What I Read in 2025

I read more in 2025 than I have in a long time. Part of it is the job [English teachers need to read], part of it is dedicating time to it, part of it is the kids getting older so I both have more time to read [toddlers are constant input/output machines, and I was never good at disconnecting from that, but teens are a different story] and I think modelling good reading is important to growing kids [the more they see you read, the more they will read, and reading makes the world a better place], and part is just because I love reading.

Here’s my StoryGraph 2025 round up of books read - I’ll comment on a few:

LINCOLN IN THE BARDO by George Saunders [USA]

• Really dug the structure of this, and thought it made an interesting commentary on how we glean information from social media and how we consider reputable sources

• It’s also a great study of grief

THE KISS, AND OTHER STORIES by Anton Chekhov [Russia]

• Deeply into my Russian bullshit

• ‘A Case History’ is a personal favourite as it explores capitalistic abuse as a kind of literal disease, and I find it fascinating that we clearly worried about this kind of thing a long time ago

THE GREAT SWINDLE by Pierre LeMaitre [France]

• Read this due to a new xmas tradition - a book swap with the sister-in-law

• Everyone should organise book swaps with people in their life who read

• This book was good, and has a moment I still see in my head probably once a month

THE CARTOONIST’S CLUB by Raina Telgemaier & Scott McCloud [USA]

• Absolutely loved this - it’s about young people making comics, and in telling their story the book tells young people how to make comics

• The perfect blend of Telgemaier YA comics and McCloud deep comics lore instructional comics

• THE perfect gift for any creative youths [and older] in your life

A YEAR OF LAST THINGS by Michael Ondaatje [Sri Lanka/England/Canada]

• My first dip into Ondaatje’s poetry - I loved it, he’s got a really good emotional flow through these poems

• I could see myself teaching his poetry in the coming years

A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN by Lucia Berlin [USA]

• A collection of short stories - and when they pop, they are blindingly brilliant

• Each is short, so you can clip through them, but they also form well to tell this semi-biographical tale of Berlin that’s so emotionally astounding

• There’s one sequence/paragraph I think is just one of the most beautiful moments in literature - and I deeply want to reference it in my writing one day

ALIENS: BISHOP by T.R. Napper [Australia]

• Dare I say a perfect addition to the Alien world - Napper lands the character of Bishop [in various incarnations] so well and the plot is gripping

AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner [USA]

• Shocking no one, classic book is a classic for a reason

• The tale of a depression era family trying to transport their dead mother to her hometown for burial is so brutally sad when it gets really low

• My favourite 1-2 chapter punch where they complement each other so perfectly in focus, voice, and construction [they are the coffin details and the “My mother is a fish.” duo]

• There was one quote I read to my family over breakfast because I thought it was beyond beautiful - “The air smells like sulphur. Upon the impalpable plane of it their shadows form as upon a wall, as though like sound they had not gone very far away in falling but had merely congealed for a moment, immediate and musing.”

THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA by Yukio Mishima [Japan]

• The prose in this is so brilliant, and structurally it’s very well put together

• This was my first Mishima and I can see my reading more from this

IN THE SKIN OF A LION by Michael Ondaatje [Sri Lanka/England/Canada]

• Had to go back to this to see if it’s still my favourite novel - and it is [is it the best? actually maybe, but is it my personal favourite? absolutely]

• The structure and wandering narrative just capture me every time, and the way Ondaatje writes about moments and people and the way life is built like sand blowing upon a shore just thrill me deeply still roughly 25 years after first reading it

• It’s nice to go back and see something hold up [my reread of I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson showed it to be a mean and misogynistic book, that wanders far too slow, and yet packs just a brilliant ending punch that it lands and will remain, but the whole of the book is barely worth that journey]

KING SORROW by Joe Hill [USA]

• Ended my teaching year with a 24 hour audiobook of this tome

• A rocking story of a dragon summoned, death, a friendship group over decades, and I loved every minute of it - just “a very, very good read” and I loved ending the year with that

• I feel like Hill’s work is often in conversation with Stephen King’s work [20th CENTURY GHOSTS is his NIGHT SHIFT, and THE FIREMAN is his THE STAND, and STRANGE WEATHER is his DIFFERENT SEASONS] and this is very much in league with IT - and like all the others, the connection is loose and Hill absolutely does his own personal narrative and thematic take on elements that form into his own brilliant work

It’s been a good year for it, and I really love hitting my reading chair in the window on a slowly warming sunrise and getting through a few pages. I have set myself the goal for 18 books in 2026 and am currently 5 in so that’s a good Summer break - though am about to slide into the behemoth that is Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamozov so that will slow me down. Mostly, it’s just nice to look back at this because I appreciate every minute I get to spend annotating my paperbacks, leaving notes, reading aloud to people, and generally getting lost in the words.

Here’s the final StoryGraph round up: