2025 in Books

[starlady]

It's the eleventh day of Christmas and high time to post this roundup. 

2025 Reading Stats

• 144 books read, of which 12 were a reread
• By gender: 45.5 (32%) by men, the rest by women and other genders
• By race: 62 (45%) by people of color
• By language: 28 (19%) in Japanese, 8 (0.5%) in translation
• New books: 37 (26%) published in 2025
• New-to-me authors: 27

…versus 2025 Resolutions

• Read 125 books ==> Success! 144, an all-time high!
• Read 25 physical books owned since 2023 or earlier ==> Success! 29
• Read 35 books by authors of color ==> Success! 62
• Read 10 books in translation ==> Fail
• Read a volume of manga a week in Japanese ==> Well, I got closer than I have before?
• Read all the comics bought before 2025, both physical and digital ==> Fail. But I did buy a refurbished 2021 iPad mini and reading comics on it in Kindle is a pretty good experience, unlike my old iPad which had been blinking off randomly for years. And I think I have done the physical part of it? Except for a few random bandes-dessinées I have lying around.

General Comments
I feel like I'm not entirely sure how I managed to read this many books (well, I read six Lumberjanes collections on the trains to and from New York on New Year's Eve, and I ruthlessly read a lot of novellas that had piled up in December), but I'm pleased about it. I'm especially pleased about reading so much manga, and also that I've gotten faster at reading Japanese again. Which is good because I still have so. much. manga to read. And I buy more every time I go to Japan. I'm also pleased about the physical TBR progress, which includes sorting a bunch of books lurking on the bookshelf for years into piles of "read this and then sell it back," which I will continue doing. Sadly Half Price in town closed because of landlord greed, so now I have to go to either Fremont or Pleasant Hill. Other than that, I did de-prioritize new books to focus on older ones, so there's a lot of good 2025 books that have piled up. Too many books, too little time!

Best of 2025

• The Witch Roads and The Nameless Land (duology) by Kate Elliott
• Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen
• The Wall Around Eden by Joan Slonczewski
• Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle
• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
• Metal from Heaven by august clarke
• Fuichin zaijian! (10 vols) by Murakami Motoka
• Absolute Wonder Woman vol. 1 by Kelly Thompson et al.
• Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill

2025 Reading Resolutions

1. Read 125 books
2. Read 25 physical books owned since 2024 or earlier
3. Read 35 books by authors of color
4. Read 10 books in translation
5. Read a volume of manga a week in Japanese
6. Read all the comics bought before 2025, both physical and digital

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen
The Wall Around Eden by Joan Slonczewski

Tell me about these two? I've never heard of either.

[starlady]

They are both great! Holy Terrors is the third book in a YA trilogy set in a pseudo-Germanic fantasy world (the last book revolves around a Holy Roman Emperor-style election) and follows a con artist named Vanja who is the goddaughter of Death and Fortune. Vanja was abandoned by her mother in the woods at age four and subsequently adopted by her godmothers, then went back to the mortal world when she got older--she has a LOT of trauma around her abandonment and then subsequent mistreatment as a palace servant (the first book, Little Thieves, is a riff on "The Goose Girl" fairy tale), and the emotional arc of the book is her working through all that and also seeing if she can get through her own issues enough to accept love. Unfortunately she has picked up an identity as a Robin Hood-type folk hero/thief and her love interest is a Prefect in the crime-stopping order. At times I was reminded a little bit of Frances Hardinge, if Frances Hardinge wrote heist books. The books are extremely funny and also extremely emotionally moving, I cried multiple times, highly recommend.

The Wall Around Eden is the book that won Slonczewski the Campbell Award again--they are one of only two authors to have won twice. It was written in the mid-80s and tells the story of a Quaker community in Pennsylvania (the Philly suburbs, specifically) that was one of the few to survive the nuclear holocaust thirty years before. The whole planet, or really what's left of it, now lives under alien occupation and technology restrictions. It's a really beautiful novel, the protagonist is a teenager who becomes an adult in her community over the course of the story but as Slonczewski is a Quaker, the plot doesn't go where you'd expect. Also they are a practicing scientist who was active in the anti-nuclear movement at the time so the science is really well thought out (although, good news, later research disproved the "nuclear holocaust will sterilize/destroy the ozone layer" theory that is part of the book's backstory, the theory was proposed by Carl Sagan a few years before the book was published). Also highly recommended!

[rachelmanija]

Thanks, I just ordered a used copy of Wall Around Eden. Sound really up my alley.

[starlady]

Looking forward to your thoughts! I have read about half of Slonczewski's books and it's probably my favorite of them.