📚 The Best Writing of 2025 📚

The best things I read in the last year!

In 2025, I read 51 books this past year which I admit is good — but consider that in 2024 I read 77. It was a busy year!! Granted, this year I read a lot more with my eyes, as I read at least 12 myself. There was a period where I was doing two a month, which broke around July for whatever reason — but I was so proud of that stretch!!

To that, here’s a quick sprint of what I read and what I loved from the last year. Lots of goodness but certainly a lot to be desired.

Read previous best ofs for writing: 2024, 2023, 2022.

NOTE: No embeds, etc. as I ran out of time. Sorry! But follow links, etc. I also did not get to proof these so please give your boy some grace.

Best: Fiction in translation

It was an amazing year for translation. I think a lot of this builds on the buzz of a breakout like I Who Have Never Known men from the year(s) before, which showed that works from other languages and other times are perhaps some of the most interesting things happening. Much of that is owed to a stellar The Booker Prizes group for translation, which all felt timely and exciting in ways American fiction simply did not.