Books I Read in 2025
Contents
- The Empress’s Blue (Kōgō no Midori)
- Is Lifelong Employment Possible? (Einen Koyō wa Kanō deshō ka)
- The White Book (Subete no, Shiroi Mono-tachi no)
- Enryobukai Utatane (A Modest Little Nap)
- Can You Love a Scar? (Kizu o Aiseruka)
- The More I Knit, the More I Became Myself (Ameba Amu Hodo Watashi wa Watashi ni Natte Itta)
- Recording Makes Reading More Fun
This post was automatically translated by AI from the Japanese original. Some photos and screenshots show Japanese text.
This year I aimed to read 100 books, so I set aside a lot of time for reading.
In the end I read about 80 books, so here are the ones I loved.
The Empress’s Blue (Kōgō no Midori)
I bought it because the cover caught my eye. I thought it would be a fight over the king’s favor in a place like the Ōoku, the shogun’s inner palace, but the story took a turn I never imagined, and I loved how the mysteries kept unfolding in the second half.
Afterward I read another book by Chisato Abe, “Karasu ni Hitoe wa Niawanai” (A Crow Doesn’t Suit a Single-Layer Kimono).
I couldn’t predict where that one was going either and it was fun, but I preferred the world and story of The Empress’s Blue.
Is Lifelong Employment Possible? (Einen Koyō wa Kanō deshō ka)
A heartwarming romance in another world 🥰
The manga was so good that I ended up reading the original novel too.
↓ In the manga, the food looks delicious and the art is beautiful!
The original lets you enjoy the wizard teacher’s feelings and the finer details of the situations.
The White Book (Subete no, Shiroi Mono-tachi no)
A book that puts you in a strange state as you read.
It felt like my own hazy feelings, the ones that haven’t turned into words yet, were resonating with it.
It was less about savoring a story and more like savoring poetry.
Enryobukai Utatane (A Modest Little Nap)
This is where I started getting into essays.
It’s amazing that someone can cut out a slice of everyday life and make other people enjoy reading it. Even if I had the same experience, I’m sure I couldn’t express it this skillfully.
Can You Love a Scar? (Kizu o Aiseruka)
These are essays by a psychiatrist, and they are full of compassion.
I was hooked from the very first piece, about how a child can only watch what happens around them and is a painfully aware witness. Yes, that was me too.
I remembered how I felt as a powerless child who wanted to help my parents.
If I had been older, could I have changed something? Would I have been able to?
Even as adults, what we can do is limited. Still, the book taught me that simply watching has value in itself, and I feel like it healed the child I used to be.
The More I Knit, the More I Became Myself (Ameba Amu Hodo Watashi wa Watashi ni Natte Itta)
I flipped through it and found this line near the beginning: “Knitting and writing are alike.” I already loved that sensibility, so I bought the book.
My favorite story is the one where she tries smoking the cigarettes of a man she likes because she wants to know him better.
When I finished it, I felt warm inside, and I thought I’d like to look at the world and live like that too.
Recording Makes Reading More Fun
At first I wrote on reading cards, but then I started using an app called Cat’s Library.
The Cat’s Library screen
The cat is so cute. Every time you finish a book, it goes onto the bookshelf.
It’s easy because it can pull in author information from the title. The app also organizes books on three shelves (want to read, reading, and read), and since the covers line up as photos, the more you keep going, the more of a sense of accomplishment you get ✨
Related post:
How I Keep a Reading Log in Obsidian: Book Notes and a Database
