It’s that time of year again*, when it’s traditional to post lists of the gazillion books you read last year. I always used to start the new year with the best intentions of reading more books, and end it feeling frustrated with myself that yet again I’d not managed to carve out the time. Then long covid came along, and for a long time reading has been very difficult.

Well, last year I read precisely three books (if you squint a bit), and I could not be more delighted with myself. Maybe it’s just because three is infinitely more than zero, and no doubt I’ll get greedy again before too long. But for now, the difference between Reading and Not Reading feels infinitely more important than the volume of what I read. And each book feels more precious for being one of so few, and for being so hard won.

Enchantment by Katherine May is a beautiful book, full of wisdom and grace. I finally finished it last summer, more than two years after starting. I love this woman’s writing, and I really enjoyed savouring it. Funnily enough, I find I have a better memory for the early parts of the book, which I read very slowly – sometimes a page or two at a time – than for the latter half, where I began to speed up. Or perhaps it isn’t funny at all: after all, I had a lot of time and space for the words to sink in.

Assembly by Natasha Brown took my breath away. This book has so much to say – about intergenerational trauma, race, class, capitalism, life – and it says it in so few words, chosen with such wild originality. In fact, the whole reason I picked it up was because it’s a novella, which felt more achievable for me. I even managed to attend Mark’s novella club with him to discuss it, which felt like a really joyful milestone. I’m grateful to them, not just for their insights but for giving me a reason to finish it.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin has been proof that nothing beats a good story. It’s kept me reading like neither of the others did, for all their charms. A previous version of me would probably have devoured the last chapter on New Year’s Eve just so I could add it to my tally for the year – and I won’t deny I was tempted. But I knew I’d pay for it later, and I couldn’t think of a better talisman to carry with me into the new year. I finished it a few weeks into January.

Actually, it’s not quite true that I only read three books. I’ve read dozens of children’s novels aloud to Rory at bedtimes – this past year we’ve particularly enjoyed Michael Rosen’s Uncle Gobb series, Nadia Shireen’s Grimwood books, and the Wildsmith series by Liz Flanagan. I’m not quite sure why these shouldn’t count, to be honest.

I think the good reason is that they don’t feel entirely chosen, and I want to get back to reading by, to and for myself. The bad reason is that a lot of us carry an instinctive snobbery about kids’ books, as though they are somehow not “proper” literature – even though my favourite book of all time, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, is a children’s book. (Technically, so are the Earthsea books – although for slightly older readers.) Actually, these are all brilliant books for readers of any age – funny, wise and full of heart.

I also love the way kids’ books tend to wear their politics and their values on their sleeves – and those values are often gently eco-socialist. In the last book we read, Liz Pichon’s Shoe Wars, the baddy was a tyrannical and corrupt monopoly capitalist, so obviously I was on board. The Wildsmith books had my son out and about listening to all the ways nature talks to us, and wondering aloud if maybe we were wildsmiths too. (Thank you, Liz Flanagan, for one of my favourite moments of 2025.)

Grimwood’s Rock the Vote – surely written during the general election campaign – features a weasel called Steve Nasty who is basically Nigel Farage. At the end (spoiler alert) the animals decide to ditch having a mayor altogether and essentially become an anarcho-syndicalist commune instead. I’ve rarely loved an ending more. And Michael Rosen – well, Michael Rosen is Michael Rosen, and Uncle Gobb is a transparent and absolutely hilarious cipher for Michael Gove and his joyless ideas about education.

I’ve also been reading my husband’s daily microfiction, which has been incredibly rewarding. I’ve always thought Mark was a brilliant writer: it’s one of the very first things I ever loved about him. But these past few years I feel he’s begun to write from a deeper and truer place, and it touches something deep and true in me as well. I could not be more proud of him.

As I write this, I realise he is also responsible for all three of the books I read last year: he bought me two of them, and borrowed the third from our local library. And he’s at least partly responsible for the way I’ve read them, too.

His blog on Joanna Biggs’ A Life Of One’s Own reminded me of Mark Nepo’s definition of listening, quoted by Tara Brach in a podcast on Deep Listening: “to listen is to lean in softly with the willingness to be changed by what you hear”. I wondered aloud if perhaps we needed to practice “deep reading” as well as deep listening. His response was essentially “what is reading if it’s not a form of listening?”

I don’t want to consume books any more. I want to listen to them. I want to be changed by them.

But I’m learning that this doesn’t mean I need to read everything slowly. My husband zips through books at a pace I find frankly disgusting, and he listens to them more deeply than almost anyone I know. As Earthsea has reminded me, there’s nothing quite like getting lost in a good book – and that’s hard to do when you’re only reading a page or two at a time.

As I wrote a couple of years ago, I do want to keep what I’ve learned from this illness about the value of reading – and living – slowly. But I don’t want to get overly hung up on the idea that “listening” to a book means you have to ponder each sentence for hours on end. That sounds like a surefire recipe for turning reading into a chore rather than a pleasure, and for the kind of overthinking that is the enemy of true insight. Perhaps sometimes reading fast allows us to listen with a different part of ourselves.

Equally, I don’t want to get hung up on the idea that you can only listen to a book by reading it from cover to cover. These past few years I’ve – of necessity – learned to love dipping into things. (Happily, this also gives me an excellent excuse to keep buying books which I know in my heart of hearts I’ll probably never read.)

From Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited to David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, I’ve been changed profoundly by books of which I’ve yet to read more than a page or two. I’ve sat with individual sentences or paragraphs for weeks or months at a time, their meaning unfolding like a zen koan.

At the same time, I’m aware of the dangers of taking things out of context, and I know there’s value in following a story or an argument from start to finish. As reading – like many other things – becomes gradually more open to me, I’m looking forward to doing that a little more this year.

Whatever and however you read in 2026, may you be changed by it.

* Alright, it’s not any more, but it was when I started writing this. And last week was Imbolc, and the world is still turning, so now seems like as good a time for a new year’s book post as any.