Books of the Year 2025

Here's the list of books for this year:

1. "Machines Like Me", by Ian McEwan
2. "The Ultimate Discworld Companion", by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs
3. "So You Want to be a Game Master", by Justin Alexander
4. "The Maps of Middle Earth", by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", by J.K. Rowling *
6. "Nero", by Conn Iggulden
7. "The Labyrinth of the Spirits", by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
8. "A Stroke of the Pen", by Terry Pratchett
9. "Hercule Poirot's Silent Night", by Sophie Hannah
10. "The Phoenix Project", by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
11.  "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", by J.K. Rowling *
12. "Hera", by Jennifer Saint
13. "La Belle Sauvage", by Philip Pullman
14. "Mary: or, the Birth of Frankenstein", by Anne Eekhout
15. "Assassin's Apprentice", by Robin Hobb
16.  "Dragons of Deceit", by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
17.  "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", by J.K. Rowling *
18. “Tower of Fools”, by Andrzej Sapkowski
19. “Dragons of Fate”, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
20.  "Odyssey", by Stephen Fry
21. "1984: Julia", by Sandra Newman
22. "Dragons of Eternity", by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
23. "Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince", by J.K. Rowling *
24.  "The Running Grave", by Robert Galbraith
25. "Defiant", by Brandon Sanderson
26. "Aim to Misbehave", by Rosiee Thor
27. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", by J.K. Rowling *
28. "Warriors of God", by Andrzej Sapkowski
29. "Skyward Flight", by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson
30. "Light Perpetual", by Andrzej Sapkowski
31. "Crystal of Storms", by Rhianna Pratchett

My target for the year was 30 books, so that has been exceeded.

The list of books includes five rereads (Harry Potter), and five books for Funsize - the same five Harry Potter novels in each case. There were no RPG-related books this year, although "Crystal of Storms" is a Fighting Fantasy gamebook, which is RPG-adjacent.

This year's best book was "Mary: or, the Birth of Frankenstein" by Anne Eekhout, with "Hera" by Jennifer Saint as a close second. The weakest book(s) of the year is a joint award to the three Dragonlance novels - it hurts me to say this, given how much enjoyment I've had from Dragonlance over the years, but these really didn't work for me at all.

As might be expected, the backlog of unread books has shrunk significantly over this year. My hope would be to clear it entirely by this time next year, but I guess we'll see.