As you may have read from my post about my favorite books of 2025, I’ve decided to start writing a post about the books I’m reading in 2026 now, throughout the year, as I read them. This way I’m hoping to have more immediate feedback on the books, not struggling through some hazy memory of 8-12 months ago. It’s also hard not to be more influenced by books I read more recently as opposed to ones I read early in the year. I don’t do reviews and I don’t keep notes or make ratings, maybe I should but maybe this will fill the void, at least for now.

As I stated, my intention for 2025 was to read more non fiction and I think I accomplished that. I’ll try to run the numbers and provide some hard evidence. My intention for 2026 is to read more literature, the classics if you will. We’ll see how that goes. I’m going to try to stick with more non fiction as well.

At the end of 2025 and into the beginning of 2026, I made an effort (and am continuing to make an effort) to read some of the “Best of 2025” books, mostly as voted on my Goodreads readers. Here’s the winners from last year:

So far, I’ve read My Friends, Atmosphere, Not Quite Dead Yet, Onyx Storm, and Everything is Tuberculosis. The Compound is next up. While not a winner per se, a lot of people seemed to be talking about The Dream Hotel. I started it, got maybe half way through and just couldn’t finish. To depressing, to real life for right now. I feel like there are a lot of 1984-esque books out there right now and I just don’t need to read them.

As I mentioned in my favorites of 2025, My Friends is right up there with Atmosphere and could have been my favorite book of 2025. I just finished it, so it’s up for 2026 and will be very hard to knock off. It’s the first book by Fredrik Backman I’ve read and it was brilliant. The story was deep and rich but the best part is the characters, you feel a strong connection with them and it doesn’t take long to want to know what happens next.

I’ve also read the Emily Tesh books, both of which I thought were great. One if very Logan’s Run like while the other is Harry Potter like. Interesting that a sci-fi and then fantasy came from the same person and both are great, I love to see that kind of diversity.

Finally finished The Compound a few days ago. It was pretty touch and go there, as I “turned it off” several times. I kept waiting for something to happen but it never did. Not sure why it won “best of 2025” and particularly not sure why it won in the sci-fi category. It’s basically a Survivor like reality show type thing. Hmm. To top it off, I’ve started John Grisham’s The Widow, his latest book. I’m threatened to stop listening to it several times already, geez. I’ve only ever read The Firm and that was obviously a long time ago. Not sure what to do at this point.

I paused on The Widow and read Mary Roach’s Replaceable You. She is upfront in the prologue about what the book is about (and not about). I would have preferred some of the stuff it wasn’t about but it ended up being not bad overall.

As I stated last year (every year?), I don’t have any expectations for the number of books I read in any given year. I did have an “intention” for 2025 to read mostly non fiction. Looking back at my favorite books each year, a surprising number of them were from the non fiction books I read. While I feel like I read “more” non fiction this year, it definitely wasn’t mostly non fiction. I haven’t run the numbers, maybe I will later, and I was doing well right up until I got on the John Sanford – Lucas Davenport kick. I read all 35 Lucas Davenport novels and the 2 Letty Davenport ones. Hmm…

Despite no expectations, 2025 was another banner year, tying 2022 for the second most books read in a year for me, with 116. As with all years, I don’t recall most of the books I read. If I read a summary I’ll remember them or maybe just bits and pieces. That’s okay, the pleasure is in the journey.

2025 started off with Neuromancer by Willian Gibson. Tough read. Apparently it will be a TV series (or movie?) coming out this year. Interesting. The Peripheral got cancelled after 8 episodes/1 season right after a controversial ending, so bummer. I also read Persuader by Lee Child, which season 3 of Reacher was based on. I’m having a harder and harder time watching Reacher. I also read Cold Storage by David Koepp, which is also apparently being made into a movie. It felt a little pedestrian to me, the alien virus/zombie thing feels like it’s been done more than a few times now. I am looking forward to the movie Project Hail Mary, based on the great Andy Weir novel, which will be in theaters this summer.

As always, series played a large part of the books I read. I reread all the Robert Langdon novels by Dan Brown. I went to Italy this year and wished I had read Angels and Demons before. The books are still good but honestly, The Secret of Secrets was a disappointment. As I scroll back through all the books read, I don’t have a lot of strong feelings about most of them. Other “disappointments” if you want to call it that were: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver and The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Actually, The Dawn of Everything could have been good, it was just WAY TOO LONG! The Rift by Douglas E Richards finally broke the camel’s back for me. I’ve been telling myself not to read any more of his novels, as I just find his style so annoying now but have never listened. I generally like Andrew Mayne and enjoyed Mr. Whisper but was deeply disappointed by Imposter Syndrome, the second book in the series. I plan to read the final book in the trilogy, I hope it’s much better.

Quite a few books deserve honourable mentions, as they were all good, just not quite up to the few favorites I had this year. Many of the non fiction books were good: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Spy and the Traitor, The Art Thief, Think Again, American Predator, and Not the End of the World. I also like Orbital: A Novel, you can definitely see why it won the Booker Prize. The Lucas Davenport novels were all good, I mean you (at least I) can’t read 35 of them if they aren’t pretty good. I was surprised I enjoyed Rebecca Yarros’ The Empyrean series so much, Fourth Wing was great. Finally, The System: A Novel of the Deep State by Barry Eisler was good. I like Barry Eisler, his John Rain novels are some of my favorites and while I don’t buy into his particular view of things, The System was entertaining.

Similar to Remarkably Bright Creatures last year, my favourite book of the year was Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, it must be something about 3 name authors. Such a great story, and as someone who grew up in the era of the space shuttle, it was great to be taken back to that point in time. I have to say, I’ve been reading Goodreads “best of 2025”, and those guys are onto something. Atmosphere won in the historical fiction genre and I can tell you right now, My Friends by Fredrik Backman could easily be my favorite book of 2026 (it won best fiction). Also on the fiction side, Dennis E. Taylor kept the ball rolling for me this year with Flybot, a good stand alone novel. Dennis is probably the author who writes the closest to the way I think.

On the nonfiction side, 3 books really stood out to me. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson was great. He is such a good story teller and the amount of research that goes into each book is crazy (I loved Dead Wake). It was genius to concentrate on the 6 months leading up to the civil war, to give you such a clear picture of how things evolved. So much has already been written about the civil war I didn’t need to relive all those battles. This books is visceral, the tension is palpable, so much so I don’t see myself going to Charleston any time soon, if ever.

Like many others, I read Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. This was my first John Green book. His passion and dedication are remarkable, as is his level of research. I learned so much from this book. We’ve all heard of TB and probably been tested for it but I had no idea the extent of havoc it has reaped upon humanity. Finally, probably my favorite non fiction book was An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong. It was fantastic. Ed’s ability to describe sensations for things we literally have no basis for is amazing. I love science and Ed makes the entire animal kingdom come alive with this incredible book. He does a fantastic job of putting you into the “bat’s shoes”, along with many the other animals.

Epilogue: As I write this post in mid January I realize I’m having a hard time explaining the details of why I loved my favorite books so much, many of which I read many months ago and MANY, MANY books ago. To that end, I think I might start writing my favorite books of 2026 now, especially given how much I’ve like the first few books I’ve read. See you soon.

I forgot to mention that 2025 was the first year I didn’t read the Bobiverse books. I don’t know if I’m moving on from them, just needed a break, or what. There should be a new book in 2026, so I’ll revisit all the Bobs this year.