We've reached the time of year where it's time for me to reflect on the last 12 months, and this time I don't mean that in a "go to your room and think about what you've done" kind of way.
One of the things I do around this time of year is look back at all the books I read, decide on my top ten, and then award medals to my top three. Although this year is the first time I'll be doing it with my own website, and under my real name.
Anyway, let's look back...
According to Goodreads, this year I read 65 books or 24,385 pages, with an average book length of 375 pages.
This is down from the 82 books I read in 2024, although I've read slightly more pages this year: 24,385 pages in 2025, compared with 24,078 in 2024. Fewer books, but the books were all much longer (thanks in no small part to me reading several books by a certain Mr. Sanderson this year).
Well, let's not pad this out any longer. Here's the list, starting from number ten and moving to number one:
Important note if it's not obvious: This is listing the books I read this year, not books that were released this year. I'm pretty terrible when it comes to reading new releases - though there is at least one new release in this list!
10. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
This book snuck into my top 10 by virtue of the fact that I haven't stopped thinking about it, or being disturbed by it, since I read it back in March. Initially, I didn't like it that much - the book itself is, I'm sorry to say, quite dull. But it's a beautiful example of what TV Tropes calls "Fridge Horror" - in that it doesn't really hit you until after you've finished reading it, and by that point it's firmly ensconced subcutaneously.
9. The Answers - Catherine Lacey
Catherine Lacey is one of the most interesting authors working today. Her books are always very unique and push the boundaries of what you can do with literature. Even if I don't necessary like or enjoy the book, I always appreciate the fact that she's pushing boundaries and experimenting. Though I'm happy to say that The Answers fell firmly into both the "liked" and "enjoyed" categories. It's hard to explain the book without just telling you to read it for yourself, but it's basically an absurdist, slightly sci fi novel about an experiment to determine the nature of love, written in a very unique style.
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
This book kept getting recommended to me by pretty much everyone I know who reads books and this year I finally got around to reading it. And yeah, it's really good. It's about a perfectly normal, very logical and relatable boy, struggling with the weird and illogical social conventions of everyone around him while he tries to find out who killed his neighbour's dog. Or something. It's possible I've missed the point of the book. Or not been diagnosed with something I should have been diagnosed with a long time ago... Either way, well worth reading.
7. The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin
I read a bunch of books by Ira Levin this year and all of them could have made the top 10, but I've decided to choose The Stepford Wives to act as a representative, as I ended up liking it so much that I read it in a single day. I think most people know what it's about thanks to the excellent 1975 film adaptation (and the utterly dismal 2004 film) but the book is also really good and deviates from the film in a few key ways - with a much more ambiguous ending. (And there is nothing I love more than an ambiguous ending.)
6. Truth Needs No Colour - Heather McQuillan
Although this book is aimed at a younger audience, I was still blown away by it. This was a genuine page-turner, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The book is about, basically, what New Zealand would look like if David Seymour was Prime Minister and Jeff Bezos ran the South Island. It's hard to find good dystopian fiction these days, let alone dystopian fiction set in New Zealand, but this book nailed it and had some very interesting things to say about the state of our education system too.
5. I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman
This was one of those "where the hell has book been my whole life" kind of books. (The answer, as per usual, being "You walked past it in the library every day for the last 10 years"). This book nails so many of the tropes and styles that I'm always looking for: It's a post-apocalyptic dystopia, where women are caged underground for no apparent reason and the book doesn't explain anything. Instead you're forced to make guesses along with the characters, deal with the absurdity and apparent meaninglessness of their situation, and then everyone slowly dies. It's not for everyone - if you're someone who needs closure, or needs the plot to be spoonfed to you, you'll probably hate it, but if you're into absurdism and dystopian fiction, and can handle ambiguity, then I can't recommend this masterpiece enough.
4. The Martian - Andy Weir
Somehow this flew under my radar and when I went to read it I was pretty sceptical of its reputation. 4.42 stars on Goodreads with over a million ratings? There's no way a book can be that good! Well, it turns out, sometimes the hype is actually worth listening to because god damn I loved this book! I love hard sci fi at the best of times, and this book was charming, funny, scientifically accurate and also absolutely gripping and thrilling. It's such a great book, I would recommend to absolutely anyone. (And some day I promise I will get around to watching the movie too.)
3. Auē- Becky Manawatu (🥉 Bronze Medal)
I made a conscious decision this year to try and read more New Zealand fiction, because there's so much good stuff being produced in this country that flies under the radar. Auē is, apparently, the highest rated NZ book on Goodreads and it turns out it's for very good reason. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did - the book is sort of like a 21st century version of Once Were Warriors but told primarily through the eyes of a child. And while it unflinchingly faces a lot of terrible social ills, like domestic violence, abuse, broken families and crime, it's also charming, sometimes funny and often very heartwarming. It's a real emotional rollercoaster, and utterly deserving of its place in the New Zealand literary canon.
2. Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer (🥈 Silver Medal)
This is another one of those "I can't believe I never read it until this year" kind of books because, man, I loved it. It's a perfect blend of science fiction and horror, and just super creepy. I don't want to say too much more, because I don't want to accidentally spoil it, but if you haven't read it, you definitely should. It's fairly short and took me only about a day or two to read and man it's pretty out-there and pretty freaky. (Though, I'm sorry to say, the rest of the series never quite lived up to how good the first one was.)
1. Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (🥇 Gold Medal)
I was so daunted by this book when I first picked it up and did not think I would like it, let alone choose it as my best book of the year. A 600+ page tome, written by a celebrated semiotician seemed to me like it was going to be another one of those very prolix, pretentious novels where I'd be off to the dictionary every third word. Turns out Foucault's Pendulum is a little more enjoyable than that - or at least, it is if you're me. You see, while it's true that the book does have an awful lot of people sitting around discussing philosophy and not really doing anything, this book gets a pass because it happens to be about topics I find really interesting: Gnosticism and conspiracy theories. (I should also mention it's a satire which is making fun of a lot of conspiracy theories, and yet despite this made a scarily cogent argument at one point for why the earth might be flat.) It's also amazingly prescient - I could not believe it was written in 1988 because it seemed to understand the world of 2025 so well. I can't recommend it for everyone, but if you're me (and what do you know, I am me!) then you'll absolutely love it.
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Previous years winners:
(Listed here because, finally, I have a blog on which to post them)
2024:
🥇Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
🥈Extreme Makeover: Apocalypse Edition - Dan Wells
🥉Radio Free Albemuth - Philip K Dick
2023:
🥇Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
🥈Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
🥉House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
2022:
🥇Ubik - Philip K Dick
🥈Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick
🥉Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
2021:
🥇The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton
🥈Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
🥉The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
2020:
🥇I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - Harlan Ellison
🥈Neuromancer - William Gibson
🥉On the Road - Jack Kerouac
2019:
🥇Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke
🥈Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
🥉Lexicon - Max Barry