My Top 10 Books of 2025
Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon
Both epic in scope and intimate in detail, Dykewomon's magnum opus follows two Jewish women's journey as they flee the pogroms of Eastern Europe to the squalid streets of turn on the 20th century New York. Dykewomon excels at bringing the past to vivid life with a poet's eye for detail and deep interiority within her characters. This is an intergenerational tale, one made richer for the fact our two main protagonists are lesbians living in a society that demonizes their existence, which Dykewomon effectively, empathetically ties into critiques about interlocking levels of oppression (religion, class, sex, and sexual identity).
Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel
Do we really need the economy to perpetually grow? Why? Do we need more stuff? According to Eswatini born Jason Hickel, the unequivocal to all of these questions is a resounding "no". The growth mindset, which takes the form of capitalism, over centuries has degraded both the environment and our connection to it. By reducing everything to a commodity, we no longer see the world as a living, breathing thing. The consequences, as global warming is showing, are dire. Hickel's solutions are radical and thought provoking. Quite simply, this was the most radicalizing book I've read in over twenty years.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
As someone who has lived paycheck to paycheck my entire adult life, it's always been in the back of my mind that I'm only one unexpected expense away from eviction. Set in Milwaukee during the Great Recession in 2008, Desmond follows a cast of characters attempting to live with dignity in very undignified times and circumstances. To his credit, Desmond tells both sides of this story, following both tenants and landlords as they navigate a system both intentionally and unintentionally cruel. His empathy, his willingness to listen, and ability to provide context, easily explain why this expose won a Pulitzer.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
More than a work of fiction, Tan's debut novel is a work of myth making. I do not mean this in a derogatory sense. Instead, by pooling together multiple strands of American and Chinese history and blending them together, she has created a foundational myth for a group of people to draw upon. Much of this myth making comes from the weaving together multi-family, multi-generational tales into a tapestry you can interpret in different ways. It works because Tan's an emotive writer with a gift for bringing you into her characters' minds, transporting you across years and continents.
Spoonhandle by Ruth Moore
Like most readers, I tend to read novels aimed at a general audience. However, sometimes we read authors whose works can only truly be understood by locals. Perhaps only Mainers can understand the tension between the local populace and people "from away" imposing their vision of rustic paradise, adopting the trappings of local culture without understanding its ethos. Perhaps only Mainers can understand the soul of local collaborators, of those who quietly resist, those yearning to live centuries old traditions. "Regional writer" Ruth Moore is mid-20th century writing at its best - clear, unsentimental, evocative, and grounded in proletarian realism.
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
My favorite kind of humor is irony. The subversion of expectation, of finding humor opposites, and being hoisted by one's own petard via personal faults and socialization lights up my brain. As such I adored Wharton's almost ethnographic study of 19th-century New York's upper crust, living lives under such strict and opaque rules that one can't but laugh at her character's self-imposed haplessness. Wharton, who grew up in this exact setting with people from whom these social norms were gospel, is deliciously savage, picking apart her protagonist with a surgeon's skill. It's revenge on an epic, literary scale.
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
This novel starts with a radical act of love. Set 1980s Chicago, it begins at a makeshift funeral of a victim of AIDS. Upon learning the deceased's family intends to junk all of his possessions, the mourners raid the apartment and distribute what they can to the people who loved him for him. This sense of community, of death picking off everyone in that community one by one, of the social fight for recognition and dignity, makes Makkai's novel unforgettable. I wanted understand the AIDS crisis better, to feel its horror. I did not expect was to feel the love.
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
Groff is not an optimistic writer. Her style, highly literary and interior, conveys a coldness upon the reader. We do not want to relate with Groff's characters; to do so opens us up to desolation and despair. The story follows a nameless servant girl escaping starvation in Colonial Jamestown, determined to tromp through the wilderness to French settlements drawn on a vague map. She is hopelessly, achingly unprepared. So why read this? Because Groff, on a sentence by sentence level, may be the best author in America. Her prose in infuriatingly perfect: thoughtful, concise, no extraneous words over even syllables.
North Woods by Daniel Mason
If you excised the last chapter of this highly engaging mosaic of a story, you would have a masterpiece. The novel takes place over four centuries on one farm in Western Massachusetts. Each generation of inhabitants lays another piece of the mosaic, bringing their own dreams, loves, disappointments, and lives to a story so rich I never wanted it to end. Which brings me to the final chapter. Mason over indulges in his concept, forgetting what makes his story so exceptional and, like the apples at the center of story's farm, the theme he'd crafted with such care and dedication.
The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Plyvainen
I have a lifelong fascination with Arctic cultures. Life in such an extreme environment fascinates me, as does the technologies and beliefs tied to those cultures and the survival. One of these groups is the Sami of northern Scandinavia. Treated much like other indigenous cultures (exploitation, forced assimilation, and cultural genocide) by European governments to their south, Plyvainen catches this culture in an estuary in the early modern era - when old traditions are still strong. Her attention to detail (her research included living with the Sami for six months) is immersive, bringing us into this culture with sensitivity and passion.
