Well, shockingly I am here with my third 2025 reading goals update. (Albeit a couple of days early, please excuse that…) This has been my hardest year ever with work, and the last three months have been the hardest I’ve ever had in my 10+ years of working. While I did still read a fair amount, I do wish I had had the mental capacity to read more. I gravitated towards the authors, topics, and genres that I knew I would enjoy. In any case, I did read some spectacular new books, you can find their covers featured throughout. Let’s get into 2025 Reading Goals: Update 3!
2025 Reading Goals- Update 3
Thankfully, this summer was a big summer for eARCs and physical ARCs. Several publishers and authors have been incredibly kind to grant me advanced copies, and I have many, many books to recommend to everyone. With stress, I was just focusing on reading period and less on specific goals, but that happens. I will be happy with the fact that I am still reading and that I can get back to the goals going forward!
Read 2 Non-Fiction Books Written by Women per Month
If I am doing nothing else, it is promoting the research and writing of women! It is 2025 and in many, many, many genres, books written by women are still in the very small minority. And I still keep seeing people on social media saying “I don’t look at authors, I read what I want to read- a good book is a good book”. And to that I say, that attitude only further supports the status quo, but it in affecting female authors, BIPOC authors, LGBTQ+ authors. It also makes me sad that people think seeking out female authors (or any other underrepresented group) is difficult and/or a waste of time.
Here are my July, August, and September non-fiction reads!
July- 4: The Edwardians: Age of Elegance, Kathryn Jones; Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women, Elizabeth Kerri Mahon; The Last Empress of France: The Rebellious Life of Eugenie de Montijo, Petie Kladstrup, Evelyne Resnik; From Handbags to Hand Grenades, Kathryn West; When Women Rules the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe, Maureen Quilligan
August- 8: Captive Queen: The Decrypted History of Mary, Queen of Scots, Jade Scott; Cosy: The British Act of Comfort, Laura Weir; Looking for Anne of Green Gables: The Story of LM Montgomery and Her Literary Classic, Irene Gammel; Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, Rebecca Romney; The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York, Anne de Courcy; Leftover in China: The Women Shaping the World’s Next Superpower, Roseann Lake; Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Legacy, Devoney Looser; The Book Lover’s Guide to London, Sarah Milne
September- 3: Marie Antoinette: Teen Queen to Guillotine, Melanie Burrows; Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything, Colette Shade; Scottish Queens: 1034-1714, Rosalind K. Marshall
Read 80% Books Written by Women- 88% (39/44)
Because I don’t think that I could rewrite this as succinctly or directly, my original motivation for this overall goal:
I have seen many, many people on social media say that they do not pay attention to the gender of the author when choosing books. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that attitude tends to reinforce traditional gender and race focuses in the publishing world. It is 2025, and we can all be responsible readers.
September/October has been/will be difficult maintaining the 80% over both months. Due to a few pre-orders and ARCs, plus library books coming through, I am on the cusp for September and October looks to be the same. Given that I am absolutely maintaining my goal over the year, I am still happy with my progress. However, I am still reminded of how few female authors are published in so many genres, and how difficult it is to get their books.
75% of Books Read from Library, NetGalley, Spotify, or owned for 1+ year- 81% (36/44)
This goal still remains to hopefully preserve my budget, and I’ve stuck to it thus far. I have used credits for most of the new books/audiobooks, so my budget is on track. As my library now has Hoopla again, I’m also able to get more books and audiobooks from the library. However, Hoopla has also been flooded with AI slop since I last used it, and searching it is very tedious. I am hoping to put a bit more work into Hoopla to make it more usable for me.
Read 5 Books from “New” Areas of History
Although my goal is finished, I did not intend to abandon it- however, I inadvertently did over the summer. Because of the aforementioned stress, I was really sticking to the genres that I know I will enjoy. And because of that, I read a lot of literary history. I’m not entirely upset about the pause, as I found what I think are my two favourite books of the year (I will let you guess) but I hope to focus on it once again in the last quarter of the year.
- Hidden Histories of the Viking Age, Eleanor Barraclough (Viking history)
- Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures, Katherine Rundell (Environmental history)
- Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt, Barbara Mertz (Egyptian history)
- The Case of the Married Woman: Caroline Norton: A 19th Century Heroine Who Wanted Justice for Women, Antonia Fraser (Legal history)
- City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris, Holly Tucker (Crime history)
What was your favourite book of the summer this year?
Cheers,
The Historian
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