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Best Books of 2025: Science Fiction & Fantasy
The most striking aspect of my SFF reading in 2025 was that there was very little SF in the SFF. I only read a few science fiction books, which is very unusual for me. I mostly attribute this to the fact that there seemed to be less interesting science fiction published last year, not many big releases (with the possible exceptions of Tchaikovsky’s Shroud, a minor Scalzi and the final instalment in The Sun Eater series). There is so much more excitement around fantasy at the moment that SF seems to be somewhat crowded out of the market. I will make a more conscious effort this year to ensure I don’t neglect one of my favourite genres like this again.
Best of 2025: Books
It has not been easy to put this list together: I read 161 books last year and apart from a few absolute standouts, there were dozens of good books that could all have made the cut on a good day. It is particularly true for non-fiction, where I could almost have separate top tens for certain topics. Anyway, I have suffered, I have doubted, I have agonised and here is the list.
Best of 2024: Science Fiction and Fantasy
It has taken me a while to get the last ‘best of’ post out, but here it is, the overview of the SFF books I enjoyed most in 2024. It is rather long, but with the world events being what they are, I wanted to give you are range of options for escapism. I have already done a very tight selection for my overall best books list, which has already been out for a while; if you only want the crème de la crème, read that.
Best of 2023: Fiction & Poetry
Posting my previous year’s favourite books in March must be some kind of a record. But as I shared my absolute faves already, doing the follow-ups by genre seemed less urgent. And then suddenly I was about three months late. Anyway, I have found these summaries very helpful for myself, when people ask for book recommendations or when I need to recall my favourites for any other reason. So I am doing this despite the ridiculousness of the timing.
Best of 2023: Science Fiction and Fantasy
2023 was a very enjoyable SFF reading year to me, with almost exactly half of the 166 books I read being either science fiction or fantasy or both. And most of them were good. That said, compared to previous years, I didn’t find any new favourites of the same caliber as The Broken Earth Trilogy or Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan books. There are also some strange absences: I started two of the Sanderson secret projects, but didn’t finish them, despite liking both Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. I also didn’t read the latest Murderbot, as I was advised to do a Network Effect reread before I tackle System Collapse*. All three are very much on the top of my list for this year.**
Best Books of 2023
2023 was a somewhat strange reading year for me – definitely not bad, with 166 books* finished, about 40 000 pages read and some branching out in terms of genre accomplished. But while I read many good books last year, there were perhaps fewer absolute highs than I have had in the past. I was also rather inconsistent: August and December were great with 26 and 23 books respectively (these tend to be my best months every year, simply because I have more free time due to holidays). And then there were weeks when I read only alien romance, as my brain was too exhausted from the translation work I was doing on top of my actual work to focus on anything more demanding.
End of Summer Memo
I was planning to do an Early Autumn Memo for my re-entry into blogosphere, but it’s so warm in Brussels (up to 31 degrees expected in the coming week) that I cannot bring myself to talk about autumny stuff at the moment. Which is, in a way, good news, as I have quite a few things to share from this summer, and as they aren’t necessarily summer-specific, they may still be of use to you. So I am going to get them off my chest in this post, leaving all the talk of chocolate-coloured suede and plush perfumes for the next memo.
The Best Books I Read in 2022
I had a rather shitty reading year in 2022, thanks, of course, to Vladimir Putin. I only hit my 100-book Goodreads target out of spite, refusing to give Vlad the Small the satisfaction of ruining my challenge. So I went ahead and finished 32 books in December (most of them in the last 10 days of the month), including four volumes of One Piece*, which absolutely count, thank you very much.
Best of 2021: Science Fiction & Fantasy
I didn’t do a separate ‘best of SFF’ post for 2020 and now I regret it, as I don’t have a good reference point for my favourites and I feel like I haven’t praised them enough. I also keep getting confused about when I read what and the pandemic obviously doesn’t help with trying to sort this out. In case you are interested, there is a list of some things in I read in 2020 the end of this post – it’s not ideal, but it’s something.
Best of 2021: Fiction
Very broadly speaking, I read equal amounts non-fiction and fiction, but as my fiction reads further branch out into different genres, literary fiction doesn’t have such a central place in my reading as it has for many other people. Still, as my overall book-count was rather high last year, I ended up reading a fair amount of fiction – some of it very good.