Books I Loved Reading in 2025

 So far in 2026, I’ve finished only two books! (I'll post about them later.) The problem is simple: I’ve not set aside time in each day, or in each week to read. Work has been unusually busy-frantic this year. My colleagues and I agree this status is at least partly due to the severity of the winter, with many people staying indoors digging into their genealogy, leading them to urgently seek help.

In 2025 I had a wonderful reading summer. I worked, but also had plenty of time to read. My favorite book of the year I read in July. Fox by Joyce Carol Oates weighs in at 652 pages, and I had no problem finishing it in ten days. I’d never read Oates before, had no inkling what a roller-coaster explosion of an experience it would be. It’s a tale of a fascinating sociopath, and what amazed me most is how Oates takes the reader inside the head of such a man—his dizzying, relentless stream of thoughts, the way he “manages” all the people around him—in fact, how exhausting it must be to be a sociopath! The other characters more than share their weight with him--they are all so unique and astutely drawn. And Oates is in her 80s! This novel proves her to be at the height of her powers. 

In August, I read the new mystery by John Banville, The Drowned, the fourth of his Strafford & Quirke novels written under his own name. Prior to the most recent four, he wrote Quirke novels using the pen name Benjamin Black. The best thing about reading Banville is his agility with language. All a description needs is one or two sentences and the reader sees and knows everything. The setting is Dublin and environs, sometimes hopping south to Wicklow, and the time is a noirish 1950s. His take on Irish culture at the time is so illuminating—the tension of being a minority “Prod” (Protestant) in the Republic of Ireland. Because Banville’s characters are both Prods and Catholics, even though the conflict between them is never stated, it hangs on every word of dialogue. Banville has sympathy for his Prod characters, of whom Strafford is the most notable--He opens up a view of Irish life that I hadn’t encountered before. Prods are the descendants of the English who ran the country before 1922, and their descendants have been in sharp decline as far as status and wealth are concerned ever since. I’m so glad I bought the book because it is definitely worth a re-read.

Another top read of 2025 I read in February or March last year. Bernhard Schlink, one of my favorite authors, had a new book The Granddaughter, which is, I think, definitely his best, if not one of his best. Schlink is most well-known for his novel The Reader, which was made into a top-rated film. Not one of my favorites of his, however.

Other favorites of 2025—All published in 2025 except for Elizabeth George’s mystery. Have you read any of these? 

The Wild, Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

The Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George