My 2025 reading year

I am a self-confessed book nerd and reading evangelist with very few other hobbies. So no-one is surprised that I set annual reading estimates for myself that I track, analyse and report against – not just to keep myself accountable, but to also share the joy and gratitude I find in other people’s spoken, printed and digital words.

Which is how I know that I read 186 books in 2025 – encompassing three different reading challenges and a range of other ambitions and interests.

But it’s also important to remember that reading is never a competition. Whatever, however and however much you read is wonderful, valuable and valid, and I hope you found wisdom, distraction, inspiration, entertainment, solace, solidarity or community in whatever you read last year.

Here are some of my highlights…

Fave reads and recs

Once again, most of my 2025 favourite reads were non-fiction (even though they only made up 18% of my reading year). These included (in alphabetical order):

• Another Day in the Colony by Chelsea Watego, powerful and personal essays about the everyday violence and racism of so-called Australia.
• Black Witness: The Power of Indigenous Media by Amy McQuire Amy McQuire, an extraordinary, enlightening and devastating history of ‘Australian’ media coverage of Aboriginal stories, and a powerful call to believe Black witnesses. Essential reading.
• It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World by Mikaela Loach, a hard-hitting but hopeful and accessible approach to climate activism.
• On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, an extraordinary, easy-to-read, how-to guide to resisting and surviving this global political moment by listening to the lessons of the past.
• They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom by Ahed Tamini and Dena Takruri, the startling memoir of teen activist’s journey from occupation to imprisonment, of social media witnessing that makes us all complicit, and Palestine’s ongoing fight for freedom.

In 2025, two fiction books (82% of my reading year) also made it onto the list:

• James by Percival Everett, an extraordinary reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s point of view, about enslavement, empowerment and the secrets we tell to survive.
• Salvage by my amazing pal Jennifer Mills, extraordinary dys-hope-ian speculative fiction set in an all-too-possible future about siblings and space billionaires, running away and finding a way home, and how we care for one another after the end of the world. Ambitious, cinematic, stunningly written prose, with gobsmacking turns of phrase on nearly every dog-eared page.

Blak Books

Warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: the following includes the name of a person who has died.

Once again, I made and met a personal commitment to read at least 1 Blak book by a First Nations or Torres Strait Islander writer each month in 2025, and ended up reading 17 (plus First Nations books from Palestine, New Zealand, Canada and Turtle Island/USA).

The term ‘blak’ was coined by G’ua G’ua and Erub/Mer multi-media artist and activist Destiny Deacon. ABC’s editor of Indigenous Radio Daniel Browning explains that: “Blak, rather than Black, was [Deacon’s] kind of rejoinder to being called a black C[***] her whole life. So she took the C out of Black and turned it into something political.”

Particular highlights were:

• A Savage Turn by Luke Patterson, a gently fierce post-colonial poetry collection about identity, dis/connection to Country, and looking at contemporary ‘Australia’ through a First Nations lens.
• Always Was, Always Will be by Aunty Fay Muir and Sue Lawson, a must-read history of iconic First Nations protest movements from the 1788 colonisation of so-called Australia to the 2023 Voice referendum. Powerful, inspirational, essential.
• Archival-Poetics by Narungga activist-poet Natalie Harkin, three small volumes of First Nations poetry that took a long time to read, the archival evidence of ongoing colonisation haunting and retraumatising all at once.
• Comfort Food by Ellen van Neerven, accessible and gently insightful poetry about the everydayness of food, travel, family and fleeting moments.
• If this is the End by my pal Bebe Oliver, a powerful, moving, achingly honest and vulnerable poetry collection about queer First Nations identities, mental health and emotional growth, home towns and the homes we make for ourselves.
• Returning from Gunai poet Kirli Saunders, an extraordinary illustrated collection of First Nations poetry about queerness, connection, decolonisation and Blak joy.

I recorded the challenge as part of Read Indigenous 2025, and have set up a 2026 Blak Book Challenge on StoryGraph. Who’s joining me?

Read Harder

2025 was my third year attempting BookRiot’s Read Harder Challenge, which invites readers to explore formats, genres and perspectives that go beyond their reading comfort zones and diversifies their TBRs. I completed all 24 challenges. Another highlight not mentioned above was:

• The Pairing by Casey McQuiston, a delicious bisexual and gender fluid romance about food, dreams and second chances on a tour through Europe that made me hungry for food and travel and head over heels in love with love. (Read as a queernorm book).

I recorded all of my challenges on StoryGraph and will be trying to Read Harder again in 2026.

The Diverse Baseline

I completed The Diverse Baseline reading challenge to read a minimum of 1 book by racialised authors per month – reading 85 of the 91 bonus challenges. Particular highlights not mentioned above were:

• Forest of Noise: Poems by Mosab Abu Toha, a powerful and urgent new collection of poems about life within and in exile from Gaza.
• Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao, the second historically-inspired political space adventure in the epic Iron Widow mecha-scifi series: a thrilling and sobering saga about capitalism, labour, misogyny, betrayal and the violent fight for vengeance, freedom and control.
• Oathbound by Tracy Deonn, the third cliffhanger in her magical Legendborn Cycle about supernatural incursions, racist secret societies and reclaiming destinies. Inhaled in the week after its release and I am already desperate for the next one
• The Nightmare Sequence by Omar Sakr and Safda Ahmed, a gut-wrenching collection of poems and illustrations about Israel’s live-streamed genocide in Palestine, and a powerful reminder of the necessity of art in impossible times.
• Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis, a powerful collection of speeches, interviews and essays about historical and contemporary struggles against state violence and oppression.

I recorded all of my challenges on StoryGraph. Who’s joining me for The Diverse Baseline challenge in 2026?

We Need Diverse Books

Overall, I read 140 books for the informal #WeNeedDiverseBooks challenge (75% of my reading total), in which: “people of colour can be first-page HEROES rather than second-class citizens. Books in which LGBTQIA+ characters can represent social CHANGE rather than social problems. And books where disabled people can be just… people.”

Since making the move to StoryGraph (a black and female-owned GoodReads alternative with better data visualisation and fewer evil corporate overlords), I also know 4 of my 10 most-read authors for 2025 were writers of colour.

Reflecting the top five genres I read in 2025 (which were the same as the 2023 and 2024: romance, LGBTQIA+, contemporary, fantasy and YA), this includes multiple books by Nalini Singh, Tracey Deonn, Talia Hibbert and Adriana Hererra.

Books that will stay with me

In addition to all those already listed above, other books I needed, can’t stop thinking about, or know will stay with me include:

• Ander & Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa and The Broposal by Sonora Reyes two queer YA romances about being undocumented in contemporary America.
• Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary by the late Ukranian writer Victoria Amelina. Not an easy read, but a vital one. I sobbed my way through its stark and devastating documentation of those who document war, the grief the book holds fragmented like grief itself, pieced together posthumously after Amelina was killed in a Russian attack.
• Shaking Hands with Death, Terry Pratchett’s extraordinary 2010 Richard Dimbleby Lecture on the right to a good death, republished to coincide with the UK’s new Assisted Dying legislation – 15 years after his passing.

Reading homework

These polycrisis times give us too much to care about, all of the time. Which is why I shared my list of things I wanted to read, hear and learn more about in 2025. Here’s where I ended up…

• On the topic of dismantling racism, colonialism, whiteness and white feminism, I read Chelsea Watego’s Another Day in the Colony, Always Was, Always Will Be by Aunty Fay Muir and Sue Lawson, Black Witness: The Power of Indigenous Media by Amy McQuire, Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist by Sesali Bowen, and (in fiction) Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera and Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn series.
• On police and prison abolition, I read On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder, and am currently reading Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News by Alec Karakatsanis, and Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth E. Richie. I have also been grateful for online articles, such as Crystal Andrews on What is the point of a prison? in a recent edition of Thinking about it by Zee Feed.
• Less has been published on the Land Back movement from where we now call Australia than overseas, but I recently finished Land Back: Aboriginal land rights in New South Wales today and always edited by Professor Heidi Norman and have been grateful for online resources like this one from the OC Justice Initiative.

To keep myself accountable, my 2026 reading homework includes:

• More books off my physical TBR (also known as my ‘reading shelf of shame’).
• Books on making a difference and being a better human, ally and global citizen (self-education, activism, community and care).
• More books by writers of colour with big back catalogues (to finally push JKR out of my top 10 most-read authors of all time). Talia Hibbert is already on the list and has a new book coming out in 2026. I have made a start on Nalini Singh and Tahereh Mafi’s impressive oeuvres, and I hope to read more Percival Everett after falling in love with James. According to my Storygraph stats, writers need to have at least 26 books to make the top 10 (or fewer books that I read more often), so any other recommendations are very welcome.

What are your hoping to read or learn about this year?

Subscribe or support

For future updates, subscribe to my free occasional enews.

If any of my work or writing has been of value to you, I’d appreciate you joining me as an advocate, ally or accomplice from just $2.50/month on Patreon).