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.

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.