All of the Books I've Read in 2025

Lean mean reading machine.

As a child, losing myself in book after book for hours on end was my preferred way to spend time. My affinity for reading was unshakeable until I went away to college. While so many of my textbooks enamored me, I spent very little time reading anything else. I’d like to say that I was too busy, but truthfully, drinking and smoking and scrolling on Instagram just seemed like more fun at that age. It took a while to get back into my favorite hobby, which was revived by Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica.

Over the last few years, I have made a conscious effort to read more no matter what goes on in my adult life. I’m also haunted by my every-growing physical stacks of TBR books, so my 2025 reading goal was to read at least one book per week. My only criterion is that the book has to be interesting. I tend to favor literary fiction, contemporary fiction, memoirs, and horror. Trope-wise, I consistently gravitate to unreliable narrators, magical realism, reluctant heroes, dystopian societies, post-apocalyptic worlds, love triangles, forced proximity, hidden affairs, found family, coming-of-age narratives, unresolved endings, interpersonal relationship conflicts, creepy settings, and so much more.

Without further ado, here’s what I’ve read this year:

2025 Reading Wrap

The Stats

• Number of Books Read in 2025: 59

• Physical Copies/Kindle: 51

• Audiobooks: 8

• DNF: ZER00000000!!!!!!!!!

Rec or Wreck?

Rec

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

• Good Material by Dolly Alderton

• Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

• Kittentits by Holly Wilson

• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

• Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton

• There There by Tommy Orange

• Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

Wreck

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• Credence by Penelope Douglas

• Some Other Time by Angela Brown

• Want by Gillian Anderson

The Books

1. Bunny by Mona Awad

2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

3. I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

4. Suffer the Children by Craig DiLouie

5. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

6. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

7. Piglet by Lottie Hazell

8. The Union of Synchronised Swimmers by Cristina Sandu

9. Good Material by Dolly Alderton

10. The Employees by Olga Ravn

11. What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

12. Credence by Penelope Douglas

13. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

14. Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

15. Bitter Passage by Colin Mills

16. Kittentits by Holly Wilson

17. Some Other Time by Angela Brown

18. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

19. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

20. Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

21. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

22. The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica

23. How to Fall Out of Love Madly by Jana Casale

24. Death Valley by Melissa Broder

25. Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton

26. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

27. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

28. Carnality by Lina Wolf

29. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

30. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

31. The Vegetarian by Han Kang

32. Big Swiss by Jean Beagin

33. There There by Tommy Orange

34. Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans by Bill Schutt

35. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

36. Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

37. Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

38. The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex by Melissa Febos

39. Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

40. Mother Doll by Katya Apekina

41. Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman

42. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

43. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

44. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

45. Open Throat by Henry Hoke

46. Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

47. Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery by Brom

48. Want by Gillian Anderson

49. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

50. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

51. The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

52. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

53. Authority by Jeff Vandermeer

54. Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer

55. We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad

56. All’s Well by Mona Awad

57. Outlawed by Anna North

58. Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou

59. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

2026 Reading Goals

• Ideally, finish the remaining books for my physical TBR (22x) and Kindle TBR (6x). Here are the titles:

  • What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher

  • This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

  • The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

  • My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me by Kate Bernheimer

  • Sociopath by Patric Gagne

  • Never Whistle At Night by Shane Hawk

  • Anna Karenina By Leo Tolstoy

  • Stiff by Mary Roach

  • Piranesi by Susana Clark

  • The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

  • The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte

  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

  • Grey Dog by Elliott Gish

  • Martry! by Kaveh Akbar

  • Banal Conversations by Halle Butler

  • The Names by Florence Knapp

  • Television for Women by Danit Brown

  • Watership Down by Richard Adams

  • Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams

  • White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa by Susan Williams

  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

  • Discontent by Beatriz Serrano

  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

  • The Taken Ones by Jess Lourey

  • Betty by Tiffany McDaniel

  • Babel by R.F. Kuang

  • The Real Deal by Caitlin Devlin

  • The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz

• Read between 10 - 12 nonfiction books. No specific genre. Just vibing.

• Get through more 500+ paged books. Preferably 2 books.

• If a series comes along, so mote it be. If not, who cares?

• Keep up with my monthly book recaps on Substack.

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Cover photo: Pinterest