Book of the year, 2025

I was nervous for a while, but a high read rate in December kept me exactly on target on reading book numbers, despite a lot of very long (and many cases very good) books. Goodreads stats tell me that though I'm almost exactly the same on number of books as last year, it's seven thousand more pages read. An exceptionally high rate of hard non-fiction topics too, with 41 (34%) history, politics or theology, only bettered in 2005 and 2010. I am thinking of reading more literary criticism next year and this will blow the segmentation.

Books of the month were less clear with a 4-5-3 split between fiction - hard - soft non fiction, though there are some outstanding novels lurking under some of the BOTMs. August was an outstanding month. I am slightly worried about whether monthly is the right way to assess it. I gave 15 five star ratings and these split 4-6-5. Either way, the big undercurrent here is the dominance of America. I wanted to read a lot in response to Trump, and I have: 17 novels (of 60), 11 historical works (of 27), 5 cultural books (of 19) were on America. The first of those is typical, the latter two very much not. For history, that's 40% of all books on US history I have ever read (previous annual record: 2) And almost all those history books were huge. 

Of all the non-fiction, it is therefore inevitable that my favourites would be American. There is a lot to be said for Nicolson's diaries and for Bayes, but this was a year dominated by Lyndon Johnson for me. I loved Caro (apart from the second one), and the best of them all was Master of the Senate. It's beautifully written, and acute on the way that people get things done in small forums. I do think it's hard to read unless you have read the earlier work though and its really really long. Sorry.

Novels were mixed this year and many of the best ones don't appear on BOTM lists. In particular, I also loved Half of a yellow sun and Flaubert's parrot (see above). They just lost out to non-fiction in July and August. The two best novels of all though were books of the month. I loved Rundell's follow up to Impossible Creatures and I think she is an exemplary and enchanting children's author. However, I thought Tan Twan Eng's House of Doors was superb. Evocative of both the people, place and time he was writing about. A jewel.

Jan: B. Wilson, The secret of cooking (2023)
Feb: H. Nicholson, Diaries and letters (2004)
Mar: R. Caro, The path to power (1982)
Apr: R. Caro, Master of the senate (2002)
May: A. Patchett, Those precious days (2021)
Jun: P. Morris, Black Butterflies (2022)
Jul: T. Chivers, Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World (2023)
Aug: Tan Twan Eng, The house of doors (2023)
Sep: Guha, India after Gandhi (2017)
Oct: K. Rundell, The poisoned king (2025)
Nov: A. Aswany, The Yacoubian building (2002)
Dec: S. Charles, The Medieval Scriptorium (2024)

List of books rated 5*

Jan (2), B. Wilson, The secret of cooking (2023), G. Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (1986)

Feb: J. Dench, Shakespeare (2024), E. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (2010), H. Nicholson, Diaries and letters (2004)

Mar: R. Caro, The path to power (1982)

Apr: R. Caro, Master of the senate (2002), R. Caro, The passage of power (2012)

May: A. Patchett, Those precious days (2021)

Jun: - 

Jul: T. Chivers, Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World (2023), C. Adiche, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)

Aug: H. Chang, Bad Samaritans (2007), J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), Tan Twan Eng, The house of doors (2023)

Sept: - 

Oct: K. Rundell, The poisoned king (2025)

Nov: - 

Dec: - 

Bibliography, December 2025

BOTM: S. Charles, The Medieval Scriptorium (2024)

C. Achebe, There was a country (2013)
A. Berkeley (as F. Iles), Before the fact (1932)
A. Drury, Advise and consent (1959)
M. Grant, Hunger (2010)
T. Harford, How to make the world add up (2020)
S. Mintz, Sweetness and power (1985)
C. Moran, Moranthology (2011)
T. Pratchett, The thief of time (2001)
S. Richards, The prime ministers we never had (2021)
K. Tordasi, Bramble Fox (2022)
G. Treasure, Huguenots (2014)
J. Wood, How fiction works (Revised edition. 2018)

I read widely this month, but not particularly well. Some of these were duffers and I was especially disappointed in Treasure, which was a turgid account of what should be a fascinating history, and Richards, which was facile and unthinkingly partisan. Some good ones here too, though none was a standout. I'm glad I read Wood, but the middle section did disappear into pretention, and Harford was reliably clear and effective, but I've read too many of this type of books. The best of them all was Charles' book on the medieval book production, which was stuffed full of insights and facts. It's a reminder of just how different reading is for us now, and how little attention we pay to that difference when we talk about medieval government. I bought it on sight. I am glad I did.

Bibliography, November 2025

BOTM: A. Aswany, The Yacoubian building (2002)

L. Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom (2016)

J. Lewis-Stempel, The Glorious life of the Oak (2018)
S. Loftus, Puligny-Montrachet (1992)

O. Matthews, Glorious Misadventures (2013)
Y. Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003)
M. Osman, The Ghost theatre (2023)
R. Perlstein, Reaganland (2020)

D.S. Tesdell (ed.) Shaken and Stirred: Intoxicating stories (2016)

I'm in a bit of a reading rut at the moment. Almost all of these were fine. They weren't bad (though Osman was disappointing), but few were really exciting. That's not to say I didn't learn anything. Reaganland, which I thought was the weakest of Perlstein's books, gave up details I am glad I know. Matthews opened a window onto a fascinating life in Russian America, though couldn't quite decide if it was a biography or an account of that view of US history.

However, the best of all was Aswany's Cairene farce, which was good. Like Loftus, it reminded me how alien the recent past is (that's a book I'd love to write). In this case, that's tripled by the fact that it's published in 2002, looking back at the 1990s, about characters who themselves hark back to the 1950s. I suspect it couldn't be written now, and that's a shame. Bizarrely, it reminded me of the aesthetic of The Producers, for some obvious reasons (the gays), and some less so (the precariousness of some long standing, but ramshackle groups in big cities). Someone should do a musical.

Bibliography, October 2025

BOTM: K. Rundell, The poisoned king (2025)

S. Choi, Flashlight (2025)
K. Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (2025)
G. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (2003)

K. Kitamura, Audition (2025)
B. Markovits, The Rest of Our Lives (2025)
A. Miller, The land in winter (2024)
R. Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge (2014)

C. Sheffield, Brother to Dragons (1992)
D. Szalay, Flesh (2025)

Katherine Rundell's book was published too late for the Booker, but it wouldn't have been nominated because it's for children. This is a shame, but it is unquestionably better than half of them, including the winner. It's not quite as good as Impossible Creatures, which was utterly enchanting, but it's still very very good. Like all good fantasy writers, she knows what she's doing with the genre, and she writes lightly and cleverly. My children were delighted to see a 6-7 reference in there too. She's paying attention.

It was also Booker month, so I've read them all. I'm writing this after we know the result, but I didn't know when I read them. It's not a vintage year I think. The depth of the list is far from superb. I woudl only really recommend reading half of them. The concepts behind Kitamura and Szalay I think flaws them as novels too much, and makes frustrating reading. While I'm don't feel they or Markovits had much to say. Desai and Choi were too long, though the core of both was good. I enjoyed them; I'd have enjoyed them more if they had been shorter. Miller was the best, and I think is a very well done miniature of life in a point of change in social and economic shift in the 60s, just before something happens. My ranking:

1. Miller
2. Desai
3. Choi
4. Markovits
5. Kitamura
6. Szalay

Bibliography, September 2025

BOTM: R. Guha, India after Gandhi (2017)

A. Foulds, The quickening maze (2008)
E.J. Howard, The light years (1990)
---------------, Marking time (1991)
---------------, Confusion (1993)
---------------, Casting off (1995)
---------------, All change (2013)
A. Krebiehl, Wine of Germany (2019)
R. Perlstein, Nixonland (2008)
A. Seldon, Major: a political life (1997)
F. Wade, Square haunting (2020)

I am glad that I've now read Elizabeth Howard's Cazalet saga. I thought they were very much worth reading, though I don't think any were outstanding. #1 and #4 were the best. I did wonder if one of them deserved it, but in the end felt that Guha's book was the best. It's obviously an impossible task to cover seventy years of Indian history even in a very long book, but he does a good job or marshalling the narrative. As ever with these things, the back end is harder to do and it is worse than the front. It very much helped me to understand Indian modern history, particularly to distinguish the bits that were inherited and the parts that were changed after independence. Very helpful on Kashmir too. I hesitate to recommend it because it is so long, but the best of September's reading.

Bibliography, August 2025

BOTM: Tan Twan Eng, The house of doors (2023)

M. Albertus, Land Power (2007)

P. Barker, The silence of the girls (2018)
--------,    The women of Troy (2021)

--------,    The voyage home (2024)
J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984)*

H. Chang, Bad Samaritans (2007)

J.M. Coetzee, Summertime (2009)

Y. Kawabata, Thousand Cranes (1952)

J. Lees-Milne, The last Stuarts (1983)

R. Perlstein, Before the Storm (2001)

G. Redmonds, Christian names in local and family history (2004)

J. Thurber, The 13 clocks (1950)

Great holiday month; I read loads of things, and some of them were really really long. And, with the exception of Land Power, I think they were all good. My favourites were Barnes, Perlstein, Chang and Eng. Barnes is dismissed as lightweight, which I don't think it is at all, just very finely balanced (I loved it just as much the second time round). Perlstein was fascinating. Key conclusion: America has always been nuts; and racist. Chang was fantastic, though I think less interesting to read now, 18 years later, because some of that thinking has become mainstream, particularly post crash. I do have quite serious regret that I didn't do more economic history as an undergraduate. 

Best of the lot was Tan Twan Eng's book on Maugham, which I thought was outstanding. I do really like Maugham, so I am biased around books that cover him, but this was a splendid sideways access onto a fragment of his life, and that of those strange eastern imperial Englanders. It's better than his excellent prior novel, and I'm going to seek out his other one too.

Bibliography, July 2025

BOTM: T. Chivers, Everything is predictable: how Bayesian statistics explain our world (2023)

C. Adiche, Purple Hibiscus (2003)
C. Adiche, Half of a yellow sun (2006)
A. Byatt, Ragnarok (2011)
A. Bashford, The Huxleys (2022)
M. Bahari, Then they came for me (2013)
J.M. Coetzee, Youth (2002)
J. Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
M. Grant, Gone (2008)

I loved Chivers' book on Bayes. I regret not doing more statistics beyond 18. In a minor key, I'd have been well placed to do a paper on historical statistics in my first year at university; more majorly, I do wonder if I should have done economic history more generally. There aren't many status in first millenium. Sadly. Anyway, had I done so, I hope I would have been part of the debates and communities he describes. It's done very well (though I think could be slightly shorter) and it has songs!

It's a good job it did have songs. Half of a Yellow Sun is an outstanding book. Everyone says so; they're right. It was very close.