November 24, 2025

My Reading Year Reflections

With weeks of 2025 still to go, I’ve already hit my goal of reading 200 books, a goal that is somewhat arbitrary, meaningless, and paltry when you actually think about all the books in the world that I’ll never get to read, but still is pretty substantial in the face of all that, although it only means anything because of how much I’ve loved reading these books, how many of these books I truly loved. Books loved are what I measure out my life in, never mind coffee spoons, and while I know focusing on numbers is kind of irritating (“It’s about quality, not quantity,” so spoke that rare school librarian from my past who did not like me, and that criticism lives rent-free in my head, don’t worry!), but being a fast reader is pretty much my only remarkable skill, so can we let me just have that? Do people go around telling Andre De Grasse not to focus on his speed because it’s making all us slow-walkers feel bad? No, they do not.

If you’re curious about how I find the time to read, I shared some of my top tips here! (#1 is “Get Your Blood Checked,” which really did lead to an entire extra hour of reading every day after I learned that my iron count was low and started taking supplements, and was thereafter able to get up in the morning.)

And in addition to the books themselves, here are some things that helped make my reading year remarkable.

• So much nonfiction. Fiction is my usual lane, but with the world being extra weird and hard to understand in 2025, having nonfiction to help me puzzle it all out has been so helpful and even sometimes reassuring. Diving deep into a subject instead of merely scrolling has also been a nice counter to anxiety. Standout titles that have helped me make sense of the world this year include At a Loss for Words, by Carol Off (which just came out in paperback); When the Clock Broke, by John Ganz; In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times, by James Cairns; How to Survive a Bear Attack, by Claire Cameron; Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything, by Colette Shade; The Snag, by Tessa McWatt; Encampment, by Maggie Helwig; Storm the Ballot Box: An Inside’s Guide to a Voting Revolution, by Jo-Ann Roberts; Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, by Mark Bourrie; and Water Borne, by Dan Rubinstein.
• A focus on Canadian small press books. While I’ve always been a fan of Canadian small press books (which is to say books that are published by presses that aren’t Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, or Harpercollins), I’ve never made them my religion. Especially since market forces mean that the big presses are always going to be able to attract the big deal books that everybody is most excited about (whether that attention is warranted or not) and—this is a controversial statement, I realize—not all small press books are necessarily great and/or to my taste. Sometimes the former is because they lack the resources to fully invest in the production process, which undermines the reader experience. Sometimes the latter is because the very job of a small press is to publish the odd and underrated and not to cater to the widest commercial appeal. Sometimes both factors have meant that small press books have not been as much of my reading focus as they should be. But this year, I decided to make my “On Our Radar” column at 49thShelf a round-up of my own reviews of Canadian small press books, and has that ever been rewarding, pushing me to make small press titles a bigger part of my reading life, resulting in an expansive, transporting, and so much more interesting experience.
• The library. I’ve borrowed books from the library this year more than ever. This is especially convenient since I live in a city with one of the largest library systems in the world, putting so many great books at my fingertips. It’s meant I’ve been able to read a lot of hyped books I wasn’t sure about without getting invested—like, say, The Plot and The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Putting books on hold at the library before they’re released means that I’ve ended up getting to read brand new books before anybody else in the library system OR that I’ve had to wait months and months for my hold to finally arrive, and there are advantages to both of these. The library has allowed me read widely and keep things interesting. (Having just three weeks in which to read a high demand book that can’t be renewed also helps me focus and get the book read, whereas it otherwise might linger on my shelf forever…)
• Bookseller recommendations. It might be hard to tell because I’m still in Instagram a lot, but Bookstagram has factored a lot less into my reading experience this year, which has made my reading more diverse and interesting. And a highlight of this has been heading into bookshops and letting bookseller recommendations decide my purchases—and it’s had me ending up with books like The Road to Tender Hearts, So Far Gone, The Correspondent, and more. (See also “The Booksellers’ List,” new from the Canadian Booksellers Association, which is just definitively excellent. These booksellers have got taste!)
• Weird avenues. My reading regrets most years involve not having pursued enough of these. Not this year though, which makes me very happy. This is partly because I dove into this year with a number of reading projects on the goal, including reading everything by Elizabeth Strout in order of publication (DONE! It was THE BEST!), rereading Carol Shields (I’m slowly going about it, have read up to Swann), and reading Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka books (need to reread The Fire Dwellers and I’m DONE!). None of these authors are that weird, I realize, but anything that isn’t the New York Times bestseller list is a little bit weird these days. I’ve also read a few books in translation, have done plenty of rereading, and feel like I’ve been free to take the wheel in terms of reading what I want to read (which is the nicest freedom I know).
• Reading on my own. A big part of my year even beyond reading has been relearning that not everything I do has be recorded online, and book reviews are included. I was feeling a lot of pressure to write something about every book that came across my path, as though it didn’t exist unless everybody knew that I’d read it, and letting that go has been really freeing and has brought real ease into my reading life.