#year of reading challenge 2025

[book-lore]

Who's up for a reading challenge for 2025? There are many out there but this is one that I designed specifically to help me, and whoever would like to join me, in getting to read those books I have in my own collection or my local library. This was inspired by a friend talking about how the major publishing companies were often putting out so many books that independent authors often get buried in their wake. Personally, I think this isn't helped by the constant "haul" nature of how many of us hoard books. There's nothing wrong with buying books at all, but often I'm seeing a lot of people buying so many books and reading so few. This isn't meant to be an exercise in shame because I am just as likely to pick up another book as the next person but I would like a reason and a bit of a fun exercise in engaging with my own collection with a little more intention. So this brings me to the Year of Reading Challenge! I'm posting the guide for the squares below so if you are so inclined, feel free to join!

The Challenges:

Centre square is Get or Renew Your Library Card.  The remaining 24 challenges are: 

Numbers Game: Read a full series by the same author(s) in 2025.  Series can be as short as two books, or as long as you want.  If you are a masochist, try the Discworld series, but for all other mortals, choose as you see fit.  Series doesn’t have to be complete, so GOT is fine. 

Mine: Read at least 3 books on your shelf.  These should be books you’ve owned for at least a year.  If you actually read everything you buy, these can be library books. 

Getting To It: Clear at least 2 books off your TBR.  Has to have been on the list for at least six months. 

Nostalgia: Either re-read an old favorite, or read something that reminds you of something you enjoyed. 

Who Are You Again? Choose a book that you’ve forgotten why you put it on your TBR to read. 

Summer: Read a book that reminds you of summer when you were a kid.  Can be a re-read of an old favorite or a book that incorporates something that says summer time to you. 

Winter: Read a wintery or holiday story that you’ve been meaning to get to.  Choose something different than you usually read every year. 

Spring: Budding talent – read a book from an indie author, either one you love or a new to you talent. 

Autumn: Where Tropes go to Die – Read a genre blend that takes common tropes and familiar themes and puts a different spin on them. 

Impulse Buy: You’ve done it.  I’ve done it.  Just read it now. 

Thumbs Up: Read something that has been recommended to you by someone you know. 

Ouch: Read or re-read something that gives you emotional damage.  We all need a good cry sometimes. 

Fluff: Sometimes you just want to feel good.  Read a book that feels like curling up in a large, warm blanket. 

Switcheroo: Is Fiction your life?  Let’s find one non-fiction book you might like.  Are you someone who only reads non-fiction?  Let’s try the land of make believe for one book. 

Thicccc: Stop letting that big book on your shelf bully and intimidate you.  Pick it up and let it know who bought/borrowed it. 

Compact: Sometimes a book doesn’t have to be long to pack a punch.  Read a book that crams as much story as possible into a punishingly small page count. 

Young at Heart: We’re all adults here but sometimes we don’t want to be.  Read a children’s book from any age category. 

Second Date: Find a book on your shelf or from your library that wasn’t your cup of tea.  Give it a second try to impress you this time around. 

Influencer Glamour: You know that book you bought because everyone you know or everyone online said it was the best book in existence, and this is totally different from all the other times another book was the best one they’ve encountered.  Let’s read it and find out if the hype was worth the price tag. 

Perspective is Key: Have you noticed that all the authors you read tend to look the same or have the same background?  Time to get out of your bubble and try reading at least one book from an author who has at least three key differences from your favorite ones. 

Judge by the Cover: We all do it, so let’s just give in to it.  Find at least one book from your own collection or the library where you are intrigued by the cover alone.  Don’t read the synopsis, just dive in. 

Hear Me Out: Audiobooks count as reading.  Better yet, you can read and do other things, like drive or go to the gym or other activities that you can’t do with a physical book.  Listen to at least one audiobook. 

The Book was Better: Find a movie or series that was based on a book and find out if the book really was better after all.  This can include books that have been optioned for adaptation and no, it doesn’t matter if they are languishing in development hell. 

Pulp: It’s trash, they say.  It might be, but it might also be treasure.  Try out a genre of book that gets picked on and see for yourself.  If you are already a pulp reader, it’s time to break out the big guns and get to the stuff that scares off literary critics in the first page. 

Enjoy and happy reading!

[fanfic-reading-challenge]

The 2025 Fanfic Reading Challenge

Welcome to another year of the Fanfic Reading Challenge (FRC)!

I won't bore you with the history of the challenge, this year, but I will welcome you to check out past posts that do explain some of it, as well as include a brief overview of what, exactly, this challenge is, though it does change year to year. (Essentially you read fics to complete goals and win bragging points and an artsy badge.)

This year is especially different, as I had the extreme pleasure of having @noxsoulmate as a partner in crime in keeping me hostage on track to completing this year's FRC. Another valued member of the mod team is @jandjsalmon and speaks for all of us if you need questions answered!

As for the challenge....

This is, indeed, a challenge. Of course.

First of all... you must obviously read fanfiction. As if you don't already!

You also need to download and make your own copy of the spreadsheet, which can be found here, as well as below in the important links section.

To participate in the challenge, you read fics that match the tasks in the challenge. An example of a task can be: "read a fic with a title containing the word purple in it." Should be easy! Of course, there are harder ones.

Which is why there are different modes of challenge to the FRC. These are as follows:

Participation (Complete 1 task)

Regular Mode (Complete 80 tasks)

Hard Mode (Complete 150 tasks)

Extreme Mode (Complete 220 tasks)

Complete (Complete 250 tasks)

The challenge lasts from January 1st, 2025, to December 31st, 2025.

There are badges that go with the modes completed, and even a secret 6th badge that will be fairly obvious if you look at the spreadsheet! Doesn't mean it'll be easy to complete though. *smirks* (Blame Noxy)

Most important of all: this challenge operates on the honour system. We don't check your work, or your reading logs (see below), so I mean, I guess if you want to be slippery with the rules, you do you, and that's on your conscience, but honestly it's so much fun to see how much you can get done by following the letter of the law/tasks! You can be slippery even with following the tasks fully. It's great fun. ;D

I think that's enough for an intro, really, maybe too much.

Important Links and Reading Logs/Trackers

As there is a component of the FRC that includes tracking numbers of words read, most of us use a reading log/tracker to keep count of how many fics we read, including data such as words, of course, chapters, month completed, ship, author, title, fandom, link to the fic, and such. It's a great place to mark what fics you want to read in the future as well!

This year we have FOUR trackers on offer, quite different from one another, so take a look, play around with them and check out their "intros", and choose according to what you think will work best for you!

Fic Tracking Sheets

Juulna's 2025 Reading Log

Noxy's 2025 Reading Log

2025 Jandy's Fic Tracker

Taru's Fic Tracker 2025

Discord

We have a blast on Discord. From general chatter to sharing pet pics to being there for each other during the tough times to forming lasting friendships and making friendships you’d never make in a ship- or fandom-specific Discord, to asking for help ‘rolling the dice’ (pick a number between 1-10!) to choose the next fic to read, to finding some of the really challenging task fills in fandoms people might not have ever read but are willing to try, or finding fandoms someone has never read and is very tentative about stepping out of their box, but they’re being 100% supported and know they don’t need to complete the fic for it to count for the task, stepping out of their comfort zone… we’ve formed a very odd group of, if not friends, then companions (but there are definite friendships that have formed!! Just ask the people who have started watching NHL and NFL together in our off topic channel!).

In any case, our Discord is not necessary, but it is a worthy and tactical element to completing many of the tasks of this challenge. 💙

And.... without further ado....!

The 2025 Fanfic Reading Challenge! (link)

There is an info/rules page as the first sheet on the spreadsheet that should fill in any further questions you have. It also has more contact info than just this page if you have any further questions and perhaps need a more immediate answer for your needs.

*Occasionally you will run into something that looks like an error, and it may in fact be one! Let us know if you see it. It's hard not to make a mistake on as large a spreadsheet as this.*

Please, first of all, have fun and just read fanfiction that you enjoy! I (Juulna) did that last year and didn't even come close to completing the entire challenge, and I still had a blast because I was enjoying what I was reading and rereading. Others took the challenge right to the completed end. Others forgot about it halfway through but still had fun, and some even went back and filled in the sheet for a really good showing! The challenge is what you make of it, what you want from it. So... just have fun. Read fic. Smile. Enjoy. :)

Second of all... well, we would love if you signal boost this post!!!!

Third of all, we do have our pinned post that includes a link to this page and that will include a link to our Discord and all our trackers as well, including past links for memento and informative purposes.

Thank you, and a blessed 2025 to all!

[anakindoodles]

Anakin vs. Obi-Wan and moments before sudden doom

Please click for better quality!!

[astraydestiny]

NEW QUEST UNLOCKED: January Writing Month Challenge

ALLLLLLRIGHTY. ITS TIMEEEEEEEEE!

Time for January Writing Month!

Hey, i’m Kani/Kana! (I alternate between those two names) for those who don’t know me.

What most people don’t know about me, except for my lovely moots, is that I usually have a rotating schedule for my consistent writing (for my own sanity). My last writing month was November, and not it’s january! It’s pretty much like this:

January: Writing Quest

February: XP Farming (Inspo gathering/content consumption)

March: Writing Quest

April: XP Farming

May: Writing Quest

June: XP Farming

July: Writing Quest

August: XP Farming

September: Writing Quest

October: XP Farming

November: Writing Quest

December: XP Farming

Of course, you don’t have to stay within these boundaries, and you can write if you want to on the XP months! But on the Writing Quests, you HAVE to remain consistent to achieve a set goal of whatever amount of words you wish to achieve, by the end of the month,

If you want to participate with me of course, i usually do this, bc i have a BOOK TO FINISH!!!! Books plural actually, both reading and writing… And shows I wanna watch and movies i wanna watch but i just don’t feel motivated to watch them… BUT YK THATS WHY I MADE THIS SYSTEM THAT I’M ONY JUST NOW SHARING WITH THE WORLD!!

It’s very simple, and i’m sure other people pretty much came up with the same thing, just different names and stuff, but i guess the unique thing about it here is that you can get constant updates about my progress throughout the entire thing, and you can also like show ur progress thru reblogging or comment or smth i dunno ITS THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS!!!

Bc we’re motivating eachother and stuff

SO YEAH

Writing Quests can also be a lot of things, I know I listed one of them in one of the previous paragraphs but I’ll put a list of things you can do right here if ur not writing a book.

Assign a Word count to finish by the end of the month

Weekly Short Stories (1k-2k), written and edited

Analysis’s of Tales you like, and been wanting to do

Asks and requests for your own blogs

IDK PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING THAT INVOLVES WRITING TBH

A Writing Quest should also be fun by the way! So make it as fun as you can, don’t force yourself to write, write about what you like, or even just journal your thoughts! Just as long as you write and grow from the process!

Mmm that should be it. If ur interested then reblog probably idk

BUT YEAH! GL ON EVERYONE WHO SEES THIS AND IS INTERESTING I TRYING IT!

From a fellow writer,

-Kani

(Me rn bec its liek 12:30 on a school night after winter break i needa sleep istg)

[theinquisitxor]

25 in 2025

I was tagged by @e-b-reads for the 25 books you want to read in 2025. You can see how I did on my 24 in 2024 list here.

I liked the idea of color coding them like other people have done, so that's what I did for this year. Key is at the bottom!

The Books of Pellinor series by Allison Croggon (reread)

Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Hild by Nicolla Griffth

Captive Prince by CS Pacat

The Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima

The Luminaries by Elenor Catton

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Carving Shadows into Gold by Brigid Kimmerer

Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid

Oathbound by Tracey Deonn

The Listeners by Maggie Steifvater

Katabasis by RF Kaung

Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

Emily Wilde 3 by Heather Fawcett

A Dark and Drowning Tide by Alison Saft (currently reading)

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by HG Parry

The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington

Ancillary Justice series by Ann Leckie

She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker Chan

Gods of the Wyrdwood by RJ Barker

Green = books from last year's list I didn't get to

Pink = new releases I want to read this year

Blue = books on my physical tbr

Tagging anyone who is interested!

[cosmogyros]

Normally I don't plan my reading in advance, because I simply follow whenever my fancy leads me, but this challenge seems fun! 25 books I want to read in 2025 - let's go.

(I've been missing the classics recently, so this list is a bit classic-heavy. Also I ended up being unable to keep it to 25. Oops.)

Color coding:

pink = fiction

green = nonfiction

An asterisk means it's a book I already own in physical form.

As I read books on this list, I will italicize them.

1. Willa Cather - My Ántonia

2. Gabriel García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

3. Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

4. Han Kang - Human Acts

5. Geraldine Brooks - Horse

6. Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone - This Is How You Lose the Time War

7. Ruth Kinna - The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism

8. John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath

9. Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own

10. Leslie Feinberg - Stone Butch Blues

11. Mary Doria Russell - The Sparrow

12. Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen

13. Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States

14. Betty Smith - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

15. Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from the Underground

16. Upton Sinclair - The Jungle

17. Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths*

18. Olga Tokarczuk - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

19. Akwaeke Emezi - Little Rot

20. Naomi Klein - No Logo

21. Hengameh Yaghoobifarah - Ministerium der Träume

22. Kim de l'Horizon - Blutbuch

23. Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing*

24. Susanna Clarke - Piranesi

25. E. M. Forster - Maurice

26. Richard Adams - Watership Down

27. Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness

28. Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady

29. Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita

30. Frank Herbert - Dune

Additionally, I'm going to tag on a second goal list. My "currently reading" pile has become way too huge, because I have a fickle heart and tend to hop around from book to book (or, as Bertie Wooster would say, I "flit and sip" like a butterfly). So I'm aiming to finish at least five books that I already started in 2024:

1. Albert Einstein - Essays in Humanism

2. Daniela Dröscher - Lügen über meine Mutter

3. Priscilla Murolo & A. B. Chitty - From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend

4. Frantz Fanon - Black Skin, White Masks*

5. Simon Blackburn - Think: A Compelling Intro to Philosophy*

[winnie-the-monster]

My 2025 reading goal: to read all the books currently on my tbr, without adding new ones.

So….. did anyone buy that lol?

[moyazaika]

will you appear again before Christmas?🥲

YES HI!!!! WOWEE sorry for being away longer than i intended! estranged family member showed up on my front door after 18 yeARS of no contact?!?!? went to bali and lost my pasSPORT?!?!?! failed my driver's TEST!?!?!?!

#life

[here-queer-and-really-werid]

Please recommend any book to read in 2025 please

I've decided to set a New Year’s resolution/challenge – I'm going to try to read more often (or rather read at all), and I would love to hear some book suggestions/recommendations.

All suggests and generes are welcome

Not strictly for the new year

————————————————————————————————————————

Title:

Author:

Genre:

[nicogayngelo]

Books Read in 2025:

Daughters of Bronze by A.D. Rhine

“A city filled with women who fight for what they love and who laugh despite the tragedy that surrounds them daily. We may be trapped behind these walls, and our stories will surely vanish when the last of us takes her final breath. Yet neither war, nor sickness, nor enslavement can stop us from weaving our lives together. As mothers and daughters and wives. As friends. For that is what women do. It is what we have always done and will continue doing for as long as there are sad songs and warm lips to sing them.”

[bargainsleuthbooks]

📚🎧Stacking the Shelves: January 25, 2025 #BookHaul #ARCReview #LibraryLove #BannedBooks

It's time for my weekly round-up on media I've acquired, whether it be advanced reader's copies from NetGalley and Edelweiss, library borrows, or purchases. Lots on all counts! #BookReview #BookSky #BookBlogger #BannedBooks #LibraryLove #BookHaul

[durzarya]

Me: I'm 2 days behind my January tbr

The 5 books I've read: am I a joke to you

[aperiodofhistory]

20 books in 2025

I'm so satisfied with the previous reading year. Probably because I have read mostly some of my favorite genres, fantasy, history, and horror. This year I want to tackle the following books, that have sat on my TBR for some time now. But also succumb to my mood reading habits of picking up books that feel right for that time of year.

The library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

Babel by Rebecca F. Kuang

Legends & Lattes by Baldree Travis

Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World by Victoria Finlay

The Island of missing trees by Elif Shafak

Ways of being by James Bridle

The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror by various authors

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet

Shakespearean: On Life & Language in Times of Disruption by Robert McCrum

Femina by Ramírez Janina

Anything by Ava Reid

The road by Cormac McCarthy

Red rising by Pierce Brown

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Spinning silver by Naomi Novik

Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

More of Jane Austen

The bog wife, by Kay Chronister

Throne of glass series, by Sarah J. Mass

The tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte

[a-ramblinrose]

Rose's 25 Books In 2025

As always this list comes from my owned TBR and it's a mix of genres/difficulty/new or backlisted books!!! Wish me luck lovelies!

Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Nation by Terry Pratchett

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov

The Letters of Emily Dickinson

Band Sinister by K. J. Charles

The Grace of Wild Things by Heater Fawcett

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Metal From Heaven by August Clarke

Tim Drake: Robin Compendium

The Sword of Kaigen by M. L. Wang

The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal & Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee

To Shape A Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

Babel by R. F. Kuang

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb

Angel Mage by Garth Nix

The Orange by Wendy Cope

World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn

Thousand Autumns Vol. 1 by Meng Xi Shi

The Greek Plays edited by Mary Lefkowitz

The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

[fingertipsmp3]

Okay I’m adding two more resolutions for 2025. I am exclusively mood-reading books, which means no TBR and no regimented planned reading, and I am also refusing to wear anything I don’t want to wear

[songofwizardry]

things i liked in 2024

for the past few years, i've kept a running list in my notes app of media i really enjoyed over the course of the year, and last year i finally wrote it up properly and put it on tumblr, which was fun! so we're doing that again. with some vague categories, and links where possible, here we go—my 2024 media list:

words (prose, poetry, etc—book links go to storygraph):

non-essential work by Omar Sakr [poetry collection]: i did not read as much poetry as i wanted to this year, but i discovered Omar Sakr online and his work just hit me very hard. my favourite is probably on finding the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in Dante's Inferno.

the gardener's hand series by Felicia Davin [prose, fantasy trilogy]: i read a lot more books this year, and i'm very happy about that! i absolutely adored this series. i started it on a recommendation from a friend (thank you @everyoneinspaceisgay), and not only was it extremely readable, i loved the worldbuilding and the magic in particular, our main characters are so compelling, and it's just a really queer series. not just in the 'oh there's a gay relationship at the centre of this', it is very very queer. loved it. can't believe i haven't heard more about it tbh.

the adventures of amina al-sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty [prose, fantasy]: i knew i was going to love this book, because i adored the daevabad books, but god, this was good. amina is such a good protagonist, there were djinns and magic and high sea hijinks, and while a decent chunk of the reason i loved daevabad was because seeing a fantasy world filled with the islamic mythology and folklore that i grew up with made me really happy and excited, this hit that even more—amina sails the indian ocean, and that's my coastline! i grew up on the Swahili coast, my community's immigration history is shaped by the indian ocean, and i had no idea before i read the book that the indian ocean and its coastlines and trade routes would form such a major part of the story. it was excellent. i got very excited at multiple points. you should read it.

paris daillencourt is about to crumble by Alexis Hall [prose, romance]: my partner is a connoisseur of queer romance. she recommends to me a lot of queer romance, but this one has maybe been my favourite. idk what it was about it—the birmingham references, the joy that was the love interest Tariq, the intense quotability of it all (i have so many screenshots, particularly of quotes from Tanya, who is a secondary school science teacher and who was just extremely relatable to me), the nostalgia it gave me (they're disastrous just-about-twenty-year-old gays and one of them lives in, i quote, 'a house with four other students in birmingham with one bathroom and rising damp', it took me back to 2016 in a very vivid way tbh), it was just great. if you need a gay romance, you should read this one.

honourable mentions go to the two t kingfisher books i read this year (nettle and bone and a house with good bones, both excellent and creepy in a wonderful way) and bury your gays by chuck tingle, which was the perfect thing to read in the depths of summer.

video (ish):

we built a TUBE MAP out of LEGO with working trains! by Geoff Marshall [youtube video]: i don't know how to describe this other than this is a delightful bit of nerdery. so much nerdery. the lego is great, the little trains are incredible, but it's the work that goes into it and the justifications about which lines should be above and below the others that make this video incredible.

bingo - game changer season 6 episode 5 [video, dropout exclusive]: game changer just... keeps doing wild and weird and wonderful things with their format, and i don't know how they keep doing it but they do and i'm having way too much of a good time here. it was really hard to pick one episode from the most recent season to go with. this could easily have been a recommendation for deja vu or beat the buzzer instead. i guess what i'm trying to do is recommend the whole season. anyway, i loved bingo because it did something that got me into game changer to begin with—set up what feels like an innocuous game, so you know there's a twist coming, and slowly, layer by layer, reveal the twist. except this one goes places. it reminded me of some of my game changer favourites (tell us about yourself, lie detector) except boy does it take things to a wholly ridiculous level. sam reich, never stop please.

chris grace: as scarlett johansson [video, dropout exclusive]: (link goes to youtube clip from the show, which is sorta... spoilery?) i don't even know how to describe this. it's a stand-up special about racism, it's about scarlett johansson, it's a one man show, it does some absolutely incredible things with its form and format and works with the medium of dropout presents so well, it made me cry and also left me a little shell-shocked in places, it's funny, it's... look, it's a lot and it's really fucking good. i tried looking for a solid review of it to try and explain what it's like, but i didn't succeed. i think you just gotta watch this one to understand it.

rogue - doctor who season 14 episode 6 [tv show episode] - the most recent season of doctor who has just been... fun, okay. like, i think doctor who is at its best when it is not taking itself too seriously and it's a bit ridiculous and also ridiculously heartfelt. this episode was basically made for me. historical shenanigans! aliens with very specific abilities! d&d references!!! (was not expecting that and got SO excited by it.) the doctor getting overly attached to someone and then losing them promptly! emotional high stakes! banter! a+ work all around. i'm told the bridgerton gays loved it as well (my only reference for this is my partner). it was great. this is what doctor who is about, folks.

the importance of being earnest - national theatre revival [theatre]: ("salmon, this isn't video no matter how far you stretch the definition of video." look, i'm aware. idk where else to put it though, and also, it's going to be in cinemas in february and then it will be video, so i'm just ahead of the times. go with the flow.) i keep saying it feels like i've waited fifteen years to watch this exact production of earnest, and i will keep saying it because it is true. i will write up a better post about it sometime soon (promise), but this was so much fun—it was incredibly camp, it starts off with a drag interlude, it's unabashadely gay and also incredibly pretty (the sets were amazing), and it just felt like a love letter both to the text of the play and to the spirit behind it, yknow? i had an absolutely amazing time watching it, and it's one of my favourite things i've experienced this year. when it's in cinemas, you should watch it if you can.

honourable mentions go to: heartstopper season 3, for pulling absolutely zero punches this season, making me feel extremely nostalgic and a bit old, and for the side-characters of the two gay teachers that i have gotten way too fond of; the good place, which i had obviously watched all of as it aired but that i rewatched with my partner this year, and the ending is still so so so good; and to the nein hells (critical role c3 e111), which was an absolute fucking riot—chaotic and hilarious and still heartfelt, and a very good summation of why i love this ridiculous d&d show.

audio (briefly, because this list has gotten very long and out of hand):

this year i started listening to let's learn everything, which is a truly delightful sci-comm podcast (that i discovered via hearing the cast on Tom Scott's lateral). all their episodes are great commute listens (and remind me to have enthusiasm about science when i am tired which is helpful when my job is... yknow teaching science and being enthusiastic about it), but i particularly enjoyed the episode that has interviews from the Ig Nobel ceremony and the episode about epigenetics and the World Games.

i also kept listening to if books could kill which does a great job of tearing to shreds terrible airport books. i don't have any specific episode recs from this year, but if you've never listened to them before, the episode on the secret is a good place to start!

ok, this has gotten a lot longer than i intended, so i'll stop there. if you've read this far, thanks for coming on this journey with me! i've enjoyed making these lists. 2024 was really wonderful in some ways and... relentless and exhausting and very difficult in other ways. i'm hoping for a bit more time and a bit less exhaustion in 2025, and i'm going to try to keep up my reading, to write a bit more, and to hopefully watch more actual play stuff, because i really didn't watch as much of it as i wanted to this year.

let's see what 2025 brings—new critical role stuff? another season of game changer that will blow my mind again? (definitely.) more doctor who? an alecto the ninth announcement? (if we are very lucky maybe.) we shall see! happy new year, folks!