2025 in Books

Here we are, early in the new year, and it's time for my annual round-up of what I read in the old year.

I'll start off by saying that  2025 wasn't a particularly great year for reading. Last winter was really busy (full-time congregational ministry, teaching a course at the Atlantic School of Theology, and taking over as chair of the Pastoral Relations committee of the region just before our Pastoral Relations minister suddenly died), which meant not only less time for reading, but almost no mental energy for reading. My re-reading numbers are higher than usual this year, as I found myself turning back to childhood favourites where I can fall into a world that I already know and love.

And then the summer, which is normally the season for lounging on the deck with a book in hand, also didn't slow down. Work stayed busy, and the season felt particularly short as I spent a week and a half in Calgary at General Council in August.

So my grand total of books read in 2025:  27. Less than half of my 2024 count (though to be fair, that year was an anomaly as I was on sabbatical for 3 months).

Some other numbers that I like to track:

Paper Books:  11
Ebooks:  7
Audiobooks:  8
Pre-Publication Manuscript:  1

Purchased Books:  6
Library Books:  18
Gifted Books:  3

Fiction:  21
Non-Fiction:  6
Poetry:  0
Graphic:  0

Re-Reads:  8
First Time Reads:  19

Canadian Authors:  11
Non-Canadian Authors:  16

Female Authors:  18
Male Authors:  10
Non-Binary Authors:  1
(Yes - I know that these numbers don't add up - two books had two authors!)

Non-White Authors:  2
White Authors:  27
(Yikes - not good.)

Books with Racial Diversity:  15
Books set in an all-White world:  8
(Again - the numbers don't add up - 4 of the non-fiction books didn't have "characters")

Queer Authors:  4
Non-Queer Authors:  25
(Another yikes.)

Books with Explicitly Queer Characters:  11
Books with No Explicitly Queer Characters:  12
(See note above re. non-fiction books with no characters)

I'm happy with the percentage of library books this year (2/3 of my books came from the library in either electronic or paper format - three cheers for public libraries!). I also like the increased percentage of audiobooks this year. But I also want to diversify my reading next year - more non-white and queer authors for sure, and hopefully throw in some poetry and graphic novels too!

Thank you to Sarah at Smart Bitches Trashy Books for sharing her reading spreadsheet. I downloaded her 2020 version, and have tweaked it year by year so that it tracks for me the things that I want to be tracking.

Finishing off with a couple of books that stood out to me this year.

The Story Spinner (Barbara Erskine)

This was a Christmas present from one of my sisters. She included a note with it, outlining the reasons why she thought that I would enjoy it:  "a setting from long ago; takes place in Wales; lots of Welsh and Roman (Latin) names; a character with the last name Jones; a main character who is an author; and a pastor named Kate." She was right - I did enjoy it! I enjoy most of Barbara Erskine's books (with the odd exception that crosses the line from spooky to too scary), and this one fit the mold:  time slip, strong female characters, a plot that makes it hard to put down, and vivid scene painting.

When the World Fell Silent (Donna Jones Alward)

Historical Fiction seems to be this year's theme! This is probably the book that has stayed with me the most vividly post-finishing. It is set in Halifax during the explosion on December 6, 1917. It follows the stories of two women - a nurse, working at the Camp Hill hospital treating soldiers injured in the war who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant just before the explosion. The father is a soldier who doesn't write to her after he is sent overseas. The other character is a young widow with an uneasy relationship with his family with whom she lives. Both of their lives are dramatically changed by the explosion. This one was especially engaging because of the years I lived in Halifax - I could picture all of the places where it is set (including Camp Hill!), and this was another impossible-to-put-down book. I look forward to reading her next book, about the Titanic!

Endurance (Alfred Lansing)

This was recommended to me by another member of the Grand Bay Writers Group, and I listened to the audiobook of it on a road trip to Cape Breton and back. It is non-fiction, telling the story of the Shackleton Expedition to the Antarctic, but it reads like fiction. I was on the edge of my seat, listening to the story unfold - even though I was driving on a flat highway after dark, I actually started to feel seasick listening to them riding in a small lifeboat over the enormous swells of the Drake Passage! It isn't a perfect book. It doesn't question the motivation of the expedition, but rather paints it as a grand adventure (an expensive and life-threatening adventure); but after finishing the book, I learned that it had been written in 1959 and am willing to extend some leeway to the author.

Jesus and John Wayne (Kristin Kobes Du Mez)

Another non-fiction book, this one about how the American evangelical church has warped the image of Jesus, creating an idea of Jesus in the image of John Wayne, the hyper-masculine cowboy renegade. It has shaped my thinking and my preaching, and has helped me better understand some of the political movements of the present moment.