Top 8 books I read 2025

I read 36 this year, here are my top 8 (the top 5 I read for the first time, and 3 favorites that I reread) 5. Erasure- Percival Everett This is the first book I've read by him, and I really enjoyed it. I have James on my list of books to check out next year. 4. Born a Crime - Trevor Noah I love memoirs, and I think this was the only one I read this year. There was some dark stuff in it, but he writes it in such an interesting, funny way, I really enjoyed it. 3. My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell I've always loved books set in boarding schools, and this is a good one, because there is a lot of disturbing content, but you read it through the lens of a teenage girl who doesn't really understand what is happening, and see how that shapes her growing up, and her outlook as an adult. 4. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption - Stephen King I read a bunch of Stephen King this year, I've read some of his horror, but I tend to love his general fiction the most. I'd actually never seen the movie until this year, I watched it after I read it. They were both fantastic. The movie was really beautiful, but I like a lot of the original details from the book. 5. 4321 - Paul Auster This one was really cool, and made me think of a lot of different things, like how one thing can completely change your life. It's four different stories in one, all with the same main character, but each is a different potential life for him based on things that happened with his family, and you see how that changes him, and how his relationships with the characters around him are different in each timeline as well. Then these are my rereads (and also probably 3 of my best books of all time) Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld She is one of my favorite writers, and this was the first one I read by her, and I've read it at least 5 times in the past 20 years. The main character in this book is just so raw and relatable, like she drives you crazy at times, and especially when I reread it now I can see all these mistakes she's making, things she shouldn't say and do, but it's so relatable, like all my worst characteristics as a teenager. She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb This book is amazing. I've probably read it 5 times as well, and my opinions of different things change each time I read it, but it's so good, so amazingly written, and I feel for the character so much. She has some horrible things happen to her as a child and young adult and it takes her so long to heal from it, and there are all these amazing whale references, and it's sad and beautiful. 11.22.63 - Stephen King This was my second time reading this one, and it's SO GOOD. This is probably the book I recommend to people the most, because I love it so much. There's time travel, but not in a really sci-fi way, it's mostly just a man who lives 4 years in the past with the goal of stopping JFK's assassination. And his life in the late 1950s and early 1960s is so good and interesting, and it's probably Stephen King's best book of all the ones I've read.