2025 books

• The Giant Book of Ghost Stories (anthology edited by Richard Dalby, including a preface by Christopher Lee) – lots of fun 🙂
• Veniss Underground – classic (see recommended books above)
• Buddha – Osamu Tezuka – the story of Siddartha’s life in manga form. Eight volumes. Fantastic!
• Invisible Planets (Chinese sci-fi anthology edited by Ken Liu) – not bad; a couple of good stories including the excellent Night Journey of the Dragon-horse by Xia Jia
• Wuthering Heights – a bit long, and a bit annoying at times due to the somewhat unbelievable nature of some characters. Pretty amazing as a first novel. The denouement is (eventually) worth it – just. Communication is important!
• Educated – Tara Westaway – a seriously grim read. Demoralising to think of how many people are in similar situations around the world – or in worse situations. A good ‘check your privs’ book.
• The Portrait of Dorian Gray – quite fun, not sure if I had read it before. It would have shaken things up when it was first published I imagine. 
• All Quiet on the Western Front – another classic; typically I will reread this once a year or so. 
• Light, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, You Should Come with Me Now, Wish I Was Here – all by M John Harrison. A unique writing style, and interesting stories. I’ve enjoyed patrolling through his bibliography this year. Light is fantastic.
• Inhibitor Phase – Alastair Reynolds – far-future sci-fi and the end of the story for many familiar characters in the ‘Revelation Space’ universe. 
• The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger’s Guild – Mathias Énard – fantastic! A coming of age story (kind of), reminding me at various times of 100 Years of Solitude, The Diary of Adrian Mole and The Secret History. The eponymous banquet was my favourite part of the book, occasionally making me burst out laughing. I’ll try to find some more of Énard’s books!
• Intermezzo – Sally Rooney – J has had this on the shelf for a while and I read it piece-by-piece whilst getting through some others on the list here. Spoiler alerts: it does NOT have a terribly bitter-sweet ending (thank f). A decent read and as usual, very relatable characters and events.
• Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (and Other Lessons From the Crematory) – Caitlin Doughty – intriguing to say the least. I don’t often read non-fiction these days but this was a pretty interesting memoir of sorts. I didn’t find it ‘lol funny’ like some of the dedications claimed – don’t think I laffed once. 
• Burn – Peter Heller – classic ‘man goes bush and emerges to find the world changed’ with a modern north American flavour. Writing style similar at times to Cormac McCarthy. Again will try to find some other novels by him.
• All The Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy – excellent. The second time I have read this and it didn’t disappoint the second time round. Another coming of age story – with cowboys, Mexico, ‘the frontier’, desperadoes etc. Very good, and the first book in the Border Trilogy.
• The Crossing – Second book in the above trilogy; very good.
• Cities of the Plain – links both of the above (kinda) and wraps up the trilogy. The end of McCarthy’s elegy for the old days. I was a bit boggled about Billy Parham being seemingly older than John Grady this time.
• In the Blood – Jack Carr – shoot-em-up mindless drek with some peculiarly precise dialogue.
• Snow – John Banville – pretty bog standard detective story, fairly boring.
• Attack Surface – Cory Doctorow – fairly silly and the main character was almost insufferably twee. Strong ‘virtue signalling’ vibes. I got though it but mainly because I didn’t have anything else to hand.
• She is Haunted – short stories (mainly) about women. Some were quite enjoyable, others a bit of a snore.
• Dead Astronauts – Jeff VanderMeer – I liked the writing but it went nowhere really. Kind of aimless, like the books after Annihilation. Perhaps that’s just his style when writing longer stories.
• Relentless Strike – Sean Naylor – NON-FICTION ALERT! Modern special operations and the formation of JSOC. Interesting but fairly dry.
• Tintin – Hergé – Have read most of my favourites this year.
• When God Was A Rabbit and Tin Man – Sarah Winman – Both fairly enjoyable; I think I preferred the rabbit book. Easy reading.
• The Vaster Wilds – Lauren Groff – This was good to read, but I had to suspend disbelief slightly. The ease with which the main character was able to find food in the forest was a bit offputting.
• Pan – Michael Clune – Interesting ‘enough’ – elements of the style of Brett Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt. 

Well! I didn’t reach my goal – although if I was naughty and counted all of the various books I started but didn’t go on with I might have got close. That was probably the main obstacle for me this year; finding something I actually liked enough to bother getting through it. The robot helped me to pick some new books, and had about a 25% strike rate. I have more data now so hopefully it gets a bit more accurate. 

2026 reading list!

• Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance – Southern Reach Trilogy – Jeff VanDerMeer (JVDM). 
• Borne – JDVM.
• (Be)wilder – Darryl Jones – my PhD supervisor continues to pump out pop sci. This one was good but a bit disjointed, perhaps by desgn.
• To be continued…