Booklist 2025
It's taken me almost to the end of January to start on this, but it's time for the annual book list for 2025! As always, this is the list of new (to me) books I finished in the year. Last year it was 63- but I feel that a significant proportion of those were books read to kids and graphic novels I read after my 10 year old brought them home from the library. In other words, not a particularly impressive personal reading list. I also reread around 5 books, I think these were all books I read to the kids- including a bunch of Chrestomanci books which is always a pleasure. So, to the summary!
Shortest book was Cairn by Kathleen Jamie. She writes such beautiful essay collections, about life and nature and the world. This is a blend of essays and poetry- and this is I think one of the sadder collections of hers, with the sense of seeing the effects of climate change really starting to hit home, and a sort of grief over that, and about getting older. Longest book was Swallowdale by Arthur Ransome. I've been reading the Swallows and Amazons books to the kids, and they are loving them. I've realised there are a bunch I haven't read yet, but lovely as they are they are so chunky! It's pretty slow going when you only get about 1 chapter a night.
Oldest book was also Swallowdale (1931) closely followed by Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome (1933). Newest book I'm going to take a stab and say this was Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray which came out in late October. A controversial book club pick- most people preferred Green Dot (which I have not read) and yes the characters are infuriating but I quite liked it as a character study and look at the ways people react to their parents, and relationships and how they change over time. As a book about friendship or chosen family though I am unconvinced.
Most books by one author goes to Cressida Cowell with 3, whose Wizards of Once series we listened to over a number of road trips. They're narrated by David Tennant and very enjoyable!
Reading themes the main one that will jump out at you is spies. Or secret agents. My brother-in-law gave me Spydle for Christmas (after I really enjoyed Murdle), and the little snippets there inspired me to read up on the women of the SOE- who worked with various resistance forces in WWII, organising equipment drops, smuggling out allied soldiers who were captured, transmitting information and organising sabotage. I got particularly fascinated with Christine Granville- a Polish aristocrat who did incredibly brave things, only to be killed by a stalker after the war. Anyway highly recommend looking her up on Wikipedia! Or, if you want to do the full deep dive like I did, read Christine: A search for Christine Granville by Madeleine Masson. If you want shorter form info with a bunch of shorter stories of women in the SOR, read The Women who Lived for Danger by Marcus Binney. And only for the full SOE deep dive- political context, history, effects both positive and negative, the truly tragic story of the network in the Netherlands, read SOE: The Special Operations Executive, 1940-46 by MRD Foote. But I also read some lighter spy fiction, in Slow Horses by Mick Herron, since I loved the tv show so much.
Favourite books are hard to pick this year- there were quite a few that I liked, but did I truly love them? Lets go by genre and see. The standout fantasy was probably The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks- it's very atmospheric, the Trans-Siberian Railway inspired setting is great and it's an interesting story with characters that draw you in. I also enjoyed reading the sequel to my favourite shadow-magic-with-conman-and-heists-and-romance in Thief of Night by Holly Black. For sci-fi I feel like all of them were good- I really enjoyed The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. Maybe not quite as much as I hoped? But still a good exploration of an interesting premise- I'm a sucker for a bit of time travel, I thought the characters in this were great and it's well done. Bridge by Laruen Beukes was a thrilling twisty multiverse novel, and I really wanted to talk to someone about it afterwards. Salvage by Jennifer Mills was a post-apocalyptic climate change novel, exploring class and different approaches to disaster and views of the earth's future. For crime, I just really love Jesse Q. Sutanto's Vera Wong books, so Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a dead man) is probably top of the list. Vera Wong expands her found family and warms more hearts while tackling some really dark themes and I love her for it. Richard Osman can also be relied on to deliver joy alongside crime, and We Solve Murders was just as fun as the Thursday Murder Club.
Jumping from genre to literary fiction, Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov is a weird and at times uncomfortably timely book about a man who opens 'time shelters' as therapeutic centres for people with dementia, and ends up with geopolitical scale chaos. In a particularly fragmentary and non-linear way. It takes on the pleasures and dangers of nostalgia, the fraught nature of the past, tribalism, Europe's violent history, communism, fascism... It's a hard one to sum up but it was good. And a nice segue into Patrick Modiano's Missing Person is about a detective in post-war France (1960s?) who lost his memory and is trying to track down who he is and why he is without a memory- and it's an atmospheric noir tale taking in the sad story of 20th Century Europe. Actually that's a whole theme really, with Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili taking a fairytale tragicomic look at Georgia and its history, war and the rift between those who leave and those who stay behind. And a gentler, contemporary look at identity and belonging in Ripeness by Sarah Moss, which obliquely takes on migration and identity and the effects of the holocaust- Nationalism and DNA and who belongs where but also life and friendship. In popular fiction I'm just going to highlight (and maybe Hard by a Great Forest belongs here too) Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum, which is a comforting book, but I think not saccharine, about starting again in middle age, about recovering from burnt out and divorce, about questioning what a successful life looks like, about building your own community.
The full list! With a couple of notes throughout.
Spydle- The National Archives. Puzzles!
Murdle: Volume 1- G.T. Karber. More puzzles! But with a sort of story, so I've included it here.
SOE: The Special Operations Executive, 1940-46- M.R.D. Foot
The Reading List- Sara Nisha Adams
Swallowdale- Arthur Ransome (read to kids)
The Ministry of Time- Kaliane Bradley
The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands- Sarah Brooks
Slow Horses- Mick Herron
The Keeper of Lost Things- Ruth Hogan. Struggled with this one honestly!
Cairn- Kathleen Jamie
The Stonekeeper- Kazu Kibuishi (Kids graphic novel)
The Corner That Held Them- Sylvia Townsend Warner. Also a good one! A slow and wry look at the life of a group of medieval nuns, nuns who are particularly concerned with balancing the books and interpersonal politics, and just day-to-day life in a nunnery.
We Solve Murders- Richard Osman
Plain Jane and the Mermaid- Vera Brosgol (Kids graphic novel)
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore- Robin Sloan
The White Mouse - Nancy Wake
Christine: A Search for Christine Granville, GM, OBE, Croix
de Guerre- Madeleine Masson
School for Nobodies- Susie Bower
The Women Who Lived for Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in
the Second World War- Marcus Binney
Rainbow Grey- Laura Ellen Anderson (Kids book)
I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom- Jason
Pargin
The Wizards of Once- Cressida Cowell
Time Shelter- Georgi Gospodinov
Murder in Williamstown- Kerry Greenwood
The Knowing- Madeleine Ryan. My least favourite book of the year! I like a close character study, I like a slice of life, but this just felt self-absorbed.
Intermezzo- Sally Rooney. Really liked this too- really great character study. I am late to the party on Sally Rooney so no idea how it compares to the others. but i like a book that can make me care a lot about characters I don't necessarily like.
Twice Magic- Cressida Cowell
How to Solve Your Own Murder- Kristen Perrin
Tithe- Holly Black
Anya's Ghost- Vera Brosgol
The Deadly Dispute- Amanda
Hampson
Catastrophic Happiness- Catherine Newman. A series of essays about life and parenting.
Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man)- Jesse Q.
Sutanto
Wicked Things- John Allison
Knock Three Times- Cressida Cowell
Four Aunties and a Wedding- Jesse Q. Sutanto
Tilly and the Bookwanderers- Anna James
The Unquiet Grave- Dervla McTiernan
Your Friend and Mine- Jessica Dettmann
How to seal your own fate- Kristen Perrin
A House Like an Accordion- Audrey Burges. Architectural magic realism- I struggled to get through this one too, though at the end I think it was worth it.
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop- Hwang Bo-Reum
Winter Holiday- Arthur Ransome
Stepping Stones- Lucy Knisley (kids graphic novel)
Ant Story- Jay Hosler
Ripeness- Sarah Moss
The Summer War- Naomi Novik
My Sister, the Serial Killer- Oyinkan Braithwaite
Bridge- Lauren Beukes
Salvage- Jennifer Mills
You are here- David Nicholls. An enjoyable ramble across England with a midlife romance.
Dept. of Speculation- Jenny Offill. Love her fragmentary style, think I slightly preferred Weather.
Thief of Night- Holly Black
The Rachel Incident- Caroline O'Donoghue. I liked this one- mostly for the friendship between the two main characters, dreadfully as they behaved at times.
Mystery at the Manor- Alasdair Beckett-King
Hard by a great forest- Leo Vardiashvili
The Tryout- Christina Soontornvat
Missing Person- Patrick Modiano
Apple Crush- Lucy Knisley
The Squad- Christina Soontornvat
Chosen Family- Madeleine Gray
Vertigo- Amanda Lohrey
Fallen Star- Glenn Dakin
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