Excuse the bombardment of posts!!

I always like to take a snapshot of my TBR bookcase at the beginning of the year when it is neat and tidy and ready to go ?

Tagging my fist read of the year one I love so much I have a tattoo that says "so it goes"

Ready for this new year!!

I so wish more people were reading and talking about the tagged, it was my first 5 ⭐read of 2025 and I still think about it all of the time.

This was very hard, but after doing a separate list of my favorite weirdos (Sky Daddy might be my fav of the year if really pressed) and nonfiction, here are 10 favorites of 2025 that just blew me away. I could talk for hours about each of them.

2025 Wrap up!

199 books
64,373 pages

My most read author was Martha Wells (4) followed closely by (3) Sally Rooney, Patricia Highsmith and Edouard Louis

My Bookish Goals for 2025

✔100 books - I read 199
✔50K pages - I read 64,229
💀25% NF - I hit 24% which is a bit shy but I am still happy with it!
✔50% not US - I did 53% and read from 64 different countries!
✔12 Chunksters - 15

It is always so fun to look back at what we accomplished even if we just missed out goals, at least we tried!

One of my goals for 2025 was to read these 25 books and get them off my long suffering TBR bookcase.

I read all but 3 (Trace of sun I didn't get to but also decided I wasn't going to get to it so donated it)

I am going to get to Dr Z, A Terrible Kindness and The French Lieutenant's Woman this year.

One of my biggest goals every year is to read from lots of different countries, and try to keep my US reading to under 50 percent of the books I pick up
It was tight this year, I clocked in 47% US based books/authors

But I did read from more countries than I have before (since keeping track)!
I read from 34 different countries this year with the biggest being:
England (26)
France (14)
Australia (7)

Hope to do better next year w/ the percentage!

My last book of the year is a short nonfiction ARC of Edouard Louis' mother. He tells about her challenges with leaving abusive relationships and how it affects her children (through his own eyes). This is a heartbreaking read and very effective.

English translation set to release 22 January, 2026

This is a tough read. A novelization of Louis' growing up gay in a poor, bigoted family in a small rural French village. If you have read any of his nonfiction you will see all of his past in these pages and it is hard to see how the family treated each other, knowing it is mostly true. There are some interesting side stories (his cousins arrest and run from law for one) and in general his writing is (as always) heartfelt and gorgeous

My most anticipated Nonfiction list

I am throwing together my top 20 books that I most anticipate reading here is my fiction list (note not all are publishing 2026, many are older I just haven't gotten there yet)

I read 47 Nonfiction Books this year.

These are my top 11 The tagged is essential reading. I literally cannot say enough good things about it.

Omar Al Akkad is a treasure.

#Bestof2025 apparently you have a really good chance of making my list if your cover is yellow for some odd reason?

2025 #Bookspin #DoubleSpin #Bingo

36 Bingos this year (2023 = 34 2024 =24)
Read 21 of 24 Bookspins and Double Spins

What a year! Thank you @thearomoaofbooks

Not the best month, but I did get one bingo and did read my #bookspin book!

Thanks for the year of bingos @atthearomaofbooks

Do you put a lot of thought or meaning into your fist book of the year?

I have never really thought about it before! I think this year I am going to start with a re-read of one of my favorite books.

"I became consumed by worry, as when a realization dawns too late and plunges you into inertia. It was one of those cases where the more time passes, the less able you are to correct your mistake or set right some embarrassing situation, and so it becomes harder and harder to react."

I just love how Louis describes situations we have all experienced.

Every year I choose a few books I want to re-read. These are the ones I have been thinking about a lot and will be my picks for 2026!
A Dive From Clausen's Pier
Death With Interruptions
The Collector
Slaughter House 5
The Bluest Eye
5th Season
Red @the Bone
In The Time of Butterflies
Death of Vivik Oj
Underground Railroad

Well this is a first. I was trying to get a copy of Ripley 1 that matches my other Ripley editions and this is the style but it came and is a tiny slim volume and after more research it turns out it is a ESL sort of cliff notes version! This is super cool if you are going for that ..but not at all what I was hoping for!

Unpopular opinion. I really dislike Charlotte McConaghy....

Here are the 4 most disappointing books I read this year!

Murderland should have been great, but the author inserted herself in the most bizarre ways.
CRA - The movie was SO much better. Yikes
Apartment Women - What even was that? I had to look at my review b/c I have no memory of it, my review says people were mad about bins and sex noises LOL

Reading Goals 2026-What are you most excited for?
Are there any goals for 2026 that you are really itching to dive into?
I think my most exciting goal is to read a lot by a few authors. This is totally different then how I normally read. Occasionally I pick one author and read 12 books of theirs in a year, but this year I am trying to move one author off my most read list, so I am focusing on a few people to bump that person down it should be fun!

I love Mary Roach, her humor and the questions she asks make her books unique fun treasures. Replaceable You is all about the different ways we can modify and change the human body and each chapter had me fascinated. I borrowed this from the library but I need to buy a copy, there are so many facts and tidbits in here there is no way to absorb them in one reading. ❤️

I reject the top 10. I have read close to 200 books this year, and I refuse to have only 10 favorites. So I am looking at them in categories. First up!
FOR THE WEIRDOS
These are all books that I loved, but are not books I would recommend to just anyone.

Tagged might be my fav of the lot- Sky Daddy about a woman with objectophilia towards planes and how it runs (an a little bit ruins) her life. So well written and engaging!

I see now why so many love this book! The word I keep coming back to is Charming. The village, charming, the story (in its way) charming, Matthew , charming, Anne, charming! I had to put myself firmly in the 1908 Canada frame of mind (what do you mean send the orphan back??) I loved that Anne was nurtured so well by the whole village and that we get to see so much growth in her in the first book. I thought her anger at Gilbert was insane! 👇

I LOVE a sassy footnote

Note about how male doctors discussed how a woman must have a working vagina to "preserve the marital relations and keep the home intact":

"And here we see how an anus can be used as a substitute for the male brain."

Some times I Google something and the popular questions send me cackling!

Did Anne and Gilbert date in "Real Life" reminds me of my bookselling days when people would ask for books "Written BY" Jane Eyre ?

I am torn about this. I really enjoyed the story about the bachelors and the three women. It this had been only a story about that it would have been a big pick. But there are a couple of other stories (one real, maybe?) threaded in, and I am very confused why the book "ends" in the middle but it isn't the ending of any of the stories. I also thought it was a bit unbalanced, the other stories coming in during strange times and different lengths.

Newson has quickly become an auto-read for me. After this brilliant sophomore novel I will read anything he puts out.
I was blown away by his first novel My Government Means To Kill Me and I am equally in awe of him here where we go to 1950-60s Hollywood. Newson has a talent for melding a fiction book into the crevasses of true events and telling deeply meaningful stories of the Gay Black men who are often overlooked in these times and places.

I just finished Rasheed Newson's sophomore novel and I am blown away by it. The books current US release date is June 2, 2026 which gives everyone time to read his first book (tagged) if they have not. Newson writes historical fiction of Gay Black men in a brilliant and highly readable way. His first book looked at NYC in the 1980s and his second looks at Hollywood in the 50-60s Both weave fact and fiction seamlessly with brilliant characters.

Recommend this on audio. Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer and she sings between chapters.
This is part poetry, part short story, and I am unsure how much is fiction. It is a unique and hard read (review trigger warnings, there is many dark abuses)

Rating for the originality and craft event though it was a bit dark for me.

This feels more modern than many of Morrison's work (maybe due to references about Botox and silicone in someone's bum!) it is also one of her shorter novels (under 200pgs). While I enjoyed it, and liked the through line of women finding their own way it felt like one of the least impactful of Morrison's works I think due to the frequency of the changes in POV and subjects.
It is TM though so it is gorgeous

Thanks @Bookwormjillk for putting this on my radar! It was a fun audiobook, a bit more like Clueless than the original Emma but I finished and was sad I wouldn't be hanging out with them anymore.

Not a book for you if you are known to scream "just talk to each other" ?

This is a series and I am going to keep going with it! Next up P&P with Elizabeth of East Hampton

#10BeforeTheEnd

Some people are doing amazing! Some are done! Some of use are a struggle bussing through and might not make it!

I am finishing Anne this weekend, but then I am short by 3 and I have other things on my list.

Either way it falls for you I hope this challenged helped you get to some of those lingering books!

A wholly original story that is written exceptionally well.

I am glad it was short, even at only 165 pages it took me over a week to read, this is one of those books that I admire for the craft but didn't particularly like, and I found myself having to push through the last 60 pages. I am probably an outlier here. I think this would be a great book in a class, there are so many writing and storytelling topics here.
Glad I read it...once.

Finally getting to this Women's Prize long list 2025 read, and I have learned so much! I was especially interested in the Chinese education system Yang describes. The idea of having to go to school in the same district as your parents no matter where the family moved was fascinating as an American where people move to get their kids to better schools.
Overall I enjoyed this, my only complaint is that I had trouble keeping track of who is who.

What an amazing guy Rick Steve's is ❤️

I am 15 pages in and she keeps talking about this "sorrel horse" and not being a Horse Girl I finally just looked it up. The are like chestnut horses but a bit more read, with red-brownish mane & tails.

How can this be anything other than a pick? Toni Morrison writes about American Blackness and whiteness in literature. Calling up classics by Willa Cather, Poe, Hemingway, Faulkner.
Many of the pieces she discusses I had not heard of (Cathers Sapphira and The Slave Girl). I fear many of the issues she brought up in this 1992 work still plague us today
And incredibly interesting (and short) read to think more about lit + race in an intelligent way

ARC release: Jan 27, 26

This is my first Saunders and maybe it wasn't the best place to start. I couldn't tell if this is normal for him or if the ARC was just very rough. Maybe I am not smart enough, I understand what he was going for here, an oil man is dying and a woman is helping him cross over - a bit Miracle on 34th but he is going to die. I just thought it was scattered and a bit too whimsical for me.

Uganda. Coming of age
Kirabo is raised, without a mother mostly by the women in her family and village, I loved the interweaving of the different generations and the, mistakes, lessons, and striving to do better. While this is Kirabo's story you also get her father's, and her grandmother's along with tons of cultural criticism and Ugandan myths.

Incredibly well done.

#WeeklyForecast
Y up next is global!
Belgium
Ukraine
Uganda
China
France

I picked up A Girl Is A Body of Water on audio. And I am 1/4 into both Have Never Known Men and Vigil.

One of the few times I think the show is better than the book!

Rewatching this series 🥰
I loved this series so much I had Essie Davis' haircut for years!

Next up - Belgium

I know I am late to the party on this one.

"Love - what has that done for her?"
I am so glad I ignored the mixed reviews and read this. I love Aw's writing, and thought the style which was often changing in POV, topics and history reflected the heat and drought of a last summer.

Jay was a well flushed out MC who was pleasant to spend time with and I found the family as a whole interesting and complex.

#malaysia #bookerlonglist

"Weather to spend money, save money, eat, not eat, be happy, be sad - everything was traced back to their arrival in their new country with nothing to their name."

#Booker #Longlist. This didn't make even the short list but I am enjoying it much more than the book that won.

It might be low expectations from bad reviews, but I enjoyed this! I thought the writing was solid, and the story original. Though I understand the "twist" from the beginning, I don't think that was the point of the story, the point is what would you convince yourself to do, and what lies could you make up to yourself (and others) about what you see around you. The characters were interesting.

#ToB #Longlist

Weekend plans

Also finishing listening to #ToB Killer Potential

ARC Expected 6 January 2026

Dell and Dinah, and their boys Guy and Shep are "America's Favorite Family" they do a 30 minute sitcom of their life each week, they have been on air for 12 years but it is 1964 and the world is changing, Dell is in an accident and in a coma, and Dinah has read Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique.

This was a bit too wrapped with a bow for me, but it does reflect the sitcom attitude so I think it works for what it is ?

Just checking to see if we can post photos yet ...

Neighborhood walk

Listening to the tagged #ToB. The mom.in this has the same name as the mom in my other, completely unrelated current read Meet The Newmans.
It always throws me and I get so distracted on how 2 random books pick an unusual name (Dinah) and I happen to pick them up at the same time!

Well. That just wasn't for me.

I thought the characters flat (and way too whiny)
I wish the second story had been moved to the end, but I am not convinced moving them around would have helped all that much, it all felt incredibly repetitive.