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| Books completed | 75 |
| Fiction | 72 |
| Non-fiction | 3 |
| Australian authors | 25 |
| Female authors | 61 |
| Translated fiction | 2 |
| Crime fiction | 39 |
| Re-reads | 21 |
If I had to sum up my reading for 2025 in one sentence then I would say:
2025 was a year for steadiness - I returned to a lot of familiar voices, found order in crime fiction, supported Australian authors and chose books that could live alongside my busy life, rather than provide an escape from it.
Crime fiction: structure and entertainment
If I define crime fiction broadly, including murder mysteries, detective novels, young adult fiction and crime series, then I read 39 works of crime fiction in 2025 - 53% of my reading. Crime fiction clearly dominates for me. In some ways I find this surprising because I wouldn't identify as someone who particularly prioritises crime. I think what it shows is that crime is almost a default reading mode for me, but hopefully not in a shallow way.
I return frequently to:
- Golden Age crime (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Ngaio March)
- Series detectives (Jacqueline Winspear, Kerry Greenwood, Dervla Tiernan, Robert Galbraith), and
- Contemporary Australian crime (Benajamin Stevenson, Jane Harper, Christopher White, Sulari Gentill).
I obviously favour series and familiar detectives, contained worlds and narrative momentum and resolution. My reflections on this are that crime fiction offers me a reliable narrative structure with a clear beginning, middle and end. It offers me something grounding when my attention is stretched or limited, thus providing a way to stay connected to reading even when I am busy. Crime for me isn't about chasing thrills or gore. In crime fiction I find order and often familiar voices to keep me grounded.
Crime as a default reading mode also means that when I read a non-crime books they stand out for me even more. Crime fiction offers the reliability and my other reading offers me something new and different.
Deep affection for Australian writing
Books by Australian authors made up 34% of my reading in 2025, and they appear constantly across many different genres:
- Crime (Kerry Greenwood, Jane Harper, Bejamin Stevenson, Sulari Gentill)
- Contemporary fiction (Madeleine Grey)
- Literary fiction (Charlotte Wood, Hannah Kent, Peter Carey)
- Non-fiction / Memoir (Hannah Kent, Helen Garner).
I take from this a desire for places, people and experiences that I recognise and characters that feel culturally legible and emotionally familiar to me. Common experiences and emotions can be found throughout the world of course, but reading Australian fiction is something that I do deliberately as well to support Australian authors.
Reading as comfort and continuity
There is a lot of re-reading that pops up across the year (specifically 28% of my reading), for example the Harry Potter series, Phryne Fisher series and books by Agatha Christie. A lot of these books I read at night time when I can't sleep or listen to as audiobooks while I am driving to and from work. This is about reading for continuity - keeping it up even when I am tired or distracted.
It isn't nostalgia, so much as maintenance reading - books that hold me steady.
Serious literary fiction but selectively and intentionally
I did read some challening and weighty books by authors such as:
- Han Kang
- Colson Whitehead
- Percival Everett
- Peter Carey
- RF Kuang
- Min Jin Lee
- Ann Patchett
- Claire Keegan
But I read them more sparingly than other types of fiction, and when considered in light of the order in which I read books, they are surrounded by crime or other comfort reads. I reflect that I still want depth and ambition in my reading but not at the expense of enjoyment or momentum in my reading overall. This means that I was more deliberate about which books I chose and was careful not to attempt books that asked something more of me than I was able to give.
Kindness, morality and human decency
Even across genres there was a throughline of ethical choices, how people behave under pressure, small acts against large systems and compassion in constrained circumstances. Even my crime reads are more about the humane that the brutal.
Books where I see this include:
- Small Things Like These
- The Soul of Kindness
- Bel Canto
- Pachinko
- The Women
- Wicked
The year of audiobooks
Finally - this was the very first year that I explored the world of audiobooks - inspired by the 2 hours of driving that I need to undertake to get to and from my new office. Because I was listening to them while driving, my audiobooks choices we more about practical reading - rereading or light reading. I will definitely be listening to more audiobooks in 2026.
That's me for 2025 - looking forward to 2026.
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