Reading Recap of 2025

2025 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read fewer books than last year's seventy titles, not sure why I was so busy, but only totaled about forty-four counting a couple DNFs. I only read, don't listen. Eighty percent were by women authors, or names that sounded female, fourteen percent (6) were translations from Norway, Portugal, Mexico, Chile, Italy or France. Over half, 27, were fiction and the rest non-fiction or the outstanding poetry of Diane Seuss. Memoir accounted for eight titles.

The art books were particularly rewarding as I explored the work of Surrealist Painter/Poet Alice Rahon Alice Rahon and Shapeshifter also the stunning book from Wayne Thiebaud called Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art chock full of color works from the many artists he copied.

If a theme was to be gleaned from the novels I read, it is bemoaning the evils of the patriarchy, particularly in marriages of the fifties represented by Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, A Bowl Of Cherries, and Fonseca, and Single Lady from 1931, as well as Heat Wave from the nineties.

The diaries Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I 1978–1986 of Helen Garner were favored reading as was rereading Helen Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road and the Sontag memoir from Sigrid Nunez.

I continue to be impressed by the quality of translated literature available at our local bookstores like Elliott Bay Books and hailing from so many small publishers. And I learn of many of these titles from GR friends. At least in reading, it was a very good year.

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