Books of the Year, Such as They Were

I distrust ranked lists of books, including my own. The ranking implies a competition that did not take place — as if the novel that helped me through a difficult October was losing against the story collection I read on a train in June. They were not competing. They were different weathers.

So this is not a ranked list. It is more like an inventory. The books that were present in 2025, that I find myself still thinking about, that changed something — in the writing, in the attention, in the way I walk past certain kinds of silence.

Jenny Offill's Weather was one I had somehow avoided for years, telling myself I would come to it at the right time. This was apparently the right time. Han Kang's The Vegetarian, which I know is not new but which I had not read, arrived in February when I needed something that would not comfort me. Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces I have now read three times; this year's reading was the one where I understood what it was doing with time.

What I notice, looking at the full list, is that I read almost no fiction published in 2025. I suspect this is a form of self-protection — the new book needs room to be itself, and contemporary fiction is a crowded room where it is easy to lose your own voice. Perhaps in 2026 I will catch up. For now I am grateful for the year's reading, whatever it lacked.