10 Books to Read in 2025 | Bookmas Day 6

0:00 Welcome back to Such Fun Read. We're back for Bookmas Day 6 and let's make another reading goal for 2025. I understand that I didn't complete pretty much any of the reading goals that I set last year, but what is the fun in being realistic and not making goals that might make things even harder? I already talked about the series that I wanted to read in 2025. I now want to pick 10 books that I plan to read in 2025. I thought about picking 25 books, but let's be real here. Let me not make it the most difficult thing for myself.

0:43 Also, these are books that I own. We'll get to the books that are released in 2025 at some point. I haven't really looked that far ahead yet. Number 1, Emma by Jane Austen. I am doing it. I will read Emma in 2025. It is happening. Hopefully, it isn't the only Jane Austen book I read in 2025, but this one is a must. Here is the summary. Emma is the story of Emma Woodhouse, a young girl from a good home that does not need the financial support of a husband and is determined not to marry. Emma however is not opposed to the idea of marriage for others and is determined to play matchmaker between several of the local citizens.

1:27 In spite of Emma's resolve not to marry, she finds herself attracted to several men throughout the book and considers the prospect of marriage. I think this might be the first time I've ever looked up the book summary for Emma. I just feel like I've always known what it was about because I loved Coolest growing up. But yeah, I think this is the first time I've ever looked at the book summary for Emma. Interesting. Number two Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. After doing the I'll get around to it later book tag, I noticed how I have the entire Wolf Hall trilogy on my shelves. Is it even called the Wolf Hall trilogy? Is it the Cromwell trilogy? I don't know. But I do know I've stopped myself from watching the TV show because I wanted to read this before doing that.

2:13 I've had the book for a while now, and it's time. Here's the summary. England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of 20 years and marry Anne Boleyn. The Pope in most of Europe opposes him. And to this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell, a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist. Astute in reading people and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile. One day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

2:59 Number three Babel by R.F. Kwong. It is possible that I will read this before 2025, but if I don't, this is a must. Just like the others. I probably should not say must for all of them. I think having them on this list already states that. I really do like R.F. Kwong though. I enjoyed both the Poppy War, I really need to finish that series, and I enjoyed Yellow Face. That book was one of my favorite books I read last year. So what's this one about? 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by Calera and Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lavelle. There he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel.

3:49 Babel is the world center for translation and more importantly, magic. Silverworking the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire's quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to pursuit of knowledge, but knowledge obeys power and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As the studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide.

4:33 Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? Now is a society called Hermes like the luxury brand or is it Hermes? Did I say Hermes? I think I said Hermes. Let's move on. Number four, Blackbird Oracle by Deborah Harkness. Another one I could pick up before the end of the year, but if I don't, it's here. It's on this list. I am excited to get back into this world and see what's been going on with Matthew and Diana. I may end up finishing my reread of the first one and then go through the entire series before jumping into this new one, but I haven't decided that yet.

5:16 Honestly, I don't even remember what this book is about. I don't even think I ever looked it up. I just saw a new book in the also series was coming out and I had to preorder it. Let's see what it's about. Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and witch and vampire geneticist, Matthew de Clermont, in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana's family line.

6:00 Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the congregation. They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family's future and answers a message from a great aunt she never knew existed. Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads, It's time you came home, Diana. On the hollow ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana. A confrontation with her family's dark past and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power is she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.

6:48 Number 5. Empire Silence by Christopher Arruccio This went viral. This book got really popular earlier this year or was it last year? It just got popular. I remember seeing they needed to rush more to print because it kept being out of stock. Is the science fiction series, I believe it is a six book series? I guess I'll find out. Here is the summary. Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galactic-spanning debut of the Sun Eaters series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy. It was not his war. The galaxy remembers him as a hero, the man who burned every last alien seal sin from the sky.

7:32 They remember him as a monster, the devil who destroyed the sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives, even the emperor himself, against imperial orders. But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier. On the wrong planet at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe starts down a path that can only end in fire. He flees his father in the future as a torturer, only to be left stranded on a strange backwater world. Forced to fight as a gladiator and navigate the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, Hadrian must fight a war he did not start. For an empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.

8:14 Number 6, Svartekrigen by M.L. Wang. I have heard great things about this author. I think this one is a standalone fantasy and I don't normally read those, so this will be interesting. I thought I guess Babel would be considered a standalone fantasy too. I think. Anyway, here's the summary. On a mountainside at the edge of the Kaganese Empire lived the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fires of the Kusunagi Peninsula have held the empire's enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name the Svartekrigen. Born into Kusagini's legendary Matsuda family, 14-year-old Momora has always known his purpose, to master his family's fighting techniques and defend his homeland.

9:03 But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain of Kagan's alleged Age of Peace, Momora realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies. Masaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Masaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.

9:45 When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire, or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores? Number 7. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Nefinegger I saw the movie. I didn't watch the TV show that came out a few years ago, though. I've heard the book is so much better than the movie. I mean, I'm not surprised. That is usually the case. This book has sat on my shelf for a while now, and it is about time that I read it. Here is a summary. Henry de Tambeau is a dashing, adventurous librarian who is at the mercy of his random time-traveling abilities.

10:29 Claire Abshire is an artist whose life moves through a natural sequential course. This is a celebrated and timeless tale of their love. Henry and Claire's passion affair is built and endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate embasked in the bonds of love. Number 8. The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanon Jeffers A number of books I have on this list are pretty big books. This one is no exception. I think I want to put bigger books on here so that I will make an effort to read them. I'm excited for this one, too. Kind of forgot I had it on my shelf, to be honest.

11:10 Let's look at the summary. An intimate yet sweeping novel that chronicles the journey of one American family from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. The great scholar W.E.B. Du Bois once wrote about the problem of race in America in what he called double consciousness, a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois' words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans, the revere choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great-grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers, Ailey carries Du Bois' problem on her shoulders.

11:53 Ailey is rooted in the north in the city but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chickaseta where her mother's family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights about for belonging that's made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma as well as the whispers of women, her mother Belle, her sister Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries. That urged Ailey to succeed in her stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors, indigenous, Black and white, and the Deep South. In doing so, Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story and the song of America itself.

12:45 Number 9 Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susanna Clark Another one that I didn't watch the TV show for because I wanted to read the book. I think this one is right up my alley. I may be in the mood for this one right now, but also I have other books I want to read so this one is going to have to wait. But I might pick this one up early at the beginning of the year. We'll see. Here is the summary. In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, most people believed magic to have long since disappeared from England until the reclusive Mr. Norell refills his powers and becomes an overnight celebrity. After practicing magician then emerges the young and daring Jonathan Strange.

13:27 He becomes Norell's pupil and the two joint forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wild, most perilous forms of magic and he soon risked sacrificing his partnership with Norell and everything else he holds dear. And the last book I have on this list at number 10. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson I know I need to complete the Mistborn trilogy, but I'm seeing all of these people so excited for the new book in this series to come out. It makes me want to read this one too and catch up. Here is the summary.

14:09 Roshir is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Hills hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into a soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter. It has been centuries since the fall of the Ten Consecrated Orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their shard blades and shard plate remain. Mystical swords ensues to farm them that transform ordinary men into near-invisible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for shard blades, wars were fought for them and won by them. One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains.

14:52 There Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable. Bright Lord Daelnor Carlin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late King, he is fascinated by an ancient text called the Way of Kings. Traveled by overpowering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to dial his own sanity. Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shalan seeks a train under an eminent scholar and a notorious heretic, Daelnor's niece, Jasna.

15:34 Though she genuinely loves learning, Shalan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasna hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war. So those are the 10 books I want to read in 2025. I'm sure there are many other books I want to read. I know there are some that I want to reread, especially since some series have a book coming out in 2025 and that makes me want to remember what happened. I'm curious if you have a book or two or more on your shelves that you have to read in 2025. Let me know. But thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss new episodes and we'll speak soon.