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  Lit/dope/bussin' approach. So here is the Aardvark  listaclised 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 THE NEW Soaraway SMOOOOTH Radio 3 ( together with its dullard 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 that one is an intellectual giant.

2) The politics of Western Nations are so peculiar and so aberrant, that the occasional intelligent, thoughful and balanced politician gas begun to seem like alien 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 in last summer's drought -  the only analysis of the likely impact has been provided by Andy Link of the Riverside Inn on Facebook. Please Santa for Christmas, please 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 grammatical constructions.

4) Best listen of the year did turn 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 other series 'Cautionary Tales' , and  his calm delivery, consistent declaration of sources, and general thoughtful approach has completely won me over to the point where I have become a superfan. For a starting place why not try the episode on Grace Oakeshott which has more twists and turns than an Agatha Christie 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' ( not the same episode). Needless to say Michael Berkeley is consistently national treasure-ish on  '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 in pointing 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 book-partner. I often find myself therefore  reading a dozen books simultaneously, with more queueing up for attention.

So my big personal 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 titles arriving every day to the bookshop this is probably a forlorn hope. So many books, so little time.