2025 Books

Here we go!  These are the books I finished in 2025. Asterisks indicate library books.  

All the Dead Lie Down, Mary Willis Walker

At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities, Heather Webber*

The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver*

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath*

Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney

The Black Bird Oracle, Deborah Harkness*

Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics, Elle Reeve*

Black River Orchard, Chuck Wendig*

Black Woods Blue Sky, Eowyn Ivey*

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister*

The Border Keeper, Kerstin Hall*

Camino Ghosts, John Grisham*

The Cat Who Saved Books, Sosuke Natsukawa, trans. Louise Heal Kawai*

Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves, Quinn Connor*

The Clinic, Cate Quinn*  

A Common Life: The Wedding Story, Jan Karon*

The Cook, Maylis de Kerangal, trans. Sam Taylor*

The Coworker, Freida McFadden*

The Crooked House, Christobel Kent*

Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive, Eliot Stein*

The Death of Mrs. Westaway, Ruth Ware*

Death of a Traitor, M.C. Beaton and R.W. Green*

Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill*

A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness*

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells

Diving Into the Wreck: Poem 1971-1972, Adrienne Rich

Eudora Welty on William Faulkner*

A Fatal Grace, Louise Penny*

The Fifth Witness, Michael Connelly

The Final Twist, Jeffrey Deaver*

First Frost: A Longmire Mystery, Craig Johnson*

The Giver, Lois Lowery

Goldenrod: Poems, Maggie Smith*

The Goodbye Man, Jeffrey Deaver*

The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why, Phyllis Tickle

Grimoire Girl: Creating an Inheritance of Magic and Mischief, Hilarie Burton Morgan*

The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, Neko Case*

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson*

A Heart That Works, Rob Delaney*

Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age, Fiona Maddocks*

How to Love a Forest: the Bittersweet Work of Tending A Changing World, Ethan Tapper*

Hunting Time, Jeffrey Deaver*

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

In Prior's Wood, G. M. Malliet*

Joyland, Stephen King*

Kiki's Delivery Service, Eiko Kadono, trans. Emily Balistrieri

King of Ashes, S. A. Crosby*

The Lamb, Lucy Rose*

The Last Juror, John Grisham

Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquirel; trans. Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen

The Longmire Defense, Craig Johnson*

Mapping the Interior, Stephen Graham Jones

Margo's Got Money Troubles, Rufi Thorpe

The Martian, Andy Weir

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, Ally Carter

The Need, Helen Phillips*

The Never Game, Jeffrey Deaver

A New Song, Jan Karon

Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucille Morris Upton, Susan Croce Kelly*

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich*

Night Shift, Charlaine Harris

On the Condition of the Working Classes, Pope Leo XIII

The Pecan Children, Quinn Connor*

The Probable Future, Alice Hoffman

Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver*

Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt*

Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, Lois Winston

The Robber Bridegroom, Eudora Welty*

The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge: The Official Guide to All the Books, Erika Berlin*

The Rural Diaries: Love, Livestock, and Big Life Lessons Down on Mischief Farm, Hilarie Burton Morgan*

The Sequel, Jean Hanff Korelitz*

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Robin Wall Kimmerer*

Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops, Shaun Bythell

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Brian Stone

Skinny Dip, Carl Hiassen

The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement, Sharon McMahon*

Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan*

Small Wonder: Essays. Barbara Kingsolver

South of Nowhere, Jeffrey Deaver*

Start Right Where You Are, Sam Bennett*

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel*

Still Life, Louise Penny*

The Stone Witch of Florence, Anna Rasche*

Summer on the Island, Brenda Novak

The Thanksgiving Visitor, Truman Capote*

Under the Lake, Stuart Woods

The Unquiet Dead, Ausma Zehanat Khan*

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, C. M. Waggoner*

The Washing Away of Wrongs, G. M. Malliet*

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson*

The Wedding People, Alison Espach

What You Are Looking For Is In the Library, Michiko Aoyama, trans. Alison Watts

Wild Dark Shore, Catherine McConaghy

The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from the Farm, Rosamond Young*

The Witch's Daughter: My Mother, Her Magic, and the Madness that Bound Us, Orenda Fink*

The Women and the Men, Nikki Giovanni*

The Writing Retreat, Julia Bartz

Y is for Yesterday, Sue Grafton

I finished the Kinsey Milhone books this year.  I'll miss her, but I don't know if I'll reread them. I've started the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny and that's been fun.  I tried to read more nonfiction but I just don't like it as much.  I was much more likely to grab a paperback from a little free library or a thrift store just to try it, and that usually led to something fun.  As always, I don't know what I would do without libraries.  I read a lot of books for the first time that I always intended to read before now--We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Skinny Dip, Station Eleven, Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and a few others--and I was glad I did.  I started the Tracker series by Jeffrey Deaver because I like the show, and there's enough difference between the show and the books to enjoy myself.  I also discovered Quinn Connor this year and am really looking forward to anything they publish next.  

Here are the books that have stuck with me and that I wanted to talk about with people as I was reading them or that I would want to recommend, in no particular order:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

In Cold Blood

The Bog Wife

The Lamb

Station Eleven

The Robber Bridegroom

What You Are Looking for is in the Library

Black Woods, Blue Sky

The Pecan Children

A few more thoughts:

The Bell Jar really has so many more funny moments than I remembered.  

What You Are Looking For... was gently lovely.  

John Grisham novels are so great for when you're in the mood for a John Grisham novel.  

I read the Niko Case and Orenda Fink memoirs too close together and because the stories had similarities, it's all gotten smooshed into one thing in my mind. 

Small Things Like These was tremendous and probably belongs on the list above. 

Under the Lake was so dumb, and not in a fun way.  

I am going to take a break from S. A. Crosby after King of Ashes, my word.  

Those women in Divine Secrets... were just so much.  I

 went through a phase of reading books published in the 1990s and it was fun to see how 'of its time' some of those books were.  

I should read more poetry in 2026. 

I should probably go back to alphabetizing by the authors' last names. 

Go to the library.