First Top 10 Tuesday post of 2026! Happy New Year, everyone!!!
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt has us look at our best books of 2025, and I am eager to see what everyone has to share!
My own favorites are listed below, and reviews shared earlier by me HERE. My reading list is still heavier on the historical fantasy fiction side, but I am glad I managed to pick up on non-fiction reads as well.
So, which were your best books of 2025? Do share in the comments!
Happy New Year 2026!
Lots of watches this past year 2025, and here’s a time capsule of everything good that I binged on.
Standout watch of the year. This movie is a spellbinding visual feast. To think it is based on a book written by 20-year old Mary Shelley during a writing contest among friends in 1818! This story remains relevant for modern times, as genius scientific inventions come perilously close to upending longstanding concepts of humanity… and you wonder, at what cost? Where are we heading towards?
Joan of Arc is a fascinating historical figure, so I jumped to watch this French silent film, which has been restored after great damage to the original reel and is in public domain. Yes, I know, silent films are difficult to watch, especially when superstition and religion are added to the mix. But seriously, the acting by Renée Jeanne Falconetti is phenomenal. She does not need words, her facial expressions of the solemn, devout, hurting, doubting Joan convey it all. When they burn her at the stake near the end, it is an electrifying, goosebump-raising, horrifying moment that will bring tears to your eyes. An underrated masterpiece.
Ralph Fiennes has been my favorite actor ever since I saw him in The Constant Gardener and he shines in Conclave too. The election of the next Pope is a grand but top-secret affair, and now we look within to see how it all plays out. But what if the former Pope had been murdered? Fiennes, playing caretaker of the Papal elections, has a difficult task indeed. I am not particularly fond of the resolution, but I know I was glued to the screen throughout.
When the world is going grim, you take refuge in the pieces of awe and marvel around you. Sharing some art, photography and music to click for.
{Disclaimer: None of the links or images shared here belong to me in any way, and no copyright infringement or commercialization is intended by sharing them here for fair use purposes.}
[1] Feast on the photos of the Earth’s most stunning landscapes for the 2025 International Landscape Photographer of the Year contest. In case you have trouble accessing the official website, also try The Atlantic and My Modern Met. I could not take my eyes off this haunting landscape photograph from New Mexico by Karol Nienartowicz.
Name(s): Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy
Author: Ann Leckie
Publisher: Orbit Books
Cover Art: John Harris
Awards: Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction Association, Arthur C. Clarke, Locus etc. etc.
Audiobooks: Recorded Books (Book 1); Hachette Audio UK (Book 2)
Ancillary Justice had (IIRC) won almost every award the SFF genre had to offer, with good reason. It’s no easy feat, world-building on this level, with a character of this level of feel-good integrity and grit, and a thrilling, convoluted, galvanizing plotline to boot. Think Star Wars, combine it with Inception, Artificial Intelligence tropes and some comedic elements, and you will still fall short of Ancillary Justice. I can give the book(s) no higher praise. Till date, Ancillary Justice is definitely one of my favorite SciFi books.
The books are set in Imperial Radch, a highly advanced technology militaristic colonial empire which has conquered and rules most of interplanetary space. The first book, Ancillary Justice, tells us how Breq used to be a part of a sentient artificial intelligence/ ship (imagine a supercomputer hacked into pieces but still functioning, if you will) of the Radch empire, but has now been sundered and seeks revenge against the perpetrator.
What a strange and mesmerizing tale! Gilling has incorporated elements of folk legend, superstition, horror, The Gothic, complex mythology and epic knight quests, and made it into a completely new and unique genre of its own.
The simplest description: There is an abbey at the top of a mountain, where people visit for answers from the gods. A bunch of diviners (think: oracles) offer their interpretations of the signs they read. But then many of these diviners disappear, and the last one standing, “Number Six” (think, Brienne of Tarth) decides to find out what’s happening. Her allies are a rather insecure boy-king and his band of knights, who may or may not believe in the gods or the diviners’ great gifts.
Some parts of the story, especially early on, seem a little implausible, and you do have to suspend disbelief. But it’s a small price to pay, for a very rewarding plotline overall. The characters, all of them, are very well written, each one with a distinct voice. And that ending is something you will never see coming, and yet, it couldn’t have ended any other way.
I read it once, and then I went back and read it all over again. It’s that good. I was a huge fan of Gillig’s Shepherd King duology in 2023, and The Knight and the Moth is no different.
Recommended for fans of: The Gothic, Cozy Horror, Gargoyles, Complex mythology systems, Epic knight quests/ Arthurian adventures, Medieval fare, Dark academia, Folktales, Brienne of Tarth, Oracles/ Divination stories, Darkangel Trilogy, House of Salt & Sorrows, Naomi Novik’s work, The Familiar, etc. etc. etc.
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt is to recall profound/ witty/ [insert your chosen adjective] things that book characters have said. It made me think of quotes that have seemed miraculous to me, full of insight and capable of bringing great healing. I call them “talisman” quotes.
“When someone who I have given a great deal to
And who has been a source of great hope
Betrays and insults me,
May I regard him as a great sacred friend.”
~ Shantideva (as quoted in The Anger Diet by Brenda Shoshanna)
“These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, We Are the Builders of Our Fortunes: Success through Self-Reliance
A clock to perhaps remind me that it’s time to get back to the blogging time capsule, cough up at least one post a month. So here I am, with a monthly recap :: some reviews of the hits and misses for February 2025.
First, music share — I am totally obsessed with this song. If anyone has any listen-alikes, please do share!
Animation retelling of Norse mythology, and how the Norse gods came to an end. Only Season 1 is out so far, so fair warning for cliffhanger. (Warning also that this is NOT family friendly.)
This show is absolutely brilliant in plot and execution, the dialogue is tight and spell-binding. Thor is this hammer-wielding, jealous, spoilt, cruel, self-destructive, hateful THING. But his grand time is coming to an end (hopefully) when Sigrid decides to take revenge for the murder of her clan at Thor’s hands. On her wedding, no less.
Can a mortal defeat Thor, especially when all the other gods are rallying behind Thor? The real lynchpin of the show is Loki, Thor’s underestimated, reviled brother, in whose hands rests the fate of the Norse gods. Watch for episode 5, where a bitter Loki describes himself as the ultimate scapegoat for everybody else. This show is so good!
It’s time to list our top 10 reads of 2024 (and download massive TBR reclists, of course). Not much of reading this year, but I would not have missed this Top 10 Tuesday theme for the world!
I have not been a great fan or follower of the Grishaverse, so was hesitant in picking this up. But what a marvelous story this turned out to be. We peer into the ages of 16th century when anti-semitism was rife. Luzia is desperately trying to escape her confined pitiful life with her displays of magical craft… but soon ends up getting embroiled in a larger political net. Everything in this book was so impressive – the Spanish Golden Age/ Renaissance feel, the worldbuilding, the writing, the prose, the characterizations. Aaaaand, it is a standalone. If you’ve liked Mistress of the Art of Death, you’ll love this one too.
I am ready to write bad angsty poetry on my never-ending reading/ blogging slump! Still, somehow, pushing myself to do this mid-year 2024 blogpost on stuff I have liked till now.
Let’s all pledge to move out of Slump Valley! And just in case these recs reach you, hope you’ll like some of these.
I have not been a great fan or follower of the Grishaverse, so was hesitant in picking this up. But what a marvelous story this turned out to be. We peer into the ages of 16th century when anti-semitism was rife. Luzia is desperately trying to escape her confined pitiful life with her displays of magical craft… but soon ends up getting embroiled in a larger political net. Everything in this book was so impressive – the Spanish Golden Age/ Renaissance feel, the worldbuilding, the writing, the prose, the characterizations. Aaaaand, it is a standalone. If you’ve liked Mistress of the Art of Death, you’ll love this one too.
Top 10 zippy reads? I am all for it these days – and that’s the theme for this week’s Top 10 Tuesday. Here are my recs, with equally zippy blurbs!
The Throme of the Erril of Sherill by Patricia A. McKillip
Tropes: Knight quests, Riddles, Puns, Folktales
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
Tropes: Snarky, Retelling, The Odyssey, Ulysses hero-not-hero
Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente
Tropes: Native American, Retelling, Snow White, Wild West
Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa
Tropes: Anthology, Japanese folklore, Dark, Compassionate
Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
Tropes: Anthology, Science-Fiction, Bizarre, Quirky Horror
Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West
Tropes: Essays, ROFL Funny, Old blockbuster movies, Punchlines
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Terror
Tropes: Surreal, Otherwordly, Lurid, Anthology, Poetic
How the World Became Quiet by Rachel Swirsky
Tropes: Anthology, Science-Fiction, AI & Identity Crisis, Evolution
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Tropes: Graphic Novel, Poetic, Feel-Good, Found Families
Princess Floralinda & the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir
Tropes: Snarky, 40-floor fall, Coming of Age, Unexpected friends
So, do any of our choices match? Do you have any zippy read recs? Let’s chat!