New Year 2025

 

2025 in Books

The last day of 2025 and perhaps time to glance back - I will make no resolutions, wishes or anything for the coming year, what happens happens - but it might be interesting to look back at what exactly I was reading in this year. Dear reader, this was NOT exactly what I would naturally go for, but more a careful selection in order to find something else, rather than my usual read. I would have been perfectly happy just gulping celebrity biographies but knowing this, I made a conscious effort to go in different directions. 

First, I followed lists of the most popular and successful books as voted by readers on Goodreads - this means that I have actually read something recent, like Nigerian horror writer Nuzo Onoh (“Where the Dead Brides Gather”), a Native American author Nick Medina (“Indian Burial Ground”), surprisingly strong thriller by Lisa Jewell (“The Night She Disappeared”) and the latest Dan Brown so I obviously made an effort to stay in current times. TV shows have inspired me to read trilogy by Hugh Howey, excellent “The Eternaut” by Argentinian Héctor Germán Oesterheld and “The Greedy Queen: Eating with Victoria” by Annie Gray was extension of my love for her TV shows where she combines history and cooking. I did read books about music, but carefully - instead of wallowing in the books about popular music, I limited myself on eight titles - obviously I could not completely ignore my favourite subject, but eight is a fine number. I am really enjoying Routledge books about popular music as explained by the countries, they are actually magnificent collections of essays and brilliant introductions to popular music of selected countries. Perhaps the biggest discovery in genre of popular music was Ethan Mordden whose book on Streisand I gulped in a few days. I just noticed that I read not one, but two titles by Stephen King who remains an old friend and a favourite. 

For 2026 I already have an idea and to-read lists ready: this time I want to focus on the authors I have never read before. So I created a list of books and authors I have never encountered before, except in theory. I want to explore different subjects, different perspectives and stretch a little bit out of my comfort zone, since it seems like I am circling around horror, SF, thriller and music - maybe 2026 will be the year when I will discover some new favourites. At the moment I am halfway trough Hillary Mantel’s celebrated “Wolf Hall” that turned out to be much more demanding than I expected, it is a novel that cannot be read lightly here and there, but one must focus on its brilliance and it feels more like a task - not sure do I want to continue with other parts. I think that 2026 might be a very interesting and satisfactory year if I select authors that I have never read before.