Favorite Books from 2025

My reading was up slightly from 2024, I read over 190 books this year, a few were books for middle grade children, so that padded the number but most were books for adults. I have picked my top ten fiction and nonfiction to share with you and hope that you will share what you have been reading with me. 

FICTION

Big Novels

    

 

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende

In telling this intertwining story of immigrants, Allende begins with a young Jewish boy who is sent alone to England when his family is being destroyed by the Nazis. Samuel is alone but for his violin. His life continues with music playing a large part in his happiness. Many years later, he is again alone but this time he is wealthy, divorced, and  living in California. His life intersects with Anita Diaz, a child refugee from Ed Salvador, separated from her mother. Allende’s prose is poetic and mesmerizing. She gives a voice to the thousands of immigrants wandering our world today. A haunting story that still needs to be told. 

 

Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

The aftermath of the Civil War in the US left many people without family or home. One of these is ConaLee, a caretaker for her mother and younger siblings. ConaLee is taken from her home by an evil stepfather and abandoned near the asylum where her mother has been taken. While at the asylum, ConaLee befriends others like herself who have no home and continues to care for her mother, without revealing their relationship. The story goes back in time as well as forward, revealing family secrets and ultimately giving ConaLee the home and the family that she deserves. Phillips won a Pulitzer Prize for this book, justly deserved. 

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

This could also be titled, The Long Life of Cyril Avery. The story begins before his birth to an unwed, outcast mother in post World War II Ireland. Cyril is adopted by an extremely dysfunctional couple who make it clear that they wanted a child, but they don’t want the child (Cyril) to make any demands on them or interfere with their lives at all. Cyril’s life as a gay man in Ireland is difficult and eventually he makes his way to Denmark and then to New York, only to ultimately return to Ireland to reconcile with his adoptive father and to finally meet and enjoy a relationship with his birth mother, full circle. This book will make you cringe, and it will make you cry and laugh out loud. Cyril is a flawed man, but one who can be loved for who he is and for who he strives to be. 

Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson

Colleen and her sister, Enid, were raised in the woods of northern California. They didn’t have much, but they had a loving mother. Although Colleen goes away to college briefly, both she and Enid marry logging men after their mother dies from cancer. Colleen and Rich have one beloved son, in the midst of a series of miscarriages.  Enid and Eugene have a large family, seeming to produce a new baby every year or so. Not only is logging a dangerous job, the men's  livelihood is threatened by environmental protesters, and legislation put in place to protect the land and the few remaining first growth trees. When Colleen realizes that the chemicals sprayed on the underbrush to make easier access to the large trees could be causing her miscarriages, there is a rift in her marriage. This is a gorgeous love story with the main characters well developed. It showcases the love between husband and wife, parent and child, humans and nature. It’s long but worth the time. 

Family Stories

       

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, Olive Kitteridge, a Maine schoolteacher who does her best to understand her students and her family, although they often misunderstand her. Strout continues to write about Maine with an on-going saga of Lucy Barton who ends up in Maine living with her ex-husband during the pandemic. This new story includes Olive as a character and explores the relationships between Lucy, her ex and Jim and Bob Burgess, also characters from a previous Strout book. These stories are simply told and often the plot is subtle, but Strout is a superb storyteller and these dips into Lucy Barton’s life and both heartrending and refreshing. 

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Not only is this a family story, it is an isolated family on a wild island southeast of Australia, not too far from Antarctica. The Salt family has taken refuge on this island after Dominic’s wife dies giving birth to their third child. Two teens and a young boy are homeschooled and work with their father taking care of the island and the seed banks that have been abandoned when the water begins to rise due to melting ice. When Rowan shows up looking for information about her husband who was one of the seed bank scientists, there is immediate tension and this family must figure out how to deal with Rowan, save as many seeds as possible and be ready to evacuate as soon as the boat comes to remove them from this untenable location. Both exciting and precious, this is a story of family love and protection as well as environmental danger that we all may face soon. 

    
Love Stories

Heart the Lover by Lily King

Over the past few years, Lily King has become one of my favorite authors and I try to read her books as soon as they come out. Heart the Lover did not disappoint. This is the story of Jordan’s complicated relationships with two of her fellow students while in college and shortly after. Neither relationship ultimately works out, but both of these young men remain in her heart, if not her life. The second half of the book details how Jordan reconnects with both men when one is dying of cancer and she is dealing with her own son’s brain tumor. The characters in this book are so vibrant and likable, even when they mess up, I hated for the book to end. I want to know more about their lives as they age. 

Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall

If any book this year broke my heart, it is this one. As the book opens, we encounter Beth and Frank, a farming couple in rural England, struggling to deal with their grief over the death of their beloved son in an accident on the farm. We then flash back to Beth’s first romantic relationship with Gabriel, the son of the local manor house. Gabriel has recently returned to the area with his son, who is the same age as Beth’s son when he died. In the next section, Frank is on trial for murder. The reader does not yet know who was murdered and how this occurred, but the book flashes back and forth between the past and the present, gradually telling the story of Beth’s two loves and how she could possibly love two men at the same time. Stupendous!

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

This book was published in 1922. Von Arnim is an enigmatic figure, living her life perhaps a century ahead of herself; she married several times, wrote books under her own name and followed no one’s rules except her own. In this book, she follows four women living in London, all desperate to get away from their lives. They find a reasonably priced rental on the coast of Italy for the month of April and all make their way there. In this gentle love story, the women discover hidden facets of their personalities as well as the loves of their lives. I loved the pace of this book as well as the subtle lessons each learned and that we could learn as well. 

Not a Big Book or a Love Story

Twist by Colum McCann

A very short novel about the maintenance of undersea communication cables that carry 90% of electronic communications between continents. Anthony Fennell, the narrator, decides he wishes to write about this maintenance and manages to make a connection with a sea captain based in South Africa. After receiving permission to go with the crew on a mission to repair cables, Fennell connects with Captain Conway and his family as they wait for a cable to break requiring them to go to sea. Conway and his wife both have secrets they are keeping from one another and from the crew. Fennell gets his story and so much more. Not only are the cables twisted to form an electronic rope under the sea, but there is also a major twist in this story. This is a short book that carries a big punch. 

NONFICTION

Memoirs

    

Connie: A Memoir by Connie Chung

I loved reading this book about a strong woman who had to overcome the “cuteness” factor. According to her, she did it with humor and panache and she embraced her life and her career with all she had. Connie was the tenth child in her family and the only one to be born in the US. I loved the story she told about finding out how many baby girls of Chinese heritage were named Connie after she became a famous newscaster. What an honor for her and a testament to the influence she had on women and Chinese immigrants. Her stories were well-told and she uplifted many people with her testament. For the most part, she did not give names if the story had a negative context, but Dan Rather must have really irked her because she did not have a good word to say about him. 

Bits and Pieces by Whoopi Goldberg

My friend who recommended this book to me suggested that it was better to listen to it rather than read it. And she was right. Whoopi reads this book herself in the audio version and it was both sincere and laugh out loud funny. Whoopi honors her mother and her brother in this memoir as well as the many people who recognized her acting skills both in comedy and drama. She also comes clean about her own issues: dyslexia, drug abuse and her lack of ability to mother her own daughter. Luckily Whoopi’s mother stepped in and helped raise her daughter and Whoopi and her daughter have a good relationship as adults. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a Whoopi Goldberg performance will love this book. Listen to it!

The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates

In a world where billionaires fight for every last dime and refuse to fund our federal government, Melinda Gates stands out as one of the few who does good with the money she has. This book was written before she and Bill split and she has only good things to say about him. While she gives a short background on her childhood, college years and first years at Microsoft, this is primarily about the foundation that she and Bill started to address issues of health care and education around the world. They largely worked with women’s issues and Melinda was quick to acknowledge that in order to do the most good, they needed to spend time with and learn from the women they wanted to help. This is a relatively short book that packs a punch that made me admire the woman and the work she is doing. I look forward to reading her new book, The Next Day. 

    

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

While most people, including myself, know Roy as a novelist, she sees herself as an actor, producer and most importantly an activist. Roy has written this book as a memoir of her mother, but she veers off from her description of the time they spent together to describe her own life and how she both rebelled against and deeply loved her mother. Mary Roy was a single mother in southern India, a region known for repression of women. Yet, she did not depend on her family, she raised her two children on her own with her own resources. She stood up for herself, going so far as to take her brother to court over the arcane law that women could not inherit property. And she won. Arundhati gives her mother credit for all the great things she did, including starting a school, but she also describes the way Mary Roy treated her two children. They were the scapegoats of the school and scarcely a day went by without a beating or a verbal assault, calling names and humiliating. This harassment occurred not only when they were children but also when they were adults and  had retruned to help care for their mother in her later years. What astounded me was the great love Arundhati had for her mother. There is much to digest here and it all makes me want to go back and read her novels again. 

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder  by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie was famously the target of the Islamic world after writing The Satanic Verses in 1988. He survived the fatwa put on his head at that time and describes briefly here the pressure on him and on his family to avoid the public eye, live quietly and try to stay alive. Fast forward more than thirty years and again, Rushdie is the target of an attack, again based on the fatwa issued decades previously. Although he was stabbed numerous times and lost his sight in one eye, along with other very serious injuries, Rushdie survived. He recovered and he thrived. This is the story of how he was able to come back from these injuries and write about his experience. This is a beautifully written book that will stay with me for a long time. I have not read any of his other books, but hope to this year. 

True North by Jill Ker Conway

I read this book several years ago, and came across it again at the library book sale. Originally published in 1994, it is the memoir of the first female president of Smith College. Conway came to the US from Australia to study history at Harvard Graduate School in the 1960s. She was an excellent scholar and finished her PhD, but could not get a full time job as a professor because she was, wait for it, a woman! From there she  eventually found an academic position at the University of Toronto, following her new husband there, and then was recruited for the presidency at Smith. While Conway gives many instances of discrimination in academia in Australia, Canada and the US, she remains optimistic and hopeful for the future of women in academia. While much has changed since the 1960s, there continues to be both subtle and overt discrimination of women in higher education. But, True North gives me both a glimpse of the past and hope for the future.  

Journalistic Writing

      

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick

Demick recounts a story unfolding over several decades that she followed and at some points influenced in her role as a journalist. During the height of China’s one-child policy, it was common for community workers to take children by force if parents did not follow the policy, or pay exorbitant fines. Some of these children were sold to baby mills where they were adopted by US parents, who did not suspect the children had been abducted and sold. The case Demick follows was a set of twins, one who stayed with her family and one who was stolen and adopted by a couple in Texas. Through careful reporting and persistence, Demick is able to help the two families connect and eventually meet in China. She is respectful to all parties concerned and examines her own actions for ethical and critical behaviors. Ultimately, it seems that it is a good thing that she has helped these two families connect with each other, although many emotions are evident throughout. 

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

When this book was in the works, Meta and Zuckerberg tried to prevent it from being published. They were able to prohibit Wynn-Williams from publicizing the book, but the publishers were not included in this injunction. Wynn-Williams recounts her time working for facebook as a Director of Global Public Policy, a job she designed and begged for as she saw the growth of facebook world wide. This is definitely a case of ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ While working for facebook, she saw policies that were dangerous for dissidents in several countries, harmful to the public, but particularly teens and corporate executives who cared only about the bottom line and how they could monetize social media, hence the title. She is particularly hard on Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, but names other names as well. One of the most telling statements she made was that no one at Meta who made policy would allow their own children to be on social media. If they know it’s bad, why are they promoting it for other people’s children?

What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché

While in her 20s, Forché is approached by a friend’s cousin with the proposal that she go with him to El Salvador. A young poet with a flexible schedule, Forché takes him up on the proposal. Thus begins a multi-year saga of trips to El Salvador, exploring incidences of human rights abuse, many of which the U.S. is complicit in. At many points, Forché herself is in danger and her new friend lives constantly with the threat of death. Although this book could be placed in the category of memoir, it also is very powerful reporting, giving witness to the policies of our country, some of which have led to thousands of people leaving their homes and seeking refuge in our country. This was a difficult book to read because of all the destruction of property and human life. But, it is also beautifully written and it opened my eyes to many things I wish I didn’t know. 

 

The Worlds I See by Fei Fei Li

A final book that I could have placed in the memoir category, but I see it in a larger place than just memoir. Li came from China to the US with her parents as a middle schooler. She had to learn a language, figure out how to succeed in her new country and take care of her parents. This is a familiar immigrant story. The child becomes the parent in so many ways. Li was an only child with two brilliant parents who had strikingly different skillsets, both of which helped her in her new life. To begin, Li was outstanding in math, had a wonderful mentor in her high school in New Jersey and made it into Princeton on a full scholarship. Her trajectory was meteoric and she went on the complete a PhD and to be one of the leading scientists in the field of artificial intelligence. This is where the reporting comes in. She gives a brilliant picture of the underpinnings of AI and what a large language model is. She also explores the ethics of AI. While I did not understand everything she wrote about, this was a great introduction to something that already affects all our lives. 

 

Bonus: One Children’s Book 

First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly 

Every year, I try to read all of the Newbery Award winners and Honor books. I often disagree with the judges as to which book should have won the medal (the highest prize) but this year (2025), I think they got it right. Kelly writes about a preteen boy living with his single mother in 1999. Michael is worried about Y2K and is hiding food under his bed as a way to be prepared for anything that might happen. In August, he meets a new boy in the neighborhood who gradually  reveals he is from the future. Ridge is very careful not to do anything to change the trajectory of events that could affect his own family and other people of the future. However, once he realizes how worried Michael is about Y2K, Ridge tries to think of a way to let him know everything will be okay, without affecting the future. Young people reading this book will not have lived through Y2K, but it may spark some good discussions at home.