The complement to mindful living is mindful reading.
I want to learn from what I read. I want to see what others have seen. I want to consciously read what is not standard culture fare. Something more offbeat or deep. I want to learn storytelling and cultural terraforming.
I leaned more into sci-fi this year. Shocking no one, over half of titles read were poetry but less science and less memoirs, more novels this year. I completed none in French but 9 in translation.
I think I mentioned 49% of what I finished reading was free by library, little free libraries, free downloads, gifts or review copies. This tracking takes credence from the theory that elves sneak books in while I sleep.
In 2025, I read 110 pages on the average day.
That works out to a book or chapbook every couple days. Although some I picked away at for years, like Bly’s Inferno, And In His Hand a Burning Coal by klikandtuna (AO3, 2025) and Are we meant to read the footnotes by RiaTheDreamer (AO3, 2025).
And some I blast through, like a bunch of Sydney Rye Mysteries and a Louise Penny.
I read about the usual number of pages as usual for most of the last 5 years, a little lower than the high of 42,000, a little higher than the usual 33,000.
32 were re-reads this year, compared to 24 last year.
I read 72% on paper. (Up from 63% last year).
Half were published in 2024 or 2025. I didn’t consciously aim to push into classics this year.
Titles were 143 pages long on average, with range from 8 pages to 1200, with 75 titles being chapbooks.
We read 46 books aloud, so a few fewer than one a week last year.
I just started tracking British books. For the previous dozen years it was American, Canadian or Other. In rough measure, half were Canadian, a quarter American, a tenth from the UK and the rest other or unknown. I have learned to automatically cub reading American by default. I tried to read what was blank, a stretch or opaque to me, not going so far as to read financial or sports. We have to be reasonable about pushing comfort zones, yes?
Slightly more female at 48% female, 44% male, the remainder multiple or non-binary. 9% queer. 10% BIPOC authors. (Although with AO3 I don’t know gender, sexuality, place, or race.)
I’m in a privileged spot to go to book fairs, to go direct to authors and publishers, and to have an option to review things.
As far as favs, that’s a hard call. I mentioned some in an earlier post or two. I did a round up on substack icymi, but there’s also a heap of ones I’d read again, or refer to. Divergent Paths: Family Histories of Irish Immigrants in Britain, 1820-1920 by John Herson (Manchester University Press, 2015), A “Working Life” by Eileen Myles (Grove, 2023), anus porcupine eyebrow by Gary Barwin (Paper Kite Press, 2009), The Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the couple who taught America how to Love by Thomas Maier (Basic Books, 2009), Code Talker: The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII by Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila (Penguin, 2011), and Screaming Obscenities at the Sky by Christian McPherson (At Bay Press, 2025),
I was better at dropping books that weren’t holding a spell for whatever reason. Thus I have no books I’d rank 0-2 stars from 5.
I read 18 history and memoir. I read more haiku than usual for me, 25 books or chapbooks.
I start 2026 reading 9 books in parallel.
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And because someone on bluesy asked my rate of writing…I figured that out.
Some of you may recall I used to calculate poem writing rates but a poem is tricky. It can be 6 words or 12 pages, which break apart and merge so as moving targets are hard to quantify even impressionistically. What does “finished” even mean? At scale of line, or poem or manuscript..? A month’s line, now that’s clear.
Poetry written? This shows an advantage of self-audit. January and March have gone astray. Accidentally deleted? That and a decade of photos backed up to one mislaid DVD. Ah well, each year has its losses.
February: 261 words per day
April: 340 words per day
May: 120 words per day
June: 220 words per day
July: 45 words per day
August: 109 words per day
Sept: 213 words per day
Oct: 107 words per day
Nov: 230 words per day
Dec: 163 words per day
That averages 181 words added to poetry files daily, almost 66,000 words of new poetry in 2025. I have no idea if there’s a bell curve to fit that against.
I have a lot to revise and send out. (I detest the word submit.) I’d like to get a few in the can for future. After all, Octavia E. Butler died frighteningly close to my current age. If there’s a time for sharing, it’s while alive…
