Now that 2025 is ending what has been your favorite book you’ve read in the last year?
Mine is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (audiobook is the way to go!)
Lesser known: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle. Satire Horror. It was a fun ride.
All Sinners Bleed (mystery noir) by S.A. Cosby and My Friends by Frederik Backman are also my notable mentions
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. Very enlightening.
same… i read Project Hail Mary and it was awesome…
arl read The Gone World and it was also amazing
Definitely the Dungeon Crawler Carl books. Currently listening to the Bobiverse series and it is a close second.
The Devils. Fantastic mix of grim dark and fantasy.
For me I think it was Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. So many emotions lol.
Project Hail Mary was another one of the highlights!
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One of my favorites I read was the trilogy which starts with The Three-body Problem. Mind boggling stuff, and page turners, but not perfect.
I also read a lot of Stephen King, and the award for the best book I read in 2025 has to go to The Green Mile. It’s one of King’s best, and one I have great memories of reading when it came out.
I always have trouble picking favorites, so here are the three I most enjoyed:
- The Crows by C.M. Rosens - 90s chick lit crossed with eldritch horror: a young woman buys a house in a seaside town, unaware that some of the townsfolk are secretly eldritch monstrosities, or that the house is more than it seems. Suffers a little bit from self-published editing in places, but the awfulness + fluff combo works surprisingly well; I devoured this.
- Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko - dark academia fantasy with cosmic horror elements: a teenager is coerced into attending a mysterious institute, where the main coursework is incomprehensible, and nobody will explain what the students are learning. Despite this being much too slowly paced for me and not my typical subgenre, the magic system was fascinating.
- Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm - short story collection focusing on scifi technology. I’m not a huge short story fan, but I read a few collections for bingo, and this is the only one I liked as a whole.
I read a lot of great books this year. But, my shortlist goes to one author: Omar El Akkad.
One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This (2025) and American War (2017) were both revelations.
P.S.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020) by Rashid Khalidi. An absolutely vital history in its address of Occupied Palestine, the State of Israel, and the world’s interactions with them. In much the same way Tony Judt deepened my perspective of Europe with Postwar, and Davids Wengrow and Graeber pushed my understandings with The Dawn of Everything, Khalidi weaves family history with world events to lend a sorely lost dimension to a vilified people.
Just finished Strange Houses, a Japanese horror themed, interview and conversation style novel.
A psychological story with lots of twists and unsettling situations. I immersed myself in the world and the story is believable as could be real.
It’s a quick read under 200 pages with some pictures but I loved it.
I’m now going back to his first book Strange Pictures and will probably pick up Strange Buildings when it comes out.
Oooh you have piqued my interest with this one and especially with only 200 pages? I’m in. Tyvm for sharing!
Contemporary Theological Approaches to Sexuality, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Dirk von Der Horst.
I read (listened to) the first 6 books of Dungeon Crawler Carl. The whole series is fantastic. Best enjoyed via audio book because the narrator does a great job with the voices.
I also got around to reading The Shining by Stephen King. Definitely worth the read!
Happy New Year!
I’m reading Dungeon Crawler Carl at the moment and it’s great and completely bonkers! Just started book 4 today.
Damnit Donut!
A good narrator is priceless!
I can definitely recommend the recent sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep. The movie adaptation is not bad, but as in most cases the book is better. What’s interesting is that the book version of Doctor Sleep is a sequel to the book version of The Shining, while the movie follows up the 1980 Kubrick film.
Just added to my tbr!
I haven’t done a full recap yet, but this is year I read all of the Murderbot books (recommended if that’s your sort of humor, steer clear otherwise) and the Black Sun trilogy. Honestly the latter has stayed with me the longest, even if it’s a light read.
Project Hail Mary is a sound hard scifi book that finally doesn’t mix romance into everything (as or rarely happens since a couple of decades).
I read all the Murderbot books in a row a couple of times a year and they never get worse, they are fantastic.
And Project Hail Mary is so good, I love the relationship with Rocky, I really did feel horror and dread when he was in danger and that is very rare for me.
Kindred by Octavia Butler
I read that in 2024. It really stuck with me and honestly in a way felt timeless. As their “present” was just the apartment really with no notable descriptors but def felt the shift into the past. Amazing writing.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-game-in-yellow-hailey-piper/567aec11eab5b2e5
‘A Game In Yellow.’ It may not be the finest book I read, but it was the one that instantly sprang to mind.
“The King In Yellow” is an old play that was banned by the Vatican and every European king; every actor and audience member who has been part of a performance has gone mad. Now the play has resurfaced in New York, and an unsuspecting couple are going to be part of the next production.
