, I would count this goal as met.

-        Work through my list of backlist “must-read” books:  I read 16 backlist books this year, which is the most backlist I’ve read in a single year since I started tracking my reading 6 years ago.  A large part of this was due to school, since most of the books I’ve had to read for my classes were written years ago.  No doubt this will continue to be the case in 2024 with the rest of my classes focusing on the classics.

-        Read widely and diversely:  To be honest, I’m cheating a little in making this a goal, since, as a person of color myself, I’ve always made it a priority to support POC and other authors from marginalized groups.  In past years, a little over a third of the books I read would by POC/marginalized authors, but this year, I exceeded that:  out of the 57 books I read this year, 30 were by POC / marginalized authors.  Of course I intend to continue this reading habit in the coming year.

-        Re-start my “completist” project:  This is a carry-over project from 2022 wherein I wanted to read all the books written by my favorite authors.  The goal was to finish at least 1 author on my favorites list each year.  Unfortunately, I have not made any progress on this goal, so it will continue to be a carry-over for next year (though if I’m being honest, based on all the reading I’ve got lined up for 2024 so far, most likely this is going to continue to carry over into subsequent years).

-        Incorporate books about Writing into my reading schedule:  This one is also an ongoing goal for me.  In terms of stats, I was able to read 2 books that were specifically about the craft of writing this year.  However, this doesn’t count all the writing / craft stuff I’m involved with for my classes, which in a way, offsets not being able to read actual books about writing.  With that said, I still intend to continue this goal, but like my completist project, it will likely be carried over to subsequent years.

 

Now for the actual book lists.  I tried to separate the books I read into categories that give an overall idea of what my reading life was like this past year.  Some of these books were indeed “favorites” that I adored, while others were ones I appreciated but didn’t necessarily love.  If you’re interested in my specific thoughts on each of these books, feel free to check out the reviews for more details. [Note that the below are not listed in any particular order].

 

1)     Classics that I read/re-read for School:

-        Emma by Jane Austen

-        Persuasion by Jane Austen

-        Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

-        The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

-        The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan

-        Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

-        Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

 

2)     New 2023 Releases by Favorite Authors:

-        Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

-        The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

-        Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See

-        Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

-        Watch Us Shine by Marisa de los Santos

-        No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

-        The Cuban Heiress by Chanel Cleeton

-        Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney

 

3)     2023 Releases I Read and LOVED (Fiction and Nonfiction):

-        The Porcelain Moon by Janie Chang

-        Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

-        The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

-        Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

-        Good Fortune by C.K. Chau

-        The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry

-        The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

-        A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen

-         

4)     Other Notable 2023 Fiction Releases I Read and Enjoyed:

-        A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo

-        The Miniscule Mansion of Myra Malone by Audrey Burges

-        Paper Names by Susie Luo

-        Community Board by Tara Conklin

-        A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysha Chang

-        The Sorrows of Others by Ada Zhang

-        The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

-        The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok

-        The Golden Gate by Amy Chua

-        Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

-        Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang

 

5)     Backlist Books I Read in 2023 (and ADORED):

-        A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

-        Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

 

6)     Notable Nonfiction Reads (New & Backlist):

-        The Upstairs Delicatessen by Dwight Garner

-        The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

-        The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

 

7)     Book Club Picks I Enjoyed (New & Backlist)

-        The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

-        Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

-        Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett

-        Fault Lines by Emily Itami

-        Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

-        Did You Hear About Kitty Karr by Crystal Smith Paul

-        Talking at Night by Claire Daverley

-        Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

-        The Postcard by Anne Berest

-        Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

 

8)     2024 Releases I Read and LOVED:

-        Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung

-        The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang