My Bookish Goals For 2025 – A Winter Check-in

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One month to go to complete the ten goals I set myself. Time then to check whether or not I’m on track…

  1. Achieve my Goodreads goal of reading 104 books – I’ve read 91 books so far this year meaning I’m 5 books behind schedule.
  2. Read more of the books I already own, including:
    • At least 20 books that have been in my TBR pile for longer than two years, i.e. January 2023 or prior – I’ve read 15 so far and quite pleased with that.
    • The 5 remaining books on my Backlist Burrow list, a challenge I started in 2023 but have made little progress with – No progress, sadly and unlikely to be in the time remaining
  3. Attend Henley Literary Festival and at least one other literary event – I went to several events at Henley Literary Festival and attended the Borders Book Festival in Melrose for the first time.
  4. Complete two historical fiction reading challenges:
    • When Are You Reading? Challenge (see my updated post here) – I’ve matched 10 of the 12 time periods and have books identified for the final two.
    • Historical Fiction Reading Challenge – By my calculation I’ve already surpassed my target of 50 books.
  5. Complete the What’s in a Name Challenge (see my updated post here) – Annoyingly, I’m just missing that last one…
  6. Read all the books on The Walter Scott Prize 2025 longlist before the shortlist is announced – I didn’t manage this but I did read all the shortlisted book before the winner was announced. And I was there at the Borders Book Festival when it was!
  7. Reach the point where I’m read and reviewing every book on my NetGalley shelf in advance of publication – I nearly managed it! Just one book left on my shelf that’s a 2025 publication, the rest are 2026. My feedback ratio is now 99%. I know, showing off…
  8. Take part in a reading challenge I haven’t done before (see my updated post here) – I took part in the Nonfiction Reader Challenge hosted by Shellyrae at Book’d Out and read three, which was my target.
  9. Finally bite the bullet and update my blog’s theme – Pretty obvious I haven’t got around to this yet again.
  10. Embrace audiobooks and aim to listen to one per month – It hasn’t been strictly one per month but I’ve listened to 12 with one more I hope to finish before the end of the year.

I think I’m going to give myself 7/10. If you set yourself any bookish goals this year, how are you getting on?

My Week in Books – 30th November 2025

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On the blog last week

Monday – I published my review of Agricola: Commander by Simon Turney.

Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Things You Might Be Thankful For.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Friday – I shared my review of The Cracked Mirror by Christopher Brookmyre.

Saturday – I published my review of Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey

Sunday – I shared my review of Divination: A Conspiracy of Blood by J. A. Downes.

New on my shelves

Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China by Jung Chang (William Collins)

Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation – the story of ‘three daughters of China’: Jung, her mother and her grandmother and their lives during a century of revolution. Fly, Wild Swans is, quite simply, what happened next.

Jung Chang arrived in the UK in 1978 aged 26, part of a Chinese scholarship programme for study abroad. Finding herself in the London of punk, political protests and Ziggy Stardust, she felt as if she’d landed on the moon. She and her fellow students had all grown up in complete isolation from the west, living in fear as to what might happen if they broke any of the strict rules imposed upon them by their government. It was an invaluable opportunity but came at a cost of long-term separation from her mother and family in China.

As Jung began to adjust to life in the West, she warmed to the fashion scene, rebelled and thrived. Her studies took off and she became the first person from the People’s Republic of China to be awarded a doctorate from a British university.

Fly, Wild Swans is, in many ways, Jung’s love letter to her mother set against China’s development from the relative freedoms of the late-1970s and untrammelled capitalism of the 1990s to the current authoritarian repressive rule of Xi-Jinping. With vivid flashbacks to her family’s experience in communist China, the book offers an extraordinary account of Jung’s research into the genocidal regime of Mao Tse-Tung, the many fictions she uncovered and the political consequences of publishing her subsequent biography.

As Jung becomes a successful academic and writer in the West, Fly, Wild Swans demonstrates how much she relies on her mother still living in China and the painful years in which politics has prevented them meeting. Through the arc of their respective lives, she gives an immersive, deeply moving and unforgettable account of what it is like to live in a communist dictatorship and the threats modern China poses to the international world order. It is family history at its best.

What I’m currently reading

Version 1.0.0

I’m reading Ravenglass from my TBR pile, Small Acts of Resistance from my NetGalley shelf and listening to the audiobook of Atmosphere (set in the final time period I need for the When Are You Reading? 2025 Challenge)

Look out for…

  • Book Review: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
  • My Top 3 November 2025 Reads
  • #6Degrees of Separation