Happy New Year! As the New Year gets underway, I've been looking back on what I read and listened to in 2025.
What I read
I love to
keep track of the books that I've read, and I've been doing this in Goodreads for a few years now. Every year I enjoy looking back over my reading year, and here are some of my stats from 2025:
I don't worry too much about the number of books, as I usually read a variety of books including some very long ones. This year I read 91 books, which compares to 115 last year, which wasn't a surprise as I knew that I had read less in 2025. But just look how much I read in October as I powered through my Kindle "To be Read" folder on a week long holiday in the
Dominican Republic!
I was surprised to see that my top genre was Romance as I like to imagine that my reading tastes are more highbrow. A lot of those free Kindle reads probably fell into that category, and also at times this year I did seek out books which were a little easier to read rather than any longer classics.
What I listened to
We have the Spotify family plan so that we can all keep our listening interests separate. And although it's not cheap we definitely get our money's worth. I was quite impressed with my listening time of 7,182 minutes (119 hours) but it pales in comparison with my son who managed 61,191 minutes - that's over 1000 hours!
Here are my top stats:
Not surprisingly,
Pulp are at the top, especially after the release of their new album this year which led to my three favourite songs from the album falling in my top songs list. Spotify gave me a listening age of 47 based on listening to music from the early 90s which is only a year out. However I think that my age estimate may have been lowered based on the fact that the K-Pop group Blackpink made my number two.
This was mainly due to repeated listens to Shutdown before we went to see them in concert over the summer. I was learning the rap so that I could join in and embarrass my daughter! I also love their song Jump which reminds me of our
trip to Seoul in the summer when we watched the video release of the single on a huge screen.
The top artists also reflects the amount of time I spent listening to set lists as part of our
year of concerts. Maybe it spoils the surprise for some, but I like to be familiar with the songs that are going to be played so that I can make sure I know them well enough to sing along!
Reading and listening plans for 2026
My to be read pile is currently very manageable, but I'll be starting with books that I received for my birthday in October and haven't yet read!
I've decided that I want to really indulge my interest in Everest this year. I love reading accounts from climbers, and I'm particularly interested in the commercial side of climbing and the companies that take people up when they aren't quite as experienced as they should be. I've read a couple of books already, and I'm putting together a list to purchase second hand.
In terms of music I want to try and find some new-to-me music to listen to rather than just repeating through my favourites. I'm intending to look up a list of what are generally considered to be the best albums and work my way through those, as well as listening to older albums from my favourite groups where I'm only familiar with the singles.
