It was a wonderful year in books for me. Looking back I see so many good reads, and I’m grateful I get to share them here with you. One of the strongest connective threads in my books from this past year is the intense, transformative, and sometimes wounding power of love. Love can be an upheaval, a mess, and filled with imbalances that lead to obsession or sacrifice or destruction. And love is tied to loss. Even when love is beautiful it carries a cost. Wuthering Heights, Call Me by Your Name, Heart the Lover, Hamnet, Fates and Furies, The River is Waiting, Tender is the Night, and A Thousand Splendid Suns all explore that theme deeply. Many of the books I read this year also examine people being shaped or damaged by forces larger than themselves. And many deal with memory, grief, and the persistence of the past. How does society shape (or crush) individuals? How do we sit with sadness, ambiguity, and unresolved feelings? Can we offer sympathy without absolution?
Looking back on this year I am very lucky to have a safe, happy, and stable home; and a rich interior life full of art and books and nature; these things offer me some shelter from the repercussions of life, from the current attempt at an authoritarian takeover happening in Washington, and from the everyday sorrows, injustices, losses, and struggles. I lean heavily on art and literature these days, to escape, to process, to keep going. To create a life, a life of my own, is a tremendous privilege, and I am grateful.
Before we dig into the books I do want to shout out some great movies I watched this year: Sinners, Pee-wee as Himself, and Frankenstein were my favorites that were released in 2025. For first time watches I loved Let the Right One In, 2008; Past Lives, 2023; and Carnival of Souls, 1962. Feel free to drop recommends (movies, books, or podcasts) in my comments, I’m always looking for the good stuff!
And just a reminder, this list is what I liked the most and the least. Books that show up at the bottom of this list are not bad, they just aren’t for me. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum.
Fiction
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte, 1847
Very early in this book a man named Lockwood, seeking shelter during a snowstorm, is locked into a haunted bedroom for the night, (this after being attacked by dogs, witnessing a half dozen acts of physical and emotional violence, and getting a random bloody nose from straight up terror); he sees a ghost outside the second story window and he grabs the ghost’s wrist and rubs it against some broken glass. The ghost wails and bleeds (ghost blood I guess) all over the bed sheets. It was about then that I knew that this book was awesome and that I needed to strap in. I thought I had a good idea of what Wuthering Heights would be, having read Jane Eyre (by Emily’s more levelheaded sister, Charlotte) and having gleaned a few things, like “gothic love story”, and “the moors”, and someone named Heathcliff. But I was absolutely wrong. Emily Bronte was 30 years old when she died, and only published this one novel. She is described as solitary, strange, and uncompromising, which hits pretty close to home for me. This book is a masterpiece, but it is not a love story, gothic or otherwise. This book is about generational trauma, domestic violence, obsession, and the soul warping effects of spite and isolation. If anything it examines what happens when people are denied love. It begins with three children, Catherine, Hindley, and the foundling Heathcliff, raised together in a deeply dysfunctional household, and then unfurls into an epic and haunting voyage through deranged and relentless multi-generational madness and vengeance. I loved it. I’m not sure I will ever stop thinking about it.
2. The River Is Waiting, Wally Lamb, 2025
I read Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much is True in the late 90s. I loved them both and thought he was a very talented writer, but to be honest I lost track of him a bit, and picked up this, his latest novel, without a lot of expectation. The River is Waiting is about Corby Ledbetter, a man who who ends up in prison after a tragic accident causes him to loose everything. Corby is a deeply imperfect protagonist, who chooses wrong and fails those who love and count on him many times over. In the hands of another writer this could have been a very predictable and shallow redemption story. But The River is Waiting is not about redemption and it’s not a neat and clean narrative. Corby is locked up, both in a literal and figurative cage, and forced to confront his addiction, guilt, and find accountability while navigating a deeply broken penitentiary system. This book made me think long and hard about grace, and what grace really looks like, in the real world. A truly powerful and beautiful book.
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini, 2007
This is the story of Mariam and Laila, two women living in Afghanistan who are forced together into a home where they are subject to unimaginable cruelty fostered by an increasingly abusive husband and a culture that strips woman of any agency. The city of Kabul is itself another character here, described beautifully, almost poetically, and the city too rises and falls, blossoms and suffers, affected by ongoing conflicts and the changes in laws and leadership. Not only are individual people crushed by the Taliban regime, but the country itself is deeply wounded, collectively. This book brought me somewhere new, but tells a deeply human story of the power of love and connection. It made me think about sacrifice, and endurance. How much can you take and what are you willing to give, for your family, for those you love, and for your country?
4. Call Me by Your Name, Andre Aciman, 2007
This is one of my faves, a lush and languid love story, deeply entwined with its setting, the idyllic sun-drenched Italian countryside during a single summer in 1983. What is more exciting and terrifying than first love, the way it envelops you, drowns you, blots out the sky and leaves you gasping? Gorgeously written, I loved everything about this book. There were a lot of luscious contrasts here, the quaint villages, cobblestone squares and languid sea up against the interior torment and despair of that first obsessive infatuation; Elio’s family is wealthy, pretentious, and and almost gaudily elegant, and into this you place Elio who is a train wreck of self discovery, fear, doubt, and self consciousness as he tries to navigate the tricky landslide of his desire for Oliver. It was hot, and it was gorgeous. And I adore a love story that exists in one time and place, perfect and preserved, nothing worse than when people try to turn a love affair into a damn marriage.
5. Heart the Lover, Lily King, 2025
Another absolutely perfect love story, every sentence is exactly right, and this thing has not a whisker out of place,(you’d hardly think such writing was possible, but then again, Lily King is an absolute master.) This book is apparently a prequel to her 2020 Writers & Lovers (which I adore and wrote about in my blog that year at length, highly recommend) but honestly that hardly matters, as this is a stand alone story. There is something of Hemingway in this book in that it is so spare yet conveys so deeply. Streamlined to perfection. I keep using that word, but I am truly in awe.
6. The Giver, Lois Lowry, 1993
I did not expect this book to land here in the top ten when I picked it up a few days after Christmas and blew through it in one afternoon. This is a YA dystopian novel about a community where every aspect of life is controlled to ensure safety and stability. Our young protagonist is about to graduate to year 12 and receive his work assignment, the job he will do for his entire adult life, but everything changes when he unexpectedly is assigned a unique role: The Reciever. As he learns what he is required to do he also learns about the world he is living in, what has been given up in exchange for order, safety, unending stability. Colors for instance. Free will. Choice. Snow. Animals. Memories. This is a powerful and provocative story. And the ending is absolutely perfect in its ambiquity.
7. The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin, 1972
I love Ira Levin. Rosemary’s Baby, A Kiss Before Dying, and The Boys from Brazil have all appeared on past book blogs. I love his style, and I love what he writes about. I had seen two different movies of this one (1975 and 2004) and so I went in knowing the plot and the twist(s) but it was still such a great read.
8. Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934
I really loved The Beautiful and the Damned, and have always struggled a bit with The Great Gatsby (although I like it more now than I did when I read it in high school, but it’s taken me three or four readings of the thing to appreciate it, which seems like too much work.) Tender is the Night might be my favorite of his to date. I was surprised by this book many times over. It is a much more self aware and humble book than his early works, which makes sense, as he was riding into the crash of the jazz age, and his own personal crash of alcoholism. This novel is set in the French Riviera in the 1930s, and like all of his work is largely autobiographical, portraying himself and his wife at this time in their lives, through the characters of Dick and Nicole Diver, expats who are coming off a decade or so of decadence and crash landing into middle age. This is a complex novel, and has a challenging narrative in part as it is exploring the destructive nature of wealth, the fragility of romantic love, the nuances of failing mental health, and the toll of alcoholism on the human psyche. There is a lot of meat on this bone, highly recommend.
9. Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell, 2020
I have a history of disliking historical fiction. Few will forget my scathing thoughts on The Lacuna in 2009 ( a mess of a thing with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Trotsky showing up), and you’ll see way down on the bottom of this list Loving Frank (clandestine love affair between Frank Loyd Wright and Mamah Cheny), which I hated. But. Hamnet works. I think it works in large part because so little is known about Shakespeare’s family. They know he had a wife, and children, and where they lived, but any details about them are lost to time. Hamnet, William Shakespeare’s son, died at age 11, in 1596. This book works because Maggie O’Farrell is a remarkably good writer and she has crafted, from scratch, the character of Agnes. Agnes is fabulous, a magical, wild, extraordinary woman, and inserting her into a role that is like a blank spot in history (that of Shakespeare’s wife, a complete unknown) is such an enchanting idea. Again here we find grief, love, loss, and sacrifice, it is magnificent and searing. Really looking forward to this movie!
10. A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny, 2022
This is #18 in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels. I fell down this rabbit hole a few years back when I watched the Amazon series, Three Pines (an absolute must watch). I’ve read six of these now (#2, #3, #6, #7, #8, #18) and they are so good. I love this world, and I am eager to read them all.
11. Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff, 2015
12. Ladder of Years, Anne Tyler, 1995
Not my favorite for Anne Tyler, but not bad. Highly recommend Breathing Lessons, Back When We Were Grownups, and The Amateur Marriage if you’re looking to start with her.
13. The Unmaking of June Farrow: A Novel, Adrienne Young, 2023
This was interesting. I’m not the right audience for this (kind of a fantasy, sci/fi with some time travel, and a falling in love when traveling back in time thing) but it was very unique. Melodramatic. A lot of melodramatic inner dialogs that took me out of it a bit.
14. Lone Women, Victor LaValle, 2023
This was also extremely unique, a young black woman travels to Montana as a homesteader in early 1900’s, kind of a western with a magical realism bend. I loved the premise but that actual narrative didn’t completely work for me.
15. Wandering Stars, Tommy Orange, 2024
16. A Passage to India, E. M. Forster, 1924
I expected this to rank much higher. I adored Howards End, A Room with a View, and Maurice, and highly recommend you check them out if you’re interested in Forster.
17. Never Flinch, Stephen King, 2025
The weakest of the Holly books, but still readable as hell.
18. We Used to Live Here, Marcus Kliewer, 2024
Ok, people love this book. There is a lot of interesting things going on here (horror, modern, pacific northwest) but this novel reads like a series of vignettes where the horror dial is cranked to 11 over and over and over. I couldn’t stay with it, and felt like it jumped the shark so many times that I lost faith.
19. Rabbit Boss, Thomas Sanchez, 1974
There were so many parts of this huge, dense and overwritten book that were so wonderful. I wish a good editor had gotten a hold of this thing. Epic novel of four generations of a Washo Native American family in the Sierra Nevada. Worth the slog for the gems, but a fair bit of work.
20. The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat, 2004
21. Speak to Me of Home, Jeanine Cummins, 2025
22. My Darling Boy, John Dufresne, 2025
23. Loving Frank, Nancy Horan, 2007
Bad historical fiction. Not for me.
24. Theo of Golden, Allen Levi, 2023
This book is straight religious propaganda. I wouldn’t even deign to call it a novel.
Non-Fiction
- To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse, Howard Fishman, 2023
This is one of my favorite books ever. I feel like it was written just for me. Shout out to Meg Bastey for not only recommending this to me, but buying a copy for the Maine State Library which ended up being the copy I read. Connie Converse was a folk musician living in New York City in the 1950s who wrote and recorded a collection of songs (you can find them on YouTube) and then left the city and then mysteriously disappeared in 1974. Her music was largely unknown until this book was published. This book is meticulous, Fishman became obsessed with her (and so did I) diving into her, her family, her music, and the entire music scene at the time. She was an outsider, and a missing link musically. A true artist, such as a rare thing.
2. The Immense Journey, Loren Eiseley, 1957
An absolute gem. Scientific essays that attempt to tell the story of man.
3. Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, James Sanders, 2002
An almost text book on New York City in film. I love New York and I love film, so this was such a treat.
4. Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, Susana M. Morris, 2025
I knew very little about Octavia so this was an informative and rich text. Big fan of her books.
5. Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Virginia Giuffre, 2025
Virginia was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and then had the guts to call him out by name. This was published after her death and is a harrowing read.
6. Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, Heather Cox Richardson, 2023
Really wonderful and important book. Giving shape and meaning and context to what exactly is happening in our country right now politically. I really want Heather Cox Richardson to do a podcast with Sarah Vowell.
7. Down the Kitchen Sink, Beverly Nichols, 1974
Such a delight, but it is hilarious this is published as a memoir. Sure Beverly, sure.
Thibeautown 