How do you feel about your reading in 2025? A look back at the year in books and reading, and a look ahead at what's coming in 2026

Send us Fan Mail We're back with our annual year-end reading round up. Join us as we talk about our year in reading, our favorite books of 2025, the big stories in the world of books and publishing (probably not a spoiler: AI), and what we're looking forward to reading in 2026.  We also talk about the pros and cons of different reading tracking apps and audiobook listening apps, how reading tastes can change over time, and how culling a TBR can feel just as cathartic as physically de-cluttering your life. This annual reflection has become one our favorite conversations to have! We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. ----------------------- Books we talk about in this episode:  Our favorite books of 2025: Robin Hobb! Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook Tom Lake by Anne Patchett (read by Meryl Streep) A Lady's Guide to Scandal by Sophie Irwin The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak Already published books we want to read in 2026: All That Life Can Afford by Emily Everett  Murder for Miss Hortense by Mel Pennet  Is A River Alive by Robert MacFarlane The Overstory by Richard Powers Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney  The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon  The Correspondent by Virgina Evans  I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman  Lifeform by Jenny Slate  The God of the Woods by Liz Moore Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry  Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmare’s in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao  Moby Dick by Herman Melville The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin Books being published in 2026 we want to read: The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (Feb) The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer (April) American Fantasy by Emma Straub (April) The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez (March) Land by Maggie O'Farrell (June) Whistler by Ann Patchett (June) Dead Beat by Leigh Bardugo (September) -----------------------  Sources  Anthropic to pay authors $1.5B to settle lawsuit over pirated chatbot training material: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/g-s1-87367/anthropic-authors-settlement-pirated-chatbot-training-material Bone, J. K., Bu, F., Sonke, J. K., & Fancourt, D. (2025). The decline in reading for pleasure over 20 years of the American Time Use Survey. iScience, 28(9), https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)01549-4 Support the show -----------------------  Intro and outro music: "The Chase," by Aves. Support us! If you liked this episode, please consider becoming a monthly supporter of the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2235482/support.  It also really helps us reach more listeners if you leave us a rating and/or review, especially on Apple Podcasts.  Reach out! Do you have thoughts, questions, or ideas for future episodes? Email us at [email protected]. To learn more about the podcast, visit our website at allbooksaloudpod.com. If you'd like to see more bookish content from Martha & Elizabeth, follow us on Instagram and TikTok @allbooksaloudpod. Read on!