Every year, I post on social media about the books I most enjoyed that year. For 2025, I'm writing a blog post instead, so this is a bit more permanent. The following list is not ordered or ranked in any way.

Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith

An anthropologist is sent on a mission on a planet colonized by humans centuries ago, but where all males were wiped out by a strange disease. The women, though, seem to thrive, generation after generation…

I loved this novel, thought-provoking and beautiful in a way that I found very similar to the work of Ursula K. Le Guin (one of my all-time favorite authors). I still think about elements of it months later.

Cackle, by Rachel Harrison

A woman moves to a small town, and makes friend with a somewhat strange person. She seems weirdly well-known among the town folks. Or do they fear her? She seems nice enough…

You can see where this is going a quarter of the way through but it's still a very fun, and reasonably light, little novel.

Notre-Dame du Nil, by Scholastique Mukasonga

(Read in the original French, the English title is Our Lady of the Nile.)

The novel follows a few students of a catholic school for girls in Rwanda, at a time of increasing ethnic tensions that eventually led to the genocide against the Tutsi. Written with a disarming simplicity, with teenage characters that ring true.

An excellent commentary on colonialism and ethnic violence weaved in a beautiful and fascinating teenage story.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig

Weird and fascinating mix between a travel story, philosophical essays, and a mystery about a fragmented mind. This book is a classic among a specific kind of nerdy audience; its theses on quality and the deeper meaning of maintenance work resonate a lot today.

Absolutely worth a read. I get why this has such an enthusiastic fan base. I still regularly think about it months later, and it actually changed the way I approach certain parts of life, like choosing and taking care of my tools. (And by tools, I mostly mean kitchen utensils.)

Translation State, by Ann Leckie

A science-fiction novel difficult to describe in just a few words! One of the protagonists is assigned to a meaningless and mostly hopeless mission (tracking down someone who disappeared two centuries prior). The second one is an adoptee with weirdly violent tendencies, that suddenly becomes the center of attraction of a particularly enthusiastic cultural group. The third is a weird sort of alien, growing up in a crèche learning how to pretend to be human, occasionally vivisecting and devouring the other "kids". And of course, their stories become intertwined in unexpected ways…

Weird and wonderful. I love everything Ann Leckie writes, but I think this book is one of her best — I think enjoyed it as much as her debut novel, Ancillary Justice, which was an absolute masterpiece.

We'll prescribe you a cat, by Syou Ishida

An adorable Japanese novel about a strange mental health clinic that prescribes cats to people. The patients are initially a little nonplussed but obviously, the prescriptions are working wonderfully, often in very… indirect ways.

This is a short and easy read, essentially guaranteed to improve your mood. Lovely ending.

Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer

In a dystopian / biopunk / post-apocalyptic urban setting, a scavenger stumbles upon a… thing, which might be a plant, or a piece of biotech, or maybe a kind of sea anemone or other strange animal. This is a weird starting point, and then it gets weirder, fast. (The giant flying bear definitely helps.)

Extremely original in a messed up way. Hard to put it down. Gift it to your weirder friends.

The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman

A group of old people in a retirement village meet weekly to try and solve cold cases for fun… until an actual murder happens right next door. Both the story and its characters are very good at not taking themselves too seriously, so this makes for a very fun read.

I enjoyed the story and its colorful cast of elderly characters, but the witty writing is really what makes this book special — it's probably the novel that made me laugh the most this year.

Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang

The protagonist, a white author who didn't really make it as a writer, is friend with a Chinese-American author who is way more successful than her. The friend unexpectedly dies, and the protagonist steals her latest unpublish manuscript to pass off as her own. This is her first major bad decision, and it's very, very far from the last. In the process, the novel also offers exceedingly sharp commentary on racism, social media, and the publishing industry.

I started reading this book in the morning and absolutely could not put it down, finishing it a few hours later and skipping lunch in the process. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, in the best of ways. (This is a very normal metaphor.)

A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher

Somewhere between a fairy tale, a romance novel, and a horror story. A teenage girl lives alone with her abusive mother, who uses powerful magic to get an absolute level of control over her daughter. And she has to follow along when her sorceress mother decides to make a move to find herself a new husband…

I absolutely love what Kingfisher is doing with the fairy tale genre, in particular when she's weaving darker elements into the story. This novel, with its wonderful and awfully realistic depiction of this controlling mother, is no exception.

Everything for Everyone, by M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi

A couple of academics — or the closest thing there is to it — are writing a oral history of the New York Commune, by interviewing people who lived there during the revolutionary events that took place there between 2052 and 2072. Each chapter interviews a different person and focuses on a different aspect of the global revolution that ended capitalism, and the efforts to build a better society afterwards.

I love novels that imagine radically different ways humans could live together. This one is not only beautifully written (it made me cry a couple of times!), but it's also very well-researched, and doesn't shy away from considering the darker aspects of violent uprisings and society building. Even if you don't connect with this book as much as I did, it certainly won't leave you indifferent.