Books I Read in 2025

Thank the gods my attempts to put books back into my life has worked. I got a slow start. Gardening season always helps, because I do spend an extraordinary amount of time outside trying to keep ahead of weeding and pruning and chopping things. Also, I train for my August race, so during the heat of the summer I spend more and more time on trails. All these tasks are better with earbuds and book. For 2026, I hope to make my list of books longer. But for 2025, I am very pleased that it is as long as it is, compared to 2024.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I had to put this one on 2024 and 2025 because I was hardly ever finding time to read but also its a long book. over 21 hours on audible.com. This is a magnificent saga of a boy who grew up disadvantaged and privileged in ways that I could easily relate to, and I saw some of his paths similar to mine. Though his story was much more difficult. He was born poor, to an uneducated single mother who didn’t do a good job at mothering. He went into foster care, was abused in multiple ways for multiple years. He became a high school football star, and he honed his talent in making comics. After a life-altering injury, he became addicted to drugs and despite how hard he worked, the drugs just bled him dry. All the beautiful relationships he had built were destroyed over time, till he was only a shell. It’s the kind of thing that can be a crossroads for a person. I continued to relate to his moment of reckoning; how it came to be, what he noticed. Despite its length, and my difficulty finding time to read, it was always engaging.
Erasure by Percival Everett. I read this one because I’ve wanted to see the movie American Fiction, and have not, so this seemed like a reasonable next attempt. It’s a ridiculous but still realistic story. Only 8 hours long, so it was a good choice to get myself back into reading again. The protagonist is an author of painfully aloof and pretentious books. He’s not an ass, just possibly on the spectrum, and writes about what he feels is important in the literary sense and refuses to relinquish his high standards. Then a contemporary author gets a lot of recognition for writing a cheap sellout novel of Black American steroeotypical characters. Out of fury and disgust, he writes one of his own, and sends it to his agent as a joke. The agent loves it. The book gets published as a joke, but under a pseudonym because he wants to be true to his dozen fans, and not disappoint them. It becomes a blockbuster best seller despite every attempt to sabotage that fate.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. This was recommended to me by my therapist. The book explains the importance of doing less, but doing those few things better. Examples are provided of how doing less is more fulfilling, more helpful, more profitable, more sustainable than we think. Examples are provided of how trying to do too much can cause catastrophe. FYI, most of it is geared toward the workplace and work environments, not so much your personal life in general. I was already on board with wanting to do less, so I wasn’t very invested in all the chapters that were trying to convince me. Some of these examples were interesting, but I really wished the book was about HOW to reduce things in my life more than why I should. The instructions, examples, suggestions on how to do it were not there, or possibly not clear enough for me to be inspired or take notice, and I left feeling more convinced than ever that I needed to somehow find a way to do less. But this book didn’t help me get there.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I was surprised at how much I was captivated by this book. The author’s premise is so clever and wonderful and wonderfully illuminated. It’s set in a future when Earth predicted its demise with enough time to send out colonizing ships to potential future planets and moons. Ships were then to launch a nanovirus engineered to superspeed evolution to prepare intelligent species to get the planet ready for spoiled Earthlings to then come and habitate the place when the time was right. A civil war on Earth had been underway when one ship launched, and none of the scientists realized that one of their team was an undercover enemy of the scientific plan. The enemy’s big plot was to destroy the mission. Two launches were planned for the prepared green planet: one of the nanovirus, and one of primates for the virus to act on. The primates got blasted out of the sky. The nanovirus safely landed and went to work…on the insects and invertebrates that were there.
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Eager to go back to this amazing world and see what happened next, I enthusiastically began book two. The author’s choice to bounce back and forth through time, like in the first book, was more distracting this time. Whereas book one used the same names over and over, through generations, to help the reader keep track of who was who, book two did not use this convention. And the attempts to be as clever as the first one and leave a great secret for the reader to discover, lasted too long and just got confusing for me. I lost my ability to track all the different characters, lost my ability to track what was happening at the different stages in time, lost my interest after a while in finding out what the new secret unexpected consquence of the nanovirus was. I actually read ten hours of this 15 hour book, and finding that I had absolutely no idea what was going on, just quit reading it.
The Attic Child by Lola Jaye. This book tells the painful traumatic stories of two children locked in their own home in the same attic for four years. Only, each was locked up alone, 50 years apart. While Lowra is trapped, she finds some papers with writing, a necklace, and a doll that were hidden beneath boards, but has no idea how they came to be there. The book begins with adult, emotionally dead Lowra as she tries to solve the mystery of the house when she inherits it after a death. On a subconscious level, she suspects that understanding the story of the artifacts will help her have a real life beyond just existence. The audible version has two narrators and both are wonderful: reading one for Dikembe/Celestine, and one for Lowra. I began by explaining Lowra, because I read a review that says her character was too uninteresting. The truth is: the weight of this story is on the shoulders of Dikembe. He lives in a violent time as a child in the Congo, but his parents have protected him from it (they think). When his mother has an opportunity to send him away with a kind, educated British man, she makes sure Dikembe goes. The reader is exposed to the painful, constant disrespect he is subjected to as a pretty plaything as the British man’s “companion,” an object of interest, dragged around society on display, and harrangued for not expressing his gratitude, and lied to about a return trip to join his family. Dikembe wins you over as a powerful, optimistic, courageous, indefatigable man who creates a life out of nothing, and then continues to recreate it each time his forward progress is demolished. Through his story I was educated about parts of colonization of the Congo and slave commerce and racism and Black experience that I didn’t know. Dikembe teaches the reader about love, and that message reaches Lowra. I found that Lowra was written accurately as a woman trapped in a depressive disorder, for good reason after incomprehensible abuse. A reader who can’t understand why Lowra is like that, has not experienced depression, and that’s ok, just don’t judge so harshly. In my opinion, these horrific stories of children trapped in attics is told in a way that I was able to keep reading, though this may not be the case for everyone. Read with caution.
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. Part of why I chose this one right now is because it’s read by Wil Wheaton, and I usually enjoy his acting skills. It’s a fun romp of SciFi politics, which is pretty much one of my favourite genres ever, except maybe Fantasy politics, haha. It’s not a super intelligent story, not that mind-expanding, not that original. But well-written with a few fun characters and no plot lines or characters lost by a careless author, which will drive me crazy. The cursing is kind of fun – but nonstop, so be ready, and the sex is almost as often, but thankfully, no lengthy descriptions of the sex, just references too it. An all-around good story for if you want to just enjoy a book.
In the Name of God by Selina O’Grady. {in progress} I’m having to read this one in bites. It’s good but dense. A very well-researched book about the origins of organized Christian and Muslim religions, with a lot of Judaism because they are all three intertwined. Her main theme tries to be that religious tolerance should not be a goal, because to be tolerated is not to be valued or respected. She tries to use the history of religion to “prove” this. Rather, we should try to understand each other, and respect each others’ similar and different cultures, and live together and let it go. Maybe the idea is to show how organized religions all manipulate people, start wars, commit heinous crimes against humanity, and also bring people together. Since we’re all the same in the main themes, lets stop killing each other for it. My life is too scattered and filled with anxiety day to day, and it’s hard for my brain to settle down and absorb this educational and fair history book end to end. But I imagine I’ll finish it. (Looking up a link for this post, I see that she also wrote: And Man Created God, which is sitting beside my bed at this moment, waiting to be read. I didn’t realize I had seen her name already. I guess I should read that one too.)
High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society by Carl Hart. This one talks about the author’s childhood and how it led him to study drugs in America. I only started it. For the reasons listed in 8. above, my brain is just not in the space to read much non fiction I guess.
The Sellout by Paul Beatty. I tried hard on this one, and quit it too. I think it’s well written, witty, clever. But at least for the first 35 minutes, it’s 35 minutes of the main character doing a monologue, I turned it off at that point. A reviewer described it as “savage,” and that’s a good adjective. Interesting and funny, it’s still hard for me to hold still and listen. Maybe when the world isn’t falling apart, I can come back to these titles.
Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I decided to read this after coming home from my first trip to England, since one of the towns we visited was where the movie Stardust was filmed. I have always enjoyed the movie, sort of light and romantic, but more for the lessons therein, of where to place your love and dedication, how real friends behave, how to trust yourself, how to be brave. I assumed the book would be better and it is much better. An excellent classic fantasy, with witches and witches spells, true love, flying pirates that capture and sell lightning, family, tradition, and growing up.
The Library of Borrowed Hearts by Lucy Gilmore. It’s a pretentious and confusing book title for a sweet little romance, so ignore the title. It’s a fun romantic mystery wherein a bored librarian stuck in the basement going through old volumes in order to purge them, notices a first edition classic racy book she never expected to find in that particular town. Chloe decides to keep it for herself, and discovers that, written in the margins, a conversation unfolds between two different people. She gets very invested, and when the messages say the next book to look for, she does a scavenger hunt in the town and actually finds it! This begins her quest to unravel the entire story, which is a nice quest to have, to help her avoid reality of her life, which is raising her two younger siblings on her own, after her mom abandons them, and all the emotional issues that come up for the three of them while they try to get by. Like a Hallmark movie, it’s unrealistic that their awful neighbor Jasper, who has been mean to the children their entire lives, suddenly turns into a gentle grandfather and adopts them all when challenged. The character of Catherine seems much too careless with other peoples’ feelings, but I ended up forgiving her because this, at least, is an unpredictable characteristic/plot twist, so maybe it’s believable after all.
Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy. This one was a tough read, but so good I couldn’t stop. Set in North Carolina and rife with racism: the kind that is undeniable and clearcut, and the larger kind that is subtle and permeates people of all races so deeply that it’s hard to see. The book exposes examples of all of it, in the form of a detective novel trying to solve two difficult crimes of murder and assault with intent to murder. Educational, yes, but also a REALLY good story. It was disappointing that the lovely character development that made me fall in love with Toya, the artist, ends too soon. She comes from the big city to live in a small town with her grandmother and is compelled to challenge the cult of Confederate history adulation she finds there. Her grandmother is very proud of her, and knows how important the work is, though her instincts are to ask Toya to stop. She holds her tongue and sends her off with a smile, and Toya is murdered. About the same time, a police officer is attacked and almost murdered. Two other main characters each take the lead on investigation of these crimes. The dramatic ending is believable as much as it makes you cheer for and despise humanity.
A Room With a View by E. M. Forster. (Click that link to read an actual copy of the book autographed by the author.) I was feeling nostalgic and thinking of my mother’s love for the movie A Room With a View. She loved it so much and I barely remember the movie. There was a scene where the young main character, George shouts loud and long out of joy and freedom (if I’m remembering the scene right). It got me to thinking about how much oppression she felt in her life, and I felt bad for her. I wanted to read the book to maybe get closer to her. I do love old classics like this, and this one was great. Some excellent English propriety out of place in Italy, and characters clashing with each other. The young Lucy so impressionable because she has been told to be impressionable, and her tiresome cousin Charlotte, who seems to remind me of tiresome friends I have endured. The old man is marvelously unconventional, and is frustrated that his son George could be wonderful too, but is painfully shy which stunts his life. The show-off author is also a character I know and can’t stand. All the busybodies reminded me of Jane Austen’s work – so maybe this really was what life was like in those times and places and thank goodness I don’t have to contort in that way. It didn’t obviously bring my mother closer to me, but I did very much enjoy the book.
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. This book was recommended to me by a friend. I read my first Kingsolver book at the beginning of the year, and I liked it, so I was game to read her debut novel. It’s a good book – the kind that is just right to kick off an author’s writing career. I identified a bit with the main character, but mainly with her independence and not her experience of unconditional love by her mom. Kingsolver unfortunately uses a couple of annoying Cherokee/Native stereotypes that bothered me more until I realized the year it was published. Taylor and her friends in the book talk about immigration, refugees, Native issues, racism, classism…referring to hateful phrases used right now, today in 2025, and facing issues that are in our news every day, so I thought at first it was a modern book. Once I realized it was published in 1988, I realized that authors were not trying to get cultures exactly right back then. Anyway, Marietta leaves her Kentucky home in a broken down car to seek her fortune and works her way across Oklahoma and ends up in Tucson. On the way, an abused woman hands off an abused child to her, in an attempt to save the child. A bewildered Marietta takes the child and in that way becomes a mother. She stops in Taylorville needing gas, and takes a new name to go along with her new life. Her car completely dies in Tucson and she’s stuck a long time, trying to earn enough money for repairs. By the time she has her car repaired, she has decided to stay. She even goes back to Oklahoma and comes home with the baby legally adopted. This book is kind of like the one I want to write: a character who doesn’t know what she want sort of figures out a path by the end.
Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver. The story of Taylor and the baby, who she names Turtle, and her mom and a few other friends continues. I cringed a couple of times about the Cherokee stuff, but honestly, I couldn’t specifically complain about any part of it. It is clear that Kingsolver worked very hard to write it well. I followed, nodding my head, with all the important parts regarding the ICWA, which is also an old story that is still extremely relevant in today’s world. I am so grateful for the reasonable way the problems were solved in this story, and the example of how perceived enemies can work things out with patience and openness. It’s a good story and they work together well as a set.
All Fours by Miranda July. I think this is the first Miranda July book I ever read. I did read her short story Swim Team, which is startlingly remarkable, about a woman who becomes a swim coach and the whole team remains on a linoleum floor with bowls of salt water in front of them that they can put their faces into. I am only familiar with her from the movie Me And You and Everyone We Know, which was a bit mind-blowing in its unconventionality. The key scene for me was when two strangers walk beside each other on a sidewalk and decide that it represents the length of their lives, and when they reach the next street it will be time to die and they must be brave and part and walk away from each other. All Fours was equally bizarre and yet devastating and relatable. A woman in her forties decides to take a road trip from California to New York as a sort of challenge to herself but she chickens out immediately, and stops at a hotel 20 minutes from the house and cannot bring herself to move on. She spends the entire two weeks in the hotel, calling her husband and child each night and lying about where she is and what she did that day. It was really uncomfortable for me to be immersed in this story. While at the hotel, she spends $20 thousand to renovate her hotel room to pure magnificence, and has an affair in that room. And at the end of the two weeks, she goes home. There are also some creative explorations and descriptions of sexuality that were very interesting to me, because I only know my own, and have almost never discussed sex with others so freely. This book is…Wow. It’s…it’s just astonishing that there are worlds of learning and understanding and relationships that come out from the awkward premise of not taking a road trip. The book does continue after she returns home, and thankfully, the main character does some healing. There is a whole menopause plot line, which I believe is unnecessary, but I’m sure it connects with some people. I have felt as strung out bananas as this woman all my life, and going through menopause has not really changed it for the worse. July’s ability to engage you is unparalleled and irresistible. If you being reading, I’ll bet you won’t stop. But I won’t push.
Hole In The Sky by Daniel H. Wilson. Author Wilson is a member of my local Mt. Hood Cherokees group here in Portland. I like SciFi anyway, and I love Wilson’s writing. But here we have a guy I know and like, a Cherokee, a SciFi book, AND it’s got a Cherokee character and Native culture, knowledge, and symbolism as part of the plot line. SO COOL!! When the book came out I was able to catch one of his author talks at Powell’s bookstore here in town, and I was just thrilled to begin. The book is fast-paced and leaves me confused much of the time. I got halfway through in the audio book, but was so disoriented that I stopped and began again with the (autographed) book, and that made it much more intuitive for me to follow. It’s an alien first contact story set at Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma. I’m such a goofball for not noticing it is an almost horror novel for 2/3 of the book. I mean, Wilson is so easy going and fun loving and funny, that the super scary shit in the story didn’t register for a long time. I think the movie is going to make good use of the horror. For some reason I liked the idea of listening to the audio (voiced by professional voice actors, including Natives) and reading simultaneously, so I’ve been holding off on the final chapters till I can do both. Thus, I have been almost done for a month… but don’t know how it ends.

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