What I Read in 2025

This year I managed anxiety by diving into reading in a huge way using the only medium I could. I made it my goal to read 50 audiobooks, and at some point it became clear I was flying through things while cleaning, cooking, commuting, exercising. So I doubled the goal, and I finished 101. I was hesitant to share publicly about the personal project because year-end lists of accomplishments can often feel self-serving and navel-gazing when there is so much pain going on in the world. But reading this year became my own small act of rebellion, healing, caring, love. And we could all use more of that in our lives.

Huge shout outs are due to Libby and to the many, many friends who shared recommendations. There was no way to read this many things without grabbing ideas from anyone I talked to, and it was a beautiful way to connect with friends this year. When I see the list I see the book I started reading out loud to my son before he got old enough to start requesting his own books and didn’t want any Dickens. I see the book recommended by my therapist. The three books a friend suggested over beers. A book I never read from an undergrad class but finally made time for. I see all kinds of genres. Some serious, some for work. Others for fun and for teenagers. I got into history for the first time. I dug nonfiction in a way I hadn’t before. I found beautiful inspiration from amazing writers. At least one book on here made me think writing was a mistake.

I haven’t read this much since grad school comps, an experience that by and large burned out of me the ability to read anything in any great quantity unless forced to do so. But doing so this year was a way to wrap myself in words, cultures, ideas, pains, stories in ways that I desperately needed.

My absolute favorites from the year:

1. The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
2. Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
3. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Next year I will slow down. But all the same - may the new year help you find the words others have written that let you know you’re not alone.

The List

2025 Total: 101 Books

1. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
2. My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
3. We have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
4. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
5. Wool by Hugh Howey
6. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
7. Strike by Sarah Bond
8. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
9. Shift by Hugh Howey
10. Dust by Hugh Howey
11. Kraken by China Mievelle
12. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
13. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
14. What I Ate in a Year by Stanley Tucci
15. Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks
16. Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters
17. Gunslinger by Stephen King
18. The Roundhouse by Louise Erdrich
19. Introduction to Greek Philosophy by David Roochnick (Great Courses)
20. How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy
21. Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
22. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
23. The Raven Tower by by Ann Leckie
24. Big Questions of Philosophy by David K. Johnson (Great Courses)
25. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
26. Pastoralia by George Saunders
27. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
28. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
29. Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino
30. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
31. Effective Editing by Molly McCowan (Great Courses)
32. Novelist as Vocation by Haruki Murakami
33. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
34. The Art of Statistics by David Spiegelhalter
35. Evicted by Matthew Desmond
36. First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami
37. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
38. Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
39. Academia Next by Bryan Alexander
40. The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
41. 50 Philosophy Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon
42. Legendborn by Tracy Dean
43. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
44. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
45. Small Teaching by James M. Lang
46. The AI Con by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
47. We Want to do More than Survive by Bettina L. Love
48. A Pedagogy of Kindness by Catherine J. Denial
49. Ain’t I a Woman by bell hooks
50. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
51. Clean Agile by Robert Cecil Martin
52. A Field Guide to Grad School by Jessica McCrory Calarco
53. Imagination Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin
54. The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy
55. The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
56. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
57. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
58. J Pod by Douglas Coupland
59. American Higher Education in the 20th Century edited by Michael N. Bastedo, Philip G. Altbach, and Patricia J. Gumport
60. White Noise by Don DeLillo
61. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
62. The Next Conversation by Jefferson Fisher
63. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
64. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
65. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
66. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
67. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez
68. What Masie Knew by Henry James
69. Educated by Tara Westover
70. Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick
71. Analogia by George Dyson
72. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
73. A History of American Higher Education by John R. Thelin
74. Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant
75. Grit by Angela Duckworth
76. The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje
77. The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
78. Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
79. Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
80. The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt
81. A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
82. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
83. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
84. Universality by Natasha Brown
85. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
86. Chesapeake Requiem by Earl Swift
87. The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
88. The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
89. Leading Generously by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
90. Outline Rachel Cusk
91. Furious Hours by Casey Cep
92. Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
93. The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger
94. Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh
95. Complaint by Sara Ahmed
96. The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty
97. The 5AM Club by Robin Sharma
98. Exit Strategy by Marha Wells
99. Eichman in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
100. Viral justice by Ruha Benjamin
101. Dangerous Rhythms by T.J. English