What I've read in 2025 (so far)
A midyear book celebration of sorts.
So far, I’ve read 35 new releases this year, a mix of contemporary titles and reissues, both fiction and nonfiction—more than a book a week. Not bad, and that’s not even counting the galleys I’ve already read for fall and winter releases or the handful of older books, rereads, and audiobooks I’ve fit in when I’ve had some free time.
Inspired by
’s midyear post and questionnaire, I thought I’d do a quick retrospective on my best and worst of the first half of 2025, and take the opportunity to reintroduce myself to some of my more recent subscribers and followers.
I’m a Boston-based book critic who contributes to The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and WBUR.org, among others. Anything I can’t write about in one of those places ends up here on my Substack. I tend to focus on literary fiction, literature in translation, and nonfiction related to my personal interests—art history, ancient history, and occasionally astrophysics. My intention was to write a lot of short, little capsule reviews here but so far I’ve ended up writing a bunch of essays.
My most popular posts so far have been my analysis of the seven reasons I might give a book a bad review, some thoughts on how male desire is (or isn’t) represented in literary fiction, my complicated journey with Matthew Gasda’s debut novel The Sleepers, and an examination of what’s missing from Sue Prideaux’s revisionist biography of Paul Gauguin.
Some themes have emerged in my reading this year. Father-daughter relationships have been a recurring storyline, especially estrangements and separations, be they emotional, political, or interplanetary. Climate angst, too, in both fiction and nonfiction. Millennial malaise seems to be a big trend as our generation reaches its novel-writing peak, from New York to Berlin to the beet fields of Minnesota. Has anyone read a book about a happy millennial? Do I have to write it? Some of the reissued and older novels I’ve read show, however, that this kind of ennui, the existential anxiety and political strife, certainly isn’t unique to our era—if there’s one takeaway from all my reading this year it’s that there truly is nothing new under the sun. The details change and the style. But the problems don’t really, at least not all that much.
Now, the questionnaire:
(All the links go to my reviews)
Best book I’ve read so far?
For fiction, Lion by Sonya Walger (NYRB, February). For nonfiction, Radio Treason by Rebecca West (McNally Editions, February).
The book that made me laugh?
The Pilgrimage by John Broderick (McNally Editions, March). I literally guffawed at the last page, a vicious bit of black Irish humor. Honorable mention to Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection (NYRB, March), though that was more of an uncomfortable laughter of self-recognition.
The book that made me cry?
let me tell you and let me go on by Paul Griffiths (NYRB, April).
Favorite character?
The unnamed narrator from Antonio Di Benedetto’s The Suicides (NYRB Classics, January).
Favorite new-to-me author?
Mathias Ernard. I picked up his book, Zone (2008), on a whim while on a trip to the London Review Bookshop, and was really impressed.
Favorite book by a debut author? Also, the best cover so far.
Maggie Sarsfield’s Beta Vulgaris (W.W. Norton, February).
Biggest disappointment?
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux (W.W. Norton, May).
Biggest surprise?
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922).
Most anticipated books in the second half of 2025?
This is cheating a bit, because I’ve already read them, but Prue Shaw’s Dante: The Essential Commedia (W.W. Norton, September) and Todd James Pierce’s Making Mary Poppins (W.W. Norton, November) are high on my list.
New releases I haven’t read yet, but want to.
Laurent Binet’s Perspectives (FSG, February). Louise Hegarty’s Fair Play (Harper, April). I started Henry Wiencek’s dual biography of Stanford White and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Stan & Gus (FSG, July), but had to set it aside for other things.
Book I want to read by the end of the year?
The Birthday Party (2023) by Laurent Mauvignier, another Fitzcarraldo book I picked up in London.
OK. If you keep reading, you’ll find a full, ranked list of my 2025 reading just beyond the subscription widget.
2025 new book releases (so far)
(All links go to my reviews.)
Highly recommended
Lion by Sonya Walger (NYRB, February).
Sakina’s Kiss by Vivek Shanbhag (McNally Editions, July).
Radio Treason: The Trials of Lord Haw-Haw, the British Voice of Nazi Germany by Rebecca West (McNally Editions, February).
The Bewitched Bourgeois by Dino Buzzati (NYRB Classics, January).
Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History by Anika Burgess (W.W. Norton, July)1
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (NYRB, March).
The Pilgrimage by John Broderick (McNally Editions, March).
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global by Laura Spinney (Bloomsbury, May).
Terrestrial History by Joe Mungo Reed (W.W. Norton, April).
let me tell you, let me go on by Paul Griffith (NYRB, April).
The Ways of Paradise by Peter Cornell (Fitzcarraldo Editions, March).
The Suicides by Antonio Di Benedetto (NYRB Classics, January).
Worth checking out
The Sleepers by Matthew Gasda (Arcade, April).
How To Be Avant-Garde: Modern Artists and the Quest to End Art by Morgan Falconer (W.W. Norton, February).
Beta Vulgaris by Maggie Sarsfield (W.W. Norton, February).
The King of a Rainy Country by Brigid Brophy (McNally Editions, April).
Adventures in the Louvre by Elaine Sciolino (W.W. Norton, April).
Save Our Souls: The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder by Matthew Pearl (W.W. Norton, January)
A Philosophy of Shame by Frédéric Gros (Verso, May).
The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution by Joyce E. Chaplin (W.W. Norton, March).
The Garden by Nick Newman (Putnam, January).
Atavists by Lydia Millett (W.W. Norton, April).
From Ted to Tom: The Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Gorey by Edward Gorey (NYRB, February).
Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age by Raphael Cormack (W.W. Norton, March).
Proceed with caution
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux (W.W. Norton, May).
Command Performance by Jean Echenoz (NYRB Classics, March).
Authority by Andrea Long Chu (FSG, April)
The Story of Astrophysics in Five Revolutions by Ersilia Vaudo (W.W. Norton, May)
Nadja by Andre Breton (NYRB Classics, June).
Water by Rumi (NYRB Classics, April).
Skip it
Vantage Point by Sarah Sligar (MCD, January).
Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season by John Gregory Dunne (McNally Editions, July).2
Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop by J. Hoberman (Verso, May).
Actively dissuade people from reading it
The House on Buzzard’s Bay by Dwyer Murphy (Viking, June).
At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca (Blackstone, February).
My review is forthcoming in the Washington Post.
I love seeing your choices for these prompts, Michael. I also loved (and laughed over) The Pilgrimage—that ending! And your top pick is another one I need to get to this year!
Énards Zone is probably one of the greatest novels published in our era. My college library had a copy and I picked it up on a lark one day back in 2007-08. It still sticks with me more than anything I was ever assigned.