The best novel I read this year was probably Lorna Doone, by R.D. Blackmore, though I also really enjoyed Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott. I hadn’t read either of them before.
I achieved a major goal for the year: reading an English translation of the hugely long classic Chinese novel, Water Margin, also known as Outlaws of the Marsh.
See below for a complete list, book cover thumbnails, and thoughts on the quantity, length, format, and content of the books I read in 2025.
Total quantity
In 2025 I read 38 books. My average since 1999 is 80/year, so this seems like really not a lot. (Still better than 2023, my first year in China, when I only read 27 books.)
Maximum Length and Average Length
The longest book of the year 2025 was Outlaws of the Marsh, by Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong, translated by Sidney Shapiro, if you count the whole thing as one book even though it’s four volumes. The pages are numbered continuously: the last page is 2480.
The average book length over the whole year of 2025 was 352 pages.
Format
I bought a pile of books in the US in December 2023, and even though I left maybe half of them in the US, I STILL haven’t been able to finish the ones I brought back with me to China. Partly that’s because I was reading the Chinese behemoth Outlaws of the Marsh, but partly it’s probably because ebooks are just so much more convenient. It may also be partly because I started reading a really thick book that turned out to be not as interesting as I hoped, and that blocked me from reading other printed books for a while. Now it’s just blocking itself I guess.
Printed books: 8 titles (11 volumes, counting Outlaws volumes separately)
Ebooks: 27 total, comprising 3 ebooks I bought and 24 free public domain ebooks.
Content
28 of the books were fiction and 10 were nonfiction. Categorized complete list of books read in 2025 follows below.
English and American classic fiction
- Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster (okay, this is non-fiction…)
- Maurice by E.M. Forster
- A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
- Howard’s End by E.M. Forster
- Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
- North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
- Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
- The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
- Rob Roy by Walter Scott
- The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Triplanetary (Lensmen 1) by E.E. Smith
Other classic fiction
- Chinese classic: Outlaws of the Marsh by Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong, translated by Sidney Shapiro
- French classic: Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, translated by Frederick Amadeus Malleson
Nonfiction
- Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
- Being Online by Jian Wang
- We Who Wrestle With God by Jordan Peterson
- Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are by Kevin J. Mitchell
- The Consciousness Instinct by Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Mind Matters by Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Entwined Lives by Nancy L. Segal
- Neurotribes by Steve Silberman
- A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols by Wolfram Eberhard
All together now!
That’s it for 2025!
