![\"Copper](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Copper-Script.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWe’ll start off with my favorite book cover of the year,\u00a0Copper Script<\/em><\/a> by K.J. Charles<\/a> designed by James T. Egan, self-published. (Queer historical romantic mystery)<\/p>\n It’s just so very pretty and atmospheric. And again I’ll note this is a self-published book, so\u00a0 traditional publishers out there: you have no reason not to do better.<\/p>\n I’m not 100% on tracking cover artists yet (it sometimes involves searching), but from what is in my spreadsheet, these are the most common cover artists for books I read this year:<\/p>\n I know of the top of my head Jamie Jones<\/a> did the covers for most of the Murderbot books, and Perry de la Vega did the covers for the Shady Hollow series. (The only websites I can find for Perry de la Vega are Tumblr and Instagram, and unfortunately, both require a log in.)<\/p>\n Stone and Sky<\/em><\/a> by Ben Aaronovitch<\/a> (Queer urban fantasy & mystery) <\/p>\n and <\/p>\n After Hours at Dooryard Books<\/em><\/a> by Cat Sebastian<\/a> (Queer historical romance).<\/p>\n Seeing those titles listed together, I realize both have a major theme of dealing with grief. <\/p>\n Take that as you will.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With some series I can read (or listen to) one book right after the other. With others I need a pause after a couple books–or to read slowly (ha). <\/p>\n There are two series here that I went through twice this year: The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells<\/a>) and the Page & Sommers books (Cat Sebastian<\/a>).<\/p>\n The publisher whose books I read the most frequently was… self-published.<\/p>\n The world of publishing is confusing, because the big companies have multiple imprints that have imprints of their own; I put tordotcom (which is now something else) with Tor, just to make like easier for myself.<\/p>\n As 76% of the books I read in 2025 were rereads, the percentage of backlist I read is large.<\/p>\n What did surprise me is that I managed so many new releases (19).<\/p>\n Because I almost never listen to a fiction book I haven’t read previously, you can see the correlation between audio books (63) and rereads (137).<\/p>\n According to the BookRiot reading log tally, I spent 23 days, 8 hrs, and 8 mins listening to audio books.<\/p>\n I read 180 books in 2025, which is just over half the number of books I read in 2021.<\/p>\n But 2020 and 2021 were outliers, so for the most part the number of books I read each month was on par with previous years.<\/p>\n Again, according to the Book Riot Reading log calculations, I read 31423 pages, and an average of 86 pages a day.<\/p>\n I don’t know why 2017 disappeared from March when this chart was converted to a picture.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Most books I read fall into multiple genres, so that data is always a little wonky.<\/p>\n Much of the romance I read is historical, but I also love historical mysteries, and of course there are paranormal mysteries, so genre often adds up to 200-300% of the number of books read.<\/p>\n Lastly…<\/p>\n I’m still reading diversely.<\/p>\n This is so much easier to do than it used to be, since it’s getting easier and easier to find books that aren’t just straight white characters. (Thank you, ebooks.)<\/p>\n And I think that wraps up the books of 2025.<\/p>\n Happy reading in 2026 to everyone.<\/p>\n Favorite Fantasy Books of 2025<\/a> Fantasy Book Covers of 2025<\/a> Favorite Book Cover We’ll start off with my favorite book cover of the year,\u00a0Copper Script by K.J. Charles designed by James T. Egan, self-published. (Queer historical romantic mystery) It’s just so very pretty and atmospheric. And again I’ll note this is a self-published book, so\u00a0 traditional publishers out there: you have no reason not to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,1090],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-reading","category-years-favorites"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pefxA-54z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19503"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19524,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503\/revisions\/19524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cover Artists<\/h4>\n
\n
Favorite Books<\/h4>\n
<\/a> <\/a> My favorite books of the year were:<\/p>\nSeries Read<\/h4>\n
\n
Publishers<\/h4>\n
\n
The Stats!<\/h4>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMystery Books Books of 2025<\/a>
\nAudio Books Books of 2025<\/a>
\nRomance, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, & Non-Fiction Books Books of 2025<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMystery Book Covers of 2025<\/a>
\nRomance Book Covers of 2025<\/a>
\nNon-Fiction Book Covers of 2025<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"