Books in review: A 2025 reading list

Expect my usual menu of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen (in celebration of Jane’s 250th birth anniversary this year). However, I thoroughly benefited by including a more diverse array of authors, again mixing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and what-not. (Was there any what-not? I think there was.) The list is largely chronological (by when I read them, not when they were written. Just to be clear).

1. James, Percival Everett (fiction). One of the best books I’ve ever read (a phrase I’m going to repeat ahead), for its perception, its inspiration, its truth. And I loved Huck Finn, which I will probably never re-read without r-reading James.
2. The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan (nature, art). A favorite storyteller expands her subject and her art. This was an Audubon magazine recommendation, and it’s a treasure.
3. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (fiction). Another one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I can’t believe I’ve never read it before (a phrase I’m going to repeat ahead). I think back to being a little white girl, not especially privileged but certainly more so than Toni’s youngsters. I would hope I behaved better, but my hometown was what it was at that time.
4. Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, Alexander Nemerov (biography, history, art). Helen is one of the artists introduced in Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel and is now one I always look for in my museum visits.
   
   
   
5. Fail-Safe, Eugene Harvey and Burdick Wheeler (fiction). A character-by-character approach into telling the story. It didn’t really work for me, but I guess that’s because I liked the movie better. Dr. Strangelove, that is.
6. Lincoln and the Indians, David A. Nichols (history, Civil War era). Historians don’t set out to villainize, but clearly there were a lot of bad guys running Indian affairs for the U.S. Nichols does seem to excuse Lincoln from full culpability, what with his country-saving war and his country-expanding railroad and all.
7. The Adventures of Curious George, Margret and H.A. Rey (children’s literature). It’s been on my “children’s” shelf a long time. The illustrations are a delight!
8. The Constitution of the United States and The Declaration of Independence (documents). A good time to catch up, I think.
   
   
   
9. Einstein: Decoding the Universe, Françoise Balibar (biography, science). You can’t write about Einstein without mentioning the science, but there’s a lot of social history in this (badly designed) little bio.
10. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev (fiction). One of my top four Russian novelists, telling a compelling story with some of the social turmoil of the time.
11. Ghetto Diary, Janusz Korczak (memoir). He saved children and went mad.
12. The Remains of the Day (re-read), Kazuo Ishiguro (fiction). The butler didn’t do it.
13. The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman (history, World War I). A piece of history I’m not very familiar with. An archduke is shot and all hell breaks loose. The historian does not set out to establish villainy, but there are some pretty despicable dudes in this.
14. Winnie-the Pooh, A.A. Milne (children’s literature). Another one of those books I can’t believe I’ve never read. And the illustrations are delightful.
15. Man Ray (no author cited), Ediciones Polígrafa (biography, art). Man Ray (is that what friends called him? Or just “Man”? Or “Emmanuel”?) is one of my favorite artists, even when he was not doing Dada. I just think I get more out of art books looking at them than reading them.
    
    
    
16. Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels, Dierdre LeFaye (history, sociology). A good overview of the novels’ setting in Regency England. I just think I get more out of Jane Austen reading her than reading about her.
17. The Watsons, Jane Austen (fiction). I honestly don’t remember reading this.
18. Minor Works (selections), Jane Austen (fiction). The “juvenilia” included Jane’s brief history of English monarchs. She seemed to have no love for Queen Elizabeth I, sharpening her satirical sword on her head!
19. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (fiction). One of the best books I’ve ever read, and I can’t believe I’ve never read it before. I was almost halfway through the story before I realized the narrator was nameless.
20. Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky (fiction). Apparently one of Ellison’s inspirations. As much as I’ve always loved Dostoevsky, I liked Ellison’s story better.
21. Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White (children’s literature). Another one I’d never read before. Life and death in a tale gentle enough for children to understand the realities of both.
22. King John (re-read) William Shakespeare (play). Read in preparation for seeing a performance. I still cry when little Arthur dies.
23. Wild Gratitude, Edward Hirsch (poetry). A fellow Grinnellian’s biography came out this year, but I thought I’d better read his poetry first. Lots of misty, rainy nights prompting reflections of life and love. 
    
    
    
    
24. What Jane Austen Ate & Charles Dickens Knew, Daniel Pool (social history, reference). Explanations of much that might baffle you while reading 19th century English novels (not just Austen and Dickens). Keep as a useful reference. (I always thought a “bob” was the same as a pound. No, it’s a shilling.)
25. Northanger Abbey (re-read), Jane Austen (fiction). Much funnier than I remembered! It would be hard to displace Pride and Prejudice from the top spot, but I now almost have a five-way tie for second place.
26. Bordering on Madness, Andrew Popper (fiction). I left this on my shelf too long thinking it was some of Andy’s legal writing. It’s actually a ripping-good novel with criminal types and types with criminal tendencies. And a lovely love story.
27. America’s Future: Poetry & Prose in Response to Tomorrow, Caroline Bock and Jona Colson, editors (anthology). It’s not futurism, except it includes my own essay, “Remembrance of Futures Past.”
28. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam [partial], Edward FitzGerald, translator (poetry). Just dipping into my ancient edition of Norton’s Anthology.
29. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (fiction). Another “I can’t believe I never read this before.” A day in the lives of Mrs. D and people in or around her circle. Why does this stream of consciousness work for me when I can’t get a page into Joyce or Proust? I guess I want to live in someone’s house or neighborhood and not entirely in their head.
30. 1984 (re-read), George Orwell (fiction?). It wasn’t a prediction. It was a warning. Then it became a playbook. 
    
    
    
31. Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann (history, 20th century Oklahoma). As we learned from Truman Capote, good journalism tells a cracking good story, and brings history to life better than most textbooks.
32. The Cider House Rules, John Irving (fiction). Like A Prayer for Owen Meany, this Irving book sat on my shelf for too many years. One of the best stories one could possibly read about abortion, and why many people consider its re-illegalization a crime against humanity.
33. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard (play). Very absurdist in a Becketty way.
34. The Cricket On the Hearth, Charles Dickens (fiction). I couldn’t figure out why this is known as a Christmas story, except that it’s sort of fairy-tale-ish, life-affirming, and written for the public at Christmas time like the Carol. Anyway, it was free from the Gutenberg Project and I could read it in a day.
35. The Obama Portraits (no author cited), National Portrait Gallery (art and artists, the works of Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald). Captures a moment in time and what led to it. No such presidential portrait unveilings have succeeded these. And I don’t even want to look in that gallery right now (let alone the one in the White House).
36. Reflections of a Futurist, Bob Chernow (futurism). Duty reading to remember my former professional life. This English major did learn a lot from working with authors at The Futurist magazine.

In addition to the aforementioned essay I contributed to America’s Future, I got far enough in my DIY piano lessons (Great Courses edition) to write my own little 45-second waltz, Hosaa’s Magnolias: Waltz in C. I wouldn’t subject any readers to a recording of my own playing, but I did create a piece of sheet music by hand. I hope it’s playable.

Love, hosaa
wondering what to read or write next