Next up on the Best of 2025 train is Books. These are my favorites READ in 2025, not necessarily released. It is impossible to keep up with everything on an annual basis, so this is the one category in which I give myself something of a break. I trust you get it.

(Remember: Not every selection gets an explanation.)

Books

15. Home Team: Minor League Baseball’s Most Off-the-Wall Team Names and the Stories Behind Them by Tim Hagerty- A slim volume that fits nicely with my weirdo thing for strangely named Minor League teams.

14. The Trap by Ava Glass- I like a spy story and Glass’s tales of the newish but increasingly hardened Emma Makepeace fit the bill nicely.

13. How to Seal Your Own Fate by Kristen Perrin- Not so cozy as to be somnambulant, not so supernatural as to be horror. I like what Perrin has going on in this series.

12. Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen

11. Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus- A great book about hot dogs? Yes. Loftus doesn’t so much make the food stuff a metaphor for larger things as it becomes impossible not to view it that way as her book unfolds.

10. Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

9. Reboot by Justin Taylor- At its most basic level, this is the story of a former teen star trying to get some more time in the spotlight. But Reboot is really about environmental degradation, conspiracy theory, the omnipresent brutality of social media, and generally the ways things aren’t very good right now. The ending is a bit of a cop out, perhaps, but most will enjoy a brief salve for their nerves.

8. Woodworking by Emily St. James- A good story well told, overflowing with empathy and honesty. Being trans in America has gotten considerably rougher and more dangerous in the past few years. Keeping that in mind while reading this book will break your heart, if you’ve gotten even a fraction of a soul to you.

7. What We Can Know by Ian McEwan- McEwan returns to climate change 15 years after Solar with a far deeper and darker novel. It has his signature exhausted but not extinguished love of flawed humanity wrapped in a science-fiction shell. It suggests that when the world ends, it actually just sort of…keeps going. If you hate how people talk about higher education, especially the humanities, as if its only purpose is to train people into widgets for the economy, as I do, this one will feel especially resonant and bittersweet.

6. King Sorrow by Joe Hill- King Sorrow is a dragon, although, in practice, he’s more of a demon. Dragons should be great figures of horror, massive fire-breathing lizards, but somewhere along the way, fantasy claimed them. Hill wrestles them back a bit here, giving the book a seductive, scary monster that shapes the lives of six friends with its annual demand of a live sacrifice. The mix-and-match genre work here is skillful, and the characterization is top-notch.

5. The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa- A clever time loop murder-mystery that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Thank goodness they finally translated this one into English.

4. The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man by Paul Newman- This book was a gift from a Professor I worked with at Conn, who said my writing voice reminded her of Newman’s. I think Professor Borelli was being overly kind, but as a fan of Newman, descended from a family of Newman fans, it is/was a tremendous compliment. And the book is great, a doorstop that bounces along quickly and easily.

3. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

2. Show, Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld- Sittenfeld is a tremendous writer who excels at short stories. If there was any doubt, this volume serves as a reminder.

1. James by Percival Everett- Remember when everyone pointed to this as the best novel released in 2024? They were right.

Worst

Next to Heaven by James Frey- So here’s the thing with Frey. Back when he got raked for…taking liberties with A Million Little Pieces, I maintained that the book itself was still a good read. That it evoked the sensation of addiction, early recovery, and the reality that not everyone makes it in a way that felt emotionally true. And yes, it was bad he lied that it wasn’t ACTUALLY true, but that didn’t stop it from being worth a read. I still believe that, but Frey isn’t that writer here. Nowhere near. He apparently wrote it under two months and I have no problem believing that.

Most Anticipated in 2026

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe- The writer of Say Nothing is back with another nonfiction book but the description of this one reads like a wild novel.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout- It is set in New England, it is about middle class/middle age loneliness, and its main character is a teacher. When I first selected this book, those three items were quite familiar to me. I’m not teaching anymore (let’s just slide past that one) but the rest I remain a near-expert on.