Welcome, everyone, to my very first year-end list ever! I’m excited to be here and share some of my favorite books of the year, and I hope you are too.
When I was entertaining the possibility of doing something more in-depth than just an Instagram post, I realized I should consider my picks as a whole: Do they have anything in common? What, if anything, ties them together? Why were these five, out of all the books I read this year the ones that spoke to me?
It took me about thirty seconds to find the thread that connects all of these novels. Each of these books is a deep, psychological portrait of one, or a few individuals. All of them are coping with some sort of loss—a child, a relationship, their youth, a secret dream—and learning how to re-forge themselves, often outside the bounds framed out by society. It makes sense, in a year where I spent so much time in my own head (can a writer ever psychoanalyze themselves too much?), mourning some relationships that I thought might endure a lifetime, shoring up the foundations of existing ones, tentatively toeing into new friendship waters, that these are the books that called to me.
A Preamble
Roundabouts 2023 I made the decision to re-become a more omnivorous reader. Growing up, and all through college I read everything. Fantasy, literary fiction, classics, non-fiction (I read Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton when it came out as a high school sophomore. I was either not very cool or far too cool.). Left to my own devices out of college, I began to lose that wide-ranging taste pretty quickly, and even some of my reading habits. I gravitated towards the types of books that matched what I like to write (fantasy, primarily), and it took me about a decade to realize I was doing myself a disservice.
Last year I read over twenty fantasy books (I also read a few more books overall than this year), and this year I read six. In 2024 I started making an effort to read more literary fiction, and I guess it worked, because outside of the six fantasy novels, and 1-2 non-fiction, most of what I read was literary fiction. In the second half of this year I decided, with a friend, to read more classics, and I snuck in a handful of those, and plan to continue.
It’s a fun challenge because I have read—and loved—a lot of classics over the years, so I’m now hitting some of the lesser knows like E.M. Foster’s Great Secret Gay Bildungsroman Maurice, revisiting Steinbeck courtesy of Cannery Row, and finally got around to The Once and Future King which inexplicably slipped through the cracks in my childhood. I re-read A Wrinkle in Time with a friend who had never touched it, and it was even weirder than I remember as a child (though far less terrifying). My goal for 2025 is to dive into some indie reads for obvious reasons, and to get more non-fiction on the plate, a lofty-feeling goal when the real world gets less enticing each day.
How I Pick My Top/Five-Star Books
It’s just like, my opinion, man. As a disclaimer, not all of these books were five stars for me, and, frankly, I think that’s a good thing, at least for my sense of discernment as a reader and writer. I feel the low number of true standouts reflects the goals I’ve set for myself. I’m exploring more, and that’s a good thing.
A five-star book for me is very much not a declaration of objective, or literary value. For me, giving a book five stars is a reflection of specific qualities that matter to me. Not every five star book I’ve read needs to boil the mercury on all of these, but it should get close:
Page-turning-ness: Do I want to devour this book whole? Is it keeping me up at night? Is this how I want to spend my one free Saturday this month? (Just kidding, I have no free Saturdays)
Re-visit-ability: Do I want a copy of this book for my shelves? Once I get to the last page am I itching to start it again? Am I excited to re-visit it again later with new perspective?
Prose: The prose must be good, full stop. Ask me why I only made it four pages into Noted Book Blockbuster, Fourth Wing.
Stick-With-Me-Ness: How long after I’ve finished this book am I still thinking about it? This is the sneakiest metric for sure, and the one I often find most surprising. At least one of my top reads this year is one that I enjoyed a lot on first read, and figured that was that, but I’ve found myself thinking about it quite often since. Birnam Wood, a 2024 read was one of these. It was the second book I read that year, and I thought it was a great four star read. The fact that I was still thinking about guerilla gardeners and tech billionaires a full twelve months later kicked it up that last star.
And Away We Go:
5. SEASCRAPER – Benjamin Wood
This one lands at number five by default, in an attempt to thwart recency bias (I finished it last night). I picked up Benjamin Wood’s novel about a young shrimper on the desolate coast of England, with dreams of a career as a folk musician purely for the left-field-ness of the concept. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting to be immediately sucked in, much like the quicksand that haunts much of this slim volume’s backdrop. Wood’s prose is immediate and physical, and the present tense puts you so fully in his protagonist’s psyche and flotsam-reeking body that every moment feels completely alive. I can’t say for sure how long this one will stick with me, but it was one of, if not my most surprising win of the year.
4. ALL FOURS – Miranda July
This pick is a smuggle in from 2024, accomplished by some strategic scheduling so that I could finish it to start off 2025 correctly. This polarizing book about sex, and love (and lack thereof), and menopause, and all sorts of grief was one of those ‘right place, right time’ reads for me, and it shaped a lot of my thinking in the year to come. Discourse on All Fours has been plentiful the last two years, so I’ll just say: if you’re someone with an aging uterus, or deeply intertwined with someone with an aging uterus, I’d probably pick this one up.
3. INTERMEZZO – Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney has grown in the zeitgeist over the last few years, and she’s a love it or hate it author, so it was finally time to see what all the fuss was about. Personally, I came down hard on the side of love. This exploration of two brothers and the way the loss of their father impacts them, and the non-traditional relationships they form thereafter, was beautiful, gripping, and ultimately, triumphant. Intermezzo reminded me how much I love stream-of-consciousness writing and I’m excited to dig into more of Rooney’s oeuvre.
Much like Birnam Wood last year, I thought this was a solid four star read at the time, but here we are all these months later.
2. HAMNET – Maggie O’Farrell
I knew Hamnet was going to be a knockout; I’ve known that for five years. The question was: would it be worth the price of admission (weeping alone in the dark)? One of only two, instant five star reads this year, the answer was a resounding ‘yes.’ This book, about the death of Shakespeare’s only son, and the genesis of the Danish Play, is about so much more than grief, though the grief is gutting and viscerally wrought. Told, predominantly from the point of view of his wife Agnes, Hamnet is lush, raw, captivating, and at turns surprisingly sexy. Blisteringly original, but written in-between the lines of little-known history, I suspect this one will have serious staying power through the years.
1. LONESOME DOVE – Larry McMurtry
For anyone who’s spent time around me this fall, the fact that Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer winning Western is at the top of my list, is probably the least surprising pick I could have made. Luckily, I’m not here for the drama, I’m here for the truth, and the truth is that all of those people on Reddit who won’t shut up about this book from the eighties about sad cowboys, know what the fuck they’re about. Profound, and sometimes profoundly nightmarish, this epic about two aging Texas Rangers setting out for one great last adventure towards the Montana sunset, is one of the all-time greats. I’m glad that for once I listened to my parents as a child and waited to read this one, because it was worth the wait. Is it one of the best books I’ve ever read? Probably, and it could be that for you too.
Honorable Mentions:
Margo’s Got Money Troubles – I wavered a lot on whether to include this one. Easily my most enjoyable read of the year, it’s so staunchly of a specific time and place that I’m curious how well it will hold up in the years to come, but of course that’s part of this novel’s specific joy.
Ilium – This slim espionage story, narrated by an anonymous young woman was surprisingly hooky and beautifully written. It feels not unlike Creation Lake’s kinder cousin. If you’re looking for something in between seasons of Slow Horses, do yourself a favor.
Body Work – Lo! A non-fiction read! The subtitle of this book is ‘The Radical Power of Personal Narrative’ and I would like a lot more people, especially people who’ve dealt with trauma, especially bodily trauma, to read it. This was another book that landed in my lap exactly when I needed it.
To everyone who suggested me a book this year, thank you!
As always, thank you for being here!
xoxo
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