Fave Books 2025

I fell in love with reading again this year. It's not like we had broken up, but... perhaps horticulture would call it a reblooming. My relationship with books this year quickened, seeking to make sense of the senselessness and find the humanity amongst the intrusive and pervasive cultural smog surrounding us, because let's be honest, it's choking out there sometimes.  

Dear authors, thank you for the absolute toil you make look so easy: like few other things, it helps clear some of that smog. In no particular order, my top five reads follow. 

If you've read this
title (an imagined
early life of William and
Agnes Shakespeare)
you might be
surprised by my
perspective: this book
is a touching romance.
There's wooing, and
 deep maternal love,
and there's a remoteness
from real-life, to spin
a magic cocoon for a
happy family. But then,
tragedy: one all
parents dread most. 
Yet in making art out of
pain...perhaps all's
 well that ends well?
 Their plight reminded 
me of Prospero's final
lines in Shakespeare's
Tempest. He asks
the audience for
applause. Although
many conflicts remain
unresolved, the story 
(that suspension of
disbelief, that romance
afforded by the arts) 
can transform our
pain into something
bearable, even
meaningful, albeit
temporarily: 
"release me from
these bands
with the help of
your good hands." 

It seems to me that
beneath this short
book's surface
is Ireland itself:
its history, its
trauma, its children,
and its future.
Essentially a
novella, Keegan's book
is in no way small.
That ironic title
highlights how
trauma is minimized,
even institutionalized,
in service to 
old and tired
ideologies until 
one good man,
(seemingly small),
decides that delivering
coal and righteous
sanctimony is less
important than
his daughters' futures.  

Historical fiction
(early 1800s?)
set in what is now
Newfoundland.
A sister and brother,
just children at first,
endure the feral
environment while
trying to survive.
Explorers and early
capitalists come and
go seeking fortunes,
all hapless eventually
yet history teaches us
this is how North
America was settled. 
An Adam and
Eve tale, there's
paradise here and an
inevitable fall, plus a
cruel ocean
waiting to swallow
everything. And yet
we are the 
descendants of
these tough and
tortured mortals. 

With each incredulous
chapter, my inner voice
continued to ask, 
what IS the long walk?
Is it a coming-of-age
horror story? Yes.
Is it an war allegory?
Yes. Is it modern-day
reality-TV obsessed
USA? Yes. Is it 
about male friendship
and the way
it knots itself
embracing then rejecting
vulnerability? Yes. 
Despite my conclusions,
does it remain
ambiguous? Yes.
Although I've read
many of his titles,
I think this one 
impressed me like no
other King novel,
(and its his first!)
Also this:
read with caution. 
Although published in
1979 (!) the casual
nature of its cruelty
and insanity
 feels very 2025. 

I already wrote about
the film version, yet
I loved the book first.
A lonely good man,
a logger in early
Northwest USA,
grapples with his 
mistakes, his losses,
his empty life. 
Do our mistakes
haunt us? Often.
Do they doom us?
Sometimes. Is there
some cosmic price
to pay? I doubt it.
Or must we simply
enjoy kissing the ones
we love among the 
daisies while we can?
Yes, yes, yes.