This year provided an embarrassment of riches for the reader, making my job of selecting the best a happy, albeit difficult task. I get most books from the local town library, which means that I wait on long cues for many titles. There are a few I own, but I try to keep that to a minimum. Additionally, I borrow some as audiobooks from the library. Finally, I purchase a small number as e-books for my Kindle. My reading speed is average to slow, as I made it through 66 books this year. I do not review them all. Here I will list some books published in 2025 that I will not read and review until 2026, so they will be up for consideration in the Best of 2026:

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
The Salt Stones
Hotshot: A Life on Fire
The Uncool
Heart the Lover
Audition
The Black Wolf
A Guardian and a Thief

You may wonder about the absence of R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis. There aren’t too many times I don’t finish a book (DNF), but I struggled to a quarter of the way through, then couldn’t take it anymore. I enjoyed the inventiveness of her previous fantasy, Babel, and I considered Yellowface one of my favorites of 2023. It was a deep disappointment to me.

Another book I failed to complete was Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. I have read other Twain biographies, and I found this one very interesting, but I could not plow through its detail with other titles needing attention. I enjoyed Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, and I hope to complete Twain some other time.

For ease of review, here is a table presenting my favorites of 2025:

The best fiction this year had to include Fredrick Backman’s My Friends, a moving, well-structured and emotionally rendered novel. The Correspondent was another clever structure, real characterizations, true to the heart. The Impossible Fortune is highly entertaining, and Osman is still maintaining the writing quality, plotting, and excellent character development of the first four Thursday Murder Club books. It is important that the author taps truths about the human condition in a deep way, which each of these authors achieves. O’Brien’s Letter to the Future succeeds in a way no other book has in recent memory. It may not unfold as he depicts, but in years to come we may find he came close.

My selections for “So Close” are exactly that: they come very close to the best, but don’t quite hit the apex of excellence for one reason or another. “Worth A Mention” are worthy of your time, but are lacking in a quality or two that misses the top tier. Please leave a comment, and your best reasoning if you wish to disagree—I’d love to hear your views.

I think the bulk of my readers agree that Garabandal is seriously worth your time, as that review garnered the most views on my blog. It is a very important book for our time, and may cause you to carefully consider how you live your life. Patriot is the memoir of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who actually stood a chance of defeating Putin in a Russian election, until Putin made sure he was imprisoned and killed. He was a great man, loved his country, and wished to free his people. I encourage you to read this. Raising Hare was a sensitive, deeply felt memoir of a human’s relationship with an animal; she learns a great deal about herself as she studies this relationship, a study open to us all. A Mary Roach book is always a well-researched treat, especially her self deprecating humor— a must-read.

The other nonfiction books listed have much to teach the reader, but not in a stodgy, dull way— these are fact-based, but fascinating as fiction. Whether it is the Idaho murders tragedy, Jane Austen, the Supreme Court, or the Grand Canyon, these books are deeply personal, well written, filled with sensitivity and depth of thought. Don’t read only fiction, or only nonfiction— I urge you to stretch to include both in your reading repertoire.

Regarding classics, in 2025 I re-read and wrote some thoughts about The Great Gatsby on its 100th anniversary of publication (https://www.margueritereads.com/home/the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald?rq=the%20great%20gatsby). The birthday I shame-facedly missed, however, was Jane Austen’s 250th in this month of December (unless you can grant me absolution for the review of Jane Austen at Home back in May https://www.margueritereads.com/home/jane-austen-at-home-a-biography-by-lucy-worsley?rq=jane%20austen) . I will have to consider a re-read of Pride and Prejudice in 2026. As I shown a light on short story master Alice Munro in 2024, I plan to highlight another unsung hero, author Barbara Pym. She is a favorite of mine, and I fear is fading rapidly from public memory, although most of her books remain in print. She is thought of as a twentieth century Jane Austen, and I hope to place her back in the reader’s pantheon, giving her the recognition she deserves.

I hope you enjoyed my review of the year’s reading. Agree? Disagree? Please leave your respectful comments below, and make suggestions for glaring omissions you detect. I love hearing from you! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Thanks so much for visiting and reading!