Top Books I Read in 2025

What a lovely book. It reads like a foodie's travelogue but it's layers upon layers of themes. Chizuko, a Japanese author visiting Taiwan in 1938 as a guest of the colonial government, hunts for authentic food while the power imbalance between colonizer and colonized is quietly, brilliantly interwoven throughout.

Reads like a modern satire even though it was published in 1881. A dead Brazilian aristocrat writes his memoir from beyond the grave, breaking the fourth wall in short punchy chapters that feel shockingly ahead of their time. Ridiculous, funny, and a mirror held up to society.

Five loosely connected stories pull you into the orbit of a city where hundreds of women are being murdered and there is no accountability. Not about solving the mystery, more about how we look away.

I can't believe I didn't read this earlier in life. Set in the 1850s during the Caucasian War, Tolstoy spent years researching the real-life Hadji Murat, a feared lieutenant of Muslim mountaineers resisting Russian imperial conquest. Short, approachable, and a fascinating glimpse into a period I rarely get to dive into.

The abduction and murder of a mother of ten in northern ireland is the center of a decades long struggle in Northern Ireland during the times of the Troubles. Keefe's meticulous research reveals how motivations and a culture of silence developed around the IRA and the people on all sides of the conflict.