The Best Books of 2025

A wonderfully quiet novel, with an deep and intimate focus on Thomas, a shanker who trawls the gloomy beach for shrimp in north-west England, all the while holding onto a powerful and personal dream as a folk musician and liberty from what seems like an inevitable future.

My first Tim Winton novel, and an excellent place to start. A propulsive, tormenting premise keeps the deep characters and emotional starkness moving forward. Confusion escalates from bewilderment through despair to its final resting place, compounded by utter exhaustion. A great, great story.

A powerfully prescient novel for the times we're living in, a vision of a dystopia where we're 'amusing ourselves to death' (to quote the title of Neil Postman's seminal book on society in the age of mass media, which I also read this year). The story is maybe showing its age a little, but it's still profound and incredibly potent. I'm very glad to have read it, slightly ashamed I haven't previously.

Another incredibly timely read. Fitzgerald was only 28 when he wrote Gatsby, his exquisite story of the 'careless people' of America in the Jazz Age — the echoes for the techbros and oligarchs of our modern times are deep and challenging.

I've not read Huckleberry Finn (I know!), but this retelling of the story from the point of view of enslaved Jim is excellent, following his quest for self-liberation and the irony of the many things and ways he hides.

Truly life-changing. Judt paints a huge view of the currents and counter-currents that have shaped Europe since the end of World War 2 — and it's brilliant. My understanding of the current place and time in history on this continent (and the wider world) will never be the same.

Cory Doctorow is a superb tech journalist and communicator, but with the term 'enshittification' he has put his finger on a pungent force shaping our modern life. But it's more than that — it's also a hopeful view of what to do now that everything is so quickly going to shit.

A beautiful book of lyrical essays on the many forms of friendship. One of my favourite authors and a master of the essay form gives us a collection of deep reflections and meditations on the yearning for companionship and our need to come together, and how much richer we are because we do.