every book i read in 2025

IN AN alternate universe, or maybe at a later juncture in this one, I have an Instagram account dedicated solely to books.

I just can’t get along with the “social” half of social media. The pendulum-like desire for a-lot-of and a-lot-less attention can be disorienting, so I remain a lurker, a quiet witness.

Anywaaay, books. Reading is the one hobby I managed to sustain throughout 2025. I intended to read just one book a month, but I ended up reading more. Turns out reading a good book makes you want to keep going.

Below is a list of all the books I read in 2025. I’ve starred the titles I strongly recommend, though the ones without stars are hardly bad.

What I Talk About when I Talk about Running by Haruki Murakami

Ah, my first non-fiction Murakami. Here Murakami meditates on the parallelisms between running and writing, two solitary activities that require not just talent but also commitment and, of course, pain. The book didn’t light a fire under my butt — likely not the author’s intention either — but I appreciated the reflections. I still prefer Murakami’s fiction though.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin ★

“And what is love in the end, except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone’s journey through life?” Truly, it is. Zevin paints love and all its manifestations in this book with visceral tenderness that I found myself sniffling like an idiot while reading this book one cold January night — and I rarely play video games. A marvel!

Today I Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitzer

The short stories in this collection are thematically tethered to the quirky and occasionally dark interiors of the white, middle-class American household. The tensions are often internal. The stories are not driven by plot but instead by the intimate struggles of the domestic woman and the home she holds together. The book didn’t waggle me out of my ennui but, all things considered, I was entertained.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

The novel’s screenplay-style conceit criticizes how American media flattens Chinese-Americans into stock characters. The schtick is smart, yes, but I found it a bit too on the nose at times. What really worked for me though was the way the author folds history into the satire, tracing how anti-Chinese racism in the US wasn’t just cultural but actually codified into law and policy. It is in moments when I learn about structural exclusion that I feel the book’s emotional and political heft the most.

The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How To Make Your Life Better by Gretchen Rubin

For a brief period in 2025 I used the Four Tendencies framework to police my own habits and the ways I respond to internal and external expectations. Understanding my own behavioral dispositions is helpful, of course, but reshaping them is a different battle — all to say that I found this book somehow useful albeit not life-changing.

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

That the stories in Rejection are about rejection is one thing — they are also about people who practically live on the Internet, from WhatsApp group chats to Reddit threads to Twitter alters. The stories are obscene and disgusting, but the resulting discomfort is oddly arresting in a way that begs you to raise the question every chronically online loser has asked: dafuq did I just read? A real shooketh of a book.

Mean Baby by Selma Blair

There is a wistfulness to Selma’s tone in this memoir where she discusses her childhood traumas, her alcohol addiction, and her MS diagnosis. Reading it was like watching someone tend to their own wounds, although I almost DNF’d the book when I learned about Selma’s previous comments against Islam and Muslims. To write tenderly about one’s own pain while wishing suffering on other people, especially those who are already living under siege, is icky.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid ★

Exit West is about two people who fall in love in an unnamed war-torn city, in a world where doors can turn into portals to different countries. The novel frames war in contemporary times; people dodge bombs and bullets while messaging each other using their smartphones. The magical element (e.g., the portals) feels more like a side character, a convenient plot device to usher the story forward. But, that said, it also kind of works. By removing the usual logistics of immigration, the novel was able to beautifully paint the existential weight of displacement among refugees without getting bogged down by bureaucracy. Lovely book for sure.

The Night Guest by Hildur Knutsdottir

The Night Guest follows a woman who wakes up every morning exhausted, and the doctors couldn’t figure out what’s wrong . One day she buys a smart watch because, you know, maybe her exhaustion is just a lifestyle thing? The following morning, she notices that the step count on her watch is too high — but how can that be when she had just woken up? This premise is interesting, but the book was…it’s alright. It’s not bad. It’s supposed to be horror though, but it didn’t terrify me. It’s short too, although I’m not sure if it would benefit from added length.

Here After by Amy Lin

Here After is a memoir of a woman who lost her husband when they were both in their early 30s. It’s a short book, and the 200-or-so pages wrecked me. But that’s not necessarily a tall order, especially with grief and loss at the book’s core. What truly gutted me was the vividness of Lin’s language. Her writing is rich with detail and precision, so reading her story felt like absorbing her pain by osmosis (or some other process that makes more sense).

Margo’s Got Money Problems by Rufi Thorpe

I did not expect to learn about OnlyFans and wrestling and the strange economies of modern shame and survival while reading this book — but I did and I loved it. The shifting points of view and meta asides are reminders that the story is being told by a young woman in real time. The looseness in form mirrors the narrator’s youthful instability and relentless introspection: she makes decisions, she questions them, she learns, she fails, she succeeds. The cast of characters surrounding her is just as imperfect, yet I couldn’t help but root for them all. Lovely!

Endling by Maria Reva ★

My favorite read of 2025. The novel opens with a Ukrainian biologist devoted to preserving rare species of snails, alongside two sisters searching for their missing activist mother. Together, the trio hatches a plan: to kidnap a group of foreign bachelors and find a mate for Lefty, the last of a dying breed of snail. This satirical premise is abruptly upended by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, transforming the story into a metafictional meditation on the ethics of storytelling during war — on complicity, on endings, on survival. I still think about the characters to this day. What a great read.

All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman

This book was hands-down entertaining. The discomfort some readers feel toward the protagonist reminds of the cultural double standard Laura Dern’s character articulated so well in A Marriage Story: people tolerate flawed fathers with ease, but they do not extend the same grace to flawed mothers. This novel leans into that tension and dares the reader to sit with a woman who is messy and selfish, but still, in my (probably invalid) opinion, a good mother.

Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words by Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words is a transcript of Malka Marom’s interviews with Joni Mitchell. Here I learned that Joni was only 23 when she wrote Both Sides Now, one of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs along with All I Want and A Case of You. I also learned that Joni has worn blackface on multiple occasions. “I like the ghetto thing,” she says, which makes me think that the technology in Jordan Peele’s Get Out was something Joni would throw her money at. I may have liked Joni Mitchell a little less after reading this, not gonna lie.

Audition by Katie Kitamura

This is the headiest book I’ve read last year. Kitamura is less interested in plot than in power. Who gets to speak? Who listens? What is true? What isn’t? The ambiguity is deliberate and unnerving. By the end, the book feels like a sustained study of how much of living is auditioning for roles we didn’t consciously choose. I would definitely (try to) read it again.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar ★

This book is about Cyrus, an alcoholic poet who thinks about death a lot; specifically, he yearns for his own death to matter. The book unfolds from different perspectives, sometimes even in dream form where the characters reflect on their lives while illuminating important insights on art, spirituality, and identity. The novel ends ambiguously, which struck me as rather absurdist, echoing Albert Camus’ thesis on the futility of searching for life’s meaning. The dream sequences and multiple voices are not mere details of whimsy, but rather a reiteration of the novel’s resistance against the Quest for Certainty or, hmm — maybe its ultimate embrace of the freedom that comes with Not Knowing? If only it was that easy.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka ★

Reading this book now as a working adult, I finally feel for George Samsa whose transformation into a vermin has long been interpreted as a textbook portrayal of alienation. Marx has predicted many a-thing, but it appears he has failed to consider the ability of the ruling class to keep resistance at bay. I am just as miserable as George now, but here I am distracting myself by writing a lengthy-ass blog post instead of joining the revolution. Ah, well. Great book though.

Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda

Reservoir Bitches is a collection of short stories about women whose lives are contoured by violence and moral ambiguities. Every story feels like a live wire. The voices are angry and exhausted, yet despite the vulgarity of the book’s subjects — abortion, femicide and other everyday brutalities — it still manages to feel both tender and propulsive. Abante, babae!

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore ★

Here, Moore delivers a furious critique of old money by braiding a missing-person mystery with the corrosive truth of American class inheritance. The novel deftly exposes generational rot, not through melodrama, but through the contrast between those who own the land and those who work it. I had some misgivings about the plausibility of certain plot turns, but the conclusion still landed for me. Great, great read.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico ★

Perfection is about a couple who feels stuck, even if they live a picture-perfect lifestyle. They migrate to a city they love, they work from home, they hang out with like-minded friends, and they keep a cozy apartment where they listen to bands like LCD Soundsystem for fun. The novel consists mostly of descriptions of their hip and Instagrammable life while asking the question that The Submarines also ask in a song: here we are in the center of the first world / it’s laid out for us, who are we to break down? Latronico doesn’t have an answer, and by god neither do I.

Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller ★

This book is a biography of scientist David Starr Jordan, a memoir, and an exploration of cladistics. The author juxtaposes her mental health struggles with the life and career trajectory of Jordan, who unfortunately was a staunch advocate of eugenics. Although this fact was addressed in the book, the discussion strayed from racism, a tenet among lunatic purists like Jordan. The part about “fish” as an inaccurate biological category was mind-blowing though. It’s worth a read, for sure.

One response to “every book i read in 2025”

Ali

January 21, 2026 at 2:08 am

I liked Martyr! too. Napabasa ako ng discussions sa reddit after ko basahin (though madalas ‘di ko naman ‘to ginagawa) because of how it ended.

LikeLiked by 1 person

sure. wait. what?