52 book challenge: end-of-year reflections

The slow-moving progress bar is at 100%!
The slow-moving progress bar is at 100%!

I achieved my 2025 goal of reading 52 books in a year! It wasn’t easy, and I’m definitely not going to do it again, but I am so glad I did do it. I’ve read things I otherwise wouldn’t, I’ve pushed my perseverance, and I’ve developed some really good habits that I am hoping I can hang on to.

The full list of books I read is at the bottom of this post, but first, I’ll share some of my reflections now that the challenge is over.

What I learned

I found it hard not to gamify this. When under pressure I picked shorter and shorter books. Never under 100, as that was the minimum I set for my rule, but let’s be real - even 150 is a very very short book.

I also routinely chose unchallenging books, and ones that I was less inclined to want to savour, so I could get through them more quickly, which isn’t great. Obviously there were exceptions. But I usually like to mix in some books that test me in some way, and this year I actively avoided doing that (consciously anyway).

You can fit a lot more reading time in if you have the ebook on your phone (as opposed to reading exclusively on paper, or even the Kindle device). A phone is horrifyingly always there.

In fact, it’s crazy how many situations in life there are where my natural instinct is to just grab my phone rather than accept tedium, or awkwardness. That’s a whole separate topic, and something I’d like to improve as well - but it’s a great first step to be opening an ebook and reading a few paragraphs of that instead of mindlessly scrolling.

What I’m looking forward to, now that the challenge is over

Obviously, reading a wider variety of things. Very long books you can sink your teeth into. Poetry. Plays! Non fiction! Notoriously challenging books!

Reading at whatever damn pace I choose, and not worrying about pages per day. Maybe even NOT reading for a few days - imagine!

Not thinking about page counts when choosing books.

ONLY reading on paper. I ended up with the ebook version of pretty much all the books I read - I was kindle-first by the end, to maximise reading time. (I did buy paper copies of some favourites after the fact, for the collection.) But despite all the positives of ebooks that I listed earlier… Nothing compares to the experience of reading a physical book.

Taking more risks. Towards the end of the year I used reviews and recommendations to pick out books that I had good confidence would be enjoyable. I’m looking forward to rolling the dice and picking up a book at whim.

What I’m grateful for

I read a lot of books I might not otherwise have come across. Some really superb ones - A Short Stay In Hell comes to mind.

Persistence training. Not that my persistence is lacking (gestures at self-taught knitting and sewing skills) but all the same, a bit of grind is a good thing.

I discovered I like horror. The dwindling list of well-regarded novels under 300 pages lead me to a few in genres I hadn’t really explored, and I dabbled in them for the sake of variety. And that was great! I really enjoyed Rosemary’s Baby and The Hellbound Heart.

I well and truly kicked my Instagram habit. Mindless scrolling has dropped massively (although I still use Reddit a lot)

I think I’m really going to enjoy the epic novels I pick up next year. I’ve been craving sinking my teeth into something more sprawling.

Round-up

The books that touched my heart the most

  • Martyr!
  • A Wizard of Earthsea
  • Ethan Frome
  • The Forge and the Flood
  • Giovanni’s Room

Full list of everything I read

  • True Grit - Charles Portis
  • Sula - Toni Morrison
  • The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Hellbound Heart - Clive Barker
  • The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
  • Rosemary’s Baby - Ira Levin
  • Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson
  • A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2) - Becky Chambers
  • A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) - Becky Chambers
  • It’s Not a Cult - Joey Batey
  • Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
  • The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin
  • Tender Is the Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica
  • On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
  • Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4) - Martha Wells
  • How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves - Tristan Gooley
  • A Short Stay in Hell - Steven L. Peck
  • The Secret World of Weather - Tristan Gooley
  • The Ha-Ha - Jennifer Dawson
  • The Word for World Is Forest - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Yellowface - R.F. Kuang
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
  • So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell
  • Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin
  • The Forge and the Flood - Miles Nelson
  • The British Museum is Falling Down - David Lodge
  • Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3) - Martha Wells
  • Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
  • The Trial - Franz Kafka
  • The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1) - Seishi Yokomizo
  • The Cat Who Saved Books (The Cat Who…, #1) - Sōsuke Natsukawa
  • Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2) - Martha Wells
  • All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) - Martha Wells
  • Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
  • Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • This Is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar
  • The Unmothers - Leslie J. Anderson
  • Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar
  • Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection - John Green
  • Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel García Márquez
  • Pretty Hate Machine - Daphne Carr
  • The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
  • Train Dreams - Denis Johnson
  • Foster - Claire Keegan
  • The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3) - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2) - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Orbital - Samantha Harvey
  • The Lady of the Lake (The Witcher, #5) - Andrzej Sapkowski
  • I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman
  • The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
  • A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1) - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Cannery Row - John Steinbeck

(For ratings, see my books page)