The Aardvark Blog

Click-Bait End of Year Listicles
20/12/2025

Enough with my usual grouchy young fogey turned old fogey persona, for Christmas/New Year/Winter Festival season I am planning on adopting a more upto date approach. So here is the Aardvark click-bait Insta-friendly review of my 2025.

1) There are times during the year when consuming media/new media that I have come to the conclusion that notwithstanding time steadily reducing my little grey cells, I am actually becoming a genius. Everything I see or hear seems so strangely reductive and simplistic and once great institutions like New Soaraway smooth Radio 3 ( together with its dull cousin Radio 3 Unspooled ), now require less attention than one gives to reviewing one's Sainsburys order. I must be a genius mustn't I, or - and sadly this is the more likely explanation - our media is now aimed at a level so low that it is almost impossible not to feel an intellectual giant.

2) The politics of all Western Nations is so peculiar and so aberrant, that the occasional intelligent, thoughful and balanced politician seems to have been beamed down from outer space. Here in the UK small businesses are facing massive business rates increases, but no politician of any party - or indeed the mainstream media  - are giving this any coverage at all. If you are concerned that your favourite watering hole might disappear like indeed watering holes last summer, the only analysis of the likely impact has been provided by Andy Link of the Riverside Inn on Facebook. Please Santa for Christmas please bring us a grown up political leader!

3)There has not been a huge amount to laugh about this year, but if you need some relief from the gloom try out the Private Eye Review of 2025 . There were genuinely moments that had me weeping with laughter ( particularly the Daleks suing the BBC for being taken out of context ). Also on Youtube Sidney Morss's analysis of modern dating tickled me. What bookseller wouldn't find appealing the idea that some-one would select partners based on the quality of their gramatical constructions.

4) Best listen of the year turned out to be on the BBC ( yes there are pockets of the old Beeb remaining). For some reason I had never come across Tim Harford's over series 'Cautionary Tales' , and I can honestly say that his calm delivery, consistent declaration of sources, and general approach is revelatory. For a starting place why not try the episode on Grace Oakeshott which has more twists and turns than a brilliant detective novel. Also continuing to be excellent is 'In Our Time' and back in the summer I particularly enjoyed the episodes on 'Dragons' and 'The Vienna Secession'. Also consistently brilliant is Michael Berkeley's 'Private Passions' with brilliant episodes featuring Suzanne Vega and the art dealer Daniel Katz amongst others.

5) Finally I would like to say that being a bookseller has so many great aspects, that I feel bad to point out one of the few disadvantages. One is presented with so many possible books to read, that sometimes it is hard to pick just one partner. I find myself therefore often reading a dozen books at a time, with more queueing up for attention. So my hope for 2026 is that I will learn at last to embrace literary serial monogamy and commit to only one book-partner at a time. But with so many new title arriving every day to our shelves this is probably a forlorn hope.