Each year, I try to look back over what I’ve read in the closing calendar year and share a little about what I’ve read and why it resonated with me. In the past, I’ve done this on Facebook or Twitter. I’ve looked to move away from those sites, and move toward trying to write something (in general) more consistently. So what better -and easier- way to start this blog, then with just simple short book reviews of the handful of books that have really stuck with me this year.
I’m not a particularly quick reader, and I frequently end up stuck in large slow marches through books where my attention flags to reading just a few pages a day. Goodreads, where I neurotically keep track of the number of pages I’ve read, tells me that I finished 17 books in 2025. I’ve spent the final several weeks of this year trekking my way through David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, so I look forward to that being my first completion of 2026 at some point in mid-February given the pace I’m going.
So in no particular order, of the books I finished this year, these are the three books that I find something I want to share.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi was my favorite book of 2025. I thankfully enjoy many of the books I read, but Piranesi was unique in that I found myself spending all my waking time thinking about getting back to completing it. Set in a sort of fantastical museum, I think Clarke does an amazing job of creating a world that is in its own right fascinating and interesting. Visually, I found myself drawn to large halls that form the perimeter of the Uffizi museum in Florence (where each wall is packed with statues and portraits) and to the Doctor Who episode “Heaven Sent” (Series 9, Episode 11). Clarke unspools the mystery of the story for you in thrilling little sections - and has done a great job in creating the world, and providing you just enough information that with each mysterious reveal, you find yourself just as invested as the protagonist in trying to figure out what this might mean.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Between this book, watching Masterpiece’s Grantchester, and watching Rian Johnson’s most recent Knives Out, I have found myself drawn into a lot of “troubled” priest stories. I am not sure what this says about me - I leave that to Freud.
Set in early twentieth century Mexico, this book tells the story of a “whiskey” priest on the run from the anti-clerical authorities of post-Revolution Mexico. There are moments of ugliness, grace, beauty, frustration, and profundity.
Would be an interesting companion read with Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop in the role that religion and faith can play in giving meaning to life beyond the rituals.
Heat by Bill Buford
I am maybe too much of a hater to enjoy books where some guy drops himself into some edgy world and then tells you the reader about it. It’s probably the poor imitators of Bill Buford and Jon Krakauer that make me queasy - perhaps some insecurity on my part (“who are you to tell me about this?”) and a distrust of anyone who is eager to tell you how badass they are.
Heat is about how Bill Buford ends up cooking in Mario Batali’s kitchen in the early 2000’s as the friend of a friend. What starts as Buford’s attempt to see if he can “hang” with the line cooks in a professional kitchen, morphs into his search into the heart and understanding of Italian cooking. Given it’s the early 2000’s, when assholes were still worshipped as being edgy and untethered, Buford encounters many of them in this story and is able to reveal their flaws as people as well as their important contributions to Italian cooking. I wish I had read this before our trip to Italy, but it has ended up being such an important contributor to the way I think about cooking and eating - comparable only with Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat.
Some quick hits
The Theban Plays by Sophocles
Read these in the days after my son was born. I’ll have Freud check in on this one too. Though the world they inhabit is very different, I found the translation incredible in feeling both reachable, without feeling vulgar. The story and characters feel and act more human than many plots I’ve read.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Not much for me to add beyond, this is very good! How it manages to create such tension and fear with such a simple story.
Yondering by Louis L’Amour
He’s a master of the dime story short story. None of these are particularly profound hits, and his narrative voices don’t have enormous range, but his ability to create a world, draw you in, and resolve it in a dozen or so pages really is impressive.