Best of 2025

[Dazrin]

If pdurrant can start the 2026 list thread early, then I can start the best of thread early, so ...

It's time! What were your favorite books of 2025?

As we get to the end of the year, please take some time to review (and update) your 2025 Challenge List, your GoodReads Year in Books, your StoryGraph library, or any other book diary you keep.

Then let us know what your favorite books were.

What are your favorite books that you read in 2025?

What books do you recommend that were published in 2025?

What books are you looking forward to in 2026?

If you have time, a short mention of why you chose these books so we can decide if they would be a good fit for us is appreciated. I know some people like to plan out their 2026 reading challenges.

If you want some prompt questions to help you decide on your choices, here are some ideas from previous years:
What are your favorite books that you read in 2025?

• Is there a book that you have been thinking about since March?
• A book you couldn't put down or have re-read three times just this year?
• What books have you added to your "I'm going to re-read this" list?
• Did your favorite author finally release that long awaited book?
• What books did you tell your friends "you have to read this"?
• Did you have a favorite book club selection?

What books do you recommend that were published in 2025?

• Are there any contenders for your favorite literary/genre/other award?
• What would you have in a hypothetical MR slate for the Hugos?
• What debut author is now on your must buy list?

What books are you looking forward to in 2026?

• Are any of your favorite authors publishing something new next year that we should look for?

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Past "best of" threads:
2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012

[drofgnal]

My favorite books in published in 2025 were Ellen Marie Wiseman's The Lies They Told Us and Ken Collet's Circle of Days. Follet's was a bit of a let down from past works like Pillars of the Earth but it was still good. I also enjoyed David Greig's The Book of I, more of a long novella/very short novel. Those were my only reads published in 2025. Everything else I read was past works. I bought the new Shannara book, but have yet to read it. I may wait for book 2 and 3 to come out and read them all at once.

[Dazrin]

This year, I don't have any stand-alone books to recommend. Nothing really stood out on my list, although admittedly over 70% of the books I read were parts of series so I don't have a lot to choose from.

I do have 3 different types of speculative fiction series to recommend. A LitRPG series (Dungeon Crawler Carl), an epic fantasy (Ratcatchers), and a high fantasy series (Penric and Desdemona).

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman - I had an Audible trial early this year and since I had been hearing a lot about this series for years, I finally tried it. I ended up really enjoying it and spent a couple of my credits on these. I need to come back to them at some point. The narrator, Jeff Hays, is fantastic for these. Not a category I ever expected to enjoy, but they are a lot of fun.

Ratcatchers by Matthew Colville - I've been following his Youtube channel for a while and have been really enjoying the game his company published this year (Draw Steel), so I thought I would try his books. Both Priest and Thief were excellent, and I know he's been working on book 3, Fighter, recently so I have hope for it. I don't anticipate the rest of the series for a long time though, so if you don't want a cliffhanger you probably want something else.

Penric & Desdemona by Lois McMaster Bujold - We were treated to two novellas this year which were both great. I hope she continues with these surprise books for a long time to come.

[Karellen]

What are your favorite books that you read in 2025?

• The 10 book series of The Rho Agenda by Richard Phillips
• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• The 12 book Levon Cade series by Chuck Dixon
• The Hitman series by Kotaro Isaka
• The 31 book Lorien Legacies series by Pittacus Lore

What books do you recommend that were published in 2025?

• The Ripper’s Son by Richard Phillips

The Ripper's Son is a continuation of one of my favourite series - The Rho Agenda, which is a fusion of Sci-Fi and Thriller (Vince Flynn style)

• The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith

JK Rowling certainly knows how to weave a story, and this had me riveted just like all its predecessors.


What books are you looking forward to in 2026?

• The sequel to The Rippers Son.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Karellen

[SIZE=4]

• The 10 book series of The Rho Agenda by Richard Phillips

That's a series I haven't thought of in a long time. I read through book 3 in 2013 and didn't know there were more.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

That's a series I haven't thought of in a long time. I read through book 3 in 2013 and didn't know there were more.

Yes, currently 10, with another due around April next year.
Reading order...

• Once Dead
• Dead Wrong
• Dead Shift
• The Second Ship
• Immune
• Wormhole
• The Kasari Nexus
• The Altreian Enigma
• The Meridian Ascent
• The Ripper’s Son

You can follow the author here...
https://rhoagenda.me/
https://thesecondship.net/

[astrangerhere]

My favorite reads of the year were:

• Nonfiction - Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance
  
• Nonfiction - Selected Letters by Virginia Woolf
  
• Nonfiction - Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949-1975
  
• Fiction - Orbital by Samantha Harvey

[Fbone]

There wasn't much outstanding but these three-

Medusa by Jack L. Chalker
Redoubt by Mercedes Lackey
The Mis-Enchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans

I am looking forward to the next Murderbot book coming this year.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

[*]Fiction - Orbital by Samantha Harvey[/LIST]

I'm not ready to post yet, but this makes my "best of" list also.

[rkomar]

My experience was similar to others in that I read a lot of okay books, but not many wowed me. My favourite was probably "Maigret's Doubts" by Georges Simenon (originally published in 1958 with this English translation published in 2018). It's tough to come up with a best published this year, so I'll just go with "Crossroads of Ravens" by Andrzej Sapkowski. I haven't got to it yet, but I'm hoping that Margaret Atwood's "Book of Lives - A Memoir of Sorts" becomes the highlight of this year for me.

[issybird]

I'm going to do this in parts, starting with my favorite books published this year. Out of 22 books read or abandoned that were published this year, these were my favorites:

I Regret Almost Everything by Keith Mcnally, a memoir by the British New York restaurateur.

The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens: A History by Nicola Clark, a women's microhistory of the Tudor courts.

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America by Sam Tanenhaus; love him or hate him, it's a compelling account of a seismic change in American politics.

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, a novelization of the life of G.W. Pabst.

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins by Barbara Demick; the subtitle pretty much says it.

As for books I'm looking forward to, I tend not to be aware of books until they come out. So right now I can only think of No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes, a reimagining of the Medea story. It's out in the UK but won't be out here until next year.