My 2025 in Books

At the risk of creating a positing ‘tradition’ this blog must follow, I’d like to share a list of the books I have read in 2025 and briefly discuss patterns and possible trends. This piece is therefore a companion to similar blogs wrapping up 2024 and summarising 2023.

Reading has always been important to me but never more so than in the last six months. I knew that moving from Merseyside to Middlesex, as our family did in the summer, would affect my writing, although I didn’t anticipate going half a year without so much as compiling a blog post, but these are the realities of relocating when you have a child with incredibly complex needs and no school place available in your new home.

Not having a proper routine has destroyed our son’s sleep pattern, so we have found ourselves sitting outside his bedroom to prevent self-injurious behaviour and nighttime wandering. On those nights when I am on bedroom duty, being able to read has kept me both awake and somewhere near sane. An almost total lack of sleep has been offset by completing 57 books this year. These are:

The Year of the eBook

Of the 57 titles above, 43 of them – 75.4% – were purchased and read in digital format. This is a big shift compared to 2023, when I was first given an eReader and 11 out of 55 books completed were digital editions.

As I observed last year, some of the sensory joy of reading is lost; you can’t breathe in the intoxicating ‘new book smell’ or enjoy the feel of a downloaded page. But having a hundred books available with their own light source and none of the distractions built into an iPad or tablet has been incredibly important to me since we moved. The fact that Kindle and Kobo editions of major releases are usually cheaper than a physical book is also helpful; as full-time unpaid carers, we have a fixed income with limited amounts of ‘wriggle room’. I subscribe to a couple of daily emails flagging up deals on eBooks and on Boxing Day was able to treat myself to Nige Tassel’s 2025 release Final Destination by spending just 99p. I have had this one on my wish list since before it was published so to get such a bargain on it made me very happy, although I appreciate the author is barely making any money on my purchase.

My Reading Habits

In 2024, around 40% of the books I read were memoirs, but that could be partly explained by my studies, as I was writing memoir, so needed to read it. It’s now more than a year since the final project was handed in and eight months since Graduation, yet memoirs still accounted for 21 out of the 57 books I read this year. That’s 37%, which suggests that I have grown to love the genre.

I read thirteen books where travel was a central theme, making this my second most-read genre of 2025, and twelve specifically about railways and / or their history, which is a developing Special Interest.  My Christmas Night Read – the one book I received as a present – was the terrific 2025 release To the Sea by Train by rail historian Andrew Martin, whose book about the Paris Metro, Metropolitain, I read last year. The prolific Tom Chesshyre brought out another tremendous volume in his Slow Trains series this year. His meanderings around Britain – published to coincide with the bicentenary of the opening of the first steam-powered railway line – were a joyous read.

What does 2026 look like?

I suppose the answer to that question depends on when my son is allocated a school place! The longer he is out of school and without a routine, the more I will find myself reading at stupid o’clock in the morning. I already have some interesting titles downloaded; in addition to the aforementioned Final Destination by Nige Tassell, I have Maybe I’m Amazed by John Harris lined up and ready to read, alongside four volumes of The Jeeves Omnibus by P G Wodehouse, Alison Steadman’s Out of Character and Unruly by David Mitchell, amongst other books. As I write, I am looking at a paperback copy of another Andrew Martin; Steam Trains Today so while the eBook genie is out of the proverbial bottle, my bookshelf will continue to be important next year.

I might read fewer books in 2026, but that’s potentially a small price to pay for an increase in good nights’ sleep. As long as the books I do read bring me joy, I’ll be happy with that.

Whatever you read and however you read it, enjoy yourself. And have a very Happy New Year.