December 2025: Books I Read Last Month

Written by Graeme

Still chugging along with reading here as best as I can. I’ve said it before but I’ve just been so incredibly busy with Book Notification this past year that it’s really hurt my reading.

The nice thing is I think I am at a good spot with that site where all the big projects requiring most of my time are over, so I can relax just a little bit more in 2026.

I’m also planning on running my first ever marathon in 2026 (I currently do about 8 half marathons a year) so I’m looking to really buckle down life wise, and have a nice boring life for a few months geared towards boring routine and fitness. So I am hoping that will result in various reading sessions.

Let’s go over what I read in November:

Slaughterhouse-FIve by Kurt Vonnegut: I hadn’t read this one before, amazingly. It was one of those “you always hear about and mean to read” books. It was just incredible. If you’ve never read it – do that. The story. The character descriptions. The way he merges tragedy with humour. Just tremendous.

Exit Strategy by Andrew Child: The latest Reacher novel, and second book which Andrew wrote by himself. Eh. It has its moments, and I overall enjoyed it, but it’s not anywhere close to the quality of Lee’s writing yet.

The fighting scenes are always very weak and the descriptions just aren’t good enough. The plot gets overly convulted, and most importantly is Andrew doesn’t seem like he is having fun. That’s one thing I loved about Lee’s books; you could tell he LOVED writing Reacher, and had so much fun writing that character. I’m not getting that with andrew.

The Memory Collectors by Dete Meserve: Some near future lite sci-fi involving a company that can send people back in time for exactly one hour. It’s random where they end up – until one day, when four people, all connected due to one incident that happened a few years ago, all get sent back to relive that horrible memory.

Really good book and up my alley – if you like Blake Crouch etc, give this a go. It had the most skippable final act I think I’ve ever read; but other than that, excellent book.

I Died On A Tuesday by Jane Corry: Started off great. This was one i listened to and the narration was solid and it was a perfectly acceptable, enjoyable book about a woman who got hit by a van and almost died, and 20 years later, the person who allegedly did it gets arrested – a huge pop star.

It was great up until about the 60% mark, then it got to a completely preposterous courtroom scene and never recovered.