Five for 2025

my favourite reads from the year just gone

If you know me then you’ll know that my life can be counted in books I’ve read, that everything since I first learned how to read has revolved around books.

And so, in 2025 I managed to plough my way through 92 books (including War and Peace which I disliked immensely and it will not be appearing in the below list). I also wrote one and a half books and went to work (with all the usual stressors that entails) so how I read so many is a mystery. Escapism probably. The Booker Longlist being made up of a lot of short books helped too.

It was a good reading year and a huge majority of the books I read were solid four star reads (not you though War and Peace) but not very many five stars so despite the volume, it’s been quite easy to pick out the books I loved the most.

1. The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

   This was my absolute favourite read of the year. It is a slow, character driven novel about two unlikely couples living in a village in the west country during the historic cold winter of 1962/63. Reading it felt like disappearing into the lives of the characters, being there in the freezing cold with them and it’s a book I’ll be recommending to everyone.

2. The Painter’s Daughters by Emily Howes

   Following part of the life of the artist Thomas Gainsbourough and told through the eyes of his daughters as the family move from rural Suffolk to Bath in the early 19th century, this was a fascinating and beautifully written portrait of family life. I read this way back in January and knew it would be one of my favourite books of the year. Fabulous secret twist as well that may or may not be true…

3. The Artist by Lucy Steeds

   If someone could have written a book that covered all of my niche interests then this would be it - art, patriarchy, the female self, the destruction a fire can bring…. I very rarely rate the books that seem overhyped but this lived up to it. No better contender for Waterstones book of the year.

4. Baumgartner by Paul Auster

   The last masterpiece by one of my favourite writers had to find its way into this top five. This is a meditation on memory - how some memories become clearer as you age and how others change shape - and on loss, particularly the loss you feel as you leave different versions of yourself behind.

5. Flesh by David Szalay

   I went into this expecting not to like it, but within the first fifty pages it had completely take me by surprise and sucked me in. It is the story of one man’s life, sparsely written, almost like a play, following his rise and fall and reminded me of a modern day Jude the Obscure. The last sentence still makes me cry when I think about it.

Finally a special mention to The Burnout by Sophie Kinsella

Most writers were devastated by Sophie’s death early in December as so many of us were influenced by her work. I could rave about the Shopaholic series for hours but I read this one in the spring when I was finally starting to recover from my own burnout and it was better than any self-help book.