As the final days and hours of 2025 fall away I am celebrating a small victory.
I read 59 books during the year, meeting an impromptu New Year's resolution to read a book a week. That quickly morphed into five books per month. It's just a nice round number.
I hit it on the dot every month except January (go figure!) and September (football). I managed six books for the first time in December, no doubt motivated by the anticipation of new books under the Christmas tree.
I started reading two books at once late in 2023, and I alternate chapters. It's a concession to my ADD and keeps me motivated to hit daily chapter goals.
In past years I consistently read between 28 and 32 books annually. I would sometimes lose weeks mired in the middle of an 800-page book with no ending near. My chapter plan and monthly goals keep things moving by providing regular rewards.
I adjust as needed. If a book has short chapters, 10 pages or less, I'll read two for one. Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series averages about four pages per chapter. I am reading his books at a 4-to-1 chapter ratio.
Pairing my books is also great fun. I often go for opposite subjects and styles, but some books just beg to be read together. Earlier this year I paired Frank McCourt's memoir, "Tis'" with "The Immortal Irishman," Timothy Egan's biography of Thomas Francis Meagher.
It was only after putting the just-read "Tis'" on my bookshelf that I discovered I already owned the book in paperback. So, I either acquired the book somewhere along the way and forgot, or worse, acquired it and read it and forgot, then reread it again.
These are the hazards of life at 57. Hopefully, it's the former, as McCourt's writing style, full of conversational Limerick-isms, is quite unforgettable.
I've seen a few of these reading roundups here, and enjoy reading the recommendations. In that spirit, I'll add my own list. This is not a list of my favorite books, nor are they books published in 2025. Just reading highlights from the year.
1. "Alfred and Emily," by Doris Lessing. This was not a book I wanted to read. It lingered in my unread pile for a couple of years at least. It turned out to be one of the most unique and creative things I've ever encountered. This book won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature so I'm obviously not overselling this.
Lessing splits this story of Alfred and Emily, her parents, into two nearly equal parts. The first half tells a fictional story of how they might have met. A dreamy and delightful tale of separate lives lived during World War I. The second half is a memoir of the real and mostly unhappy lives of Alfred and Emily, told via recollections from Lessing herself.
A most difficult format, but Lessing pulls it off.
2. "An Army at Dawn," by Rick Atkinson. A 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner from the celebrated Atkinson. This one got personal, leading me to make a February trip to College Park, Md. to research my father's World War II records. After several hours of searching I found what I was looking for: Jesse Hilton was deposited on the USS Brooklyn on Feb. 22, 1943 for his first day in the war.
From Atkinson I learned that the battle for North Africa, and likely the entire arc of the war to come, tilted the Allies way on Feb, 22, 1943 when they chased Rommel during the Battle of Kasserine Pass.
The things you learn by opening a book.
3. "Thursday Murder Club," by Richard Osman. I read more fiction during 2025 than at least the past five years put together. That trend originated with this book, borrowed from the New Cumberland Library last winter. I generally favor nonfiction and opportunities to learn interesting things.
But reading can be fun, a fact Osman reminded me with this series. I read two TMC books in 2025 and plan to crack the third early in the new year. Meanwhile, Osman is keeping fans busy with a fifth book planned in 2026.
I found myself at a spring book bag sale and out of obvious choices. So, I grabbed a John le Carre book, "The Tailor of Panama." It was great! I bought and read le Carre's classic novel, "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold." From there I bought and read a John Grisham novel, "The Juror."
I learned in 2025 that I like spy and murder mystery novels.
4. "Life," by Keith Richards. If you read enough of these so-called "tell all" celebrity memoirs you realize they generally don't tell much at all.
Then there's Keith. The stories are juicy and wild enough to be nearly unbelievable, until you remember that it's Keith Richards. Like the time he conspired to "hide" sax man and drug buddy Bobby Keys on a big Stones' tour. Mick had banned the troublesome Keys. Keith describes Mick noticing Keys on stage mid-song. Funny stuff.
The drug tales are as wild as expected (Keith and Keys once set a bathroom on fire while cooking dope). But there's also some real meat to this "Life." I did not know, for example, how much writing Richards did on a lot of the Stones' biggest hits. Keith is an insatiable reader. I also did not know that Mick and Keith's relationship largely ended around 1980. For sure, there's brotherly love there deep down, but they have basically been business partners for the past 45 years.
5. "Hellbound on His Trail", nonfiction by Hampton Sides. This true story adventure of the months prior to James Earl Ray murdering Martin Luther King, and the weeks afterward, is told with meticulous reporting and vivid storytelling.
Sides is a very underrated historian, in my opinion. Several years ago, I read "Kingdom of Ice," his story of a doomed voyage to the North Pole, and it stuck with me. "Hellbound" will, as well.
Ray was such a complicated character, equal parts canny and dimwitted. He successfully escaped from maximum security prisons multiple times. Yet, he was dumb enough to dump the rifle used to kill MLK in a store vestibule as he made his escape. It gave lawmen crucial evidence with which to track Ray.
In a tight 400 pages, Sides tells a story that feels packed with every important detail. He also manages mini-profiles of important actors in the assassination-and-chase drama, including Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb and MLK lieutenant Ralph Abernathy, among others.
