2025 excuse: My dog ate 2,000 pages?

A vintage stamp featuring two individuals, one adult and one child, reading together, with the text 'A Nation of Readers' and 'USA 20c' below.

Wait, that won’t fly. I have no dog.

My annual summary from Goodreads reveals I completed 2,000 fewer pages this past year than the previous one. Sliding from 49 books in 2024 to 40 in 2025 does not represent a good report card.

Who’s to blame? Not a dog nor I.

It’s the fault of the San Antonio Spurs. A subscription to FanDuel makes most games available for watching in the comfort of my living room in Austin. This loyal fan has not enjoyed access to this many basketball games in years. But the schedule’s heavy, consuming my normal evening reading hours.

Below are books I completed in 2025. I left my personal ratings and reviews for most on Goodreads. Among the ones that rang the five-star bell for me were: The Mystery of the Crooked Man by Tom Spencer (no relation); The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr; How to Read a Book by Monica Wood; Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty; The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins; and A Small War at Close Quarters by a close friend, Vic Hinterlang.

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2024: More than 16,000 pages in 49 novels

With a talent for losing myself in a novel accompanied by absolutely no capabilities for recalling the name of the author or title, I love using Goodreads to record those for me. The website also tidily bundles your reads up at the end of the year. This look back reminded me that the first book I completed this past year was also both the longest, with 736 pages, and among my favorites – The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

Other books that that rang five-star for me for varying reasons were: Peace Like a River by Leif Unger; The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff; Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park; The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng; Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov; The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill; The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez; Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia; Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez; My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You I’m Sorry by Fredrik Backman; Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili; Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin; All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker; and Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang.

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