Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Best Books I Read in 2025.
I read so many great books this past year! According to StoryGraph, I gave 5-star ratings to 30 books in 2025. It’s too painful to narrow down to just ten… so I’m not! Leaving off books that were re-reads (such as three Tolkien and one Austen!) and a few children’s books, here are 22 of the best books that I read in 2025:
Next Time Will Be Our Turn by Jesse Q. Sutanto (review)
Even at 22, that’s ignoring other books I really loved, but for whatever ever reason gave 4.5 or 4.75 stars on StoryGraph. This topic is a lot harder than I expected!
What were you favorite books of 2025? Do we have any in common?
It’s the last day of 2025, and before it strikes midnight, it’s time to look back on my reading and blogging stats for the year. Overall, my sense is that it was a good reading year! I definitely read lots of book that I loved… but let’s see what the numbers reveal!
First, according to Goodreads:
Not sure why this says 160 books read — my challenge and all other stats say 159, which is correct!
Ha! I forgot that I reread Twilight this year after a visit to Forks over the summer!
I completed my 2025 Reading Challenge… but keep in mind my total includes graphic novels and children’s books as well as novels and big “serious” books.
I’m planning to lower my goal for 2026 by a lot. I’m aiming for 100 books in 2026. I want to give myself plenty of breathing room and allow space for books that take more time and concentration.
I really like the Goodreads graphics that I received in a wrap-up email last week:
Over on Storygraph, different sets of stats and views are available. From my challenge page, here’s where I stand as of December 31, 2025:
I really like that audiobooks are tracked by hours, rather than pages. Makes sense!
For my year in review:
Yup, same books as on Goodreads… although the page count is slightly different, presumably due to accidentally selecting different editions on StoryGraph vs Goodreads
Kelley Armstrong doesn’t surprise me at all, but I was really puzzled by Alice Hoffman… until I remembered that I listened to several audiobooks of her short fiction while on a trip last spring!
I’m actually surprised that my average rating is pretty closely aligned with the stats from Goodreads, since StoryGraph allows fragments of stars and Goodreads only allows full stars.
I gave 5 stars to 30 books in 2025! That’s a pretty awesome feeling!
This little tidbit made me laugh:
So clearly not correct! But I guess what I learn from this is that I’ve missed out on marking books as owned on StoryGraph. Note to self: Do better in 2026!
More than three, actually — but for the handful of books that I put down within the first chapter or so, I didn’t even bother marking them as DNFs.
I participated in three private challenges on StoryGraph as well:
Series Progress Challenge: I set myself a goal to read at least five books from series on my TBR — either by starting with the first book or reading at least one more from an already started series. And I did it! I’m planning to do something similar in 2026.
20th Century Decades Challenge: I decided to challenge myself to read one book from each decade of the 20th century. I did pretty well! I still need to read books from the 1920s and 1960s… and since this challenge is just for me — and because I do want to see it through — I’ve extended the end date by three months to give myself more time. My challenge, my rules!
Ideal Bookshelf 2025 Calendar: This was a fun one! As a holiday gift last year, I bought the 2025 Ideal Bookshelf calendar for my daughter, and then treated myself to one as well. My brilliant daughter decided it would be fun to create a challenge for the two of us, with the goal of reading one book from each month on the calendar. And I did it! Since two months were cooking/baking-themed, she made those bonuses. In the end, I read one per month of all the rest, plus one bonus book. We didn’t get the calendars for 2026, so this was a one-time challenge. I loved it!
In terms of blogging stats, I think I had a decent year!
Most of my referrers were search engines and WordPress reader. I had a few very odd days with 1000+ views — which is NOT my norm — and there was no particular reason for it. Chalk it up to a visit from the bots!
According to WordPress, these were my most-viewed posts from 2025:
I’m not sure how real any of this is. It’s not like the most-viewed book review posts got a significant number of comments relative to other book review posts — so again, I’m guessing a lot of this is bot-driven. I will note, however, that my small number of TV-related posts tend to get high numbers of reviews and comments… which is a bit weird for me, since most of my focus is books, not TV. (Sad commentary on today’s society? Or just another weird fluke of search engines and bots?)
Well… that was fun! I tend not to follow stats too closely during the year, but it’s interesting to see all the graphs and trends at year end.
Onward to 2026! Wishing one and all a year full of great books and happy reading hours!
It’s time for my annual end-of-year tradition — a look at all the books I meant to read! Here’s a look back at all the books I purchased in 2025, but just didn’t get around to reading for one reason or another.
As I noted last year, I’ve gotten much better about being thoughtful about which hard copy books I add to my shelves. I’ve leaned much more heavily into borrowing library books, and when I do spend money on new books, it tends to be for e-editions (since both my husband and I do the bulk of our reading on our Kindles).
However… I do still give in to temptation! There are certain authors whose books I need no matter what! I picked up a couple of signed books at author events this year, and treated myself to a few books that caught my eye and were total impulse purchases. In total, I bought fewer hard copy books than in previous years — and of the ones I bought, many were copies of books I’d already read, loved, and then decided to add to my bookshelves.
When it comes to e-books, I must admit that my restraint seems to go out the window. I tend to grab copies of ebooks when I see a good deal — I just can’t resist when a book on my TBR is available for $1.99 as a one-day price drop! The downside is that I end up adding books that I don’t necessarily intend to read right away. So, you’ll see lots and lots of new Kindle books added in 2025 and not yet read.
Let’s get to it. Here’s a salute to my unread books of 2025!
First, the hardcovers and paperbacks:
As for the ebooks added to my Kindle library in 2025:
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The e-book list is pretty overwhelming. Almost all of these were purchased when their prices dropped to a dollar or two… but still, that’s way more than I really should be adding to my library, when I still have so many books yet to read. I’ll try to do better in 2026 (but also, I acknowledge that I say this every year!)
End note:
While I’m talking about “meant to read” books, I thought I’d take a look at my quarterly Top Ten Tuesday TBR posts of 2025, to see if I actually read the books I listed as my priorities each season. Turns out, I did okay! Of the 37 books I named (three books were listed in more than one quarter), I read all but seven. My unread TTT/TBR books are:
The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn: I really like this author, but didn’t feel interested enough to read this one.
Run Away with Me by Brian Seltzer: Just didn’t get around to borrowing this book from the library. Maybe someday, but it doesn’t feel like a priority.
City of All Seasons by Aliya Whiteley and Oliver K. Langmead: DNFd this one after a couple of chapters.
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher: Still plan to read
The Fair Folk by Su Bristow: Still plan to read
Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree: Still plan to read
A Town with Half the Lights On by Page Getz: Still plan to read
Have you read (and loved) any of my 2025 “meant-to-read” books? Please let me know if you see any you’d consider best of the bunch!
Bookshelf Fantasies 