Tag / book-blog

by nflanagan

TIASL Good Books of 2025

I’ve read a lot of books this year—114, according to my Goodreads account (more on that in a minute). Interestingly, not many of them were five-star reads. Kind of like the discourse around 2025 in general: a whole lot going on, little of it particularly enlightening or inspiring.

I tried to focus on fictional books, because the large bulk of what I read, day to day, is newsletters and newspapers, op-eds and social media posts, as we collectively watch the Great American Dismantling. Fiction serves as escape, and even medicine for the disheartened soul. Quality fiction, that is—books that have something to say while entertaining the reader.

I’m sharing eleven good books I read in 2025—two non-fiction, nine fiction, plus two series that I’ve come to love.

But first, a question: Is anyone using Storygraph to record your reading? I’d like to disengage from Goodreads—it’s a Jeff Bezos thing, plus there are now some irritations around their features. I got a Storygraph account but found it confusing and cluttered.

One of my dearest friends, with whom I exchange book titles regularly, finds all on-line book-reading apps confusing and unnecessary, and still records her reads and to-reads in a spiral notebook. At the end of the year, she counts. Or doesn’t. Because how many books doesn’t matter—it’s about how much you enjoyed the books, where they lead you.

I wish I could go full-blown purist, too. But I like tracking not only how many, but whether I’ve already read something (series titles will fool you, when they all sound the same). Any advice on book apps?

So here are my best 2025 reads—some new books, some merely recent. If you want to read my reviews (they’re short), click on the bolded title.

Non-fiction

I only read two memorably great non-fiction books this year, and both were memoirs written by women I deeply admire. I’d put Atwood on my list of ten favorite authors, and while her memoir is endlessly detailed, it’s also full of snark and deliciously tart observations. I wrote a whole blog (linked below) on Ravitch’s book, a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a personal education hero.

Book of Lives (Margaret Atwood)

An Education: How I Changed My Mind about Schools and Almost Everything Else (Diane Ravitch)

Fiction

It wasn’t a great year for fiction reading. Maybe it was the heavy lifting fiction had to do to drop me into another world without being lightweight or predictable. I have collected a couple dozen promising books on my e-reader to take on a winter vacation, because it’s clear we’re in for another year where reality is intolerable. In the meantime, here are nine—very different–books I could recommend.

The Heart of Winter (Jonathan Evison)

The Frozen River (Ariel Lawhon)

The Wilderness (Angela Flournoy)

Heartwood (Amity Gaige)

So Far Gone (Jess Walter)

The Jackal’s Mistress (Chris Bohjalian)

James (Everett Percival)

The Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley)

The Safekeep (Yael van der Wouden)

I’d also like to mention two book series that have reached must-read levels for me, like the books of Louise Penney, Donna Leon, John Sandford or others whose latest installments are anticipated returns to familiar worlds and characters.

Thursday Murder Club (Richard Osman)

I found the first book in the 5-book series cute and cozy, but unremarkable. But with each outing, I added stars, and the fourth book was outstanding. The most recent—The Impossible Fortune—was just as good.

At Midnight Comes the Cry (Julia Spencer-Fleming)

I was pleased to see that Spencer-Fleming’s 10th outing in her small-town cop-meets-Episcopal priest series made the NYT list of best mysteries of 2025. It may be Spencer-Fleming’s last book, so if you want to set off on a series, give it a try.

And now—talk among yourselves. What did you read and love? Disagree with my list?

by nflanagan

Help! I Can’t Read!

It started, frankly, back in July.

Like other Type A, rule-following teachers, I can’t just relax and retire. Reading is my favorite year-round way to spend free time, so you think I could just curl up and enjoy lots of books. But no. I have been setting reading goals and tracking the books I read, for the past 10 years.

I know. Get a life.

But I really like tracking what I read. First, it helps when you’re intermittently reading a series by the same author, and the titles are interchangeable. It’s a lot better than taking a book home from the library, and 10 pages in, when it’s starting to feel familiar, wishing you’d kept a list.

Then, there are the easily confused books. The Woman in the Window. Or the train. Or Cabin 10. Or just… The Women. (I’ve read ‘em all—can’t recommend any of them.)

For about 10 years, I’ve been trying to read 100 books a year, and for eight of those years, I’ve made the goal, and sometimes significantly exceeded it. It’s a nice round number. I give myself credit for physical books read as well as audio books (usually a small percentage of the total—they take more time). Fiction and non-fiction. And I only log the ones I finish.

But this year, I’m way behind. I blame Donald Trump.

The only other year that I didn’t make the goal was 2016 (and got off to a slow start in 2017, what with the Womans March and joining groups and deciding to run for office and knitting pink hats).

This year, I was about 8 books ahead of my goal in June. When Biden dropped out of the race, and Kamala Harris quickly became The One, I found that the long stretches of time dedicated to reading were transferred to activities centered around politics. Including a ridiculous amount of time spent where I am right now: in front of my computer.

It’s summer, I’d tell myself. Check a big fat beach read out of the library!
When I did, it would sit in my reading corner until I brought it back, a month later. A month filled with doom-scrolling, sign-delivering, attending debates, wading in hope, drowning in despair.

And in the last month? No books. Just endless commentary. Seventeen takes on the same depressing story (Matt Gaetz? Really?), each with its unique, snarky—and depressing—viewpoint.

Speaking as a person whose most-read column was a screed against the Pizza Hut Book-it Campaign, because it turned kids reading for pleasure into a competition where discounted pizza coupons were the prize, you’d think I could blow this off, and just be happy I read a lot of books.

It isn’t gone—the goals, the book discussion groups, the afternoons on the couch. I’m too much of an old-school reader to end up like the college students who can’t—or, rather, won’t—read.

Ever been in a reading slump? Got a title to bust through my ennui?

My reading corner, below.