Monthly Wrap Up December 2025

By Leah's Books on January 2, 2026 • ( Leave a comment )

Wow, 2025 felt like it was the longest year ever, and I am not sad that it’s over. It was a year of big changes for me, and this year is going to include some more changes, hopefully one of those is going to be a huge one. Currently, I’m still working on trying to restructure my schedule to accommodate my mother and her needs. Between the two of us, we have a lot of appointments—thanks chronic health issues. It’s been a little difficult to juggle helping my mom and working on my blog and other activities, but we’re finding our stride.

Lately, I’ve been bringing my laptop out to the living room, so that my mom can easily get my attention if she needs me. In addition, it lets me get some natural sunlight (my room doesn’t get much sun) which should help me readjust my circadian rhythm. Insomnia and severe fatigue has made it hard to function, which explains why my December reading was a lot less than usual, and why I haven’t been posting regularly.

A new month always makes me want to incorporate a new habit into my routine, and I plan to take advantage of the new year to implement some things that I’ve wanted to do for a long time but haven’t been able to. These aren’t huge things, but they can make a big impact on my physical and mental health. I don’t like the idea of making resolutions, but there are a few things that I want to focus on this year—practicing CBT techniques to manage my insomnia (it’s supposed to really be helpful), taking care of my body and mind, making more of an effort to reach out to my friends and loved ones, getting more organized, and focusing on learning something new.

Most of these focus areas are things that I’ve started but haven’t made time to continue. I also got the idea from another blogger to track where the books I read are set, and she was kind enough to include instructions on how to create a map to track my reading. If you want to check it out and learn how to create your own visual representation of your reading on a world map, check out the blog from Read Bake Create here.

Although I didn’t start intentionally reading books from all around the world, I thought it would be cool to learn more about other countries, and it was. In fact, it was so interesting that I specifically started searching out reads from countries around the world, and I plan to continue doing this in 2026. Hopefully I can manage to read a book from every single country around the world. In 2025, I managed to read books set in Here is my 2025 map that shows all the places I traveled to through books:

As you can see from the map above, I read books set on all 7 continents, and read books from each continent, even if I didn’t get to each country. Over the course of the year, I read books set in 48 different countries (including Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and England rather than the UK overall, and Gaza).

In December, Mom and I made it a habit to sit down and watch one episode of a show after dinner. We finished watching Kugel, and started watching a really awesome new show called Red Lines. It’s in Hebrew with English subtitles, and it’s all about a woman who works as an attorney and police officer. We finished the first season and started the second, but now we have to wait for a new episode to be released each week. These shows are available through a really inexpensive streaming service called Izzy that focuses on Israeli shows. It’s also a good way for me to practice my Hebrew, since I’ve been trying to learn the language.

December wasn’t my best reading month, but it was a really busy month—family holidays, outings, appointments, and catching up on rest have been taking up a lot of my time. However, part of my unwinding routine before bedtime involves listening to relaxing music and setting aside at least half an hour for reading without being disturbed. As far as the reading I did in December, I focused mainly on ARCs and got caught up on my NetGalley ARCs, and now have to buckle down and get through my publisher ARCs. I also snuck in some reads that weren’t ARCs, to learn more about the world and experience translated reads.

I’m aiming to keep the momentum going in 2026, and getting a handle on my past due ARCs in addition to caring for my own health and that of my mother. It involves a lot of coordination with one of my brothers, and I actually realized that it’s helping us feel closer to each other—a newer feeling since he’s my oldest brother and is 17 years older than me. I’ve always been close to his sons, but it’s really nice to feel a bond with my siblings as well.

Here’s some of my December highlights:

My reading took me to Detroit, Michigan; Baghdad, Iraq; Bombay (Mumbai), India; Gwytherin, Wales; Shattuck, NY; Alabama; central Oregon; and rural Cornwall, UK.
More traffic has been heading to my blog, which is great news for me. I broke a new record for monthly views (9.9k!), and left my previous record of 6.7k in the dust.
Chanukah was laid back and enjoyable—everyone came here and we had a good time all together. Mom sent me to the liquor store to buy some Bailey’s and I couldn’t resist the bottle of RumChata Peppermint Bark to have at the holiday party. The RumChata wasn’t as strong, but it tasted so good that we all finished the bottle, which has never happened as long as I can remember.
Hazel, my rescue pup, is 2 years old now, and her skittishness is improving by leaps and bounds. She doesn’t immediately run away when I drop something anymore, which is wonderful because I’m super clumsy. While she is a chihuahua mix and is much bigger than my 2 chis, she doesn’t realize that she isn’t a lap dog, and she’s definitely got the chihuahua tendency to pick one person and bond closely with them—fortunately, I’m that person for her, and I use the counseling skills I practiced at work with the dogs. It’s been working well, and I’m hoping she will allow a leash soon so we can go for walks. Currently, she’s terrified of the leash and hides under the bed as soon as she sees it. So there’s a lot of work in store for the two of us, but I am confident we can do it.
I set a goal on Goodreads to read 100 books, and ended up almost doubling it, reading 192 books in 2025.