It’s the first Friday of 2026 and that means time for the first Let’s Talk Bookish post of the year! And I immediately go rogue as the original first topic is something I will be discussing this coming Tuesday in my top Ten Tuesday post. Said topic is Top reads in five words/sentences, and the January 6 topic for Top Ten Tuesday is Best Books I Read in 2025. So, I decided to revive a topic from January 2025 and write my 2025 reading and blogging wrap up instead.
Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted by Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Since April 2022, this meme is hosted by , Aria @ Book Nook Bits and since February 2025, Dini @ DiniPandaReads is the co-host. Let’s Talk Bookish is a meme where participants discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and share their love by visiting each other’s posts.
Reading
I had a pretty good reading year considering the number. I set my reading goal to 50 books, which is the new normal for me. I easily managed to read more than 100 books in the past, but those days are definitely over. However, I came very close this year by reading 96 books. Less than in 2024, when I somehow still managed to read 121 books at the end of the year. My reading journey was a rocky one though, because I had plenty of books disappointing and underwhelming me. This includes several of my very anticipated releases or releases I was looking forward to. The lesson I take with me into 2026 is to not anticipate books that much anymore, because I really noticed a rapid decline in quality in 2025. Books are more based on tropes to hit the TikTok popularity boxes instead of taking the time to really craft an interesting plot and ditto characters. I still managed to rate 7 books 5 stars, amongst these are 3 rereads:
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (emergency reread)
- Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
- A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas (reread)
- A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas (reread)
- Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
- For Whom the Belle Tolls by Jaysea Lynn
As I rated such a small amount of my reading material 5 stars this year, it probably wouldn’t come as a surprise for you that my average rating for the entire year is somewhat low with 3.34 stars. This is slightly lower than my final rating for 2024, which was 3.38 stars. I also had to put 7 books aside, equally as much as in 2024. I think I have a better knowledge of what I enjoy and would like to avoid in books, but I still can’t be pleased all the time. Or can I? No, I don’t think so LOL. Whereas I have selected twelve favorites you’ll be hearing all about next week, I also had some books that surprised me in another way.
When looking at the number of pages I read and the amount of hours I listened to audiobooks in 2025, these are – logically – less than in 2024. I simply read less books. However, those 96 books are across 30,216 pages and 369.42 hours of audiobooks. However, I had some trouble with finding my listening mojo this year as my favorite audiobook platform decreased their maximum listening speed to 2.0 whereas I usually listen to 2.3 for English and 2.7 for Dutch. This is such a bummer, and one I’m still sour about. It’s just to slow for an experienced and trained listener like me. For the Dutch books I found an alternative in Kobo Plus, but their English catalogue isn’t that great unfortunately (for the audiobooks, ebooks are a different story). I can’t find the books I want to listen to, which Storytel does have. I have Audible, but that’s a bit too expensive in comparison to Storytel where I am able to listen in multiple languages.
Besides mixing languages, I also mixed genres in 2025. Whereas I was truly in my romance era in 2024, I branched out and included more genres in my reading. I already read literary fiction every now and then, but in 2025 I discovered some gems in that genre too. I was still surprised to see that my top genre is once again romance, I thought I read less books in that genre. However, many books categorized under other genres also have some romance so they’re probably tagged as such. I’m planning on reading more diverse in 2026 again, and branch out even more. Although it’s just comforting to stay in your comfort zone when you want to LOL. My reading goal is set to 50 once again, let’s see how it all works out!
Blogging
Besides reading 96 books, I wrote 195 blog posts in 2025. Just like my reading journey, my blogging one was as rocky. In May I decided to move hosts as I had two blogs running on the WordPress business plan. This was turning out to be a bit ridiculous financially, so I figured hosting both on one hosting platform when you just pay for the hosting once would be a cheaper solution. As my Dutch blog is less active and gains less traffic, I decided to move that one first. That went quite smoothly, so I decided to let this one follow suit pretty soon. Well, that didn’t go smooth at all. I couldn’t blog for nearly 2 weeks and lost all my likes. It was a whole mess with posts losing their post date and so forth. Thankfully, this didn’t translate to my blogging stats getting lost. When looking at my annual statistics, it all looks pretty decent. My most popular month was November, against June as my least popular month. This is not too surprising, as I wasn’t able to blog for nearly half the month in June. I gained a total of 79.9K visitors, and 118.5K pageviews. Monster Insights seems to round it up, so I don’t know the exact number. This is a significant growth compared to 2024, although I published 6 less posts.
When looking at the demographics, my visitors came from 26 different countries, with the United States as my #1 country again. The top 5 is as follows:
- United States (21146 visitors and 26728 pageviews)
- China (6580 visitors and 6718 pageviews (not sure if I should be too happy with this though regarding it’s reputation))
- Australia (2877 visitors and 3668 pageviews)
- United Kingdom (2509 visitors and 3239 pageviews)
- India (2111 visitors and 2864 pageviews)
When looking to my referrals, I’m not too pleased. 79% Of my visitors find my blog through organic search, which is awesome, lovely. However, I have an influx of visitors who found my blog through ChatGPT and I am not pleased. If anyone knows how to prevent this, please let me know. I’m anti AI and don’t like people finding my content through an AI bot. It’s my #1 referral and I just don’t know how to feel about this. It seems like Google isn’t used anymore, and my organic search is all throughChatGPT, which I don’t classify as organic search.
My #2 referral is less surprising, as I take part in top Ten Tuesday, hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl and adding my blog to the linkup on a nearly weekly basis. So, people finding my blog through this meme is logical. What comes as a surprise though is that people find my blog through Bluesky, even though I just automatically post my content on there when publishing a blog post. I don’t ever open that platform anymore. I don’t like the app and the influx of random followers I get whom I even don’t know. Maybe I should delete my account on there, not sure yet. However, other social media platforms lead no traffic to my blog, or no significant traffic at least. So, social media isn’t good to bloggers anymore it seems.
Like 2024, book reviews are my most popular posts, even though many people see their performance on them declining. Ironically, it’s my older reviews that still perform well. My top 5 best performing blog posts mainly consist of older reviews, apart from The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods and Reckless by Lauren Roberts. Reviews are not dead guys, don’t worry. But, this makes me wonder if the chatGPT referral has something to do with this. My meme posts do not perform that well compared to these book reviews and that’s quite interesting as I gain the most traffic on Tuesday, when I participate in Top Ten Tuesday. My top posts of 2025 are:
- Book Review: Trial Of the Sun Queen by Nisha J. Tuli (5,519 views)
- Book Review: Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton (4,272 views)
- Book Review: The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods (2,612 views)
- Book Review: The Women by Kristin Hanna (2,509 views)
- Book Review: Reckless by Lauren Roberts (2,143 views)
Oh well, let’s see what 2026 will bring! I want to read 50 books, continue blogging, make a decision about my Dutch blog once again as well as my Bookstagram and what language to post in on there, find a new review format that actually works and maybe change the layout of this blog.
Okay, this post has gotten longe than expected, congratulations if you made it to the end LOL!
What was 2025 like for you in terms of reading and blogging? And what are your reading and blogging plans for 2026?
