25 books I loved in 2025!
On my calendar, I keep a one-hour recurring time block labeled, If I am not reading, the work suffers, which I remember as a quote from R.O. Kwon.
Reading is the inhale. Writing is the exhale. And yet there’s nothing easier than to get to the end of the day and realize you worked and scrolled and ate and watched but didn’t, actually, read.
Reading reminds us what’s possible. It introduces us to writers and then writers they love. Sometimes, I’ll watch in awe as a writer prances merrily outside a box I hadn’t even known I’d put my own writing in. Wait, you can do that?
Using an app to block social media outside of prescribed hours helps me turn to reading while I wait for my coffee order to be called. On Christmas, there’s nothing I love to do more than read all day. And a reading bath has been my personal cocoon since I was a kid.
Every twelve months, when we head into the next year, this is part of what I’m thinking about. What we take in. What we let influence us. What kind of creative life we are quietly building underneath the noise.
Here are 25 books I loved in 2025:
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
How to Make White People Laugh by Negin Farsad
Docile by Hyeseung Song
Mothers and Other Fictional Characters by Nicole Graev Lipson
Don’t Be a Stranger by Lawrence Perkins
The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett
The Mother Code by Ruthie Ackerman
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves
When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris
Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024
Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez
Why Didn’t You Tell Me? by Carmen Rita Wong
Funny Story by Emily Henry
Normal People by Sally Rooney
A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg
The High Dive by Chelsea Fagan
Central Park, an Anthology
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Body Work by Melissa Febos
Owning Our Struggles by Minaa B.
Mastery by Robert Greene
Chemistry by Weike Wang