Books: Your personal year in review for 2025

This year has been big for series. With everything going on in the real world, I've been finding a lot of comfort in escaping into a fictional world I've grown familiar with.

The Murderbot series made an early appearance. I'd heard a lot of mentions before, but dismissed them because the name sounded so silly and flippant. Then, I read a Tildes comment that painted it in a more nuanced light and was persuaded to check it out. It was nice being able to complete the series before I watched the show (also good!).

I've been blowing through as many Discworld audiobooks as I can get my ears on. I initially read the Von Lipwig books last year on the recommendation of a Tilderinoas an easy entry to Pratchett's style. I've since finished the Watch storyline, the 2 gods-related books, and I'm a couple books into the Witchy storyline.

I also listened to Absolution, the 4th of the Southern Reach trilogy. I enjoyed some sections more than others but overall it was fun revisiting that setting.

Most recently, I listened to the City of Last Chances (Adrian Tchaikovsky). As much as I liked the very short Elder Race for the book club, Tchaikovsky seems to be much more in his element with the space of a full novel. I either didn't realize or forgot it was a series, so it was a happy surprise finishing it and being able to pick up the next one (currently midway through). By chance, I read this immediately after Small Gods (Pratchett), and it was amusing to continue the theme of main characters with tiny cranky gods by two different authors.

I've read and liked others, but when I look at the year as a whole, this trend is what really jumps out at me.

Some of my favorite reads from this year include:

River of Doubt by C Millard - nonfiction about former president Theodore Roosevelt exploring a river in the Amazon jungle.

Stoner by John Williams, - the life of an academic at a rural university,

The Nickel boys by Colson Whitehead, A young black man finds his way into being an inmate at a terrible reform school.

A fine balance by Mistry - Several families in India find their lives intertwined. It's a brilliant portrait of the political emergency after partition. I cried.

The 13 clocks by James Thurber is a brilliant modern fairy tale.

A fever in the heartland by Tim Egan. Nonfiction US history about the rise and fall of the second ku Klux klan. It's a dramatic tale of hubris and courage.

Their eyes were watching God by Zora Hurston. African American classic about several stages of a woman's life.

The Traveling cat Chronicles by Arikawa, a poignant story through the eyes of a cat.

The tea girl of hummingbird lane, about a woman from an ethnic minority in China.

It was a good year for reading. I finished about 70 books. The book club selections provided excellent variety.

I had a pretty good year for reading, I am currently at 63 total books with an original goal of 56 which is twice what I finished last year. I also try to read at least 1 nonfiction book out of 5, and I’m currently at 21% with two nonfiction books in progress.

At the start of the year I was really getting into China Mieville who I discovered at the end of last year and is now on my list of favorite authors. I read Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky for the book club and have been devouring his books, another favorite author. Looking back the last few months I’ve read more westerns than I ever have.

Some of my favorite books I read this year, in no particular order:
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
You Can’t Win by Jack Black
Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Blacktounge Thief by Christopher Buehlman
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
Semiosis by Sue Burke
Necroscope by Brian Lumley
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
The Twisted Ones by T Kingsfisher
The Hollow Places by T Kingsfisher
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Here is my list for 2025:

Physical Books in order:

Hesiod and Theognis — Theogony; Works and Days; Elegies
Roberto Calasso — The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
George Eliot — The Mill on the Floss
Ilya Ilf & Yevgeny Petrov — The Twelve Chairs
Thomas Hardy — Tess of the d’Urbervilles
William Faulkner — The Hamlet
Thomas Pynchon — The Crying of Lot 49
Michel Houellebecq — The Elementary Particles
William Faulkner — The Town
Italo Calvino — If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
William Faulkner — The Mansion
Maxim Gorky — The Artamonov Business
Fyodor Dostoevsky — White Nights
Honoré de Balzac — Eugénie Grandet
Cormac McCarthy — Blood Meridian
Émile Zola — Nana
Franz Kafka — The Castle
Anthony Burgess — Nothing Like the Sun
László Krasznahorkai — Satantango
Kazuo Ishiguro — The Remains of the Day
Herman Melville — Moby-Dick (third read)

Audiobooks:

Anne Brontë — The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
John Brunner — Stand on Zanzibar
Charles Bukowski — Post Office
Willa Cather — Shadows on the Rock
J. M. Coetzee — Life and Times of Michael K
Wilkie Collins — The Moonstone
Richard Henry Dana Jr. — Two Years Before the Mast
Joseph Conrad — The Secret Sharer
Don DeLillo — Point Omega
Daphne du Maurier — My Cousin Rachel

Highlights (In order):

William Faulkner — The Town
Thomas Hardy — Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Cormac McCarthy — Blood Meridian

Moby Dick not highlighted since it is by default one of the greatest of all time

Disappointments:

Thomas Pynchon — The Crying of Lot 49
Roberto Calasso — The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (Cool book, too hard.)
Anthony Burgess — Nothing Like the Sun

My Goodreads shows that I've read 41 books this year, though I think I'll squeeze in a couple of more books before the year is over. I always take this number with a grain of salt, since I will also track some novellas and short stories as well.

Overall, it's been a decent year of reading. The majority of my reading has been ereading, as was the case for the last few years, as my books are still in boxes even though I moved a few years ago. Turned out to be handy since we're in the process of moving again, but I will be unpacking them at our new place finally. I also ended up finishing 4 books that had been in various states of read to "clean up" my currently reading list, though that list still sits at 30+ books since I have books I only read on my Kindle, and some on my phone and the stack of physical books I'm working through.

Something I've found myself doing occasionally is looking back at the books I read each year since I started keeping track. Even just thinking about the titles I read in a certain period bring me back. I.e.: After my oldest was born there was about a week where he wouldn't sleep unless we were holding him, and I didn't want to risk anything happening to him, so I would hold him and stay awake for most of the night and just read books. I finished another book, and then picked up Wolf and Iron and read it in its entirety, before moving on to another book. Whenever I think of that book, it brings me back to those nights where I was a new dad holding my son and feeling at peace being able to comfort him at night. I wonder what memories will stick out from this year's books when I look back in the future.

Next year I'm planning on mixing in more nonfiction reads and also focus on some more career development, so I'm not sure how my reading will look next year. I really enjoy reading as a hobby, but I'd also like to broaden my horizons and read some more books that will assist me in developing both professionally and personally. I think I'm glad to be on Tildes where there are regular threads to talk about what people are reading and for everyone to chime in with similar suggestions or talk about a book they enjoyed that someone is now reading.

This year saw me continuing several series that I had been reading in previous years:

• I've caught up on the Dresden files by Jim Butcher which was an enjoyable ride. I'm curious to see what happens next, and with how many other books I'm enjoying reading or want to read I'm okay with waiting since I'm sure Jim Butcher is going to deliver on the end of the series
• I've read more of Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erickson, and I am hoping to have book 9 finished before the end of the year and then start next year with book 10. These books are epic, and I wished I'd started reading them before I had kids so I could have binged my way through them. That being said, I enjoyed them now and can easily see myself reading them fairly quickly during a future reread. Every book in the series keeps building on the last. I'm excited to read the other stories in the setting, but I'll probably be taking a break after finishing the big 10 to go explore a different epic fantasy series for awhile.
• I finished the first main arc of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell (books 1-6). The first few books were very short and were a breeze, and the series slowly grew from what felt purely cozy to something with a bit of an edge to it without sacrificing too much of the cozy feeling. There was one small arc in book 2 or 3 that I rolled my eyes at, but the books are overall great. I will definitely return one day to read the next arc and see how things progress.
• I read the last novellas/short stories in The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey (I read everything except for one short story that I just didn't enjoy and any material in the TTRPG series). Felt like I checked off what was a great series. I don't know if I'll ever reread the series, maybe one day, but it is something I'll be recommending to my friends and others.
• I even read some more of the Warlock of the Magus World series by Wen Chao Gong which is a Chinese web novel. I have a friend who devours these types of books, and I read them to chat with him about them occasionally, but I can only take them in short bursts. Sometimes I'll read a few chapters, or if an arc is good I can fit in 100+ chapters, but I always have to take a break from them as two that I've read so far (this and Desolate Era) feel like if you took popcorn reading and distilled the popcorn down to pure carbohydrates. Fun, but not filling

I also started a couple of other series:

• The Portal to Nova Roma series by J.R. Matthew is an isekai/litRPG series which is enjoyable. I've read the first two books and am not in a rush to read book 3 until the author rounds out the series.
• The Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor started great. I read book 1 for the Tildes book club and enjoyed it immensely. I'll probably read at least the next couple of books next year.

This year feature more standalone books than I normally read. I tend to bounce between series, but this year I wanted some more self-contained stories. There are also a lot of older scifi and fantasy authors who would write more self-contained stories so it's fun going back in time as it were to experience those works. I also specifically looked for works that were a maximum of 80,000 words. Reading through Malazan which are generally 300,000+ words can take a look time and these would often serve as a quick break for a few days or a week during the year when I got to a chapter where I wanted to take a break.

Some highlights of these shorter works:

• Waterworld the novelization done by Max Allan Collins of the cult classic movie of the same name. I've always loved the movie and this was a very short and fun way to experience it again with some added details. I got interested as I remembered the existence of The Atoll YouTube channel that focuses on Waterworld content, and they mention the novel a lot of in their videos. I've never read a novelization before, so this was a unique experience.
• Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper was a fun scifi book. I know it's part of a series, but it worked great as a standalone novel.
• The Death of Grass by John Christopher, an eco apocalyptic novel set in Post WW2 Britain that was enjoyable and interesting. While it seems far-fetched, something like that with an aggressive virus could very well happen and impact a huge swathe of the world's food supply, considering how many vegetables are closely related.
• The Blue World by Jack Vance was a fun short read following humans who had generations earlier crashed on a water world and live on giant plants that stick up from the ocean floor. My first Vance book, but definitely not my last!
• Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky was a great read while I was sick over a weekend. A big thank you to @cfabbro for the recommendation.

I'm at 33 books on the year so far. My favorites were:

1. Things Come Other Things - Craig Mod - Walking memoir of the Kii Peninsula in Japan (emptying, rural, formerly a site of long pilgrimages). Interspersed with memories of his childhood in Connecticut in the 80s/90s and his murdered friend. Also some great photography.

2. Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel - Part 2 of her Cromwell trilogy. Short and really moves.

3. The Mirror and the Light - Hilary Mantel - Part 3 of her Cromwell trilogy.

4. Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel - Takes place in the same universe (sort of) as Station Eleven and Glass Hotel.

5. Last Stand of the Tin Can Soldiers - James Hornfischer - An awesome account of a WWII naval battle that made me think about what it might've been like to be in the service back then.

Also: I'm very slowly working through all the works of Rosemary Sutcliff (one of my favorite authors growing up). I'm trying to parcel out the ones I haven't read over the rest of my life. Read two this year for the first time (Sun Horse, Moon Horse -and- The Sword at Sunset). Enjoyed both very much.

I read several novels this year (and admittedly a bunch of graphic novels ... been one of those years). Here are a few things worth mentioning.

Books I liked:

The Martian - Coming off of listening to the audiobook of Project Hail Mary towards the end of 2024, I decided to start 2025's audiobook playlist with this one. I'm glad I did.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky - Based on the true story of an adolescent coming of age in Fascist Italy. His choices, and his family's choices, take him to the unlikely crossroads of being the chauffeur to Germany's highest-ranking officer assigned to Italy. The audiobook does not have my favorite narration, but it's read authentically to the writing (I started with a freemium version of the audiobook and finished by reading the paperback, which I already owned).

Books I disliked:

West with Giraffes - Historical fiction based around a true story, but I just couldn't get behind it. The prose didn't stand out; the characters were, well, characterized but flat; and fiction like this is difficult to see how much effort the author put into research to make things feel period-correct and authentic.

Miscellaneous Mentions:

I'm about 250 pages into Shantaram and love it. Been a long time since I've loved a book as much as this and I read from a pretty broad selection of genres. I'm glad it has been made into a TV show, but I doubt the show will do the book justice. I'll have to find out after I finish reading.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare isn't going to be finished by the end of the year, but not for any fault of its own I just don't have the time (and I enjoy WW2 history). I started it a few months after finishing Rogue Heroes by Ben MacIntyre, a competitor of sorts in that genre. I prefer the writing of the former over the latter.

I read a Japanese mystery/thriller called Strange Pictures. It's an interesting take on the genre, though it's style may not appeal to everyone (it's not written for western audiences). I can see why it has become something of a modern cult classic in Japan, but I do wish there were a bit more depth across the board. I'll give the next book by this author a try at some point, but for casual reading I'll stick with my "mysteries" written by Rex Stout.

I was a constant reader in my youth, then stopped during university and only really picked it back up now in my 30s. (I am forever thankful to Susanna Clarke for that. I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell cover to cover in about a week. I was hooked!) My return to reading has been slow and I only read a couple this year. almost all were what I like to call "devastating" (meaning "oh no, this has revealed a T R U T H to me about myself that I was not prepared for"). In no particular order, I read:

1. "The last days of new Paris : a novella" by China Miéville (Was in a list of recommendations on Tildes for someone looking for surreal fiction. It was certainly surreal. Took me a while to get into it, but enjoyed it once I did.)
2. "Sure, I'll join your cult : a memoir of mental illness and the quest to belong anywhere" by Maria Bamford (I find Maria Bamford amazingly funny. She also straddles the line between tragedy and comedy so perfectly that I see how easily they are one and the same.)
3. "Emergency contact" by Mary H. K. Choi (Technically a YA novel but her adult fiction "Yolk" was so good and I needed more of her kind of unapologetically millennial realness.)
4. "The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects" by Marshall McLuhan and illustrated by Quentin Fiore (I am too stupid to really understand McLuhan's written work. Turns out illustrations are very helpful to me for understanding his ....theories(?). In any case, "massage" is not a typo. My brain feels gooey whenever I read this book.)

I don't read much. But this year I commented in a thread about which book series are worth reading and I wrote there that Ian Fleming's James Bond series is worth it. I wrote this based on movies though, as I haven't read any of the books. And that made me buy and read them. So far I read 4 or 5 of the James Bond books. If you like the movies, you should definitely read the books!

After those few books I jumped onto one of my most time favorites - Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy. This book started the games we know (not the modern/recent ones, these only use the name) and it's a bit of technical, yet easy reading. I like the story, but I love the action! I have read a few Jack Ryan books, but this Rainbow Six "kinda spin-off" is the best for me. I'm currently about 20-25℅ in lacking time to read... I will finish it though, as I already did a few times before.

This year has been a year of LitRPG for me. I feel like this genre is a bit of a wild West at the moment, with a LOT of books being published and is yet to be fully vetted.

It started with Dungeon Crawler Carl, as it has with most people. The series is unfinished, which is a big negative for me, and the audiobook didn't hit with me as it seems to with everyone else who has listened to it, but it is incredibly fun and great series of books.

I read He Who Fights With Monsters next as it was listed as the "next" series to read, and was frustrated to find it was also not completed. I will chalk these up to being my fault for not putting in proper searching when I was just feeling out the genre, but this is a great series as well and I really enjoyed it.

Most of the rest of the LitRPG books I read, I made sure were completed series, so there may be some I looked over. This is on purpose. I will come back and finish them when they're done.

Worth the Candle was probably my favorite series I've read. Not only is it complete, it's well written. There is a bigger focus on character relationships in this one, which had me frustrated at first, but I was able to put aside my personal preferences and just enjoy the ride. And boy, I'm so glad that I did. There were still some annoyances at the end, but it was definitely a worthy read. Considering a lot of the authors from this genre come from fanfiction backgrounds, I was surprised by the quality of writing here.

Primal Hunter was a series I did not finish. I'm not even sure it's completed, but after about 5 or 6 books I began thinking "is this all there is?" It's not for everyone, for sure, but I've seen others say it is the quintessential "numbers go up" LitRPG. Some may enjoy that, but it wasn't for me.

Wandering Inn was by far the biggest disappointment in the genre. It's horribly written. So horribly written that I could not finish the first chapter of the first book. I commend those who are able to soldier on into this series as it is one of, if not the, largest series in the genre. I was flabbergasted by the good reviews on this series. I was so utterly shocked at the good reviews, I thought maybe I unintentionally read the wrong book. But no, some people seem to adore this series. So who knows? Maybe you will enjoy it as well.

Path of Ascension is what I'm currently reading. I know it's not officially complete - However, I have read that the main story arc does conclude enough to have a resolution and that's going to be good enough for me. Some of these authors are very ambitious and want to spit out 20+ books. The book, so far, is adequate. I have yet to read a "what happens if someone breaks a build" LitRPG, and this is the closest so far, but I haven't quite reached that stage yet in the books.

I've read so many books this year. More than I think I've ever read in one year. I got really lucky and have been able to listen to audiobooks a ton, which is my new preferred reading mode, since I can do all of my mindless work tasks and still get something to enjoy while I do it.

I was surprised just how much I love horror novels, since I'm such a weenie when it comes to horror movies and other scary-type movies. Some of my favorite books this year have been by Grady Hendrix and Simone St. James. I will read anything they put out in the future.

I DNF'd a few books this year, but they were mostly just not my type of novel - though there was one book I DNF'd for being poorly written and basic as fuck. I found I don't like most modern literary fiction. It's just not for me.

I actually worked through the Goodreads challenges for the year, and am almost at the last one on my list for the year. Several of the options weren't books I would consider reading, memoirs, non-fiction that isn't history/food related, literary novels, just genres that weren't my type. I won't be going through it again next year. If I happen to want some ideas, I'll look through the challenge list again, but I won't kill myself over reading things I'm not interested in.

Two books I was surprised I wasn't a fan of were Under the Whispering Door and The Spear Cuts Through Water. Both are queer stories, the latter being sort of a mythology book as well, but I found that they were both kind of boring and really should have just been edited down a bit better. Actually, most of the books I didn't enjoy much this year were due to them being too long and/or poorly edited so they were generally boring in some way.

I think my two favorite books this year were from my book club with two of my best friends: Murder Road by Simone St. James, and Starling House (not officially a book club book, but we all decided to read it separately after picking our second book) by Alix E. Harrow. Harrow is another author who I love and will read all of her books. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is one of my favorite books and was introduced me to Harrow's work.

I also learned I love the "dumb fun" series that are around. I'm reading the Haunting Danielle series in between heavy books, and they're pretty silly little romps with the same premise over and over, but they're cute and a good way to turn my brain off and read something simple. It's been a great thing to have in my pocket every time I needed a break.

Overall, I've read 131 books so far and have 4 more books in my library loans list to read before the end of the year. It's been a wild ride!

Last year was my first year getting back into reading; I had originally set a goal of 2 books per month and ended up doubling that. This year I've about read triple what I read last year, well more if I were to count comics or audiobooks.

I started off the year finishing off the Song of Ice and Fire series and the connecting books--though I'm actually still working on finishing off the coffee table book (very dry). I really enjoyed them and they're pretty much what caused my reading to accelerate between last year and this. George RR Martin was, until very recently, my most read author in my tracker (Stephen King would surely be my most read across all time).

Now my most read author is Diana Wynne Jones as I read the Howl and Chrestomanci series, which adds up to 10 books. They're children's books so certainly not challenging or complicated reads, but they're pleasant and cozy. Next behind that is Suzanne Collins due to the Hunger Games books; I think Songbirds and Snakes was my favorite.

One thing I got curious about mid-year was the gender split between the authors I was reading. I started tagging each book with Male/Female/Other (whether because NB, unknown, or multiple authors). I was surprised to see that last year was heavily male leaning. This year is close to even at a 8:7 male:female ratio. That wasn't something I consciously tried to change, I suspect part of the difference is because last year a larger fraction of what I read was older than 50ish years.

Some Highlights

Nevernight
Yeoh Jo-Ann - I loved both of her novels
Keyhole Factory - A fascinating book with a very unique style of telling an otherwise banal apocalypse story
Hunger Games series
Travelling Cat Chronicles - The only book I've rated 5 stars
There but for Fortune - biography of Phil Ochs
The Elements of Style
Coming up Short - by Robert Reich, informative about how we got where we are
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
This is How You Lose the Time War

Some Lowlights

Haunting Adeline - CNC is a hard balance to maintain but this dropkicks that ball. By far the worst thing I've read
Pride and Prejudice - Just very much not my thing
Exhibit - The style did nothing for me, leaving just a gross glorification of infidelity

My goal this year (or rather in 2025) was to read 12 books. 1 book for each month. Not that many but still better from like 6-7 compared to last year.

Not all books were super super long so I kind of cheated but that's okay. I think my goal for the upcoming year is to read more than 12 books I suppose. I don't know yet if I can concentrate on reading when I am in my final year of studies and that whole stress but I am looking forward to it.

My favorite books were definitely the 3 books from Susan Sontag. All her views about photography and art are very interesting to me. Also since I study photography it's all very relevant to me. And I think all her views have aged very very well. And we are still struggling with the same questions she tries to answer in the books.

The Art of Cruelty I also really enjoyed. I have been rereading parts of it since I would like to continue to further plan my own performance art and also just learn more about them. I have visited Marina Abramović's exhibition in Zurich last year and I was so deeply moved and impressed by the whole thing.

Man and His Symbols was the hardest book for me to read. Jung's writing style is so complex and very difficult. I read it in english and I am not a native speaker. I was originally interested in the book because he is also from Switzerland and I really liked his approach and his methods how he looked at dreams and analyzed different people and their symbols. I had at the time terrible dreams or still have and I, personally, think it helped me a lot to look at my own dreams and just see them in a different view. It took a long time to get through this book. I am obviously not the intended target reader. I am not studying psychology or anything. So this was the first book that I read that was like this.

My biggest let down was Disappoint Me from Nicalo Dinan. It's not a bad book per se but at the time I remembered that I seemed to be a bit disappointed in the book. It was just kind of flat and obvious? The story is about a trans person and if I remember right the author is also trans. So it covers a lot of trans issues which I, personally, enjoyed since I, myself am also trans. But I think other people could really enjoy the book. It was just not what I was looking for.

I think for next year my goal is to get into Russian literature. I already ordered White Nights from Dostoevsky so I am looking forward to reading it. And just in general I want to read more of Carl G. Jung. Even though his books are very complex I still enjoyed them a lot and they taught me a lot about myself.

By the end of the year I'll have read about 10 novels and about 50 manga volumes in Japanese. I got back into reading in a big way for the purpose of language practice last year. Previously I'd read the occasional book on an airplane and maybe 1-2 other books a year.

The biggest chunk of those novels comes from volumes of 本好きの下剋上 (honzuki no gekokujou), or ascendance of the bookworm as you might know it if you followed the anime or manga when it was big a few years back.

There's also been a few books I've read following along to book clubs in learning communities like the manga of Frieren and Cardcaptor Sakura, and the original novel of 魔女の宅急便 (majou no takkyuubin / Kiki's Delivery Service).

I also read a few books in English this year - I've been slowly rereading some of the discworld series and I tried Legends and Lattes (it was fine, but it didn't leave me that hurried to read the prequel even though I bought both together). Nonfiction wise I read a book on an airplane about the ftx collapse which was enjoyable, but not much new information.

I've been trying to get back into the expanse too, but it's been proving a little challenging. I read all six books several years ago when there were only six books but it's been so long since then that I feel I need to read from the start or I'll miss important details, but also I remember enough that the reread feels a bit of a trudge, as much as I enjoyed them the first time around.

Ok so I'm really late to the party and I should also definitely be sleeping, but I really wanted to contribute to this, so I'm going to try to do so!

I read a lot of books that I really loved this year, including a bunch from the tildes book club. Some standouts were:

• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
• Everything is Tuberculosis
• Circe

These feel like standouts to me both because I really loved them, and because all three were a bit outside my standard reading fare. I also re-read several books this year, which is not something I do often. I re-read Cat's Cradle, which I hadn't read since college, and I'm very glad I did. I feel like I got much more out of it this time!

I also re-read You Just Need to Lose Weight and Parenting Beyond Power as part of a little parenting book club with myself, my wife, and my mom. My mom has been watching our daughter three times a week, which is amazing, and we wanted to try to get on a similar page in terms of language and philosophy for how we were thinking about parenting. It worked very well for my wife and I — my mom is still working her way into some new ways of thinking, but she's been amazing nonetheless.

I tried out some new series that I didn't follow up on, and I'm not exactly sure why they didn't hit for me. Jade City, A Song of Legends Lost, and Children of Time were all good books with compelling premises (and A Song of Legends Lost is my favorite genre, "Sci-Fi that initially appears to be Fantasy"). I finished all three, but haven't picked up the next in any of the series. I think I will probably pick up the next Children of Time book at some point (probably after I finish The Rose Field). I think that the characters maybe just fell a little flat for me in these, but maybe I just need to give them more time to grow on me.

I think this might have been my most diverse year of reading (still not all that diverse, all things considered). I'm excited to look through the rest of the comments on this topic and put together a list for next year!