My Favourite Books of 2025

In 2023 I started keeping track of all the books I read in a year using a table in my notebook, as I read a lot of books and often forget what I have read through in a year. I now collect data like how long it takes me to finish books, whether I finish them at all, page counts and so on. It is satisfying to see the numbers improve but I'm reflexively hateful toward goal-setting, so self-help isn't the aim of the exercise, I just want to remember what I read each year and maybe read a bit more each subsequent year.

2025 was a difficult year full of setbacks, but it was pretty great for books! Here are some of my favourites, with honourable mentions at the end for books I liked but can't fit into a category.

THE BOOK THAT MOST SURPRISED ME

A View Across the Valley

Stories by Women from Wales c.1850-1950

Edited by Jane Aaron

ISBN: 978-1-909983-88-5

I picked this one up whilst on holiday in North Wales. I always love a short story collection (I'm particularly fond of the Tales of the Weird series the British Library puts out) though I assumed I'd read most of this one and fall off at some point before moving on, but in the end this became one of my books of the year. I particularly enjoy how it complicates the history of Wales as a poor and colonised place with how sexism (especially from Church authorities and the Industrial Revolution) kept women from being recognised as part of the liberatory struggle. There's comedy, ghosts, tragedy, a great Dickensian tale of an elderly woman being sent to a workhouse, it's all thoroughly enjoyable. Very easy to recommend, read it one story at a time on your commute or just before bed.

THE BEST TRANSFEMME BOOK OF THE YEAR

A/S/L

by Jeanne Thornton

ISBN: 978-1-915368-76-8

It's a crowded category with a lot of great contenders, but A/S/L is just so good I couldn't in good faith pick anything else. I read it twice this year, and I rarely reread books that quickly. If there is any justice trans women will start start comparing their personality types to Abraxa, Sash and Lilith the same way people used to do with Sex and the City characters (I'm definitely a Sash). Read this to have your bloody raw heart exposed and be absolutely insufferable to your friends for the next month, then reread it and marvel at how deftly Thornton threads characters and scenes into vivid, screaming life.

THE BEST NONFICTION AWARD FOR THE NONFICTION-ALLERGIC

Queer Beyond London

by Matt Cook and Alison Oram

ISBN: 978-1-526-14586-4

I've heard it said that: "England is a poor country with a London." and it certainly feels that way. It's been an observed phenomenon that LGBT people flock to the capital for so long Bronski Beat made a hit song about it in the 1980's. Being straight and cis doesn't give you a monopoly on England outside of Soho and this book was exactly the evidence for that I was craving. The different cities and towns of the UK might as well be countries unto themselves for their differences, and this book is great at showing how we have always tried to live our lives here, in the shadow of that great beast (am I talking about London or cis-het supremacy? Yes). Read this to impress your LGBT friends with trivia and to remember that WE WILL WIN.

THE BEST BOOK THAT MADE ME SHAKE IN REAL LIFE

Tell Me I'm Worthless

by Alison Rumfitt

ISBN: 978-1-8383900-2-0

I'm not someone who often seeks out horror. I like transfemme books for how they make me feel and the bigger the emotion, the better, so I've been catching up with Rumfitt's books for that reason primarily. I've also been reading them because they are really fucking great! She has an ability to capture the broken and the reactionary in English society in a way that can only be described as incisive. That is, involving an incision with a bloodied scalpel. Reading this book felt like that quote about how everyone who saw the Sex Pistols went and started a band, but with more sublime terror.

THE BOOK I WISH I HAD READ AS CHILD

The Oracle's Queen

by Lynn Flewelling

ISBN: 0-00-711312-9

This is the third book in the Tamír Triad, beginning with The Bone Doll's Twin and Hidden Warrior. An astoundingly clever trilogy of fantasy books that is utterly authentic to the transfemme experience and hopeful without ever feeling like you're sitting through medieval diversity training. The characters are so complex, so fully realised. Read this to heal the young boy that wanted to be both a heroic knight and a girl, or just to experience the kind of fantasy novel that makes you punch the air at the end.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Klara and the Sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro

ISBN: 978-0-571-36490-9

I used to think I hated sci-fi but I actually think I just hate space operas. Sci-fi with big ideas and an interest in human-scale stories rules actually. (Side note: watch Deep Space 9)

The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

ISBN: 978-0-140-16777-1

The only book I reread on a basically annual basis. It is THE Great American Novel in my non-American opinion.

Stag Dance

by Torrey Peters

ISBN: 9781805226666

The titular story is marvellously weird and unsettling, but Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones is I think is my favourite, and I usually find a post-apocalypse genre/setting annoying. She doesn't need my accolades even if she deserves them.

The Death of King Arthur

translated by Simon Armitage

ISBN: 978-0-571-24947-3

I used to consider myself a poet first and a prose writer second, but other writers in the medium haven't really set my heart on fire the same way Ted Hughes and Simon Armitage have. I ought to get back into it.

Bellies

by Nicola Dinan

ISBN: 978-1-8049-9123-7

I did love reading this and think its a good book, but I think the characters all being rich kids kept me at a distance to them at times. I don't think I'm supposed to uncritically 'like them' I just kind of get green with envy at all the opportunities that come their way. That's probably a me-problem. (I'm due some CBT in January so we'll see how I do afterwards)

That's all from me. Have a very merry Christmas and happy new year <3