1. “Our 51 Favorite Books of 2025.” “Gaze down from on high and declare certain books ‘the best’? Never! Instead, here are the titles that especially stuck with us this year. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did!”


2. William Rice’s review of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow (MCD). “The phenomenon Doctorow so rudely but effectively describes is the tightening profit squeeze on everyone who interacts with Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and our other few corporate overlords. The inescapable nature of modern technology combined with decades of business consolidation — unimpeded by the rusting mechanisms of anti-trust laws — have created money-making monsters that can freely jack up the prices of their goods and services while simultaneously diminishing their quality.”


3. Terri Lewis’ review of Canticle: A Novel by Janet Rich Edwards (Spiegel & Grau). “Given that the United States is a secular nation, Janet Rich Edwards has taken on a daunting task with her debut novel. Canticle transports the reader into a world of faith at the end of the 13th century, when God and Church ruled. The story opens with a glimpse of Aleys on her way to immolation, surrounded by a crowd chanting, ‘Sint! Sint!’ (saint). The remaining pages reveal how she came to be condemned.”


4. Anne Eliot Feldman’s review of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel by Rabih Alameddine (Grove Press). “An event in mid-2021 launches the plot. The American Excellence Foundation — a nonprofit fighting disease, poverty, hunger, and inequity — awards Raja an all-expenses-paid, three-month writing residency in Virginia. Commending his ‘courageous and excellent’ literary sensibility, they offer him the chance to ‘work on whatever I was working on.’ It’s a seeming stroke of good fortune, but even the naïve Raja gets suspicious. His last and only book came out 25 years prior, after all, and was written in his limited Japanese. Not a bestseller. He’s written nothing since, and has no plans to. So, why the honor? His getting to the bottom of it fuels the narrative.”


5. “The Best Book I Read in 2025.” “Naturally, our contributors are a bookish bunch, but their tastes are all over the map. If you’re not sure what we mean by that, take a gander at the smart, surprising list below. May you find something on it to add to your own New Year’s TBR stack!”

Subscribe to our newsletter here, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest. Advertise with us here.