… and it will be quick(ish) in large part because, well, I want to get back to my reading as we head on into 2026!
My 2025 year in reading ended beautifully just last night – New Year’s Eve – when my husband and I finished a book we were reading aloud together: Flight Paths – How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration by Rebecca Heisman.
With that, I finished 69 books in 2025. I’ve always contended that it’s not a competition, but confess that I do compete a bit with myself from year to year. In 2023, I read 83 books and in 2024, I read 100. Contributing to those numbers in recent years has been my participation in the poetry Sealey Challenge, which means I read 31 works of poetry in the month of August. But this year, I decided in July (the month before the Sealey Challenge) to challenge myself to read In Search of Lost Time, and realized very quickly that that commitment meant I couldn’t juggle that and 31 works of poetry in a month.
Still, 69 books in one year is just fine. That breaks down as follows:
- works of poetry: 20
- works of fiction: 35
- works of non-fiction: 14
- rereads: 4
- works by Canadian authors: 33
- works in translation: 9
- read aloud: 2
- audiobooks: 26
The one sub-category of reading I regret neglecting this past year was graphic novels. I’ll do my best to correct that omission in 2026!
Here is my 2025 reading, in all its glory!
January, 2025
- Ward Toward by Cindy Juyoung Ok
- The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
- The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith
- A Gaze Hound That Hunteth By the Eye by V. Penelope Pelizzon
- Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
February, 2025
- Vertebrata by Monty Reid
- Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad, narrated by Nadia Albina
- The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler
March, 2025
- All Fours by Miranda July, narrated by Miranda July
- When Whales Went Back to the Water by Lisa Baird
- Your Absence is Darkness by Jon Kalman Stefansson, translated by Philip Roughton
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, narrated by Kimberly Farr
- This Sweet Rupture by Omar Ramadan
- The Filling Station by Leesa Dean
- All the Little Monsters – How I Learned to Live With Anxiety by David A. Robertson
April, 2025
- Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes, narrated by Natalie Haynes
- This is Happiness by Niall Williams
- The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, narrated by Saskia Maarleveld
- The Incident Report by Martha Baillie
- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz, narrated by Nikki Massoud
- The Size of Paradise by Dale Martin Smith
- The Art of Gathering – How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker, narrated by Bernadette Dunne
- The Harder I Fight The More I Love You by Neko Case
- Bodies of Art, Bodies of Labour by Kate Beaton
May, 2025
- The Immortal Woman by Su Chang, narrated by Cindy Kay
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, narrated by Nancy Wu
- Carny – short stories volume 1 by S.E. Tomas
- She by Kirby
- A Bouquet Brought Back From Space by Kevin Spenst
- Miss Austen by Gill Hornby, narrated by Juliet Stevenson
- The Hour After Happy Hour by Mary O’Donoghue
- Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, narrated by Marin Ireland and Michael Urie
- Best Canadian Poetry 2025, edited by Aislinn Hunter
- Cattail Lane by Fran Kimmel
June, 2025
- Care Of – Letters, Connections, and Cures by Ivan Coyote, narrated by Ivan Coyote
- What You Are Looking For Is In the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts, narrated by Hanako Footman, Susan Momoko Hingley, Kenichiro Thomson, Winston Ting, Shiro Kawai
- Strong Female Character by Fern Brady, narrated by Fern Brady
- Curiosities by Anne Fleming, narrated by Anna Tierney, Richard Sheridan Willis, Zak Annette, Amanda Parfitt, Scott Turner Schofield + Anne Fleming
- The Adversary by Michael Crummey
- Lost Signal by Chris Hutchinson
- Fieldwork by Sadiqa de Meijer
- Softie by Kirby
- Don’t Let Me Be Lonely – An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
July, 2025
- Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, narrated by Cassandra Campbell
- Rag Pickers by Blaine Newton
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, narrated by Jeff Woodman
- In Search of Lost Time Volume I – Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright
August, 2025
- Always Look on the Bright Side of Life – A Sortabiography by Eric Idle
- In Search of Lost Time Volume II – Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright
- What is Broken Binds Us by Lorne Daniel
September, 2025
- I Can Make It All Up To You by Jacob Alvarado
- Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones
- November, November by Isabella Wang
October, 2025
- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder, narrated by Timothy Snyder
- In a Riptide by Ronna Bloom
- NMLCT by Paul Vermeersch
- The Wedding People by Alison Espach, narrated by Helen Laser
- In Search of Lost Time Volume III – The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright
- There Is No Blue by Martha Baillie, narrated by Martha Baillie
November, 2025
- A Different Kind of Power – A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern, narrated by Jacinda Ardern
- Encampment – Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community by Maggie Helwig, narrated by Maggie Helwig
- I Would Like to Say Thank You by Joseph Dandurand
- Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, narrated by Kristen Sieh
- Property by Kate Cayley, narrated by Kate Cayley
- The Character Actor Convention by Guy Elston
- In Search of Lost Time Volume IV – Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright
December, 2025
- Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld, narrated by Carrington MacDuffie
- Heart, Be At Peace by Donal Ryan, narrated by Anne Marie Ryan, Ciaran O’Brien, Donal Ryan, Eva Bartley, Gerry Howard, Killian Coyle, Roy McMillan, Toni O’Rourke
- Flight Paths – How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration by Rebecca Heisman
In years past, I concluded my reflections on and list of the past year’s reading with observations that I still find very applicable again this year:
- It’s not how many books or works you read (in whatever form) that counts. It’s that you read that counts – and it counts so very much.
- If you can read in good company, be it a partner, a four-legged reading companion and/or a group of trusted bookish friends, your reading will always be imbued with a special, warm glow.
Wishing you comforting, clarifying, entertaining, challenging and all round good reading in 2026!