📚 Anticipating My Reading Year 2025

In anticipation of my reading this year, I want to articulate one main goal and a few stretch goals.

My main reading goal is to read one more book than I already have. This means the total for the year is a moving target

Here are some stretch goals, meaning I want to remember to do them but I want them to be low pressure:

  • Read one nonfiction book a month.
  • Stop requesting books from NetGalley that I don’t know anything about except what is on NetGalley.
  • Stop requesting books from NetGalley based on marketing emails they send me.
  • Keep up with new releases from authors I love.
  • Any time I’m in a city with a romance-only bookstore, visit it.

What I want to try to do in 2025

I didn’t want to write this blog post in 2024. For reasons I cannot remotely explain, my gut/intuition/heart wanted to write this in the new year.

So here we are. I’m very sleepy.

I don’t make resolutions. Instead, I choose a word of the year (MORE) and I make a list of things I want to try. Here’s this year’s list:

  1. To make something daily.
  2. To write something daily.
  3. To cook more.
  4. To dig deep into my personal spiritual practices.

Those are the main ones. I’m sure others will pop up. I’ll document them when they do.

📚 My Reading Year, 2024

Like last year, I’m going to share some notes on my reading before popping the full list of all the books I read this year in here.

I read 106 books this year, including 4 picture books/easy readers. As with last year, I overwhelmingly read romance. This is about twice as much as I normally read, which can be attributed to two things: how propulsive so many romance books are, and the fact that I was freelancing and only doing that minimally from January through July. This left a LOT of time for reading. I read two or three books a week in that period. I’ve slowed down to my usual one a week since beginning my part-time school librarian job in August.

I did deep dives into the backlist of Kresley Cole and Sarah MacLean, thanks to the podcast Fated Mates. This podcast has been the greatest influence on my choice of what to read this year. I read a lot of old X-Men comics reading along with the book The Best There Is at What He Does: Examining Chris Claremont’s X-Men. I’m still in the middle of that project, which I started after watching X-Men ‘97. I think I’m going to pick it back up soon.

In just the past couple of months, I have really found my way into fantasy romance. My favorite and the series that really got me here is Milla Vane’s barbarian fantasy romance series, A Gathering of Dragons. It answers the question, “What if grimdark, but romance?” which is not something I thought I would want when I first started this tear of romance reading but actually is exactly the thing I want right now.

Here are all the books I read this year:

Trial of the Sun Queen A Fate Inked in Blood Bull Moon Rising Swordcrossed A Heart of Blood and Ashes The Beast of Blackmoor Killer Underwear Invasion! Nobody's Baby But Mine A Caribbean Heiress in Paris Some Writer! Heaven, Texas Lord of Scoundrels Captives of the Night The Truth About Him Everything I Left Unsaid You Had Me at Happy Hour The Pairing The Villa The Lion's Daughter If I Stopped Haunting You Operation: Cover-Up Hungry Bones Knockout Heartbreaker Bombshell Love, Come to Me When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary When Grumpy Met Sunshine This Will Be Fun Indigo Hers for the Weekend Gentle Rogue The Knowledge Gap Tender Rebel Love Only Once Daring and the Duke Brazen and the Beast Wicked and the Wallflower The Day of the Duchess A Scot in the Dark The Rogue Not Taken The Price of Pleasure The Captain of All Pleasures If You Desire If You Deceive If You Dare The Devil of Downtown Here We Go Again The Prince of Broadway The essential X-Men The Rogue of Fifth Avenue The Essential X-Men Volume 2 Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover Essential X-Men - Volume 1 No Good Duke Goes Unpunished One Good Earl Deserves a Lover A Rogue by Any Other Name Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing a Lord Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake The Familiar The (Fake) Dating Game You Should Be So Lucky The Witch Queen of Halloween The Player The Master The Professional Munro Wicked Abyss Shadow's Seduction Shadow's Claim Sweet Ruin Dark Skye Suddenly You The Kiss Quotient Matilda MacRieve Lothaire Preferential Treatment Dreams of a Dark Warrior Demon From the Dark Pleasure of a Dark Prince Deep Kiss of Winter You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop Kiss of a Demon King Dark Desires After Dusk Dark Needs at Night's Edge Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night No Rest For The Wicked A Hunger Like No other The Truth About Dragons Two New Years Nacho y Lolita/Nacho and Lolita Fox Has a Problem Dreaming of You Then Came You The Charm Offensive New Adult A Dish Best Served Hot A Proposal They Can't Refuse In the Case of Heartbreak Love Requires Chocolate The Frame-Up Never Been Kissed Get a Life, Chloe Brown A Touch of Stone and Snow

🎮 Finished The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom last night. Super fun! I love puzzles, I love getting to be Zelda without her having to be disguised, and I love that the world is still making new games I can play now that 3D games seem to give me motion sickness.

I’m coining a new aesthetic: Dark Twee. Think Jessica Day meets Lydia Deetz. A goth children’s librarian. More to come.