Read time: 12 minutes
Man, 2025 was a weird year.
The weirdest thing, perhaps, is that I’ve been saying the exact same thing for the past five years. You know how history speaks of the Renaissance, the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment? Fellow readers, I fear that future generations may refer to our era as The Weird.
Not only are we in the throes of The Weird, but the Dark and the Difficult, as well. This year was hard on a lot of folks, not only personally, but culturally, socially, financially, and globally. I’d be lying if I said that some of this hadn’t affected me personally, and lying harder if I didn’t add that although things have been wild and messy and strange, I’m a very privileged person powered by luck, a lot of good choices, and sheer stubborn optimism, so it hasn’t been nearly as hard for me as it has for many others.
It feels a bit silly to talk about reading in the context of the past year, but a)that’s what this site’s about and b)even bookish habits can be affected by the Weird. Without further ado, here’s Equal Opportunity Reader’s 2025 in review.
What I Read, By The Numbers…
In 2025, I only read 52 books. That’s about a book a week, and while that may seem like a lot, my average is about 86. For four years straight I read over 100 books, so to read only 52 this year…what am I, eight years old?
Of those 52, 14 were fantasy novels, which surprises me. I don’t feel like I read a lot of fantasy this year but apparently I did–I just didn’t review much of it.(More on this later). The above image is from Storygraph, which allows books to be categorized in multiple ways, so I also read 8 books with LGBTQIA+ themes, overlapping genres. Some of these were obviously so, like the iconic memoir by trans icon Miss Major Speaks or the found family graphic novel Gaysians, but others in the category were simply casually queer, which I’m finding and appreciating more and more often. Dark academia thriller An Arcane Inheritance, which I wrote up for next month’s Lightspeed, has a cast populated by bisexuals and nonbinary folk. Workplace sci-fi horror Several People Are Typing is by a trans author, and the central love story is decidedly queer but also very unsensational–I didn’t even think to mention it in the review.
I only read 7 romance novels this year and that is not enough. I sorely missed the presence of meet-cutes, love triangles and genitalia euphemisms this year. Next year I must do better. Also 80% of my reading this year was fiction, 20% non-fiction. That’s pretty normal for me, but I also only read books in English and that felt a bit strange.
Demographically, I’m happy to say I lived up to my mission of diverse books for diverse readers, with one caveat. Almost half of the books I read were by Black writers, with a sizeable chunk of Asian and Latinx authors(some of whom are also Black) as well. That said, holy hell did I read a lot of white men this year, for a specific reason I’ll explain in a bit. I read a few Indigenous authors but didn’t talk about them much–including the first book I’ve ever read by a Marshallese writer, the graphic novel History Project by Kathy Jetnil-Kutner. That book has very little web presence and I only came across it by chance in the bookshop in The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I really should write a proper review so that more people know about it.
Twelve of 2025’s books were reviewed for Lightspeed Magazine, and only eleven for this site. There’s a few reasons why my reviewing has fallen off a bit this year. When Trump took office in January, I, like a lot of people, pivoted hard towards political action and aid. I posted about this vaguely back in January and got so caught up in everything that I didn’t realize I hadn’t been reviewing very much over here.
By the time I realized and attempted to refocus, the technocracy was rearing its ugly head and the generative AI con was beginning to piss me off. ChatGPT and other LLMs started showing up in the list of referrers for this site, Zuckerberg and co. openly pledged allegiance to MAGA fascism for money, and frankly, I didn’t want to be on the internet anymore. I still don’t, to be honest, but I didn’t spend my youth making memes, building long distance friendships out of pure intellect and vibes, and curating my algorithms to chef’s kiss perfection to give it all up just because a few assholes have tried to turn it all into a money-sharting operation. But I am more cautious about how I approach the internet now, and what I post. Not cautious enough to avoid using words like “sharting”, but whatever. Moving on…
On two final personal notes, this year I moved from Boston to Los Angeles, with an extended sojourn in New Mexico that rewired my brain wonderfully. I also wrote a lot, published a few bits, and became a Kimbilio Fellow, which kickstarted a new project. My 2025 writing journey, and the ways in which I’ve had to fit it around two day jobs, will have to be a separate post, but basically–I reviewed and read a lot less because I was busy and exhausted. I didn’t realize how much until a few days before Christmas when my brain crapped out, I posted a joke video on social media, then booked the next day off work and slept for 14 hours straight. I’m hoping next year’s a little less tiring and a little more literary.
But numbers and excuses are the least interesting part of reading, in my opinion–I’m not the Equal Opportunity Mathematician, after all. It’s not how much you read but what it all means, so let’s take a look at that next.
What I Read, Word by Word
There were some very odd trends in what I read in 2025, looking back. First of all, I read two entire books about male sex workers, which is two more than I knew existed. The first was the Cuban sci-fi freakoff Condomnauts. The second was surprisingly from the later catalogue of classic Black romance and thriller writer Eric Jerome Dickey, who I still sorely miss waiting for new books by. The book in question is The Business of Lovers. There’s nothing in the blurb or the reviews that indicate it’s about a male sex worker but oh, boy, is it ever. I was surprised once I realized the subject matter, but it’s handled with Dickey’s trademark frank, affirming approach to sexuality. I’m not sure I like the book as well as some of his others, but it was nice to read and appreciate an old bookish friend again.
I also read a lot of weird queer romance, without realizing it. From Veggie Tales slash to packs of horny werewolves to the aforementioned Cuban space freakoff–I kept stumbling into all kinds of taboos, kinks, and explorations without trying to. I mostly chatted about these on TikTok to keep the site rating here more general, but as themes go, this was one of the more interesting unintentional rabbit holes I’ve fallen down.
In stark contrast to that, I intentionally decided to re-read the post-apocalyptic rapture fiction Left Behind series, originally published in the late 90s and early 2000’s. As much as I believe that there is no hierarchy in books and all reading is valuable, re-visiting these was largely a waste of time. These books are bad, and from a multicultural, multinational, racially diverse perspective they’re infuriatingly inaccurate about so many things. Not a drop of research went into these novels. And yes, I know–what was I expecting, exactly? I’m not sure. When I first read these, I was still deep in the church and much more adherent to evangelical thought that I realized. These books seemed interesting, then, food for theological thought and community debate. Now they’re just overtly offensive, and I’m mad I made it through five of them before remembering that a)I’m grown and don’t have to suffer at my own hands and b)I read a bunch of weird queer romance and therefore have no business thinking I’ll be anywhere near a rapture, if it happens.
I also read a few literary graphic novels, which is a genre I’m really developing a love for. I reviewed Gaysians and Wake! already, but want to briefly mention Ebony Flower’s Hot Comb. It’s a series of vignettes on Black girlhood, all featuring hair in some way–playing with grandma’s wig, the emotional roller coaster of a first relaxer, and the tyranny of the hot comb, among others. It’d make a great companion volume with Wash Day Diaries.
I mentioned reading way too many white men this year earlier. Part of that is because I read five of those brain-numbing Left Behind books, but I also read a lot of non-fiction, most of it political, some of it rage-baiting. Actually, most of it rage-baiting, when I think about it. And I didn’t review it then for the same reason I’m not going to talk much about here–it doesn’t really need a bigger platform. It certainly doesn’t need my attention. While I enjoy a good take down of a poorly positioned pile of platitudes as much as the next reformed academic, I’ve always preferred to focus on what I like rather than what I don’t. While I’ll read things I dislike or disagree with to keep the edges of my mind sharp and make sure I really believe what I think I do, I don’t think I want to discuss them much unless I really have something to say.
The Shortlists
Let’s keep it simple, here.
There are three books I read this year that I thoroughly enjoyed and think you might, too. They are:
- Esperance, a time-bending sci-fi thriller about the legacy of the slave trade by Scottish-Nigerian writer Adam Oyebanji.
- The Free People’s Village, an alt-history love song to all us old and crusty social justice warriors trying to age gracefully past the grief of failure by nonbinary anti-Zionist climate scientist Jewish writer Sim Kern.
- The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, a moment of pure fun and adventure with a hilarious Caribbean take on elder gods by Trinbagonian-American writer P. Djeli Clark
There are five books I read this year that genuinely surprised me, either because of what they taught me or how much I enjoyed them(or both). They are:
- Rangikura, a poetry collection by Maori poet Tayi Tribble. There’s something very fierce and young and intense about this, and the prose poems that form the central section of the book are stunning.
- How To Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, by Django Wexler. In the midst of everything it can be easy to forget that reading can be and is fun. This fast-paced, hilarious fantasy novel takes everything we love about the genre and uses it to make fun of everything we hate. It also reminds me that, weirdly, while monster romances written by women often have racialicious overtones, none of the ones I’ve encountered by men seem to, which is…odd. (That’s based on a sample of two, though–the other one is Legends and Lattes.)
- Novic, by Eugen Bacon. I’d heard so much about this Afro-Australian writer that I wasn’t sure what to expect but Novic, at 90-odd pages, really kept me guessing. There’s so much nuanced work in the characters and themes that I’ve been trying to get another of Bacon’s books in my brain all year and will definitely do so next year.
- Miss Major Speaks, by Miss Major(RIP). I’ve written before about how important trans women were to me in my difficult late teens and twenties, and Miss Major’s memoir in interview reminded me of those women. This book felt very much like a tight hug and a deserved cuss-out, and I’m very glad she was able to get it into the world before passing.
- Several People are Typing, by Calvin Kasulke. Adequately and cathartically sums up the disconnected misery that is corporate work in the post-pandemic, with a little existentialism for seasoning. Need I say more?
If I had any reading disappointments, I’d list them here, but I’ve explored that enough above. Ultimately, all reading–even the disappointing type–is valuable, and I with I’d had time for more.
But next year is nearly here, and with it new books, new words, new writers–and plenty of old ones to discover, too. I’ll tell you all about my plans for 2026 in another post, but for now–Happy New Year, fellow readers! Here’s to another year of reading diverse books as diverse readers!
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Equal Opportunity Reader 