books i read in 2025

- 91768 words (carrere) - trust exercise (susan choi) - hated this - kairos (jenny erpenbeck) - loved this book that singlehandedly began my east germany phase - the master of petersburg (jm coetzee) - felt super validated by all the goodreads reviews that were like "this book is so annoying" - giovanni's room (baldwin) - this was actually soooooo good. i didn't expect it to be so good but it was seriously just so beautifully written - death valley (melissa broder) - didn't really understand or like this (katie agrees) - the end of the affair (graham greene) - loved this - slow days, fast company (eve babitz) - this was fun and sexy and made me want to try quaaludes - limonov (carrere) - this was also fun and sexy but in a different way. i was reading this while waiting in the doorway of yemen cafe one night and this guy exiting the restaurant was like, "great book." i was caught off guard so my reflexive response was "oh yeah?" which made it seem like i didn't have an opinion about the book even though i was halfway through at that point - pride & prejudice (jane austen) - so good, esp. in that tolstoy way where the author describes social types and dynamics as if they're universal truths and like they kind of are? - the return (hisham matar) - the first bad man (miranda july) - while i was reading this, i was like damn miranda july is so weird. but it's highkey so inspiring how wacky and crazy she is. she's able to inhabit emotions and daydreams/the subconscious so fully that she explains everything in a way that sounds so understandable, normal, and relatable - queer (william burroughs) - the mixed up files of basil e frankweiler (e l konisburg) - sojourn (amit chaudhuri) - der klang der familie - stories of your life (ted chiang) - what belongs to you (garth greenwell) - the copenhagen trilogy (tove ditlevsen) - prose was beautiful and also really engaging. it kind of reminded me of the brilliant friend books in that the narrator is writing about her life while many of her desires or attitudes remain opaque to herself - certain american states (catherine lacey) - the lathe of heaven (ursula k. leguin) - this was cool, similar to ted chiang in that it fleshed out a basic premise in rich and interesting ways. for example, this guy is instructed to imagine that there is no more war between people, and he consequently dreams that there's a human vs. aliens battle because he's never lived in a world where there hasn't been some form of global conflict, so he literally can't envision what world peace would be like - black swans (eve babitz) - eve sounded really ditsy, which was tough when she was writing an essay about the rodney king riots - creation lake (rachel kushner) - minor detail (adania shibli) - heartburn (nora ephron) - darryl (jackie ess) - this was super interesting but i don't think i understood it. want to re-read at some point - autobiography of red (anne carson) - read this in a coffeeshop while waiting for my laundry to finish and yo la tengo's "on our way to fall" came on. also now i want to hike a volcano in guatemala and watch both the werner herzog volcano doc and the "fire of love" volcano doc - the odyssey (emily wilson translation) - THANK YOU XANDER FOR LENDING ME THIS it might have been one of my favorite things i read all year which surprised me - drive your plow over the bones of the dead (olga tokarczuk) - outline (rachel cusk) - i went into this book not wanting to like it and found myself begrudgingly enjoying it but ultimately felt vindicated re: my original opinion when i finished it - severance (ling ma) - i feel like i have a parasocial relationship with ling ma in that i read bliss montage last year and so many aspects of those stories felt autobiographical that it was impossible not to project that knowledge onto this book. in my mind there's this mythology around her and severance that i gleaned from bliss montage - she worked on this book with monk-like dedication in her spare time from her day job for years and then got into cornell's mfa program with it and this book was her mfa thesis. the immigration-related writing felt forced, but not in a "this doesn't belong in this book" kind of way, more in a "this is emotionally difficult to parse through and write about" way. i think her writing in bliss montage is better but regardless admire her a lot and also loved the detail about how nostalgia triggers people with the fever into becoming zombies