Man, time just keeps on going, doesn’t it?

Last year, I had reviewed 1300 books/170 movies/100 TV shows.

This year? I’m up to 1418 book reviews, 187 movies, and 123 seasons.

Jeeze.

Overall this year:

• Read 84 books
• Watched 16 seasons of TV
• Watched 16 movies
• Played 251 different games a total of 1807 times – 91 of them new to me
• Played 38 games on steam (25 new) with 475 new achievements!

Table of Contents

Books

Well. I didn’t read 2023 Year in Reviews|298 books… or even 196. I know that 84 books is not at all shabby. But it just feels… less.

In my defense though, I didn’t read 100+ graphic novels from the Ultimate Marvel Universe or all 50+ books of the Animorphs series, which certainly helped those years.

Next year, I hope to do better!

So what did I actually read?

• 84 total books (~4.35 days/book; 88 pages/day)

  • 92% were new, only 7 were re-reads! I’ve probably got at least one big re-read coming up next year (The Dresden Files has a new release, maybe two)
  • 17 standlones (20%) versus 67 in series; that’s a fair bit higher, both of the last wo years I read only 13% standalones

• 35 unique authors

  • 26 by Kim Harrison - All of The Hollows, which accounted for a large proportion of my audiobooks
  • 13 by Brandon Sanderson - The Stormlight Archive reread + Alcatraz for the first time
  • 7 by Ben Aaronovitch - first time through the Rivers of London

• 5 books over 1000 pages (the Stormlight Archive)

My top months were February, March, and June with 11 books each. In November, I only read 2… :\

My top subgenre was easily Urban Fantasy (with both The Hollows and Rivers of London). I did have 20 labeled as science fiction and 12 mysteries though, which is fun.

This year, I listened more than I read with 47 audiobooks, 34 ebooks, and 3 physical books. That’s a first there, usually I do more ebooks (although again, comics and animorphs).

Only 3 books I read this year were published before 2000, with none before 1990. So I should try for some older books.

I did borrow 31 books (roughly 1/3) that I read from Libby, so a big shout out to them again!

Posts in 2025 Book Reviews:

TV

Short version: I continued to (very slowly) re-watch Doctor Who, I started (somewhat more quickly) re-watching Lost with my wife, we tried Hacks (it was fine), and watched Severance (I loved it).

In summary:

• I still love Doctor Who
• Lost holds up, although it’s increasingly obvious as it goes on they didn’t have an overarching plan
• Hacks was not my sort of show
• A Man on the Inside was so silly and fun–a lot like The Good Place, which makes sense given who it’s from
• Agatha All Along was good… but honestly would have been better if it wasn’t in the MCU
• Arcane: Season 2 was insane. I’m honestly not sure if I liked season 1 better or not

Posts in 2025 TV Reviews:

Movies

A decent enough mix. I did do Barbie/heimer to start the year off, followed by (re-)watching Indiana Jones, catching up a bit on the MCU, and starting the Alien franchies. Looking back, I need to finish all of that.

Probably the stand out of the entire year?

It’s just so catchy and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. Quite the fun movie!

Posts in 2025 Movie Reviews:

Board Games

Like I said, I played 251 games a total of 1807 times. Most were still on Board Game Arena, but I still did play 128 times / 67 games in person, which is always fun.

Overall

Overall, my H-index for this year was 21! That means there are 21 games I played at least 21 times each. Among the top 5, we had:

• Welcome to the Moon - A flip and write with 8 surprisingly different maps/ways to play
• Forest Shuffle - Surprising depth for a card game with multiple roles per card and a fun theme
• Akropolis - Stacking tiles are always fun and this one has a surprising amount of depth in the scoring for not having variable scoring conditions
• Let’s Go! To Japan - Everything is slightly random, which leads to a lot of variety; plus everyone plays at the same time
• Harmonies - A cute little puzzle game about placing cubes

But hey, I do have Terraforming Mars on that list (at #8 with 28 plays), so it’s not all lighter games by any stretch.

Some standouts among the new games this year:

• The White Castle - I’m still figuring this one out! For only 9 turns, a lot happens
• Pyramido - I … did not realize this was new this year, I’ve played it 25 times already!
• Verdant - A houseplant placement game with a lot of scoring conditions
• Gnome Hollow - Making mushroom rings with tile placement
• Aquatica - A hand/tableau building underwater themed game
• Aiye - Mancala, but more so;
• Zenith - A two player game about pushing on each of 5 planets/tracks, with several ways to play each card
• Apiary - Bees IN SPACE! Another Stonemeier hit
• Archiects of Amytis - Tic tac toe, but more so
• Railroad Tiles - Mentioned in my in person section, Kickstarted and played a bunch of
• Parks (Second Edition) - I liked how the first edition did the variable track better, but it still fun to have on BGA again

Two player games

I played a bunch of two player games this year, some designed for only that count, but many more flexible. My favorites (and most played) were:

• Forest Shuffle - You can pay a lot more attention to what the other player is doing; different strategies actually work with two players
• Welcome to the Moon - Mostly single player, but the missions are shared
• Harmonies - A drafting game, so you can see what the other player is doing; still a lot of luck
• Cartographers - Really it’s a same time single player game (other than monsters)
• Zenith - Designed for two players
• Terraforming Mars - It can be more aggressive with two players and only sometimes faster
• Pyramido - Two players changes the drafting a bit; you have more strategry

Win rate / player count

This year I won 33% of the games I played.

In person

In person, my top games were:

• My Island - A legacy/campaign style game, sequel to My City
• Railroad Tiles - A sequel of sorts to Railroad Ink; this time I caught the kickstarter!
• Sprawlopolis - Solo puzzle game
• Point City - In the Point Salad/Point Galaxy family; I think this is my favorite
• Marvel Champions: The Card Game

Overall, my H-index is only 4 though, so a lot more spread out.

Steam

Top games:

• Revolution Idle - I got big into Idle games this year, with this being a major part of that–25% of my total play time, although I mostly just leave it up on another monitor–These are also huge for achievements, I got 274 of them this year (out of )
• Monster Train 2 - This one I actually played actively, so 17% of total play time is huge. 31% of achievements. It’s Monster Train but more better, which I appreciate
• Freshly Frosted - A puzzle game that I solved back in January
• Noita - Still a major favorite with 10% of my playtime
• Snakecremental - Snake, but with a skill tree? I played a huge amount… in like 2 sessions.

Best games for multiplayer:

• Stardew Valley - Obviously
• PlateUp! - It’s a co-op cooking roguelite. What’s not to love? (I wish it was a bit more tuned, but so it goes)
• MakeWay - It’s a chaotic racing game where you build up the tracks as you go and everyone (constantly) explodes. What fun!

Best roguelites:

I still love the genre. With Noita (of course), Monster Train, but also Ball X Pit (so much fun for a while, but eventually slows down), and Hades II (I need to play more of this).

Programming games:

• Neon Noodles - A Zach-like game (but not by Zach) about making very very shiny sushi
• Replicube - What if graphics card, but 3D
• Kaizen - A new Zach-like (but not actually Zachtronics? for reasons), it’s
• Shenzen I/O - Old style Zachtronics, still great fun

Puzzle games:

• Freshly Frosted - A conveyer belt game about frosting donuts
• Gentoo Rescue - A wonderful little puzzle game about penguins that I’m still part way through writing a solver for

Previous years in review