The list of things wrong with 2025 is a deep hole with no bottom. The awfulness of it has been kind of all consuming for me, and I’ve lately recognized, and must repeatedly remind myself, that it’s hard to rescue yourself from drowning if you keep diving back into the pool. So no, I have no control over the things that are actively destroying the life I thought I had, but I can express gratitude for the things that have brought me joy this year, and I’m grateful that that included some wonderful books! Here’s a list of some of the books that brought me joy this year. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and the books are not exclusively 2025 titles, but I recommend all of them!
The books of John Scalzi – I think my Mom turned me on to the works of Scalzi, or possibly someone from work, but goodness I’m thrilled to have found his books! The first book of his I tried was Starter Villain, in which an aimless guy unexpectedly inherits a vast criminal enterprise from an uncle he barely knew. This led me to the Kaiju Preservation Society, about an organization dedicated to protecting the very real Kaiju that were unintentionally released when the world exploded the atomic bomb; When the Moon Hits Your Eye, a Rashomon style story about the Earth’s moon suddenly turning into cheese, and Redshirts, about crew members on a starship realizing they have whatever the opposite of Main Character Energy is. These books in turn led me to Scalzi’s more traditional hard sci fi series Old Man’s War series which I am still working my way through. The joy I have in recommending his work is also joy that there are So Many books you will have much entertainment in store.
The Book of Dust trilogy by Phillip Pulman
I re-read the first two titles, The Book of Dust and The Secret Commonwealth, in anticipation of the release of The Rose Field this fall, the final book in Pulman’s Book of Dust trilogy. The stories in this trilogy bookend the His Dark Materials trilogy, with the first book looking at how the infant Lyra came to be entrusted to the scholars of Jordan College. The final two follow a young adult Lyra struggling to find her place in a world of growing tyranny and misinformation. Pan, her faithful daemon, finds himself increasingly frustrated with Lyra’s disconnect from the world of magic and imagination they once easily inhabited. As in the His Dark Materials trilogy, Lyra and Pan’s internal struggles are enmeshed with global and universal threats. Pulman takes tough topics straight on, often with no kind of easy solution, but there’s beauty in the struggle. I’m still not sure I understand the ending. I may have to re-read it again. But I do know that the entire series left me feeling as if we’ve received a gift we had no reason to expect. Returning to a beloved series is a fraught business, but The Book of Dust trilogy is as beautiful, urgent and necessary as the original.
Murder Your Employer, Vol. 1 McMaster’s Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes
Honestly with a title like that you could just stop and it might be enough. However, this extremely entertaining book introduces us to The McMasters Conservatory for the homicidal arts, an extremely exclusive academy for adults with “ethical” reasons for erasing people, but only those who deeply deserve it.
The Whole Enchilada by Daniela Quirke and I’ve Seen You Naked Over 8000 times by Ilene Haddad. It’s not every day that a friend publishes a book and even less often that TWO whole friends publish books, but this year my two friends Amanda and Ilene both published delightful books that I think everyone should read. The Whole Enchilada is a fun scifi fantasy road trip novel in which a young woman finds herself transporting a friendly alien named Joan to her UFO rendezvous point in rural Texas. I’ve Seen You Naked Over 8000 Times is a collection of essays about the highs and lows and inbetweens of marriage which is obviously best when you both have a sense of humor about it. Both are available from Amazon! Buy them today!
The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl
I’ve loved Ruth Reichl’s food related memoirs for years, like Garlic and Sapphires and Tender at the Bone, as well as her 2014 foray into fiction Delicious, so I was excited to discover 2024’s The Paris Novel even if I was a bit late to find it. It’s the story of a young woman whose glamorous, perpetually disappointed mother dies and leaves her a one way plane ticket to Paris. Reichl creates a 1960s Paris that is as magical and wondrous as a fairy tale, full of delightful characters and steeped in glorious food. It’s an escapist confection that I couldn’t put down.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
A tea monk who travels village to village offering tea and solace to people is found by a wild-built robot. Robots have not been seen by people for centuries, since they were released from their servant roles and allowed freedom. Describing the plot of this beautiful novel can’t really capture the magic of it, but in a sea of books imagining infinite ways for the future to be horrible, it’s nice to visit one that imagines a future that is not grim or apocalyptic.
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
I think it’s probably fitting that I ended my 2025 reading journey with When Women Were Dragons, which asks what would have happened in the US of the 1950s if more than half a million women just suddenly turned into dragons. When Women Were Dragons might be about “dragons” but it’s also about female rage. It’s about the cages that are built for women, and that women build for themselves, that keep women from expressing unpleasant emotions and inconvenient desires. It’s about how small women must make themselves to remain palatable to male tastes, and how from earliest childhoods girls are groomed to make themselves quiet and nice and sugar with no spice. It’s also a rip roaring fantasy about what happens when women suddenly become dragons. 1950s USA is not in a good head space for that sort of thing, and of course McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover have to butt in. There’s less “dragons burning up their spouses” than you might suppose, but less is not zero.
Random Knowledge Syndrome 