Best of 2025

In what has become a year-end tradition for me, I offer up my favorite reads of the year. In my twilight years, I read mostly novels plus a good bit of non-fiction, usually history or biography. And I confess I do enjoy a nice murder or a visionary SciFi. I have been a member of a novel book club for lo onto 25 years. We almost always come up with a selection that is entertaining, thought provoking and discussable. Here's the list of the 200+ novels we have consumed if you're interested.

But back to the mission. The 10 books that most engaged me in 2025 in no particular order. 

I'm a sucker for year end book lists so it would be fun if you would add your own best of the year in the comments and together we could create a viral crowd-sourced list. Or just (see #1) write me a letter. I'm always looking for books to add to the stack. 

1. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.  Novel. Have you ever reached the end of a book and felt sadness?  Not due to content but rather that you've reached the end of something remarkable and want it to continue and perhaps head back to page 1 for a re-read. This is such a book for me. It documents the life story of 80-ish Sybil, a retired law clerk, in letters, both sent and received. Sybil is a master of the lost art of letter writing, authoring eloquent and self revealing missives. She writes to everyone and they write back: her family members; authors with impressions of a book of theirs she has just  read, (Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, Larry McMurtry, Diana Gabaldon, ...; a Syrian immigrant customer service rep for a genealogy app; a young bullied mathematics savant son of a friend; her late in life discovered half-sister; a life-long friend with whom she can share her deepest feelings. A tour-de-force in my view.

2.  The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides.  History. The final voyage of Captain James Cook and his death in Hawaii in 1779. Imperialism, exploration and exploitation among the Pacific islands and the failed search for the Northwest Passage.

3. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.  Novel. Milkman Dead's 30 year spiritual and physical journey to discover his roots.

4. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Carnegie Medal) History. Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the yellow journalists of the early 1900's. Fascinating history of the Roosevelt & Taft administrations, their close relationship and breakup leading to TR running in a 3-way race in 1912 as a 3rd party (Bull Moose) candidate and thus assuring Wilson's election - from perhaps my favorite historian.

5. Orbital by Samantha Harvey. (Booker Prize 2024).  Novel. A day in the life of a multi-national crew of 6 astronauts circling the earth.  A meditation on life and space. It's a lot more interesting than that summary implies. A love letter to earth.

6. Every Valley by Charles King.  History. The creation of Handel's Messiah and the troubled times in which it was written.

7. James by Percival Everett (Pulitzer Prize 2025) Novel. Mark Twain's Huck Finn from the perspective of the slave Jim.

8. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. (National Book Award)  Novel. 4 generations of a poor Korean family, their emigration and the discrimination endured in Japan.

9. Bog Queen by Anna North.  Novel. Agnes, a forensic pathologist, investigates a perfectly preserved 2000 year old body exhumed from an English peat bog. Two threads - the life of the woman druid who ended up in the bog and the modern day investigation for clues on who she was and how she ended up there.  

10. Crying in H-Mart, A Memoir by Michelle Zauner. (American Book Award) Memoir. The story of an American-Asian life, growing up Korean in America. Food, family and a daughter's relationship to her mother, who is dying from cancer.

Bonus books just for fun

A novel?
The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell.  Every sentence is a question. Thousands of them.  Read my post Ponder These Things for a sampling.

2 good murder mystery series
Renee Ballard mysteries x6 by Michael Connelly  

DS Cross, Bristol detective with Aspergers by Tim Sullivan

And a bit too believable near future SciFi. Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, an award winning SciFi writer. It is about what you think it might be - how climate change in the near future will affect us all and the desperate efforts to combat it. Can the world survive? 

I know, that's 14.

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin