What an incredible year for books. Time is my biggest challenge to getting to everything I want to read. A three month sabbatical in 2025 made this glaringly obvious. Not only did I read more books in 2025 than I’ve ever read in a year (73), but I also read great books. And I mean great in multiple senses: with a capital G as in Greats of literature, great in that I loved them, and great in that my reading life was much richer for reading them.

I read a lot of beautiful writing in 2025, along with classics that are referenced so much they are part of our cultural DNA. I got hooked on the Zero to Well Read podcast, which has also enriched my reading life, and I revisited some old favorites, like A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Shipping News, which I wonder if I will ever tire of.

Our son is an English major, and I love to see his excitement when he gets deep into a work and really thinks about it. I often speed through a book and then move onto the next one without any reflection. In 2026, I’m interested in thinking more about what I read. I’m not sure what that looks like yet. Maybe writing notes after I finish. Maybe getting physical copies to mark up. I’m excited to join a local book club starting in January, so that’ll be a great way to engage more with what I read.

Here’s what I read in 2025, in chronological order (photos and quotes on my tumblr):

• Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Rufi Thorpe ♥️
• A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving ♥️
• The God of the Woods, Liz Moore
• I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai
• Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships, Nina Totenberg
• The Will of the Many, James Islington
• Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
• The Lion Women of Tehran, Marjan Kamali
• The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
• My Life in France, Julia Child ♥️
• the cafe at the edge of the world, John Strelecky
• Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life, Shigehiro Oishi
• The Library, Bella Osborne
• A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver
• The Antidote, Karen Russel
• The Waste Land and Other Poems, T. S. Eliot
• A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
• The Odyssey, Homer (translated by Emily Wilson)
• Paris Letters: A Travel Memoir about Art, Writing, and Finding Love in Paris, Janice MacLeod ♥️
• The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
• The Inferno, Dante Alighieri
• A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles ♥️
• The Iliad, Homer (translated by Emily Wilson)
• The Paris Wife, Paula McLain ♥️
• James, Percival Everett ♥️
• Beloved, Toni Morrison ♥️
• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• The Paris Novel, Ruth Reichl ♥️
• 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round, Jami Attenberg
• Less, Andrew Sean Greer
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy ♥️
• Night Watch, Jayne Anne Phillips
• Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Kevin Wilson ♥️
• In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway
• The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
• The Lost Queen, Signe Pike
• The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien ♥️
• The Godmother, Hannelore Cayre
• Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life, Bill Perkins
• Loving Frank, Nancy Horan
• The Netanyahus, Joshua Cohen
• The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
• The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood ♥️
• Fresh Water for Flowers, Valérie Perrin
• There Are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak
• Trust, Hernan Diaz
• The Wedding People, Alison Espach ♥️
• The Color Purple, Alice Walker ♥️
• The Weight of Ink, Rachel Kadish
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald ♥️
• Orhan’s Inheritance, Aline Ohanesian
• The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone ♥️
• Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver ♥️
• Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout ♥️
• Night, Elie Wiesel
• My Name Is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout
• Hamlet, William Shakespeare ♥️
• Audition, Katie Kitamura
• The Hand That First Held Mine, Maggie O’Farrell
• Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin ♥️
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad ♥️
• Eynhallow, Tim McGregor
• The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong
• Tress of the Emerald Sea, Brandon Sanderson
• The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
• A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, Sophie Elmhirst
• Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy ♥️
• The History of Love, Nicole Krauss ♥️
• Heart the Lover, Lily King ♥️
• The Cider House Rules, John Irving
• The Shipping News, Annie Proulx ♥️
• The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown