The Books I Read in December 2025

Amidst festive excitement and endless plans, December ended up being a truly wonderful month for reading. Sure, I had to make a special effort to read, but all the books I read were incredible – I pretty much read only four- and five-star books! Super Nintendo and Monkey King brought me back to my childhood, while The Left Hand of Darkness cemented my love for Le Guin. And, of course, I managed to complete my Big Books Challenge by reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which was quite the experience!

December was a bookish month full of nostalgia, history and social observation, and I can’t wait to recommend each of these books to you. Oh, and my top books of 2025 post is coming shortly – I wanted to finish the year before I revisited it 😉

December reads

Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald (ARC)
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Monkey King by Wu Cheng’en
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
This Feast of a Life by Cynthia So (ARC)
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

January to-be-read list

Blind Willow Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (reread)
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin
Daemon Voices by Philip Pullman

In review

Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald

Thanks Faber Books for my advanced reader copy!

Rating: 5 stars

When people hear the word Nintendo, they fall into one of two camps: the first, complete joy and nostalgia for a fun gaming company, and the second, scoffing at a childish brand. I fall into the first, having played Nintendo video games for as long as I can remember. I grew up with Pokémon Red and brain-training my way through The Legend of Zelda with Link as my avatar. I befriended countless forest friends in Animal Crossing: Wild World and my siblings and cousins and I hosted endless Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. and Kirby championships. During lockdown, I built a community of over 400 devoted (and many new!) Animal Crossing: New Horizons players. Even today, you’ll find me curled up on the sofa with my Nintendo Switch, when I’m not reading, writing or cooking! As you can imagine, I was more than delighted when Faber Books sent me a proof of this upcoming book that is a love letter to Nintendo.

Super Nintendo is a joyous celebration of the Japanese company that helped the world have fun. Whether you’re a casual gamer or an avid Nintendo collector, this book contains all you need to know (and then some) about the legendary games company. I completely loved getting to know more about the origins of Nintendo, but also of each mastermind behind their keystone game franchises. Of course, I simply adored the Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Animal Crossing and Super Smash Bros. chapters and their deep-dives, but the book as a whole is truly a wonderful, escapist and uplifting read. I am filled with endless nostalgia and whimsy, having finished this, and Super Nintendo has only served to deepen my adoration of this wall-breaking, generation-crossing, genre-defying gaming company.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Rating: 4 stars

To close out the year, I knew I wanted to read a little more Le Guin. I’m a huge fan of her writing and The Left Hand of Darkness ended up being the most perfectly thought-provoking, heart-warming and adventurous way to finish 2025. The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the novels that propelled Le Guin to commercial success, earning her Hugo and Nebula awards, and I think it’s a great example of her science fiction work and what she did in the literary world. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly – a Terran – is sent to the planet Gethen to recruit its dwellers to join the Ekumen. On Gethen, citizens don’t have a fixed gender. In fact, they don’t even have sexual organs until they come into ‘kemmer’, which is when two partners come together to mate. Each can have male or female organs during each ‘kemmer’. Gender then becomes a key theme in this novel.

I found The Left Hand of Darkness to be a bit of a book of two halves. It’s a slow burn to begin with and it took me a little while to cobble all the world-building together. Once I got there, though, I completely loved this story. There’s a classic thread of world-building, then tragedy, then a moving journey, and not one part of it feels cliché or cheesy. The latter part of this story was particularly moving, full of elegiac nature writing that propels both you as the reader into the scene and the plot itself. The harshness of the setting felt like it was made for this story, an ahead-of-its-time exploration of sexuality, friendship, gender and morals. However, it’d be remiss of me not to touch on the flawed way that Le Guin did examine gender. It was really great to be introduced to gender fluidity, especially in such an all-encompassing way. Yet, Le Guin then moves to using male pronouns throughout the book, which, for me, sort of diluted the impact. That aside, this book really stood out to me for a number of reasons and I recommend this to readers across all genres.

Monkey King by Wu Cheng’en (trans. by Julia Lovell)

Rating: 4 stars

Monkey King is one of China’s ‘Four Great Classic Novels’, written anonymously during the Ming dynasty but commonly attributed to Wu Cheng’en. Like my fellow British-born Chinese friends and East Asian diaspora, I was raised on Monkey King’s Journey to the West adaptations on TVB. These adaptations, in hindsight, clearly shaped my literary and media tastes for they’re full of fantasy and action-adventure themes, mixed in with life lessons, spirituality, comedic value and a found-family thread.

Told in episodic chapters, Monkey King recounts a Tang dynasty monk’s quest towards the West in search for Buddhist scriptures. Religion plays a small but mighty part in this book, leaning more towards spirituality and an exploration of human enlightenment. Accompanied by the Monkey King, divine pig and a river-sand monster, this is a comedic action-adventure filled with sharp observations, spiritual learnings, kung fu, and beautifully fantastical scenery. I felt filled with nostalgia reading Julia Lovell’s translation, and remembered just how escapist good literature is.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

N.B.: I no longer add star ratings to memoir works since it doesn’t seem fair to ‘rate’ somebody’s real, lived experiences.

A friend lent me their copy of Jennette McCurdy’s widely acclaimed memoir and I’m really glad I carved out the time for it this month. Jennette McCurdy is an actor that rose to fame in her childhood. This book details her upbringing at the hands of her mother and how path to Hollywood, and it is brutal. I watched iCarly in my late teens, as my little sister was obsessed, and it is terrifying and so sad to look back and think about how McCurdy was being treated ‘behind the scenes’. She writes with warmth and wit amidst the heavy topics that she shares, and this book is a strong voice for other child stars that grew up far too quickly against their will.

This Feast of A Life by Cynthia So

Thanks to Little Tiger Books for my advanced reader copy!

Rating: 3.75 stars

This Feast of A Life was the warmest way to round off a December of great books. I’ve had an ARC on my shelves for more than a year and now I can’t believe this gem was hiding there all along! Auden is on a journey to be their best self: first, using their new chosen name, second, starting a food blog. Valerie is dealing with the loss of a parent, navigating life without her mum is strange and cold – especially in the kitchen.

This novel is gorgeously intricate and intimate, and it was a beautiful coming-of-age story to finish the year with. Filled with self-love and self-discovery, I loved the light touch that So adds to the feelings of teenage confusion and angst. We have all been a confused teenager consumed with mixed emotions. Through both Auden and Valerie, we experience a whole spectrum of queer love and ace representation, something that is hugely underrepresented in YA. What’s more, the food in this book adds a new dimension! Perhaps it’s that the author, the characters and I all have a deep connection to Hong Kong and its palette of flavours, but I felt totally immersed in all facets of this book. You can practically feel the characters blossom and bloom from the pages.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Rating: 5 stars

I first picked up Wolf Hall in 2020 and ended up DNF’ing it. In fact, I distinctly remember going to buy my copy in a bookshop in Covent Garden just days before lockdown was announced, telling my friend that ‘this big book will get me through a few weeks of staying indoors’. Ah, famous last words! It turns out, an incredibly detailed historical fiction about Thomas Cromwell probably wasn’t the best way to navigate a totally new situation like a global lockdown and pandemic. However, I’ve heard so many great things about this series and knew I wanted to revisit the book in a better headspace.

December 2025 was that time.

Wolf Hall is a truly remarkable book. Mantel puts a whole new meaning on historical fiction with her immersive imaginings of Thomas Cromwell’s life. Plunged into Tudor London, we grapple with all the inner workings of Henry VIII’s squad and clever, witty dialogue brings the characters to life (yes, all 5942590725 Thomas’s…). Wolf Hall is told from Cromwell’s point of view, lending the story a unique perspective that, of course, is sympathetic to his story. The writing can be dense, and it took a little while to get used to Mantel’s use of ‘he’, but this falls into place soon enough. Slower in parts, I was enthralled by Mantel’s masterly way of conjuring Tudor England with her prose and witty dialogue. And, while it might’ve taken me a little while to get my teeth into Wolf Hall, it was completely worth the time and effort to sit with it. Needless to say, I’ve got a copy of the sequel en route already.