Gav Reads

A Web Log of Reading

  • Thoughts: Best Books of 2025 & Reading in 2026

    In yesterday’s post, I confirmed that “I’ll be back” in 2026 and promised a look at what I plan to read this year. Before that, though, I want to share some standout books from 2025. These aren’t definitive “best of” lists—just the ones that really stuck with me.

    What stood out in 2025?

    I’m going to caveat this selection by giving some stats:

    • I read 34 books in total (you can see the full list here).
    • 5 of those were Rivers of London related.
    • 7 were published in 2025
    • 4 were books in translation

    I really like using The StoryGraph app (I’m @gavreads)to capture my reading. They also provide nice graphics:

    This is my way of saying that 34 is a respectable number, but it’s not the biggest pool of work to make proclamations like this is the best book published in 2025, etc.

    I also DNF’d 9 books. I want to retry three of them (Under the Eye of the Big Bird, Extremophile, & The Ministry of Time) to see if I can figure out what others liked in them that I missed.

    If you’re looking for the best released in 2025, this not the blog post you are looking for.

    Anyway, here are some idiosyncratic ‘best ofs’:

    Best of Found Families:

    • August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White
    • The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth

    Best Slow-Burn Reveal:

    • The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

    Best Ensemble of ‘Monsters’:

    • The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

    Best Parent Fighting for Their Child:

    • The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso
    • The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis

    Best use of humour to present a horrific things:

    • The Trees by Percival Everett

    Best use of a family holiday:

    • Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne

    Best Tales of Taxi Riders

    Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida

    Best Questioning of ‘If AI is alive’?

    • The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 1 by Martha Wells
    • Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
    • The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton
    • Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon
    • The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

    Best Long Running Series that I’ve read in 2025:

    • Rivers of London (#6 to #9.5)

    Best Time Spent in a Freezer

    • When the Museum Is Closed by Emi Yagi [tr.. Yuki Tejima]

    Best Stories in an Anthology are contained in:

    Best Example of How We’ve Not Really Moved On as a Society:

    • The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle [1957]

    Best Example of How We Have Gone Backwards:

    • Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto [tr. Megan Backus] [1988/1993]

    Do you want to give out any more awards?

    I’m sure I could think of more, but let’s stop here.

    What are you planning on reading in 2026?

    All the books I bought in 2025? Maybe not, as that’s physically impossible at this point. Perhaps the topic of why I keep buying books should be explored in a future post. For now, though, I want to get some ‘quick reading wins’ under my belt and read some of the shorter, standalone fiction.

    The thene of 2026 is:

    • The year of the backlog (recent and extended).

    This might not be the most up-to-date content for future blog posts, but I’m planning to make it the best reading experience I can. With that in mind, here are two lists of 10 books I want to read in 2026 (and if I remember, I’ll report back)

    Selected from 2025 Releases:

    1. The Book of Jonah by Luke Kennard
    2. The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter
    3. Dot Slash Magic by Liz Shipton
    4. Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire
    5. Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
    6. Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
    7. The Haunting of William Thorn by Ben Alderson
    8. Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey
    9. The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch
    10. A Song of Legends Lost by M.H. Ayinde

    There are so many more… The Isle in the Silver Sea, The Everlasting,The Last Soul Among Wolves, It’s Not a Cult, Spread Me, Dead & Breakfast, Angel Down… I’d better stop.

    Selected from The Backlog:

    1. Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland
    2. Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins
    3. House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
    4. Nude Against a Rock by Robert Hamberger
    5. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
    6. Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
    7. Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
    8. Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood
    9. There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job. by Kikuko Tsumura [Tr. Polly Barton]
    10. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

    This is just the tip of an iceberg, but hopefully shows a selection of my backlog and the delights that I have to look forward to.

    That’s my plan. What are yours? Any highlights from 2025, and what’s on your list for 2026? 

  • EoY 2025: Will I be back in 2026?

    If you’re reading this, we both made it to the end of 2025—well done to us! The blog did too, which feels like a small miracle.

    Will I be back in 2026?

    Absolutely.

    Will I be posting more in 2026?

    That I’m not so sure about—but I do plan on reading more.

    What’s with the downbeat opening to this post?

    2025 has been a funny old year for me as GavReads. It started with reader’s block and burnout, which I finally shook off in April thanks to a re-read of The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch. And my first post in 2025 didn’t appear until June, a post about The Lightspeed Trilogy, which I’d stopped myself from posting despite having started it in June 2025.

    I have written a few things I’m proud of, but it’s been a trickle, not a flood:

    In the post I updated as I finished sections, I tried to form thoughts and conclusions based solely on what I’d just read and on what I’d read up to that point. I enjoyed doing it, and thanks, Dan, for the challenge.

    Speaking of challenges, I set myself two and was completely successful with one and partly successful with the other.

    Let’s start with the positive, the British Fantasy Awards 2025 shortlist for Best Anthology:

    I had planned to read them all except one, In the Shadow of Their Dying, by Michael F. Fletcher and Anna Smith Spark, at some point. And I enjoyed comparing them all, and I was really surprised how much I loved Yoke of Stars by R. B. Lemberg, despite, or because of, how much it made me work.

    I wasn’t so sucessful in my attempt to read all the works in the World Fantasy Awards 2025 shortlist for Best Novella. I finished and reviewed:

    Each one contained some excellent stories.

    I didn’t manage to complete:

    • Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon- PS Publishing
    • The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction (2023), edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Chinaza Eziaghighala – Caezik SF & Fantasy

    Or even start:

    Bury Your Gays – An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror, edited Sofia Ajram – Ghoulish Books

    I burned out while reading Heartwood, mostly from the pressure of having to review it by the deadline. By its nature, it’s very samey. The stories I’ve read are excellent, but I didn’t want to read them so quickly, and I think I just froze.

    I may have also realised that I am out of practice and have less physical and mental capacity for both reading and reviewing.

    What’s the ‘but’? I feel there is a ‘but’ coming on.

    I think I have some triggers around stress… It’s not about a lack of motivation; it’s a mental short-circuit when I force myself to do something I don’t want to do or when I worry about what the review might be like.

    I can confirm that meeting ‘on-demand’ deadlines is no longer for me, if it ever was.

    Which then raised the question of relevance, why I haven’t spent time reviewing things, and what I do in the future?

    As I won’t be reviewing with an aim to post around the publication date, that is, unless I manage to read some of my 2025 hardbacks and schedule a post for the paperback release, what is the best time to review a book?

    Reviewer friend question – when is the best time to review a book? I don't mean for the book/author/publisher, but for you as a reviewer, or other reasons if they exist?

    — Roseanna Pendlebury (@chloroformtea.bsky.social) 2025-12-24T17:38:06.052Z

    What makes me a good reviewer is ‘building’ the book in my head; what makes me a bad reviewer, and sometimes not so speedy reader, is also ‘building’ the book in my head, which is probably where the burnout comes from. And that probably explains why I have to switch genres and can’t keep reading the same things.

    Anyway, in the past, the best way to get a book out of my head was to write down my thoughts about it, which is why I posted my thoughts on The Lightspeed Trilogy a year after I first had them.

    It’s also why I think about post looking at The Last Hour Between Worlds (The Echo Archives #1) by Melissa Caruso, alongside The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis, and, potentially, The Incandescent by Emily Tesh.

    I’d also like to reread both Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts and Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead as they both deal with the future of humanity in fascinating ways.

    And when are you going to post your reviews?

    Probably, when I’ve just finished it, and with myself as the audience in mind. This means that unless I buy and review

    Are you feeling better now that’s all out of your system?

    Actually, yes.

    So what is the plan for 2026?

    This year I’ve read thirty-four books, up from 2023’s twenty-two, but down from last year’s forty. However, if I’d read at the same pace over the other 3 months, I think I could have hit 45 this year.

    The plan for 2026 is to avoid burnout, probably by continuing to embrace the philosophy of DNF’ing more when needed. Though for some stories, like The Devils and The Incandescent, that would have been the wrong thing to do, I think, even if I really did want to at certain points.

    Are you setting yourself an actual measurable goal?

    I am going to set 3:

    1. Read every day—even if it’s a page. I have a 103-day streak on The StoryGraph that I really don’t want to break.
    2. Read at least 33 books.
    3. Read at least 15,000 pages.

    Well, that’s the reading ones, what about the blog?

    I have enjoyed doing the Sunday Summary posts that I started doing in September, and I did enjoy the reading with a goal in mind, so how about:

    1. Aim to post a Sunday Summary every week.
    2. Do at least 2 reading challenges

    Oh, and what will you be reading?

    Now that’s a question for the next post, but as a preview, the ratio has to be low, 2026 purchased and high, whatever I have on the shelves, which may have hit over 500 after I went a bit overboard with acquisitions this year, including 3 from Paris.

    These are some of my thoughts and feelings as a ‘social media’ reader, as we leave 2025 and enter 2026.

    If you’ve made it this far, thank you! What were your standout reads of 2025? And what’s on your list for 2026?

  • Sunday Summary: 28 Dec 25

    Sunday Summary mainly functions as my personal record of book-related topics that have captured my interest over the past week. It also acts as a public memory prompt and bookmarking system.

    Books Read & Reading This Week.

    Finished:

    • Winter’s Gifts [Rivers of London #9.5] by Ben Aaronovitch [2023]

    Aaronovitch broke my reader’s block in April this year, and I’m quite pleased that I’m leaving 2025 on a high. It’s a great side quest for a side character, and for Ben to spend time on the other side of the pond.

    Currently Reading: 

    • ???

    I do need to find something to read before midnight to reach 100 days of pages read on The StoryGraph app. I have no idea what it will be.

    DNF’d:

    • ?

    Nothing this week, and I’ve probably witched myself by typing that.

    Book-ish Thoughts

    Rosanna posed a question on Bluesky that I still don’t have an answer to:

    Reviewer friend question – when is the best time to review a book? I don't mean for the book/author/publisher, but for you as a reviewer, or other reasons if they exist?

    — Roseanna Pendlebury (@chloroformtea.bsky.social) 2025-12-24T17:38:06.052Z

    I want to say that, based on my current experience of buying books, it’s whenever the reviewer has read it. But does that help the book? Should a reviewer be showing off the wares of publishers (whatever form they take) and act like a book merchant?

    This circles back to what is a review for?

    Books That Others Have Tempted Me With:

    I got tempted by the guardian’s best poetry books of 2025 selection and then enabled by my Christmas book vouchers.

    Rishi Dastidar’s The best poetry books of 2025 recommendations is:a) brilliantly written b) persuasive I try to buy some poetry with Christmas vouchers and this year, thanks to Rishi I’m picking up:That Broke into Shining Crystals by Richard ScottThe Book of Jonah by Luke KennardYou?

    — @gavreads (@gavreads.co.uk) 2025-12-21T08:06:00.812Z

    I did manage to get copies of The Broke into Shining Crystals and The Book of Jonah, but then went back to get Southern Sonnets by Leo Boix and The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor.

    Two books rest side by side on a train table with a wooden-effect finish. On the left, Southernmost Sonnets by Leo Boix shows a vivid collage of birds, butterflies, flowers, a snake, and a leopard layered over a map, with a quote from Chloe Aridjis. On the right, The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor features a black-and-white photo of a smiling woman, softened by a pink title band. A black bag peeks out beneath them.

    Have you spent your Christmas vouchers yet?

    I also got another voucher that I turned into ebooks – as I got mostly poetry with my one voucher, I thought I’d pick up some ‘random’ SF (random as I’d not heard much, if anything, about them:

    • If the Stars Are Lit by Sara K Ellis
    • Galaxy Grifter (Blackjack Interstellar Book 1) by A. Zaykova
    • The Shattered Skies (The Cruel Stars Trilogy) by John Birmingham
    • The Cruel Stars (The Cruel Stars Trilogy) by John Birmingham
    • Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction by Ann Leckie (I have heard of Anne)

    Cover(s) of the Week

    The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean
    To Be Published in May 2026

    Outro

    My aim is to post my look back at 2025 (and a glance into 2026) before midnight on New Year’s Eve, but I haven’t started yet. I am going to try, as it would be a nice way to round off the year.

  • Sunday Summary: 21 Dec 25

    Sunday Summary mainly functions as my personal record of book-related topics that have captured my interest over the past week. It also acts as a public memory prompt and bookmarking system.

    Books Read & Reading This Week.

    Finished:

    • The Incandescent by Emily Tesh [2025]

    If you’ve read Authority by Jeff VanderMeer, you’ll know that the mundane isn’t quite as mundane as the story portrays. I’m not sure where my thoughts and feelings sit after finishing it. At the moment, it feels like an experiment that didn’t quite have the results I expected. But I don’t know what I expected – so is it me or the work?

    Currently Reading: 

    • ???

    As of this post, I’m still deciding. Do I call it quits on my 2025 reading and start afresh in 2026? I have a reading streak on The StoryGraph to keep up, so I will be reading something.

    DNF’d:

    • Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir [2021] (in Audiobook format)

    I went in with an open mind. I knew I might not like it after trying The Martian, but so many people love the audiobook that I thought we might have got on. We don’t. Partly, it’s a humour mismatch. I don’t find it funny (that’s on me). But also, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough.

    Book-ish Thoughts

    The only thing that springs to mind right now is that there are still 10 days left, and making a best of the year book lists feels disrespectful to what you might pick up before midnight on New Year’s Eve.

    Books That Others Have Tempted Me With:

    And a special shout-out to Womble for their Santa Womble series, highlighting gifts that someone could get you, you could get someone else, or for yourself across the genres.

    Cover(s) of the Week

    Hello, Limerence Paperback by Momo Yamaguchi

    Outro

    I hope Santa brings you gift vouchers or books from your wish list, and more importantly, time to read your backlogs.

  • Sunday Summary: 14 Dec 25

    Sunday Summary mainly functions as my personal record of book-related topics that have captured my interest over the past week. It also acts as a public memory prompt and bookmarking system.

    Books Read & Reading This Week.

    Finished:

    • Physical: When the Museum Is Closed by Emi Yagi [Trans. Yuki Tejima] [2023/2025] 

    This is about a woman who falls in love with a statue and has a full-blown conversations with it. If you’re into slightly surreal and weird fiction, this is 100% for you. I loved it.

    • Audiobook/e-book: The Devils by Joe Abercrombie [2025]

    For those who have been following along, finishing The Devils has taken me a while. It’s not the book, it’s the fact that it was an audiobook (I just haven’t found the right situations to listen to anything). Well, it was slightly the book; it’s episodic, so once you finish one block, there isn’t a hook into the next section. However, switching to the ebook, I picked up the pace and found the ending perfect for the story. I am really glad I made it to the end. I wonder what book 2 will bring?

    Currently Reading: 

    • The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

    I have picked this back up after Womble’s instance that it’s not what I think it is – I’m back into it and curious again – I wonder what’s going to happen?

    Book-ish Thoughts

    I do love the lists that prizes present, especially when they include books I might not otherwise encounter. The TFR Awards is one on them:

    The 2025 Longlist for Best Transfeminine Fiction (TFR Awards)

    I own, but have yet to read, Lessons in Magic and Disaster and Black Flame, and until checking the availability of Woodworking, I didn’t own that either, but I do know thanks to a silly ebook sale.

    Anyway, I’m intrigued by Stag Dance and A/S/L but I’m not sure that they are books I’ll end up reading.

    Here’s the 2025 Longlist for Best Transfeminine Fiction for you to check out:

    • Lessons in Magic and Disaster – Charlie Jane Anders
    • A Mask for the Sun – Kay F. Atkinson
    • Magica Riot: Full Bloom – Kara Buchanan
    • Disappoint Me – Nicola Dinan
    • Black Flame – Gretchen Felker-Martin
    • Keeping the Peace – Tris Husband
    • A Hungry Light – Zin Nabelle
    • Glitch Girl! – Rainie Oet
    • Stag Dance – Torrey Peters
    • Woodworking – Emily St. James
    • A/S/L – Jeanne Thornton
    • A Rotten Girl – Jemma Topaz
    • Machines of Consent – Sophia Turner
    • One of the Boys – Victoria Zeller

    Any that you’d recommend?

    If you want more information about any of the books, the post on The Transfeminine Review includes descriptions and other details for each.

    Books That Others Have Tempted Me With:

    Cover(s) of the Week

    Outro

    We’ve almost at the end of the year, which is making me reflective.

    I’ve kept track of my 2025 reading thanks to thestorygraph.com and updated my Read in ’25 page list. Of the 32 books, only 6 were published in 2025. 14 books were from 2024, so if this pattern continues, I’ll be catching up with 2025 next year!

    I’m still figuring out what I want to post in 2026, but for now, I think I want to keep doing these weekly posts, though they do take more time than you’d think. Not sure what I’m doing with reviews, though.

    Anyway, I hope you find time to do some reading despite the pre-Christmas week chaos.