Top Twelve Tuesday ~ Best Books in 2025

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". It was created because they are particularly fond of lists. It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

This week's topic is Best Books in 2025

2025 was Jane Austen's birthday year and I participated in the #Reading Austen project. I found lots of books about Jane Austen and re-read all of her books. I could have included all of them but I thought I also need to show some of the other great books I found during the year. So, here is my Top Twelve of 2025. Just add anything by or about Jane Austen in your mind.

Adkins, Roy & Lesley "Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England: How our ancestors lived two centuries ago" (aka "Jane Austen's England) - 2013
Austen, Jane "The History of England: By a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian" - 1791

Brooks, Geraldine "Year of Wonders" - 2001
Deresiewicz, William "A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter" - 2011
Haig, Matt "The Midnight Library" - 2020
Harris, Kamala "107 Days" - 2025

Hislop, Victoria "The Figurine" - 2023
Mak, Geert "The Dream of Europe. Travels in a Troubled Continent" (NL: Grote verwachtingen. In Europa 1999-2019) - 2019

Mann, Heinrich "Professor Unrat" - The Blue Angel - 1904
Rushdie, Salman "Knife" - 2024
Takahashi, Yuta "The Chibineko Kitchen" (J: ちびねこ亭の思い出ごはん 黒猫と初恋サンドイッチ/Chibinekoteino omoidegohan kuronekoto hatsukoisandoitchi) - 2020
Worsley, Lucy "Jane Austen at Home" - 2017

📚 Happy Reading 📚

My Year in Books 2025

26,884 pages read (my count, Goodreads didn't give one this year, though it would have been worthless as they indicate a wrong one from time to time. My copy of "On the Yankee Station" had 226 pages as opposed to the 0 given by GR)

88 books read

Average book length: 314 pages

Average rating: 3.6

I am still doing my usual statistics (which you will find here) but this is what Goodreads tells me. You can find links to all my books on Goodreads here or on my page under My Reading List. 

Six Degrees of Separation ~ Wide Sargasso Sea

 Rhys, Jean
"Wide Sargasso Sea" - 2025

#6Degrees of Separation:
from Wide Sargasso Sea to The Thirteenth Tale 

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here. 

The starter book this month is a wildcard. We have to start with the book we finished our December chain with. That was "Wide Sargasso Sea" for me.

That was a lovely book to start with as it is a prequel to Jane Eyre who is a governess. The book was written by Charlotte Brontë whose sister Anne was also an author and who wrote a book about another governess, Agnes Grey. In the novel Emma by Jane Austen, there is the question of Jane Fairfax becoming a governess. The main character in Little Dorrit works as a seamstress to support her family but there is the governess, Mrs. General who is hired by her father after he becomes wealthy. The protagonist in Vanity Fair, Becky Sharp, however, is a governess. In the Thirteenth Tale, the main characters Adeline and Emmeline have a governess again.

Brontë, Charlotte "Jane Eyre" - 1847 

Brontë, Anne "Agnes Grey" - 1847
Austen, Jane "Emma" - 1816 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen)

Dickens, Charles "Little Dorrit" - 1857
Thackeray, William Makepeace "Vanity Fair, or, A Novel Without a Hero" - 1848

Setterfield, Diane "The Thirteenth Tale" - 2006

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Easy to get the connection this time, right? They are all about governesses.

📚📚📚

Spell the Month in Books ~ January 2026

Reviews from the Stacks

I found this on one of the blogs I follow, Books are the New Black who found it at One Book More. It was originally created by Reviews from the Stacks, and the idea is to spell the month using the first letter of book titles.

January:  New - interpret as you will (new releases, new to you, etc)

New. That's not normally a hard challenge but I couldn't find enough books for the letters. Still, I managed. I added some books that were new to me last year.

JANUARY

J
Worsley, Lucy "Jane Austen at Home" - 2017

Same as last year, my January book starts with Jane. No wonder, 2025 was the Jane Austen year.

This was a fabulous biography. Lucy Worsley really "visited" Jane Austen at home and accompanied her on all her visits to friends and family. It was so nice to read what she and her family, especially her sister Cassandra had been up to. 

Find more about Jane Austen here in the #Reading Jane Austen project.

A
Hammond, Richard "As You Do: Adventures With Evil, Oliver And The Vice President Of Botswana" - 2008

I have always loved Top Gear and especially Richard Hammond. The adventures the guys had in their show, they were always hilarious albeit very scary.

Here, Richard Hammond has written about his race to the North Pole with a dog-driven sled against his friends in a car - with a lot of preparation beforehand (Polar Special, also known as the Polar Challenge). And about his trip through Africa in a car that he bought right there and kept later on because he had named it (Ollie) and you cannot sell a car with a name. LOL.

N
Mason, Daniel - "North Woods" - 2023

Stories about a house that go over centuries and we get to know the inhabitants of the house. Here, we see all kinds of different people (or, in one case, even an animal) live in the house in the woods. For a long time, they grow the best apples that ever exist. How would I have loved to taste one of those Wonder apples. 

U
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Urfaust. Faust Fragment. Faust I. Faust II" (Faust) - 1772-1808 

The story is said to be the greatest work of German literature and I can well believe that. 250 years have passed in the meantime but I don't believe that there has been a single book that is as well-known around the world than this.

A
Köhlmeier, Michael "Occident" (GE: Abendland) - 2007

This book is simply amazing. A man born in 1900. He was almost as old as my maternal grandfather (born in 1899, my grandmother in 1901), so I found it fascinating for that reason alone. 

The book covers so many topics, from music at the beginning of the last century to the two world wars that raged in Europe, to the history of Portugal and Brazil. It's about the lives of just a few people, and not all of them lived through the entire century. But that's precisely what makes it so interesting. You can imagine what a person born at the beginning of the last century, like my eldest children, experienced. (Goodreads)

R
Andrew, Sally "Recipes for Love & Murder. A Tannie Maria Mystery" - 2015

The story about a newspaper columnist in South Africa who loves to cook and shares all her recipes in order to help people. Her recipes sound so great and there is even a cookbook. Unfortunately, it's only availabe in South Africa and they don't ship abroad. If one of my readers lives there or has connections, please, let me know. I'd love that book.

Anyway, Tannie Maria is a very active woman who can stand up for herself. And she has to prove that as her town is chased by an evil killer. Together with her two (female) colleagues, she hunts the hunter.

Y
Brooks, Geraldine "Year of Wonders" - 2001

This was a book about a village that struggled during the plague, that had the idea to shut themselves off from the rest of the world in order not to bring this horrible disease to others. The village existed, the people in the book were based on real people from that time. But it was still a novel.
I think the Covid-19 pandemic brought the story even closer to us.

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Happy Reading!

📚 📚 📚

Happy January!

  Happy January to all my Friends and Readers

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch
"Winter in Sicht"
"Winter is Coming"

Hanka and Frank say to this picture:

"Hanka zeigt in ihrem Bild Winter in Sicht eine Schneeeule."

"Hanka's picture Winter is Coming depicts a snowy owl." 

I guess every Harry Potter reader has a name for her. Hedwig used to be a popular name in Germany for girls my age but there were not many afterwards though it was used more often in the last 20 years, no doubt because of the famous owl.

Read more on their website here. *

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I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. And a lovely December.

* * *

Now, we are at the beginning of a new year. What is 2026 going to bring us? We should all not just hope and pray for peace on earth but try to contribute to it ourselves.

* * *

It's tough to decide my favourite book of the year. I waver back and forth between:

Hislop, Victoria "The Figurine" - 2023 and
Brooks, Geraldine "Year of Wonders" - 2001

* * *

One of the highlights was the exchange of our DIY Advent Calendar. 25 people get a number each and make 25 packets with the same content. We had a lovely meeting where we exchanged our goodies. That way, we all have a nice little surprise on every day.

I just talked to someone about our nativity scene at Christmas. I have posted a picture already in 2017 and you find it here on my blog. Obviously, as it's a huge tradition in our family, we have added to it over the year and it looks like this in the meantime:

* * *

* You can also have a look under my labels Artist: Frank Koebsch and Artist: Hanka Koebsch where you can find all my posts about the two artists. 

☃️ I wish you all a very Happy January! ☃️

Silvester! - Happy New Year!!!

 Happy New Year to all my Friends and Readers

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch
"Schwertlilien in Blau und Violett"
"Irises in Blue and Violet"

Frank says to this picture:
"Die Idee für das Aquarell Schwertlilien in Blau und Violett geht auf einem Ausflug in unserem Dänemark Urlaub zurück.
Im Juni kann man in vielen Gärten, Park und auch so manchem Wegrand Schwertlinien (Iris) bewundern. Sie haben majestätische Blüten in ganz unterschiedlichen Farben."

"The idea for the watercolour Irises in Blue and Violet originated during a trip to Denmark on our holidays.
In June, you can admire irises in many gardens, parks, and along roadsides. They have majestic blossoms in a wide variety of colours." 

Read more on their website here. *

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. 

* * *

Let me introduce you to the word for New Year's Eve in German:
Silvester!

The association of the end of the year with that name comes from the word Forest man, from Latin *silva*, meaning forest, and  dates back to 1582. At that time, the Gregorian calendar reform moved the last day of the year to the anniversary of the death of Sylvester I († December 31, 335). And so, that name stuck, not only in German but also in other languages, especially in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

In Low German, we say: Ooldjahrsavend. This means the evening of the old year.

* * *

There is a lot of superstition about this time of the year. I just saw this joke on the internet: One of my grandmothers always told me I should not go into the new year with dirty laundry. My other grandmother said it is unlucky when you wash "between the years".

And that is the last info about it. From Christmas to New Year, we live between the years, the old one is as good as over, the new one has not yet begun. Do you have those sayings in your languages?

* * *

I wish everyone a happy new year with the words of a wise woman:

"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right." Oprah Winfrey

* * *

* You can also have a look under my labels Artist: Frank Koebsch and Artist: Hanka Koebsch where you can find all my posts about the two artists.

* * *

🕛 I wish you all a Happy New Year! 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣6️⃣ 🕛

Bennett, Brit "The Vanishing Half" - 2020

Bennett, Brit "The Vanishing Half" - 2020 

"You can escape a town, but you cannot escape blood …"

I wasn't too sure about this book when I first saw it. It was a present by one of my sons and they usually know what I would like. This one won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2021 (and several other book prizes), and they are usually quite good. But the cover. Too pink, too "sweet" for my usual liking. And then the mentioned hymns of praise by authors whose books I haven't enjoyed much. Not a good outlook.

And the beginning was a little like that. Too many stereotypes. But the story keeps growing until, in the end, we get a pretty decent book about the life or women, the problems with racism, bringing up children, etc.

Is this going to be my favourite book of the year or even the month. No.

Will I read another book by the author? Probably also not. There are far better authors around. I saw her compared to Toni Morrison. In my opinion, the only things they have in common is that they are women, their skin colour and they published books.

From the back cover:

"Stella and Desiree are identical twins, growing up together in a small, Southern black community. Until, at age sixteen, they run away…

Years later, everything about their lives is different: their families, communities and racial identities. One sister lives with her black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her husband knows nothing of her past. Still, separated by many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen in the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?"