My 2025 Goodreads Summary

I took these screen shots before I recorded my final book* of 2025, so the stats are off by one book (which turned out to be a 5-star read) 

A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman

Click here for my 2025 Year-End Summary and Top Picks. 

2025 Year End Survey and Top Picks List

 

I had a really good year of reading in 2025. I surpassed my Goodreads goal of 60 books, completed a couple of reading challenges with other bloggers (20 Books of Summer and Nonfiction November), in addition to two personal challenges (A Year of Elizabeth Strout and A Year of Maggie O'Farrell). I discovered several new authors and am eager to read more from their backlists. I don't have any goals for 2026 other than to read more from my own stacks, especially those books that are over 400 pages. 

Now for the fun stats!

Total Books Read: 67

Print Books: 56

Audiobooks: 11

ebooks: 0

Female Authors: 55

Male Authors: 12

New-To-Me Authors: 21

Fiction: 54

Nonfiction: 13

General Fiction: 36

Classics: 0

Poetry: 0

Historical Fiction: 5

Horror: 0

Science Fiction/Fantasy: 2

Time Travel: 0

Dystopia: 0

Mystery/Thrillers: 10

Westerns: 0

Epistolary: 1

Childrens: 0

Young Adult: 0

Memoir: 9

Travel/Food: 1

Nature/Science: 1

Essays: 0

Rereads: 7

Debuts: 6

Over 400 pages: 6

Over 500 pages: 2

Over 600 pages: 1

ARCs: 7

Borrowed from Library: 10

Borrowed: 2

From My Stacks: 48

Total Pages Read: 19,410

Total Hours Listened: 128 hours and 23 minutes

Backlist: 56

Published in 2025: 10

To Be Published in 2026: 1

Ratings:

5 stars: 6

4.5 stars: 17

4 stars: 18

3.5 stars: 13

3 stars: 7

2 stars: 6

Top Picks of 2025 (5 stars):

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman

Honorable Mentions:

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

So Far Gone by Jess Walter

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Tin Man by Sarah Winman

Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Names by Florence Knapp

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

The Song of Hartgrove Hall by Natasha Solomons

We Spread by Iain Reid

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

The Next Day by Melinda Gates

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

Find my previous Year End Surveys and Top Pick lists here.

A Year of Elizabeth Strout

 

Amy and Isabelle (4.5/5 and 3/5)

Abide With Me (3.5/5)

Olive Kitteridge (4/5 and 4.5/5)

The Burgess Boys (4/5)

My Name Is Lucy Barton (4/5 and 3/5)

Anything Is Possible (3/5)

Olive, Again (4.5/5 and 5/5)

Oh, William! (3.5/5)

Lucy By the Sea (4/5)

Tell Me Everything (4.5/5)

Toward the end of 2024, I decided to read all of Elizabeth Strout's books, as well as all of Maggie O'Farrell's. I was inspired to start these personal challenges in 2025 since I had so many unread books by both authors. Rather than pick up where I'd left off with Strout's collection of novels, I chose to start with her debut, re-reading it and any others I'd read in the past. I wound up enjoying Amy and Isabelle and My Name Is Lucy Barton better than my first encounters, but dropped my ratings for Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again by half a point with those second readings. I read the last four in December, which made for a seamless experience in Olive & Lucy's worlds. I'm looking forward to Strout's upcoming release (The Things We Never Say), which is set in Massachusetts with a new cast of characters. (Publication date: May 5, 2026)

A Year With Maggie O'Farrell

 

I Am I Am I Am (4.5/5)

The Marriage Portrait (5/5)

Hamnet (5/5) -- read in 2022

This Must Be the Place (2/5)

Instructions For a Heatwave (3/5)

The Hand That First Held Mind (3.5/5)

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (5/5) - read in 2022

The Distance Between Us (4/5)

My Lover's Lover (4/5)

After You'd Gone (4/5)

In late 2024, I decided to spend 2025 reading all of Maggie O'Farrell's books. I had already read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, and Hamnet, and I wasn't inclined to re-read those despite my love for both novels. I began with O'Farrell's debut and worked my way through the stacks, finishing with The Marriage Portrait, which I also loved. There were a few duds in the mix, but overall, I can say that I'm a fan. I do believe her historical novels are more enjoyable than the contemporary works, but I'll continue to read whatever she publishes. Her memoir is exceptional, as well. 

Have you read an author's entire collection? In addition to this personal reading challenge, I spent all of 2025 reading Elizabeth Strout's books. I'll share those details in my next post. 

A Month in Summary - December 2025

Photo Credit: Nancy White

Little Whale Cove

Depoe Bay, Oregon

December 2025

And just like that, we have reached the end of 2025. Tempus fugit!

December is always a busy month, but this year I was able to relax and enjoy the quiet days between social events. We hosted a small-ish cocktail party to kick off the Christmas season, quietly celebrated my 64th birthday, attended a large neighborhood holiday gathering, and enjoyed Christmas with my mom, brother, and niece. I managed to read several great books, completed my personal challenge to read all of Maggie O'Farrell's and Elizabeth Strout's works, and started planning for next year's reading goals. 

Books Read (click on the title for my review):

The Nix by Nathan Hill (2/5)

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell (5/5)

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (4.5/5)

Oh, William! by Elizabeth Strout (3.5/5)

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout (4/5)

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (4.5/5)

A Far-flung Life by M. L. Steadman (5/5)

Movies & TV Series:

Wake Up Dead Man - Entertaining, but not as good as the previous movies.

A Complete Unknown - I'm not a big Dylan fan, but this was a wonderful movie! Chalamet gives a great performance.

Train Dreams - We thoroughly enjoyed this quiet film. I'll bet the novella (written by Denis Johnson) is also worthwhile. 

Karen Pirie (Season 2) - We like this series, but after a couple of weeks, the storyline is long forgotten.

Death By Lightning - Very good miniseries based on Candice Millard's book Destiny of the Republic. I'm inspired to read the book. 

Visitors:

My younger brother and my niece came to celebrated Christmas with us. I failed to take any photos while they were here, so I borrowed this one from Chris' Facebook page. :)

64th Birthday:

I had a very nice birthday with lots of cards (I love snail-mail!), emails, texts, and phone calls. Rod ordered a delicious cake (raspberry-filled white cake), and my mom took us both out to our favorite restaurant (Local Oceans) in Newport. I now have 9 months to start researching supplemental health insurance to go with Medicare, which I'll sign up for in mid-September.

Christmas:

Another borrowed photo from my brother. Not only did I not take any photos of our Christmas party, but I failed to take any on Christmas Day!

My mom at 92!

That's it for me. Stay tuned for my yearly wrap-ups where I share my reading stats, as well as my favorite audiobooks and tv shows. 

A Far-flung Life

 

A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman

Fiction

2026

Finished on December 27, 2025

Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding!)

Release Date: March 3, 2026

Publisher's Blurb:

From the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Light Between Oceans comes a breathtaking and epic novel set in the vast outback of Australia about tragedy, family secrets, and the enduring power of love.

When we do something that can't be undone or mended, how do we go on living? How do we find our North Star when there is no right answer? These are the questions at the center of M. L. Stedman's unforgettable and magisterial new novel A Far-flung Life, a sweeping and epic story of a family, a tragedy, and the aftermath that reverberates for decades.

Remote Western Australia, 1958: here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land. On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride serves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is blunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide. The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.

A Far-flung Life is a tale about family and belonging, fate and time. It is about people trying to do their best and each, for private reasons, seeking shelter from the storm of life. Can a fleeting moment unravel a whole life, mar it indelibly and irrevocably? Can compassion, resilience, and forgiveness allow us to come to terms with our human imperfections? These are the questions Stedman asks in her profoundly moving, uplifting, and luminous new novel about what the heart can endure for the sake of love.

It's been thirteen years since The Light Between Oceans was published. I received an ARC of that debut novel and gave it a perfect 5-star rating. To say that I loved it is an understatement. 

And thus, I was thrilled to receive an ARC of M. L. Stedman's new novel, and as soon as I wrapped up my Elizabeth Strout marathon, I dove right into A Far-flung Life. I couldn't have loved it more. What a remarkable story. It's one of loss, grief, love, and dark secrets. The characters are strongly defined and I ached for the MacBride family who had more than their share of heartaches. Stedman's setting is vivid, the heat and dust practically jumping off the pages.

It's hard country, out this way. Back in England, a farm might support two or three sheep per acre. Here, with the lack of rainfall, you need more like forty acres per sheep. There is heat. There is sun. But on winter nights the water in the tanks will freeze over. The searing light that coaxes life into being here will bleach it out of existence with the same indifferent shrug, leaving blanched trees, and rusted corrugated iron on the roofs of abandoned homesteads. The wind that brings the rain can bring floods and flatten shearing sheds. Everything that can do you good can also do you harm here--that's just the way of it.

This land has seen improbable things: the evolution of marsupials and monotremes; of flightless birds and animals that fly. It's seen continents split and islands arise. It's seen oceans turn to desert and desert turn to glaciers. And it's watched people drag their little lives across its surface, flat and unforgiving. 

and

In the homestead at Meredith Downs, silence is a canvas on which each sound trails like a color. The wind; a single fly; the clatter of a pan; the distant barking of a kelpie; the banging of a flywire door. There is no continuous murmur of traffic. No vague stream of voices. Each sound emerges for its solo, then fades into stillness, into a silence so complete it makes music of your heartbeat in your ears.

A Far-flung Life is a compulsively readable literary work, and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. It will likely become a book club favorite, and it will linger in my mind for years to come. I am so pleased to have finished out the year with a 5-star read, and look forward to re-reading this beautiful gem. It's a keeper.

Highly recommend!

I received a complimentary copy from Goodreads. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Tell Me Everything

 

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Amgash, #5

Fiction

2024

Finished on December 21, 2025

Rating: 4.5/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

With her "extraordinary capacity for radical empathy" (The Boston Globe), remarkable insight into the human condition, and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, "What does anyone's life mean?"

It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on th eedge of town. The two spend afternoons together in Olive's apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known--"unrecorded lives," Olive calls them--reanimating them and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, "Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love."

And with that, I have completed my personal challenge to read all of Elizabeth Strout's novels. I won't lie--I was very sad to say goodbye to all of her wonderful characters whom I've grown to love over the past year. Back-to-back reading of the final three books in the Amgash series was certainly a great way to immerse myself in Strout's world, and I loved how she included 23 of her characters from her earlier novels. The author has a new book coming out in 2026, but it's a departure from her previous works, so who knows if we'll ever hear anymore from Olive or Lucy.

Oprah Daily, September 2024

Oprah Daily, September 2024

Tell Me Everything is a marvelous novel. I'm sure some readers would be perfectly content reading it as a stand-alone, but there are so many back stories, that I feel it shouldn't be read until the earlier books in the Amgash series have been read. Part of the joy of this book is seeing the interactions between so many of Strout's characters.

A couple of notable passages:

“Olive was silent for a long moment. Then she said, meditatively, “It’s quite a world we live in, isn’t it. For years I thought: I will miss all this when I die. But the way the world is these days, I sometimes think I’ll be damned glad to be dead.” She sat quietly looking ahead through the windshield. “I’ll still miss it, though,” she said. Bob was watching her. He said, “I like you, Olive.” “Phooey. Now help me get out of this car,” Olive replied.”

 and

“Lucy stood up and pulled on her coat. “Those are my stories,” she said, and then bent down to put her boots back on. “But you’re right. They are stories of loneliness and love.” Lucy stepped into the tiny kitchen for a moment and returned with a paper towel and she bent down and soaked up the drops of water on the floor left from her boots. Then she picked up her bag and said, “And the small connections we make in this world if we are lucky.” And then to Olive’s amazement, Lucy said, smiling at her with a gentleness on her face, “And I feel that way about you. A connection. Love. So thank you.” She moved toward the door. Olive said, “Wait.” As Lucy turned, Olive said, “Well, phooey. I feel connected to you too. So there.” She stuck out her tongue.”

I don't know if I'll re-read all of Strout's books since I've already re-read a few, but I know that I'll come back to Tell Me Everything (maybe on audio) in a few years.

Highly recommend!

Lucy by the Sea

 

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

Amgash, #4

Fiction

2022

Finished on December 17, 2025

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

With her trademark crystalline prose, Elizabeth Strout turns her exquisitely tuned eye to the inner workings of the human heart, following the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic.

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody sea.

Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we're apart--the pain of a beloved daughter's suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.

If you hadn't noticed, I've been reading (and re-reading) a lot of Elizabeth Strout's novels this year. After re-reading Olive, Again, I jumped back into Strout's Amgash series which focuses mainly on Lucy Barton and her friends and relatives. I was somewhat disappointed with Oh William! but once I finished that book, I immediately picked up Lucy by the Sea and was instantly engrossed. I can't explain why, but I don't mind reading books set during the pandemic. I know a lot of people would like to forget about those first years during lockdown, but I like to revisit those months, reminding myself just how far we've come. Strout reminds her readers how especially scary it was to be a New Yorker during the first year of pandemic, and I am forever grateful that we live in a small community, mostly isolated from large crowds. (I've written about those early years here.)

Notable Passages:

Here is what I did not know that morning in March: I did not know that I would never see my apartment again. I did not know that one of my friends a family member would die of this virus. I did not know that my relationship with my daughters would change in ways I could never have anticipated. I did not know that my entire life would become something new.

 

Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us.

 

I thought then that William had been right to bring me up here, where I could walk freely even if I didn't see many people. The question of why some people are luckier than others--I have no answer for this.

 

It has been said that the second year of widowhood is worse than the first--the idea being, I think, that the shock has worn off and now one has to simply live with the loss...

And I also understood: Grief is a private thing. God, is it a private thing. 

 

It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us. 

In any case, Lucy by the Sea was a much more relatable and moving story than Oh William!, despite sharing the same anecdotal first-person delivery that I disliked in Oh William! I came to care about Lucy as I eventually did with Olive Kitteridge, and enjoyed seeing all the familiar faces that have been such a big part of Strout's stories. As soon as I finished this book, I happily picked up Tell Me Everything, the 5th in the Amgash series.

Heartwarming as well as somber ... Although simple on the surface, Strout's new novel manages, like her other, to encompass love and friendship, joy and anxiety, grief and grievances, loneliness and shame--and a troubling sense of growing unrest and division in America.... Strout's understanding of the human condition is capacious. ~NPR

Highly recommend, but should be read in order, at least with the Amgash books. 

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

Oh William!

 

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Amgash, #3

Fiction

2021

Finished on December 15, 2025

Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

"I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William."

Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. "William," she confesses, "has always been a mystery to me." Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are.

So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret--one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together--even after we've grown apart.

When I first started reading Elizabeth Strout's novels, I didn't care about her characters. I eventually came to love Olive Kitteridge, but I have yet to feel the same about Lucy Barton. Oh William! is Strout's third installment in her Amgash series, in which Lucy is the central character. Narrated in first person, and speaking to the reader, we are privy to Lucy's thoughts and emotions. She and her first husband have remained friends of a sort, and Lucy expresses her fondness and exasperation toward William, as well as grieving the death of her second husband. 

Grief is such a--oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.

She reflects on her lonely childhood, and the lack of love and nurturing from her mother. She also speaks about her relationship with William's mother, who is very present in their lives during their marriage. This is a quiet, character-driven story that unfolds slowly. It reads like a conversation between two friends, with abrupt interruptions in a train of thought or memory. Many of Strout's paragraphs begin with statements such as these:

 "I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William."

 "Also (I suddenly remembered this too) ..." 

 "What I mean to say"

 “I don’t want to say any more about that...”

Since I have two other books by Strout to read (Lucy by the Sea is up next), I pushed through to finish this one even though it's not one that I can recommend. Had it been longer (I read it in less than two nights), I may have given up. Overall, a disappointment.

My reviews of the other books in this series:

My Name is Lucy Barton (4/5)

Anything is Possible (3/5)