Last year I kept track of all the books I read, as I did in 2019 and 2020. At the end of those years I reviewed the findings (2019 and 2020), and I’m doing the same now.
For anyone who knows me, there are few surprises:
- I read a lot (190 books)
- I re-read a lot (53, or 28%)
- I go through distinct phases (or obsessions, if we’re being brutally honest)
Both the overall and re-read totals are almost exactly the same as in 2020, so at least I’m consistent…
What else do the basic stats tells us? Well, the nationality of the author shows that just under half of the authors were English (Scotland makes a very poor showing with only 6); America is a distant 2nd place (and just under half of that country’s 55 books were written or co-written by members of a single family: Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill), and although France would likely have been in 3rd anyway, revisiting the pleasures of Goscinny & Uderzo’s Asterix books ensured that those three countries were way ahead of all the rest.
Unsurprisingly, given those stats, the original languages the books were written in are heavily swayed towards English, although there’s nothing translated from a non-European language (and if you allow that I read Asterix chez les Bretons alongside Asterix in Britain, to examine the similarities and differences, then one of the books was in its original language).
My summer dalliance with Goscinny and Uderzo1 aside, looking at the month-by-month list shows the phases I went through. Stephen King I’ve read throughout the year, but there was a time in late winter when I read almost nothing else. The start of the year (and the end of 2024) saw me discover more works by the excellent Viennese fin-de-siècle writer Arthur Schnitzler; in early summer I started a chronological re-read of Clive Barker, and got as far as The Great and Secret Show (next up would be Imajica but I still feel like I read it not that long ago); I’ve already written about my reading all around Marcel Proust, and the autumn saw a brief flirtation with the gorgeously-presented books of Fitzcarraldo editions (Annie Ernaux, Clare Carlisle, Jon Fosse).
Best books of the year: Alan Moore’s The Great When was a wonderful psychedelic London phantasy and I can’t wait for the next four books in his ‘Long London’ series; although it isn’t listed because it’s an Amazon-only short story, Joe Hill’s Ushers was probably the best short I read; Tim Hannigan’s The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey was the best travel/nature book; Dylan Jones’sShiny and New was a fun trip through 80s pop, but my top music book was Ian Leslie’s superb, and surprisingly moving John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs, which managed somehow to tell the Beatles’ story in an entirely new way.
Resolutions for 2026?: I sometimes resolve to read more by a particular author, or books from a certain country2, and almost always fail, usually because if I’m not in the mood for it, then I’ll struggle to engage. Sometimes you meet the right book at just the right time, but all other permutations of that are also true. So we’ll see what 2026 offers but I’m not making any claims or predictions.
Notes
1 I should mention that the new Netflix adaptation of Asterix and the Big Fight is excellent.
2 In 2025 it was Russia – my son has a good collection of books by Dostoevsky and Turgenev, as well as those he’s nicked from me by Tolstoy and Bulgakov – but only got as far as a volume of Chekhov plays.
Into the Gyre 