January books

The first two books I read in January were picture books, which I decided to count in my reading log spreadsheet (adapted from BookRiot's; it is last year's so I had to change the dates etc.) but not in my StoryGraph (follow/friend me!). I bought both of them during Barnes & Noble's half-off books sale in late December. 

A Piñata in a Pine Tree: A Latino Twelve Days of Christmas by Pat Mora, illustrated by Magaly Morales 

This is a cute latine take on the Twelve Days of Christmas song, with stuff like tamalitos and farolitos taking the place of the birds and people of various professions in the original song. Pat Mora has written tons of Hispanic books for children and is very influential in the field, while the artist's first name is the same as one of my relatives. Behind the little girl cavorting with her stuff, we see her parents prepare, greet the visiting abuelita, leave (abuelita is babysitting), and come back with the final Christmas gift: a new baby sibling. Very cute, although the Spanglish may bother some (i.e. my dad and by extension me). I do recommend this. ★★★★½

Jan Brett's The Nutcracker, written and illustrated by Jan Brett

Jan Brett has been known for decades for her beautifully illustrated, richly detailed children's books. I was given her The Twelve Days of Christmas mini picture book in kindergarten by my teacher as a Christmas gift and reread it every year. This one is similarly lovely; I love the details of animals playing musical instruments on each page. I also recommend this one. ★★★★½

 

It feels like everyone I follow/whose posts I'm forced to view despite not following them online is obsessed with the TV show Heated Rivalry. I am not immune to FOMO; I would have watched it, but my brother cancelled his HBO Max account. 😢 The next best thing? The books the show is based on. As a stickler for series book order, I read Game Changer, the first book in the series, then Heated Rivalry, the second, through my public library and Libby (both ebooks). 

 

Game Changer by Rachel Reid

This is a famous athlete x normal person romance, where the famous athlete is a professional hockey player named Scott and the normal person is a service worker named Kip. They meet-cute at the smoothie shop Kip works at; after drinking Kip's recommended blueberry smoothie, Scott breaks his losing streak, to everyone's delight. Obviously that means he has to keep coming back before every game to buy another blueberry smoothie--just to keep winning games, definitely not to see the cute smoothie barista... Kip and Scott fall in love, but being famous in a bro-y sport means Scott is closeted, and Kip isn't sure being back in the closet is worth it. I liked this book a lot and found it both sweet and spicy. The characters' issues with self-worth and being in the closet felt realistic, and I rooted for things to work out for them. ★★★★ 🌶🌶🌶🌶

 

Heated Rivalry (Game Changer #2) by Rachel Reid

Reid's mlm hockey series seems to be loosely interconnected, and you don't really have to read GC first or else you're lost (although it does provide nice background context for That One Scene that Scott & Kip show up in). Shane is a Canadian good boy and does everything by the book; Ilya is a Russian bad boy and is always up in everyone's faces being a jerk. As the two best players in the entire hockey league, they have been in a ~heated rivalry~ since their rookie seasons--and have been secretly hooking up since then. I want to say this book takes place over 10 years? They wish they could quit each other (Brokeback Mountain reference) but can't. Can they open their hearts to love and be themselves without sacrificing the sport they love? I also liked this book a lot and recommend it to fans of the "rivals to lovers" trope. ★★★★ 🌶🌶🌶🌶

Weirdly enough, I was on the waiting list for a couple of weeks for the first book (which I expected), was shockingly able to read Heated Rivalry immediately with no wait, and am now on the waiting list for the third book... which is over 10 weeks long. Why.

The final ebook in S.T. Lynn's Black trans fairytales series became free last month, and I happily snapped it up. I enjoyed Lynn's takes on The Little Mermaid and Cinderella and was really looking forward to this one, as Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairytales. Beauty's Beast is very similar to most BatB takes that I've read; like Mer Made, it's based on the Disney movie (the servants were enchanted into furniture/furnishings). The Beast has antlers and communicates using sign language, which I thought was interesting. This novella is quite short, and I wished for more character development (especially for the relationship between Beauty and the Beast), but I liked the world the writer created. Their relationship felt more like friendship than romance, which is not IMO a bad thing. There were some writing issues and errors (I swear STL made Gaston blond in their book, but in his last description he has black hair??), which took me out of the story. Ultimately I did enjoy this, but the errors made me glad I waited to get this when it was free. There is a little transphobia, and some violence and blood/wounds. ★★★½ 

I bought two books from my friends at Something Novel Books during their pop-up last month, and I shockingly (for me) read one of the within days of buying it! I had watched and enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club movie on Netflix (the cast is excellent, especially Helen Mirren), so I was excited to read the book. I enjoyed the book even more than the movie! Four senior citizens at an English retirement village that used to be a nunnery get together to solve cold case murders in the Thursday Murder Club. To their shock and excitement, they all of a sudden have 2 new (and 1 old) murders to solve! In the process of sleuthing, they uncover the secrets of some of their community members. There is a lot that happens in this book, and a lot to keep track of. We often spend a chapter in various characters' heads, but the story is mainly told from Joyce's diary entries and Elizabeth's perspective. This book is also deeply funny; I was chortling at the reference desk reading it. I loved all the main characters and can't wait to read the rest of the books! This book is a bit too sad and violent to truly count as cozy mystery, but it's pretty close. Trigger warnings for the usual things you expect in a murder mystery (murder, blood, violence, nice police characters, etc.) as well as suicide, grief, and slight xenophobia. ★★★★ 

Narnia Bloggin': The Curious Case of the Odd Omnibus

In my previous Narnia Bloggin' post, I talked myself into buying the $75 deluxe edition of The Chronicles of Narnia omnibus (7 books in 1). I had planned on getting it from Barnes & Noble as I had a $5 credit, but then my price comparison browser plugin alerted me that Amazon had it for $50.60! $25 off is nothing to sneeze at, so from Amazon I got it. 

It's beautiful, and looked just like the one I looked at in Barnes & Noble, except... the fore edges are not even. There are two furrows, one deep and one medium, and a few smaller shallow ones as well, instead of just a flat expanse of page edges like with most books. This matters because the page edges are painted, and the furrows make the design look bad! I have never seen a book with those kinds of page furrows. Additionally, the solid red top and bottom page edges have big white scratches or scuffs where the red has been scratched or scuffed off. 

Here is the Instagram video I made of the imperfections. 

 

You cannot tell how uneven this is from this picture. Trust me, you could tell in person.

Profile view of the uneven fore edge/page edges. The deepest furrow is on the right.

scratch, bottom of book

scuff, top of book. note the glued pages

I didn't think much of Amazon's packaging of my book; it was just in a box with a plastic large-bubble (the kind the size of 3x5 cards) sheet for padding and otherwise left loose to bang around inside the box with the other thing that was in there. Maybe that's where the scuffs came from? But there was one on each side (top and bottom) of the book...

Naturally I turned to the Amazon reviews. I did a search in the reviews with the keyword "deluxe". Four reviews turned up about the deluxe omnibus edition. Turns out, I'm not the only one disappointed in the quality of my omnibus. 

"See full review" just takes you to the specific webpage for the review. I promise all text is included

Worth noting that they no longer print books with non-acid-free paper; it's standard

I asked for an exchange, marking the copy I received as damaged. A new one arrived, and while it didn't have the scuffs/scratches my first copy did, this one had, if anything, even more uneven page edges with furrows. Also, the dust jacket had come off at some point and been folded down wrong and had its corners dog-eared. (I did not take any pictures.) Clearly, Amazon is able to sell this deluxe omnibus edition at such a low price (comparatively) because all of the copies are lightly damaged in some way. What a shame. I think I'm going to go back to my local Barnes & Noble and inspect their copy/ies in person, and if it looks ok, buy it for full price. Bookshop.org currently has the deluxe omnibus for $69.90 but I'm too afraid to chance it. Ah well. 

Tentative reading goals

As previously mentioned, my yearly reading goal is 50 books a year. I feel this is achievable as there are 52 weeks in the year, so that allows 2 non-reading weeks for reading slumps and busy times. The vague goal is 4 books a month. This has worked for me for the last several years; the knowledge that I need to be reading books every month in order to reach my goal keeps me going, while being flexible and allowing myself grace. 

I also usually have the goal of reading themed books during the different themed months and what not (queer books for Pride month, latine books during Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month, holiday books during the winter holidays, etc.) which I do sometimes end up doing.  

I am not someone who can set a To Be Read list with specific books and stick to it. (I actually had no idea that's what people were doing when they said TBR list; for ages I thought a TBR list was just a list of books you wanted to read at some point in the future.) I am very much a mood reader, and what with the probably-ADHD-thing, just knowing that I need to read something or should read something, that is enough to take away my desire to read it entirely. See what happened last Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month. My brain's mileage varies. 

That said, I have some tentative, loose reading goals. I really, really need to tackle the amount of unread books I own. At best guess, it is 435 (if I have indeed logged allll the books I physically own in my LibraryThing). I just keep buying books from the thrift store and Barnes & Noble and the dollar store etc. and not reading them. This is also not counting all of the hundreds of ebooks I've bought from/on Nook or Kindle or Apple books or Kobo. Your girl needs help. 

For the physical books: I'm thinking if I stick to one shelf from one of my bookcases, that will help make it feel manageable. Or possibly reading one book from each shelf so I don't feel constrained? There's a "10 Oldest TBR" reading challenge on StoryGraph (I joined StoryGraph! My username is mialro; friend me) that seems feasible; you just read the 10 oldest books you bought but haven't read.  The goal is to read through the unread books and get rid of the ones I don't love. At least two shelves from two of my bookcases are double-stacked. It's a problem. 

Getting rid of books I've decided not to keep: I'm going to create a google sheet to keep track of books I no longer want and am getting rid of, their titles and authors and conditions, etc., and reach out to my friends who own a bookstore to see if they'll be interested in buying them. If they are interested in  them, great; if not, I'll sell my unwanted books at my local Book Off. I really should have done that last year with the several boxes of books I unloaded at my work's library book sale, but oh well. 

For ebooks, I think it will be more manageable to tackle my smallest ebook library: Apple books. I think I only have about 20-30 ebooks on there; once I read them, I can delete them. My Nook and Kindle libraries are in the hundreds if not thousands. Maybe I'll organize my ebook libraries by genre etc. so I can find what I want to read more easily. 

Book purchases: I really should do a book buying ban, but let's be real: I'm not going to keep to that. I am going to try to stop buying books from big box stores and stick to just thrift stores, indie bookstores, and Dollar Tree. 

In terms of my loose but specific reading goals, I hope to read at least one of each of the following each month:

• a physical unread book that is sitting on my shelves
• reread an old favorite book or series
• read something by a BIPOC author
• read an ebook from Apple
• read something thematic (seasonal, themed day/week/month etc.)
• read a library book
• something that is not prose or a usual genre I read: poetry, comics/graphic novels, essays, short stories, etc.  

This list allows for double-dipping (or more) and is broad enough that I should be able to find something that applies. 

Other bookish goals: 

--be more active on Bookstagram. I did ok (it was a tough year) but could be doing more. I have some ideas for posts and should try doing more reels. I also need to interact more with the bookstagrammers I follow and who follow me and try to make more friends there.  

--I kind of want to join a bookclub. There's a Silent Book Club in my area that I might actually start going to one of these days. God knows I need to get out of the house more and make friends.

--I want to make the bottom bookshelf of my center rainbow bookshelf be rainbow as well. This will involve removing the larger books from the bottom shelves in order to make another rainbow of book spines on that shelf. I'm confident it can be done. Otherwise, my shelves don't need to be reorganized; I'm happy with them. 

Will I be able to stick to these goals? We'll see! 

2025 Reading Stats

Yet another year is over! Here are my reading stats for 2025.

Total books read during this year: 55

Total books that I started to read but didn't finish: 1

physical books read: 19

digital/ebooks read: 36

physical books started but unfinished: 1

ebooks started but unfinished: 0

Library books read: 7

physical library books read: 3

library ebooks read: 4

Library books started but unfinished: 0

Total books that were rereads: 13 

Star ratings given to books

Books given 5 stars: 1

Books given 4 ½ stars: 8

Books given 4 stars: 32

Books given 3 ½ stars: 7

Books given 3 stars: 3

Books given 2 ½ stars: 1 (my first in ages)

Authors I've read the most this year: 

Sarah Wallace - 10 books

Martha Wells - 7 books 

S.O. Callahan, K.J. Charles, Agatha Christie - tied with 4 books each

#1 most loved book this year (not counting my rereads): 

most loved general fiction: Too Bright to See 

most loved fantasy: I read so many great fantasy books this year but the Legendborn series blew my freaking mind

most loved science fiction: the Murderbot Diaries 

most loved mystery: Murder By Memory

most loved romance: Get a Life, Chloe Brown 

most loved young adult book/s: the Legendborn series again

most loved children's book/s: Too Bright to See again

most loved nonfiction: Handbags: The Power of the Purse or Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller  (per usual, I can't choose)

Books purchased this year: 66  (I am cheating by not counting the books I just bought a few days ago from Barnes & Noble's half-off books sale, since I bought them this year and they're not arriving until next year. Loophole! bwahahaha 😈)

physical books purchased: 59

ebooks purchased: 7 

Books purchased this year that I actually read: 16, or roughly a quarter (if we're not counting books I bought that I have read in the past but not this year after I bought them, 12)

Books I got rid of: probably about 30 (I donated them to my library's book sale) 

I read more books than last year (that is, 2024), which I'm happy about.  My reading goal is always 50 books a year, so that hasn't changed, and I don't see that changing. Unsurprisingly, the one book I didn't finish reading this year was a nonfiction book, and a religious one at that. Very par for the course there. That's only 1 DNF, though, compared to last year's 3.

In terms of books bought, I again counted only the books I bought for myself that cost money. I fucked up by shopping B&N's half-off-hardcovers sales a couple of times. Oh well. Here's the chart my reading spreadsheet from BookRiot calculated for me of where my books purchases came from.

Speaking of my BookRiot reading log spreadsheet, I've been searching for next year's in their website, and I don't see it! Are they not making one for 2026??? I mean I have reading journals I'm planning on using, but I really love their reading spreadsheets :(  Maybe it's because the reading log sheet was originally made by Tirzah Pierce, and she no longer works for BookRiot? But they still made one for 2025...

Anyway, here are the statistics, charts and graphs from my 2025 reading log spreadsheet:

click to embiggen

 

Genres: Fantasy is still my largest percentage, although it dropped from nearly 50 percent last year. A lot of the books I read fit into multiple genres, but the sheet only let me put one, so keep that in mind in terms of genre count. Science fiction has surpassed Romance to become my second-most-read genre for 2025! Last year it was only 3.6%, so it more than quadrupled! This is clearly due to my reading the Murderbot Diaries. Romance is my third-most-read genre at 11.1%; it was 16.4% last year. I read at least 1 more genre category this year than I did last year (9 vs. 8 in 2024). 

Form: 89.3% of the books I read were prose, while novellas, short stories, and picture books shared equal pie slices at 3.6% each (I read 2 books from each of those categories). 

 

Books read by month: I had two high-reads months instead of one like last year, reading 11 books in both February and October! I read zero books in August (my reading slump) but read pretty consistently throughout the other months (2-4 books a month). 

click to enlarge

 

Author/artist gender: The amount of female authors I read went up this year compared to last, with nonbinary authors and male authors tying for second!! Other refers to group authors and authors duos. I'm not sure why the sheet doesn't create an M/F category and an Other category instead of lumping them together, but whatever. 

Nation of origin: A big jump in US books (going from about half last year to about ¾ths this year), while UK books consequently were halved. Canadian books also almost halved. I read 1 book set in Nigeria (Until the Last Petal Falls) and put Ireland as Carmilla's nation of origin since the author was Irish (according to Wikipedia the book seems to have been first published in London though... oh well). 

Protagonists of color (erroneously put as POC Protagonists in the sheet) vs. white protagonists: I nearly doubled the amount of books with protagonists of color that I read (17.3% to 33.3%)! That still leaves two-thirds of the protagonists I read as white or I couldn't tell what they were. (e.g. Murderbot's race is never given, although a white actor plays it in the show and some official? illustrations show it with dark skin and hair. Its appearance is barely described at all.) If I make my own spreadsheet for next year, I'm including a n/a or unknown categories for the rep stats. 

Authors of color (erroneously put as POC Authors) vs. white authors: (not in the above image) The amount of authors of color I read tripled compared to last year, but as that's going from 5.8% to 16.7%, it's not something to hugely celebrate. I need to do better. 

Queer authors: This stat stayed basically exactly the same as last year, with only a 0.5% change! How funny. Insert my usual spiel about how you can't always tell if an author is queer just by looking at their author bio. 

Books with queer protagonists: Remember how last year I had exactly a 50/50 split? This year 68.5% of the books I read had queer protagonists!

Books with trans rep: I don't trust the stats on this because they're collected weirdly, but according to the log I read 11 books with a trans protagonist (again thanks to the Murderbot Diaries as it's agender), and 20 with a trans author/artist. This is no doubt due to all the Sarah Wallace books I read, as the log counts them each time. I read 6 individual trans authors this year, which is down from last year's 7.

Books with disability rep: 46.3% of the books I read this year had disability rep, nearly twice as much as last year's 25%!

My sole translated book was Frida Kahlo y Sus Animalitos, which was originally in English but I bought in Spanish ostensibly for my sobrines (it's at my house and they have yet to see it lol).

An increase in nonfiction books read, at 12.5% (last year was 9.1%). 

Also an increase in the amount of books for adults that I read, 83.9%, and consequent decreases for YA (7.1%, less than half of last year's!) and children's (8.9%). Last year the breakdown was 72.7% adult, 18.2% YA, and 9.1% children. 

16.7% of the books I read were published this year, down from last year's 20.5%.  

Wow, I really made some gains in diverse reading. Overall, a great reading year! Happy new year.