It’s generally been a good year in books for me! I read 80 total (31 tradpubbed, 49 fanfiction (over 10K)), with two rereads (one of each) plus a third that is technically a graphic novel adaptation of a book I’ve read. Here are a few stats:

Book Type: 79 fiction – 1 nonfiction
Fiction Type: 34 speculative – 45 realistic
Media: 52 text – 25 audio – 2 visual
Audience: 76 adult – 4 YA

New to me authors: 43
Most read author(s): Create_Serenity – This was actually a hard one to determine this year because I read a lot of shorter works that didn’t get included in this list, and I have a couple authors that I love and read many times with these shorter fics. But of the ones officially listed, Create_Serenity had three.

Shortest / Longest books: Evocation (301 pgs) / Dark Inspiration (415 pgs)
Shortest / Longest fanfics: Stray Souls (11k) / Married at First Sight (147k)
Shortest / Longest audios: A Thief in the Night (2:45) / Wind and Truth (62:48)

Total pages read: 2,011
Total fanfic words read: 2,765k
Total audio listened to: 339:56

Best bookish experience: The Ineffable Con! TIC was brilliant and I can’t wait to write about it in more detail. In the meantime, three days of 100+ folks all in the neurospicy, queer-ish, gender-whatever category, running around in cosplay? It was heaven!

Best book-related discovery: This year’s discovery is a specific artist, Ruby Gold, who I met in the days leading up to TIC. Rainstorm, Ruby, Ruby’s friend Jo, and I hung out at a lot of the pre-events together, and Ruby’s art is incredible. They also loved the idea of the novel I was then working on, and we decided to collaborate. They’ve drawn the most amazing work for it already and some of the first chapters are online. Not only is Ruby a great artist, but it turns out we seem to be the same person in a lot of ways, and they are fast becoming a really great friend!

Best Reads of 2025

In years past, I’ve highlighted not only my favorites, but best in several categories like “most fun to read” and “best setting” etc. This year, I’m just going to talk about my favorite overall. These are in the order that I read them, because I can’t really stratify them any better than that.

1) in the house we remain by commodorecliche: I’ve rarely seen the “opposite sides” theme adapted into an AU as well as this one. It was heart-wrenching and beautiful.

2) You’re the Bad Guys by Nebz_AlphaCentauri: I read most of this in 2024 but the last few chapters posted this year. Cold war era spy AU with scenes that just blew me away. I was really excited to visit a few places the author talked about from Berlin this year!

3) I’ll Have What He’s Having by Adib Khorram (audio): This is the only tradpubbed book to make it into my faves. It’s such a good read! The follow-up was also good, and I’m looking forward to more by this author.

4) Social organization and adaptability in Xenoerpeton anthropoides: transference of social bonding habits and mate selection by Liquid_Lyrium: This is not a story I ever thought I’d read, or a genre I ever thought I’d enjoy, but it is so, so, so well-written and I can see why fandom folks became obsessed with it to the point of cosplaying merlotls…

5) You’ve Got Kudos! by ClassicHazel & Rhaegal: This book about Ineffable Con was written by the founders of Ineffable Con and is meta in so many ways. Absolutely adored this!

6) Sweeter Than Fiction by IneffableRainstorm: It feels weird to put a book by my partner, that I beta-ed, and was heavily involved in the brainstorming process for, on my favorites, but STF is still one of my favorite stories to exist. Romcom perfection!

Honorable Mention: Give a Man a Mask by Ventriloki: This isn’t on my official book list of the year, which is why it gets an honorable mention. It’s too short to go on the official list, but is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read in the fandom. The author’s prose is magnificent and the tension and setup are brilliant.

Honorable Mention: The Last Snow on Vörösmarty Tér by Bohoteacher: Again, not on the official list so it can’t be an official favorite, purely because this is under 10k. But it deserves to be here. I’ve never seen anything like this in fanfic. It’s an atmospheric fairytale told from the pov of the Christmas market, in first person. I so rarely come across books where the atmosphere itself is a primary element, and they are my very favorite. I went absolutely feral on Boho on Discord after I began reading this (thankfully, they were grateful for my feralness, and not put off, hahaha…)