2025: My Year in Reading—A Retrospect

Happy New Year! After tracking my progress via Goodreads, today, for the sixth year in a row, I’m sharing a retrospect on the books I read in the last 12 months. 

Just like in 2024, in 2025 I read 50 books, maintaining an average pace of 50 pages a day. My ratio of fiction to non-fiction was 42 to 8, while women writers continued to dominate (I read 38 books by women, 11 by men, and 1 by a writer who identifies as non-binary). 

The first 20 books I read in 2025

Around half (24) of the books I read this year were historical fiction, but I was less focused on the nineteenth century than usual, diving into periods/setting such as 1500s France (Allegra Goodman’s 2025 Isola), plague era England (Geraldine Brooks’s 2001 Year of Wonders), 11th-century Scotland (Joel H. Morris’s 2024 All Our Yesterdays), and more. 

I reviewed 7 books as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series (check out my blog posts on Allison Epstein’s 2025 Fagin the Thief, Louis Bayard’s 2024 The Wildes, James McBride’s 2013 The Good Lord Bird, Kate MacIntosh’s 2024 The Champagne Letters, Virginia Feito’s 2025 Victorian Psycho, Laura McNeal’s 2024 The Swan’s Nest, and Lizzie Pook’s 2022 Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter). 

My top-three fiction reads (in no particular order) were All Our Yesterdays, Liz Moore’s 2024 The God of the Woods, and Tana French’s 2020 The Searcher. As always, it was a joy to read books written by writers known to me personally. Congratulations again to Hope C. Tarr on the publication of Stardust and Kelsey James on the publication of The Colony of Lost Souls, both in 2025.

The next 15 books I read in 2025

On the non-fiction side, I read about everything from the legal history of fashion (Richard Ford Thompson’s 2021 Dress Codes) to life in the slums of Mumbai (Katherine Boo’s 2012 Behind the Beautiful Forevers) to sociopathy (Patric Gagne’s 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir). My favorite was Arthur Brand’s 2020 Hitler Horses, which traces the real history of lost Nazi sculptures. My day job also informed my reading, with Olivia Fox Cabone’s 2012 The Charisma Myth and Amy C. Edmondson’s 2018 The Fearless Organization influencing my day to day. 

Things I enjoyed this year included reading books I found on Brooklyn stoops (this was true of 6 of the books I read this year), books I received as gifts (true of 4 books), and library books (shoutout to New York Public Library). In 2026 my goal will remain 50 books—I look forward to seeing what new reads the new year brings me.

The last 15 books I read in 2025

What books did you enjoy reading in 2025 that I could consider adding to my 2026 list? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. 

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Neo-Victorian Voices: The Champagne Letters, Kate MacIntosh (2024)

Welcome back to my Neo-Victorian Voices series, where I review books set in the nineteenth century but written in the twenty-first!

Today’s novel is a dual timeline historical that alternates between the perspectives of a present-day American divorcee, who finds herself in Paris after unexpectedly becoming single in her fifties, and the widow behind the Veuve Clicquot champagne house, who writes letters to her great-granddaughter about how she navigated the Napoleonic era as a businesswoman, in a time when the wine industry was almost entirely controlled by men.

MacIntosh’s research into the fascinating life of Barbe Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot is clear. She does a great job fictionalizing Clicquot’s biography and turning it into a digestible story that maintains human interest, even as it covers complex swathes of French history. 

The modern-day storyline, following Natalie, is lighter and even easier to read. Natalie is the quintessential American in Paris, charmed by French fashion, food, and wine, and stumbling through the capital asking everyone she encounters if they speak English. She’s swept up in a romance with a dashing man named Gabriel and connecting with the famous champagne widow, via a book of her letters, within what seems like seconds of stepping off her plane from Chicago, but some fun plot twists keep the story fresh and entertaining. 

Overall, the book left me with the impression that MacIntosh wrote it for readers like Natalie–those in love with the idea of Paris and excited by the effervescence of champagne, even if their grasp of French history and wine is a little loose. We often talk about beach reads, but this is a city break read: I’d recommend it if you’re dreaming of a trip to Paris…or if you’re looking for a summer book club pick that gives you the excuse to break open the bubbles.

What book should I review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want my blog posts delivered straight to your inbox monthly? Sign up to my email newsletter here.