OMG – it’s February. Does anyone care about my 2025 reading life? Well, here are some thoughts on it anyhow…
In 2025, I read 67 books. (seems appropriate…). I don’t do extensive tracking of statistics; I keep a reading journal where I write down the name of each book and my thoughts on it. If I really liked a book, I put a little heart by it in my book journal. Sometimes I write down quotes, but I also record quotes in my Highlighted app because it automatically finds your book by scanning the ISBN number and then I can just use my camera to pull quotes. Highlighted also makes it easy to paste quotes into a blog post if I want.
Over all, 67 books is a lot for me – usually I average 50 or so. Not sure how I read so many books. Many of them were audio, which makes it easy to fit in a book when I had a long commute. But, out of the 67, only 12 books earned a little “heart” next to them in my journal – that’s about 18 percent. I would like to love more than 18% of the books that I read. It doesn’t mean that the other 82% were bad, just that only these 12 made me sigh with blissful satisfaction when I finished reading them, this feeling of wanting more, but also of having had a perfect reading (or listening) experience.
Anyhow, on to…
MY “HEART” READS 2026
My three top reads were memoirs, and each one gave me a quote that stuck with me all year. I listened to all of these on audio, and then loved them so much I re-visited them in print.
What the Dead Know: Learning about Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher. “When you leave here [autopsy work] each day, surround yourself with things of beauty. Enjoy nature and art and food and music and love. Just do it, and don’t skip a day. Seriously.”
The grisly yet human details about dealing with death every single day sucked me in.
-Shakespeare, or the Man who Pays the Rent by Judy Dench and Brenden O’Hea. “Everyone is nervous. It’s not your business to make more of it.” (said, regarding the first day of rehearsal.)
I loved this book, a series of interviews with Dame Judy Dench where she deep dives into the Shakespeare characters she has played while musing on her life in theatre. If you are interested in Shakespeare or life in the theatre, I highly recommend this book.
–Mailman: My Wild Life Delivering Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant “Don’t quit today. Finish your route, but don’t quite today.”, advice given him on a particularly bad day at work.
This book featured so many fascinating peeks at how the postal system works as well as Starring’s thoughts on how Americans live day to day.
Other Favorites:
-My Season of Scandal by Julie Anne Long – romance. I really loved how the two main characters develop first as friends and had a real rapport. The “sophisticated world weary hero brought down by the girl fresh from the country” is the trope, but this story feels like so much more.
-The Seven Year Slip by Ashely Potson – Time travel romance that just sucked me in even though I don’t usually like time travel. Novel that also explores grief and timing and pushing through life.
-The Finest Print by Erin Langston – Lovely romance, rich in detail about running a printing press and a main characters who are sensible and not stupid.
-Clear by Carys Davies – This book about the last man left on a Scottish island and the minister who is sent to evict him really drew me in and took me by surprise.
-Hail Mary by Andy Weir – Science Fiction, not usually my thing, but what a beautifully human story.
-The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso – novel set in Cape Town about two cantankerous old women who think they’ve settled into life but then are thrown a curve ball.
-Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela + Winnie and Nelson by -The former book was so inspirational and the latter book showed that even the most inspirational figures can be deeply flawed.
-The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, adapted into a stunning audioplay for Amazon Studios.
On to Next This Year: One of my Reading aspirations for 2026 was to read more classics – I felt like I read a lot of the same genre last year, namely memoir and romance. I wanted to read more books that were a little less in my vernacular, that might be a bit of a challenge. I found this Classics Reading Challenge from The Tea and Ink Society and I like the prompts. I like that “Classics” means anything written before 1975, so it’s not just dense Victorian tomes. Most of Agatha Christie was written before 1975! I’m looking forward to reading a few Golden Age mysteries. I’m not going to do the challenges in the month order listed, but I think I’ll get through them by the end of the year all the same – it’s only 12 books, surely I can fit that in.
Here are some of my thoughts of what to read:
January: A “serial novel” you read throughout the course of the year
-I think I’m going to read either Anthony Trollope or Elizabeth Gaskell for this. I just discovered the Serial app that will send you a novel in serial form, one chunk every day. I love that idea, though I don’t love the idea of reading on my phone.
February: A nonfiction journal or diary
– I have Ned Rorem’s New York Diaries in my TBR for about 20 years now, and I also have Martha Ballard’s A Midwife’s Tale on hold.
March: A book from the classics section of your local library
-Okay, so there is no “classics” section at my library – it’s all in the fiction. Also, the play section of the library is paltry, barely even a third of a shelf. Which is all to say… not quite sure what I’ll do for this one.
April: A classic Western novel or short story collection
No clue what to read for this one – I’ll take suggestions.
May: An Edith Wharton novel
The Age of Innocence – thanks to Engie’s Cool Blogger’s Book Club for filling this slot.
June: A book set in Africa
Things Fall Apart if the obvious one. I also just put a hold on So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ, translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas. I want to read a book by an African author for this one, not a colonizer.
July: A classic thriller
I’ve recently read about an Australian author named Mary Fortune who was one of the earliest female writers of detective fiction. Other ideas: Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Something by Ngaio Marsh? I want to read a female author for this.
August: A book written under a pseudonym
-James Herriott? George Orwell (I haven’t read 1984 yet)? Maya Angelou?
September: A short classic under 200 pages
I think for this, I might read a play. I picked up a copy of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour from the Library’s bookstore. Or maybe I should read/listen to a Shakespeare that I haven’t experienced before.
October: A classic novel featuring brothers
-This will be East of Eden; it’s been on my TBR for a very long time.
November: A classic novel featuring sisters
Well I’ve read the obvious ones (Little Women, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Howards End [one of my favorite books!], the Little House books), so I’m on the look out for other literary sisters. Edith Wharton wrote a novella called Bunner Sisters. The Penderwicks? Chekov’s The Three Sisters? We Have Always Lived in the Castle? Daughter’s and Wives?
December: A wintry mystery
No clue what to read for this one – I’ll take suggestions.
Are you doing a reading challenge this year? Any favorite Classics that you would recommend for any of these categories?