Books of 2025: The Books of the Year

For my last book post about 2025 reading, I borrow a bending of the rules from my 2024 final post: I award both a fiction and non-fiction book of the year.  I read 54% fiction this year, nine percentage points higher than last yar.  In some years, I make space for only one atop the mountain, but these two books merit sharing the spotlight.  Each brings its own charms and assets.

Wishing you a year of good reading in 2026!

The Books of the Year

Cabin; Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman, Patrick Hutchinson, 2024

When my friend Tom Persinger calls a title "the most fun book I've read in a while," I pay attention.  He said that about Cabin, and I agree with his assessment.  There's more here than fun, but let's start with that.  Hutchinson oozes self-deprecating charm as he describes purchasing a dilapidated cabin in the mountains outside Seattle and pouring his free time into improving it.  His work as a copywriter has stopped inspiring him, and he finds the cabin fulfilling that role.  Because he acquires this unplumbed tiny home with no electricity in a half-finished state, he organizes tons of work party trips out there with his friends.  Together, they accomplish landscaping and carpentry tasks and then drink beer, cook meat, and generally act like a bunch of little boys.  He encounters neighbors in this not-fancy part of the state outside the expensive city. Sometimes Hutchinson teases menace in house projects or interactions, but happily, they never pay off in anything truly horrifying.  The book generated a cozy glow for me, especially reading it before bed.  The term "shelter porn" usually describes luxury home designs outside most people's reach.  Cabin is a milder form in which the reader can feel the satisfaction Hutchinson felt while shaping this place up.  It doesn't hurt that he's finding himself and a new path in life as the cabin itself improves.  A delight.

James, Percival Everett, 2024

My in-laws lent us this book at the beginning of the year.  Since it went under my competent wife's nightstand, I forgot about it until my friend Tom (there he is again!) asked if I wanted to go see Everett speak in Pittsburgh.  When that event drew near, Paige reminded me that her parents had lent us a copy, and I quickly read the first 100 pages.  Everett entertained in person, but I got the impression he'd been on book tour a bit too long.

A retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the slave Jim - or James - this book is brilliant.  Without spoiling anything, Everett performs a storytelling magic trick by having the slaves in the book speak proper English to each other while code switching into the slave dialect whenever a white person may hear them.  The story flies by because James and Huck are in motion on their run down the Mississippi and also because the book consists primarily of dialog.  Everett benefits from the assumption that his readers largely know this story, so there's no need for backstory or exposition.  I found myself engrossed and delighted by this tour de force.  Already in April, I considered this an early candidate for book of the year. That held up.  I can't recommend this strongly enough.

Books of 2025: Fiction

True confesh: I read several books in crime and spy novel series this year.  That usually indicates that I sought books that would provide an escape, and that rings true with 2025.  I don't write about them here because I want you to esteem my literary sensibilities, but if you are also into escape literature, I recommend both the Thursday Murder Club books and the Slow Horses books.  Both have been made into pretty good TV series.

But back to how I read serious literature that makes me think....  This year, among my favorite novels were three that surprised me because they feature a kind of magic as key plot devices.  That usually turns me off, but I guess Holly Gramazio, Madeline Miller, and Yoko Ogawa write well enough that I could stand the mumbo jumbo. Or maybe I'm changing as a person (talk about magic!)

Books of the Year: Fiction

The Husbands, Holly Gramazio, 2024

My friend and trusty novel-recommender Cassie Christopher listed The Husbands among the books she read and liked in 2024.  I borrowed it not knowing exactly what to expect.  The title could have applied to any number of stories.  It's not spoiling too much to say that this is a fantasy novel in which the protagonist's attic magically produces a new husband every time her current husband goes up there.  This wild premise might have turned me off, but Gramazio plays so wonderfully with it that I got hooked.  The story remained imaginative and mostly fun throughout; Gramazio cooks up a great variety among the partners.  Possibly more surprising is that this wacky world can also produce thought-provoking moments about the blessings and challenges of marriage, family relationships, and friendship.  Although I really want to tell you about some of them, I shall refrain and instead encourage you to experience all that The Husbands offers for yourself.

The Housekeeper and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa, 2003

My sister-in-law Lauren Jackson recommended this sweet novel translated from the Japanese to me.  In this unusual book, we meet a housekeeper, her school-age son, and a math professor whose house she tends. The professor's memory lasts only 80 minutes due to some kind of unnamed traumatic event.  The housekeeper supports him in maintaining a small life in a cottage behind his sister-in-law's house, and he becomes fond of the housekeeper's son.  The professor and the boy share a love of baseball. It's a simple story told in simple language and sprinkled with math problems.

Circe, Madeline Miller, 2018

When both my competent wife and my reading buddy Cassie Christopher recommend a novel, I pay attention.  They, or course, did not steer me wrong in the case of Circe.  Madeline Miller makes Greek mythology accessible and of-the-moment in a soothing and satisfying way.  It's been a long time since I've read about these Gods and Goddesses, nymphs, and the mortals they play with and maybe envy.  Miller's Circe, witch of Aiaia, shows her flaws and her fears amidst her mysterious powers.  Actually, a most intriguing aspect of her powers is how practical they seem.  Rather than just shooting lightning bolts out her fingertips, she cooks up her magic and follows protocols to deploy it.  I combined reading and listening to portions of this book; it proved a wonderful dozing companion.  For that, I credit Miller's language and British actress Perdita Weeks's narration.  Overall, I found the story moving and was sad to say goodbye to the characters at the end.

Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano, 2023

When my friend Cassie Christopher (I told you she's good, right?) recommended this novel to me, she had me at "a take on Little Women."  As a huge an of that classic novel, this felt like required reading.  Napolitano's homage is discreetly low-key.  Yes, the main characters consist of 4 sisters and a boy coming into their universe.  Readers, though, will be hard pressed to find one-to-one doppelgängers between these Padavano sisters and the March girls.  And there's not a Marmee in sight.  Also, a humble Chicago neighborhood from the 1980s to 2008 bears little resemblance to Civil War and Reconstruction Concord, MA. Hello Beautiful refers to Little Women but stands capably on its own.  Between its covers, I found sweetness, sadness, and believable humanity.  Napolitano moves the authorial narrator around between the characters at parallel points in time.  It works well structurally.  The story comments on what we do - whether visible to us or not - in response to the strengths and faults of our family of origin.  As a reader, I appreciated that Napolitano saw the story through to completion without nailing down every detail of these characters' present or future lives.

Books of 2025: Non-Fiction

It seems like each year, I tweak the categories slightly to fit in all of the titles I want people to know about.  The Books of the Year are coming - one non-fiction and one fiction standout above all the rest.

In the meantime, however, I read some interesting non-fiction this year.

Books of the Year: Non-Fiction

Blitz Spirit; Voices of Britain Living Through Crisis, 1939-1945, Becky Brown, 2020

I learned about this book from a profile of Tom Hanks that said he was so taken with the book that he looked up the editor/compiler Becky Brown to tell her it was one of the most fascinating things he'd ever read.  That endorsement piqued my interest.  In Blitz Spirit, Brown compiles excerpts in date order from ordinary British people who submitted their diaries to the Mass-Observation program during World War II.  Brown pored through the million-plus pages archived at Sheffield University and pulled representative paragraphs.  The reader sees a brief line identifying the person by a 4-digit ID number, gender, job, and location.  In these snippets, they discuss their experience of the war, which may have rather little to do with what's happening at the front.  Here, we mainly see the war's impact at home: blackout curtains, rationing, evacuees, perceived unfairness when people skirt the rules commonly adopted to serve the greater good.  The observations range from English stiff-upper-lip to philosophical to catty and funny.  In reading through them, I learned what to expect from certain diarists - a tone, a theme, a common complaint.  The entries run exactly as long as the war itself and describe its arc in everyday life.  I read through this book here and there as a palate cleanser between other books.  Deeply enjoyable and unique.  I couldn't find it in my local library system, which is most rare.  I bought a copy and will happily lend it.

Breakneck; China's Quest to Engineer the Future, Dan Wang, 2025

I heard about this book in conversation with my brother-in-law Graham.  He wasn't recommending it per se, but he mentioned things about how Wang covers China here that piqued my interest.  Wang sets out that China prizes engineers for government leadership positions while the US prizes lawyers.  Having emigrated from China with his parents to Canada as a child and then to Bucks County, Pennsylvania as a teen, the journalist and now Yale law professor Wang speaks from both professional and personal experience.  Early on, his distinction between the fast-building engineering state and the obstruction-happy lawyer state looks bad for the US of A.  As the book progresses, however, Wang identifies how the engineering state can miss as easily as hit.  When they wander beyond building bridges and cities, which they often do, into social engineering, their performance gets shakier.  One child policy and draconian Covid lockdowns, anyone?  Breakneck provides a fascinating contrast between the strengths and weaknesses of these two cultures.  While Wang's lens focuses on China in depth here, his references are solidly American.  Having lived and worked in both countries, he slides between his broader themes and his own family's experience deftly.  Since the decisions affect people, the effects on those closest to him surely represent many others' experience.  I feel like I understand our much larger counterpart power because of this book.  Such knowledge may come in handy when.. .you know.

The Art Thief; A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, Michael Finkel, 2023

My friend Cassie Christopher recommended this book to me.  I took note because she mostly recommends novels.  Once I started reading, I saw that this non-fiction book moves with the energy and character development of a novel.  It's hard not to think about a movie adaptation while reading the book.  Although there is a movie called "Art Thief" with the lead actor delivering a horrible Boston accent, no movie has yet been released about the European art thief Stephane Breitwieser.  Michael Finkel spent ten years researching his book about this bold person whose addiction is stealing art from museums.  He involves his girlfriend in the heists as a lookout or even to carry pieces in her handbag.  Although Breitwieser fancied himself a gentleman crook who would steal to keep the pieces, not to sell them, his crimes did in fact harm the museums and their patrons.  Finkel manages the tension of the story perfectly.  I knew the thief must eventually get caught, but the author doles out the details in essentially chronological order, preserving the suspense.  In the end, it's a mind-blowing tale of potential lost, of skill devoted to selfish ends.

Honorable Mentions

Supercommunicators; How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, Charles Duhigg, 2024

Weapons of Math Destruction; How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Cathy O'Neil, 2016

Books of 2025: Poetry

In 2025, I read a total of 35 books, five fewer than my record pace last year and seven ahead of my previous high in 2020.  (Sure, there are a few more days in the year, but we have family visiting, and I don't see getting to book 36.)

Even if I had read more than one book of poetry this year, I'm confident this title would have topped my list.

Book of the Year: Poetry

Flight Plan, M. Soledad Caballero, 2025

Paige and I got to attend the launch event at White Whale Bookstore for our friend Soledad's second poetry collection.  It was a buoyant night with three other poets "opening" for the main event.  This collection again touches themes established in her debut, I Was a Bell: migration (human and avian), family history, cancer, the blessings and challenges of middle age.  Caballero's poems ring with honesty and dark humor.  They often shake a fist at the sky and ask WTF?  One of the best single lines appears late in the book opening the poem "In Pennsylvania":

"Sometimes, there is more love in a book
than in the whole day."

The poem goes on to contemplate the bright shinyness we can get from a book when everything going on outside its covers is grim and foreboding.  It's fitting.  I felt that way about reading this book in this most awful year for our country and what we think of as civilization.

Books of 2025: Stay Aways

If you're new here, I share short book reviews about what I've read this year.  The pros can write about books that got published this year.  Mine might be from this year but are almost as likely to be from any other decade back to the 19th century.

Although it can feel like a downer, I like to start with books I disliked this year.  Some books elicit mild distaste.  Others strike me as so bad that I don't want anyone to read them.

Books of the Year: Stay Away

Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner, 2024

Having held a defensive position for a year or more against adding titles to my to-read list, I found myself backed into a corner.  I was low on novels on the list and out of new podcast episodes in my feeds.  Wanting something new to read and listen to, I turned to the Booker Prize shortlist.  The calculation here was: Find a title that the lit crit world agrees is decent, and it probably got enough press that my library led it as an audio book.  But winners are in higher demand than runners-up, so shortlisted audio books can be borrowed sooner.  That quest led me to Rachel Kushner's bizarre novel Creation Lake.  Here, we journey to a French commune and meet a lot of characters with stereotypically French names.  Our guide for the journey is an outsider, suspicious and suspected.  A kind of espionage element may explain why I had to work to understand the events of the first hundred pages (of 400+).  Based on past experience, I now pay attention when a book jacket blurb describes a book as "demanding."  In this case, no blurber specified that characteristic, but that word pinged around my head as I read.  In truth, I listened to it on audio far more than I read the hard copy I simultaneously borrowed.  Maybe that explains some of my confusion, too?  Divided attention on walks, the bus, cooking, etc.  Kushner writes well, although the book's suspenseful elements didn't hold my attention very well.  I just didn't really care what was going to happen.  The characters felt cartoonish, partly due to an unreliable narrator.   I didn't completely hate reading this, but I also see no reason to recommend it.

Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You, Kross, Ethan, 2025

Sometimes, an author sounds so fascinating in an interview that I think their books must be good.  Sometimes, an academic writes a popular version of his scholarly work that turns into a best seller; then said academic writes a follow-up book.  Sometimes, it all happens in the same book.  And sometimes, that works.  But not this time.  Michigan professor Ethan Kross turned in a fascinating interview on Fresh Air or Hidden Brain.  He may have used up all of the interesting anecdotes and findings from Shift.  That left what remained pretty flat.  Even granting that there are some good anecdotes and one good (borrowed) framework - WOOP (Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan) - Kross never successfully grabbed my attention or convinced me that he was saying something newly useful about emotions.

Focusing, Eugene Gendlin, 1978

A book so bad I won't even tell you why or post a cover image.  You would never encounter it anyway.  I wish I hadn't. 

2025 Pirates Win Prediction Results

Confession time: On the last day of the Pirates season, I rooted for the Braves against them.  If that sounds counter to true fan behavior, I can grant that.  I had my reasons, though.  Well, reason.

See, in winning the penultimate game of the year, they had attained exactly my predicted number of wins.  I would win the family pool regardless, but I've never hit the number exactly.  In fact, this is only the third time a Forster has nailed it; Paige had the prior two.  This season, on the field, Pirate fans had to squint for to see silver linings.  That's all I'm doing - celebrating my accuracy despite it deriving from my team's futility.  I wish I'd been wrong in a certain direction.

Here's another one: On Memorial Day, the Pirates were on pace to win 60 games.  The final 2/3  of the season saw the departure of Derek Shelton and a long period of .500 baseball.  At the tail end, strategies more closely resembled spring training than a team trying to win.  They have a lot of young talent to evaluate, and many pitchers and position players got reps.  I feel oddly hopeful about 2026.

2025 Pirates Win Predictions - 1/3 Mark

Since the Pirates have played just over 1/3 of their games this season, it's a good time to check in with our family's win predictions.  Today, they stand at 21-36, which is good for the fourth-worst record in the majors.  And that's after winning 6 out of their last 10 games under new manager Donnie Kelly.

I tried to be as pessimistic as possible before the season without being a downer.  That put my projected win total below the rest of the family.  And yet, that turns out to be way too optimistic for this offensively-challenged squad.

To get to 71 wins, they'd have to go 50-55 the rest of the way after going 21-36 to date.  They have the pitching to do that.  The questions are: 

• Will the injury bug stop biting them? 
• Will they field the most productive hitters in the organization?
• Can those hitters hit way better in the next four months than they have in the first two?