Last year ended up being a really good year of reading for me. I've been setting a reading goal for a number of years, pretty much since I started using Goodreads to track my reading, but it's always been rather arbitrary and never much of a stretch. So it wasn't a surprise that I exceeded my goal of 110 books in 2025, but it was a surprise that I recorded my largest number completed since I started tracking.
I would have thought that I would have read less this year, given more demands on my time (Ruthie, increased responsibilities at work), but this graphic from my Storygraph reveals a very likely explanation:
More than a third of the books I read were on audio -- all those hours running, walking, and taking the dog out ended up being very productive!
Those of you who follow my book reviews know that I tend to be very stingy with my 5 stars, so I thought you might like to see which of my 2025 reads earned this rare honor. In only the order in which I read them, they were as follows:
- You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
- Small Rain by Garth Greenwell
- The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
- The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck
- Nesting by Roisin O'Donnell
- Heart the Lover by Lily King
- Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
- Isola by Allegra Goodman
- The Antidote by Karen Russell
- Heartwood by Amity Gage
- Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt
- My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss
- Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy
- Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
- The Salt Stones by Helen Whybrow
- Flashlight by Susan Choi
- More than Enough by Anna Quindlen