Books in 2025

StoryGraph summarised my year of reading as: You chased clues down winding paths, chased horizons and daring escapades, and wandered through tales tinged with shadow. That does seem pretty accurate.

I read a total of 119 books (up from 102 the year before) with a total of 32,181 pages (up 5%), so all in all a good improvement (although the page count was very much driven by the two Lucifer graphic novel omnibus editions I read).

I've been pretty steady though the year, although April did see quite a spike upwards.

I'm still using Goodreads, but mainly as my Kindle is linked. That only shows 84 books as it struggles with small press and roleplaying books in many cases.

Martin J Dougherty was my most read author, completely driven by the Deepnight Revelation work for Traveller. 

Martha Wells was the fiction author who I read most of, thanks to the Murderbot Diaries, which were also very short. Adrian Tchaikovsky came next, with five novels with Mick Herron (Slow Horses books and novellas), Samu Rämö (the Hildur series) and Christopher Fowler (Bryant and May) coming in next. 

I really enjoyed the Murderbot Diaries and have preordered the next instalment; I may find myself digging inti the fantasy books that Wells wrote that were also in the Humble Bundle I picked up. Likewise, I suspect that Adrian Tchaikovsky will continue to feature heavily as I picked up most of his fantasy fiction that I haven't read in a Humble bundle. I do intend to continue with Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series through 2026 as well. There were two notable series I started to re-read but have only read the first book - Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World and Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy. I do intend to read more of both of these, and I think that the Pendragon RPG books that are sitting in my to-read pile can only help with the Mary Stewart books.

I joined Elle Cordova's Sci-Fi Book Club this year to try and make sure I didn't get into a rut. I've certainly read a number of books that I wouldn't have otherwise; I've not liked all of them, but they've definitely been worth the time. My favourite so far has been Klara & the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, and the one that I've least liked was Slaughterhouse-5 (which drew me through but wasn't really my thing).

I enjoyed William Boyd's Gabriel spy novels, and will explore more of his work next year. I've found myself reading more thrillers and literature novels than previous years, and hope to keep some of this breadth going forward.

My favourite fiction novel of the year was Derek B Miller's Radio Life, with Nick Harkaway's Sleeper Beach a close second.My favourite non-fiction was a tie between Borderlines (Lewis Baston) and Vertigo (Harald Jähner), both of which taught me new things and were well written.

Tales of the Old West was the best roleplaying game I've read this year (although The Hooded Man deserves a honourable mention). It wins as an extremely playable game set in the period of the Western. It is gritty, focuses on community and avoids the need to draw on horror or the weird. It was a delight at the table.

My reading streak hit 1,088 days at the end of the year.

2 January 2026