2025: A Year in Reading

I found it hard to read in 2025, so hard that it has taken till now (September 2026) to muster the enthusiasm to share my list, or pass more than the briefest of comments. Perhaps it’s the the cultural moment we were (and still are) moving through, and how it became difficult to convince myself that all will eventually be well. While I’ve been unable to write (an affliction for many years now, alas), I’ve always been able to read––or, let’s be honest, my reading took precedent because it is the more enjoyable task. But to struggle after a few pages regardless of how wonderful the book, felt incredibly disconcerting. When I’d been asking myself of late, ‘What am I, if not a writer?’, then at least I could answer ‘I’m a reader.’ But now? Yikes.

Well…. I’m getting better. This year (2026), I’m beginning to find my (reading) stride again. I’ve been deliberate in my choices and ruthless in ring-fencing the time. And, who knows, one day I might step back onto the page. As the late, great Gloria Steinem said, “hope is a form of planning.’

As usual the asterisks below indicate books I did manage to particularly enjoy in 2025, which included some extremely fine nonfiction, in particular Mark Doty’s Firebird, Richard Flanagan’s Question 7, and Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson’s Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free. Two hybrid books melding fiction with historical research also pulled me in; Leonid Tsypkin’s imaginative reconstruction of Dostoyevsky’s honeymoon in Germany in Summer in Baden-Baden, and Anna Funder’s dramatisation of the life of George Orwell’s wife in Wifedom. Both reflect the significant price paid by partners of so-called ‘geniuses.’ I admire such disciplined messing with form. Sadly Tsypkin only wrote one other book before dying in the early 1980s after two futile attempts to secure permission to leave the Soviet Union. Funder on the other hand, is very much still with us, and I’m eager to read the rest of her work.

I spent time with some decent fiction too, though nothing that blew my socks off. Nevertheless, if you enjoy a book-twinning, then I suggest Perfection (Vincenco Latronico) and The Anthropologists Aysegül Sabvas), two timely novellas examining 21st century middle-class techno-domesticity. Alone in Berlin was good, (a tick off my shoulda-by-now list) though Hollinghurst’s latest and the two Kate Atkinsons felt like place-holders until her next great award candidate (oh, shut up, Susan, ye daft bisum, I’d like to see you produce such placeholders…).

To be honest, it’s hard for me to reflect fairly on last years reading, because everything was overshadowed by my need to revisit two momentous classics to prep for a teaching gig: namely War and Peace and The Portrait of a Lady. Rereading favourites is a dangerous pursuit; either you find they’re not as good as you remember, or––as was the case here––they are even more breathtakingly glorious thereby making every other text seems unambitious and paltry. Damn, as my bairns would say, Tolstoy and James totally snap.

In that case––I suggest you simply drop whatever you’re doing right now and step back into a time before media saturation and AI slop, and immerse yourself in the extraordinary artistry that brought us the unforgettable Isabel, Pierre, and Natasha.

Fiction

The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

The Home by Penelope Mortimer *

A Painter of Our Time by John Berger *

Mao II by Don DeLillo

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada *

The Game by A.S. Byatt

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

Glitter of Mica by Jessie Kesson

Perfection by Vincenco Latronico *

A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor *

The Courage Consort by Michael Faber

Wish You Were Here by Graham Swift

Under the Skin by Michael Faber

Territorial Rights by Muriel Spark

The Dead of Winter by Stuart McBride

The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas *

Halloween Party by Agatha Christie

The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michael Faber

Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin

A Green Equinox by Elizabeth Mavor *

Maurice by E.M. Forster

Father by Elizabeth Von Arnim *

Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto

Wolf Hour by Jo Nesbo

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

More Women Than Men by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Gliff by Ali Smith

Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

The Comforters by Muriel Spark *

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler

The Boys from Brazil by Ira Lein

Last Trolley from Beethoven Straat by Greta Weil

Murder Before Evensong by Reverend Richard Coles

Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan *

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

Music Upstairs by Shena Mackay

No Signposts in the Sea by Vita Sackville-West

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Non-Fiction

Firebird by Mark Doty *

Art Objects by Jeanette Winterson

Gilbert and George and the Communists by James Birch

The Primary Colours by Alexander Theroux

Intervals by Marianne Brooker *

My Trade is a Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing by Carl Phillips

Malice in Wonderland: My Adventures in the World of Cecil Beaton by Hugo Vickers

The Plague by Jacqueline Rose *

Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson *

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan *

Walk Yourself Happy by Julia Bradbury

I Shop, Therefore I Am by Mary Portas

Saving Freud by Andrew Nagorsky

Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard

The Einstein Vendetta by Thomas Harding

Signs of Murder by David Wilson

Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life by Natalie Goldberg

Hybrid

Wifedom by Anna Funder *

Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin *

Poetry

Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell, dual-language ed.) *

Bonus Rereads

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James ***

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy ***