2025 Year-In-Review: Books I Read

I read 22 prose books this year, fewer than the past few years though I also didn’t have a big stack of crowdfunded RPG rulebooks this time around. That total breaks down into 4 Kindle books, 2 Kobo books, 2 other eBooks, and 14 physical books.

It was another mix of genres, though fantasy ended up dominating. I also had sci-fi, a couple of memoirs, some non-fiction, and some horror-ish modern fantasy. The only repeat authors were two Seanan McGuire books (both from the Wayward Children series) and two Ursula K. LeGuin books from the bundle of her stuff.

Recommendations: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle, Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell, and Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree all go in the category of “queer fantasy that’s winning awards and deserves to.” The Wedding People by Alison Espach was out of my normal wheelhouse but it was a hoot. The various memoirs were interesting to me specifically, but I don’t feel the need to make anyone run out and buy them.

On the comics front, I got through four Humble Bundles of comics: IDW 25th Anniversary, Quality Comics from Top Shelf, Brian Michael Bendis’ JinxWorld, and Image Comics Showcase. That plus a handful of physical trades came to around 70 trade paperback or approximately 350 pamphlets worth of comics. That said, very little from them ended up particularly brilliant or standout.

Going into 2026 I’m starting with my full read of Thundercats comics, including the 1985 Star Comics series and a Humble Bundle of new Dynamite stuff. I have more than a dozen physical books on my dresser; I have two more Humble Bundles backed up; and I still have yet to do my complete read-through of The Books of Magic.

2025 Year-In-Review: Puzzles!

I did a big wave of puzzles in the spring, then had a big gap in the summer, but then blasted through basically a puzzle a week in October and November. Not coincidentally, my TV-watching was much more concentrated to those times, also.

We did a whopping sixteen 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles: Toy Shop, 7 Evil Exes from Scott Pilgrim, The Best Places in America, I Love Gum, Breakfast Table, I Love Baking, Blue Ribbon County Fair, Toy Stamps, CTY 2024, I Love Music, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Make Mine Marvel, Blow Pops, Love Is Everywhere, Welcome Fall, NYC Street. We also did one 1,500-piece jigsaw puzzle: Home in the Ocean; and we did two 500-piece jigsaw puzzles: Inside the Museum: The Met, and Sewing Box. And I did the two 240-piece Pizza puzzles. (I also helped do one at in a convention games room, but I didn’t record the title.)

Call that 20 “real” jigsaw puzzles, which is a pretty high count. I’ve got five on the shelf and three more my dad is bringing over, so I suspect it’ll once again come in waves along with how big my TV backlog gets.

I only did 3 Paint-By-Stickers, one from Kaleidoscope Sticker Mosaics and 2 from Paint-by-Sticker Flowers. I kinda wish I could have brought those to choir rehearsals; they’re a great thing to occupy my hands and I still have plenty left to do.