And then, there's a bearded fetus.

I did fairly minimal reading after January by my standards, at least of books, and wrote a grand total of two reviews. This is mostly because I became obsessed with the Silmarillion back in February and so fanfic took over most of my reading time this year; having plowed through A Lot of what I was interested in, now, I hope I will read more books in 2026!

Here is the list, rereads in italics and books recorded the first time I finished them.

January

1. The March North – Graydon Saunders
2. Briardark – S.A. Harian
3. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
4. A Succession of Bad Days – Graydon Saunders
5. Safely You Deliver – Graydon Saunders
6. The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World – Adrienne Mayor [nonfiction]
7. Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History From Antiquity to the Present – Michael Bailey [nonfiction]
8. Alchemy of Fire – Gillian Bradshaw
9. Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Empire – Patricia Blessing [nonfiction]
10. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire – David Cannadine [nonfiction]
11. Under One Banner – Graydon Saunders
12. A Mist of Grit and Splinters – Graydon Saunders
13. Satan the Heretic: The Birth of Demonology in the Medieval West – Alain Boureau, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan [nonfiction]
14. God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200-1500 – Ahmet T. Karamustafa [nonfiction]
15. The Bearkeeper's Daughter – Gillian Bradshaw
16. The First Capital of the Ottoman Empire: The Religious, Architectural, and Social History of Bursa - Suna Çağaptay [nonfiction]
17. A Desolation Called Peace – Arkady Martine
18. The Blue Castle – L.M. Montgomery
19. Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone) – Sam Wineburg [nonfiction]

February

20. On Violence – Hannah Arendt [nonfiction]
21. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed – Eric Cline [nonfiction]
22. Waywarden – S.A. Harian
23. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 – Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham [nonfiction]

March

24. Bonds of Blood: Gender, Lifestyle and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture – Caroline Dodds Pennock [nonfiction]
25. Irreverant Persia: Invective, Satirical and Burlesque Poetry From the Origins to the Timurid Period (10th to 15th Centuries) – Riccardo Zipoli [nonfiction]
26. The Silmarillion – J.R.R. Tolkien

April

27. The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien
28. The Development of Modern Agriculture: British Farming since 1931 – John Martin [nonfiction]


June

29. Ottoman Plovdiv: Space, Architecture, and Population (14th-17th Centuries) – Grigor Boykov [nonfiction]
30. The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien

July

31. Heir to the Empire – Timothy Zahn
32. Diavola – Jennifer Thorne
33. You Dreamed of Empires - Álvaro Enrigue
34. Sword at Sunset – Rosemary Sutcliff
35. Dark Force Rising – Timothy Zahn
36. Rose/House – Arkady Martine [novella]
37. Christianity in Fifteenth-Century Iraq – Thomas Carlson [nonfiction]
38. The Last Command – Timothy Zahn

August

39. Stone Yard Devotional – Charlotte Wood
40. The Emergence of the English – Susan Oosthuizen [nonfiction]

September

41. The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety: Sufis and the Dissemination of Islam in Medieval Palestine – Daphna Ephrat [nonfiction]

November

43. A Palace Near the Wind – Ai Jiang
44. Render unto the Sultan: Power, Authority, and the Greek Orthodox Church in the early Ottoman centuries – Tom Papademetriou [nonfiction]
44. The September House – Carissa Orlando
45. Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction – Timothy Gowers [nonfiction]
46. Sources and Studies on the Ottoman Black Sea, vol. I, The Customs Register of Caffa, 1487-1490 – Halil Inalcik [nonfiction]
47. A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700 – Dina Le Gall [nonfiction]
48. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – Annie Dillard [nonfiction]
49. Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity – Lauren Caldwell [nonfiction]
50. The Great Seljuk Empire – A.C.S. Peacock [nonfiction]

December

51. Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period – eds. Kurt Franz & Wolfgang Holzwarth [nonfiction anthology]
52. The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will be Nature’s Salvation – Fred Pearce [nonfiction]
53. Ancillary Justice – Ann Leckie