reading
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Best Books of 2025: Fiction
It was a decent fiction year for me: not too many absolute standouts, but quite a few solid reads. Thanks to the International Booker, I read a number of translated works (into English) – it was a very mixed bag, with several favourites, a couple of mehs and a winner (Heart Lamp) that didn’t work for me at all. But reading more than half of the longlist was a very enriching experience, which I think is the point of the International Booker. I also read a few of the big commercial releases of the year, not something that I always do. It confirmed my experience that I tend to like these books, but they are rarely my firm favourites (although one of them is on this list).
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 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.
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.
Natives by Akala: A Brilliant Take on Race and Class
I picked Akala’s memoir-slash-searing social analysis up almost accidentally. It was included in a couple of 2020 round-ups and although I hadn’t heard of him* or the book before, the excellent reviews made me add it to my own list. Based on the reviews, I expected it to be good, but not THAT good.
The Best Books of 2020 I Haven’t Yet Read (Science Fiction & Fantasy)
Compared to 2019, which was an incredible year for genre reads, my 2020 wasn’t quite as special. That said, there were several books I had really been looking forward to, but didn’t manage to read when they were published, so it’s possibly my own fault. This makes it even more important to comb through the best-of lists and get to at least some of the last year’s books this year.
The Best Books of 2020 I Haven’t Yet Read (Non-fiction)
For the introduction to this series, go back to the first instalment for details – if I try to explain it all again, it’ll take me forever to get to the point. The point being, in this case, great non-fiction published last year. It was an excellent year for this kind of literature and I read many of the books already as they came out. Still, there are about a dozen or so that I still want to check out, including but unfortunately probably not entirely limited to:
The Best Books of 2020 I Haven’t Yet Read (Fiction)
There are very few things I enjoy more than pondering which books to read. Sometimes I suspect I enjoy this process more than the actual reading itself. So every year, I go through all the ‘best books of xxxx’ lists I can find and, based on these, compile THE LIST of things I would like to read. It is not a firm TBR, as my success rate with this list is maybe 50% (which is completely fine by me) and it’s also not a full TBR, as there are of course also new books I want to read and a massive amount of old ones.
Best of 2020: Books
This was a weird reading year for many, but my reading rhythm was largely untouched by the pandemic. 2020 was final proof, if any was required, that my ability to read depends mostly on how busy I am at work.
Lockdown Life: Audiobooks & Red Dresses
Belgium is in lockdown again and I must admit I find writing about clothes in this situation difficult. It’s not that I think I shouldn’t or that I believe it’s somehow wrong to contemplate garments when the world is suffering, I just mostly don’t feel inspired*. Which is unfortunate, as I still have some nice pictures from my photo shoot in Estonia, which I haven’t posted.