I never did finish my 2025 book list. I’ve become very lax about tracking and documenting my reading, and now I’m looking at a list of what I read last year and I’m finding two things: There are several books that I read and vividly remember but never added them to my list; and there are books that are on my list but I barely remember a word of them.
Does it even matter? Some people just read books and move on and never even think about adding titles to a list or writing down their thoughts about the books they read. Those people aren’t me, though. It bothers me that I haven’t published a 2025 book list and so I’m going to do it now, just as we’re approaching the middle of 2026. Better late than never. So here’s the list:
The Hard Crowd (Rachel Kushner)
We Want Everything (Nanni Balestrini). I’d never have picked this up if I hadn’t read Rachel Kushner. It’s about social upheaval and revolution in 1970s Italy, and it’s great. Whoever came up with the phrase “Become ungovernable” must have read Nanni Balestrini.
The Let Them Theory (Mel Robbins). What was she thinking, you might ask? Click the link and find out. Five eye rolls. Highly unrecommended.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde). This was my first time reading Dorian Gray, and I went in knowing nothing other than what everyone knows, which is that Dorian Gray remains ever young while his portrait in the attic ages hideously. And rightly so, because as it turns out (SPOILER ALERT), Dorian Gray is an absolutely hideous person. I’d expected that he would be vain and selfish and trifling and dishonest, but he’s a straight-up murderous monster, lacking in all human decency. He’d be right at home in 2026.
The Beauty of Everyday Things (Soetsu Yanagi). I’ve actually not yet finished this book. It’s on my coffee table, and I read it a page or two at a time. It’s a series of essays about ordinary household objects made by Japanese craftsmen and artisans. The essays and accompanying photographs are quite beautiful - inspiring, too - and I like his Yanagi’s idea that patterns and technique and their limitations are prerequisites for beauty, not hindrances. No one, not even a genius, is endlessly creative. Structure is helpful. But I hate his blithe dismissal of the craftspeople themselves. He insists that craftspeople are artisans NOT artists, and that anonymity is essential to their work. He disdains the idea that a craftsperson should try to put her personal stamp on anything she makes. He seems to believe in a permanent underclass who should quietly work their lives away creating beauty and comfort and ease for their betters. Another one who'd be right at home in 2026.
Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver)
David Copperfield. Charles Dickens.
Family and Other Calamities (Leslie Gray Streeter) and Trespasses (Louise Kennedy)
The Crow Trap (Ann Cleeves)
Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
Iris in Winter (Elizabeth Caddell)
The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate, and Don’t Tell Alfred (Nancy Mitford)
The Truths We Hold and 107 Days (Kamala Harris). I read the first book early in the year, amid the early Trump 2.0 chaos of DOGE and USAID and plane crashes, when people on the internet were seriously, with a straight face, asking why Kamala wasn’t “doing something about all of this.” Never mind that Kamala actually asked for the chance to lead, by running a near-flawless campaign for President. Never mind that she warned us - repeatedly and clearly and convincingly - that everything that happened last year and that is happening now would in fact happen. And never mind that 76 or so million Americans looked at the smart and compassionate and principled and accomplished Black lady and the 34-count pu$&y-grabbing corrupt racist insurrectionist felon and said “yeah, we’ll take the White dude.” Kamala was RIGHT THERE, ready to lead, and this country said “no thanks, we like the conman.” Yes, it’s been almost two years, and no, I am not over it.
Lovely One, Ketanji Brown Jackson. I often wonder what it’s like for Justice Jackson to finally fulfill her highest ambition, only to be surrounded by the six worst Supreme Court justices in history. And Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, too - but at least they had a chance to serve when the Supreme Court wasn’t a wholly owned subsidiary of a corrupt Executive Branch. Anyway, it’s a very good book. I just finished Uncommon Favor, Dawn Staley’s memoir, and there’s a common thread connecting them. Both of these women knew what they wanted to do from a very early age. Both of them knew that they were extraordinarily gifted. Both of them were singularly dedicated to pursuing their goals. And of course, both of them had to be twice as good as white men to get half as far.
Black Widow (Leslie Gray Streeter) and The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (Louise Kennedy)
The Sum of Us (Heather McGhee). I’m not sure why I didn’t write about this before, because it is very good. I have always been impressed with Heather McGhee when I’ve seen her on discussion panels, and I am consciously trying to read more books by Black authors, especially women. McGhee’s central thesis is in her subtitle: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. She touches on some of the same themes that Heather Cox Richardson wrote about in Democracy Awakening, which explains what Richardson calls the “liberal consensus,” the social welfare system that pulled us out of the Depression and made America free and prosperous in the post-war years; and its gradual dismantling beginning with Ronald Reagan and continuing through the first Trump administration. McGhee covers this as well, but with a much closer examination of the role of race in the dismantling of the social welfare system and the ways in which Reagan and others in the public and private spheres exploited racial fears to hoodwink the so-called “white working class” into believing that equality for Black Americans would equal poverty and deprivation for them. Sadly, their tactics worked and continue to work, to everyone’s detriment. We really could have a just society and a fair distribution of wealth, but only if we understand that racism is the major obstacle.
Ten Days that Shook the World, John Reed. As I mentioned here, I re-read Ten Days after watching Reds for the first time right after Diane Keaton died. Fair warning - this post touches on pretty much everything, so don’t expect a book review.
Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, Jason Stanley. God, I spent a lot of 2025 neck-deep in fascism, didn’t I? No wonder my brain is in the state it’s in. Anyway, this book touches on some of the same things that Heather McGhee and Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum have covered in their recent books, with a bit of a narrower focus. Stanley examines a specific tactic of fascists - the rewriting of history, the flooding of the zone with bullshit, making it harder to tell truth from lies; and of course, the framing of oppressors as victims. It’s DARVO on a macro scale. Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder are both in Canada now. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to characterize their departure as fleeing the US. I worry about HCR sometimes.
I read a few other things here and there, too. I listened to an audiobook version of Jonathan Alter’s His Very Best, a biography of Jimmy Carter. I don’t consider that I really read it, not because I don’t think listening to an audiobook is reading (keep me out of that debate) but because I didn’t really pay attention to the recording. I ended up buying a copy of the book, an actual copy, because it was right on the front table of a new locally owned bookstore that I really like. The parts that actually penetrated the brain fog when I was listening were quite good so maybe I’ll actually read it this year. If I do, you'll see it on my 2026 book list. God willing, I will publish that sometime before the end of 2027.
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