Maddi Chilton is an internet footprint.

2025 Year in Review

It's January 11th! I gave myself a bit of grace with the timing of this to clean up some deadlines. Also I forgot a bit that this is a thing I do. We're here now, though!

I read 79 books in 2025. I'll accept that! Here's my Goodreads Year in Books.

For standouts in nonfiction, the triple threat of War Against the Weak by Edwin Black, Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes du Mez, and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff made me feel appropriately educated on the particular horror of our present moment. War Against the Weak is about the American roots of the eugenics project, Jesus and John Wayne is about masculinity and evangelical Christianity, and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is about how Jeff Bezos is watching you right now as you speak. I have recommended these books to other people more times than I can count this year while talking about all of the shit that is happening right now. I don't think anyone has actually listened to me but I'll continue to bang that drum, don't you worry.

moses

Last year I embarked on the capital-p Project that is War and Peace, and I read it across the entire year. This year I read Robert Caro's mammoth biography The Power Broker, which I believe beats it in word count, in a month. This rocked. Way better than spreading shit out. This book is great for any urban studies nerds or children of petty bureaucrats, of which I am both. Robert Moses is a fucking piece of shit, did you know that? I can't stop thinking about two things from this book: his brute-force development tactic of breaking as much ground as possible before funding for the entire project was secured or approved, basically ensuring that if higher-ups didn't let him build, they'd be staring at an ugly mess where his work would have been; and also the part where he built bridges intentionally too low to allow buses to use them for no reason other than he hated poor people. His fascination with motoring also gives another wild layer to his general deal. But man, he sucked.

In fiction, I continued to try to finish my Sarah Waters project, and thought The Paying Guests was one of her best and most compelling. (I read it at the same time as Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep, and they felt in conversation with each other.) I read The Golden Compass for the first time to properly engage with month-long discussions at my job about who would have what daemon, and I loved it, though I definitely came out with a different perspective on it than my friends who read it as children. Mostly: dude goes hard on the altverse science and religon in ways that are incredibly bold and inventive, and it's no wonder it got banned. I read Picnic at Hanging Rock and have been thinking about the cut final chapter since: it's made me do a lot of wondering about the lines between genre and literary fiction, and whether it would have had such a strong impact on Australia's cultural landscape if that last chapter was included. I also started reading the Brother Cadfael chronicles. I love that meddling monk!!! What a guy!!!

Other good reads: Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall, The New Life by Tom Crewe, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste by Carl Wilson, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, Sabriel by Garth Nix, MADK 2 by Ryo Suzuri, Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman, Monotone Blue by Nagabe, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles Marohn, The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean.

For movies, I watched a shitton of Westerns this year. I have become a Western Fiend. I love it when horses go fast and men wear grimy jeans. I wrote about this for Unwinnable, so I won't spend too much time on it, but my favorites were:

Other movies I watched for the first time and loved: The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Sisi & I (2023), Gallipoli (1981), Sinners (2025), Jaws (1975), Phantom Thread (2017), The Plague (2025), Bugonia (2025), No Other Choice (2025), Forge (2025), Queer (2024), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

botnia

I now have to spend a bit of time talking about how I went insane over KAJ this summer and watched their musicals, Gambämark and Botnia Paradise, basically exclusively for about three months. Listen to me. I don't know about musical theater. I don't care about musical theater. I like Phantom and JCS, you know? I don't go here. Gambämark and Botnia Paradise are so good, though, they're so good. Such clever niche comedy for an audience of fourteen people that only made it to me because they stumbled into Eurovision. They are so good.

The other thing that is good is Vörjeans: Smak ilag fast tär heim. I can't explain what this is and I don't want to but I've conditioned myself like a dog to put it on every time I'm mildly drunk but don't want to go to bed yet. I don't even watch the subtitled version anymore, I just watch those fuckers yammering away in a language I don't speak on the official channel and feel existentially comforted. What total freaks! I hope they're having a great day.

There is no music section to this post because of that thing I just mentioned where I went insane about KAJ. Moving on.

For the second year in a row I really only played games that I wrote about. This is a bummer: I can feel the burnout approaching, and I don't want my primary hobby to be relegated to the part of it that makes me money and is therefore associated with deadlines and drafts and emails and shit. I want to play games for fun again! It's so nice when I do play a game that pulls me past that stress into joy of the genre again (like Promise Mascot Agency! Play fucking Promise Mascot Agency!)

mascot

I played, adored, and refused to shut up about the aforementioned Promise Mascot Agency (reviewed for PC Gamer, written about again for Unwinnable). I dipped my toes into a genre I am totally unfamiliar with and ended up loving Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (reviewed for PC Gamer). I had trouble getting the hang of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II but admired the craft of it (written about for Bullet Points). I liked Rosewater and thought it had a great crew despite the fact that I suck shit at adventure games (reviewed for PC Gamer). I did not like Rue Valley, which I thought lost touch of its own time loop mechanic (reviewed for PC Gamer). Pentiment was a really clever and crafty game for the history freaks among us, and I enjoyed pulling apart how it lined up with and diverged from The Name of the Rose (written about for Unwinnable). Lastly but not leastly, I played the infamous Horses and thought it should have been slower and more boring (written about for PC Gamer).

This year I have a list of six games I want to play for myself alone. In TWELVE MONTHS. That is achievable, right? That's normal? I have no idea how you people play so many video games. I have to like, do laundry. (Last year I said I'd play twelve games for myself? Ha ha. Look at this asshole.)

On the personal side, this year wasn't great. I spent the majority of it dealing with a minor but persistent health issue that is treated mainly by exercise, a thing that is good for you and also takes up so much time and makes you tired. Juggling everything in 2025 was a lot. I felt myself pushing against the limits of my capability and pulling myself back from them quite often, which is a testament to the good work my therapist has done but also, seriously, so fucking exhausting. I'm tired all the time. Also there's that thing where the world fell apart. So our expectations for 2026 are low, okay? Read some good books. Play some good games. Watch some good movies. That's the goal. We're gonna tackle that one together.