December 2025: What I Read

December was a slow month. December contains my birthday, the lead up to Christmas, Christmas itself and I was also distracted by challenges at work and the usual activities of day-to-day life. With that in mind I really only finished 3 books. The first was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a book I read at night when I was in the grips of my usual insomnia. 

Interestingly, the only other books I completed in December 2025 were both audiobooks. The first was Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These, which I had been trying to borrow fro mthe library for a long time but the wait list must be huge. It first became available as an audiobook so I took the chance and borrowed it. What a book. This might be the stand out for 2025. It does so much in such a small novel. I highly recommend and will review it more fully to do it justice. 

The other book I finished was Disney Adults by AJ Wolfe. I picked this because I will be visiting Tokyo Disneyland for the second time in 2026 and on my first visit I was so overcome by emotion at being at Disneyland for the first time (in 2024) that I actually cried on more than once occasion. The strength of my reacton suprised me so it felt natural to listen to Disney Adults when I found it was a free option on Spotify. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Was it a great work of writing? Probably not. The audiobook was narrated by the author which meant that the enthusiasm for the topic was palpable, but the entire book read more like a blog post than a work of non-fiction. 

Worth a quick mention - I didn't finish A Gentleman in Moscow, but I will try it again in 2026.