2025 Book Report

BEST OF THE YEAR

An Image of My Name Enters America, Lucy Ives

Brilliant, sprawling essays from a true living genius. Opens with an interrogation of unicorns and made me sob by the end. Even better than her website.

State Champ, Hilary Plum

Manifesto-as-novel about abortion rights and anorexia. Phenomenal first-person narration; Angela was one of my favourite characters this year. Audacious, grody, and blatantly political in a way that most contemporary novels can only gesture at.

Libra, Don DeLillo

The fictionalized story of the JFK assassination; a perfect book for this era of coups and conspiracies. No one nails the dark strangeness of politics quite like DeLillo. He once described it as “the most haunting book I've ever worked on,” which reminded me of Mark Fisher's writings on hauntology (echoing Derrida: “the future is always experienced as a haunting"). Is the future dead? Is the past alive?

Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

'I god, this book rules! Shout out to Fran Magazine for leading McMurtry May. With the exception of Jake Spoon, flop of all flops, I loved every single man in this very long book full of men, men bored with the West that they’ve settled, men restless amidst the remains of their violent behaviour, men confronting their own demise. Made me grin with delight and also cry like a baby. Worth all the hype.

The Visitors, Jessi Jezewska Stevens

Not enough books about the Occupy movement in the world! C is broke and aimless and haunted by "a rogue garden gnome with a pointed interest in systems collapse" as protests grow outside her apartment. Surreal and shifty.

Encampment, Maggie Helwig

Heartbreaking and hopeful. Everyone, especially every Torontonian, should read this book. Thrust it into someone's hands (I lent it to my mother, who lent it to her local minister), support St Stephen-in-the-Fields, and watch Helwig's acceptance speech from the Toronto Book Awards if you want to feel resolved.

Elegy, Southwest, Madeleine Watts

Irresistible to anyone drawn to the desert despite their better judgment (me, always me). As much as I loved this novel, I loved Watts' annotated bibliography even more. Her first novel, The Inland Sea, is also a stunner.

Zazen, Vanessa Veselka

Pulled this at random from my partner's bookshelf and it was a revelation. I can't believe it was written in 2011; the bombed-out near-dystopia it depicts seems like it could take place next week. Punk as fuck. Hunt it down and go in blind.

Close Range, Bad Dirt, and Fine Just the Way It Is, Annie Proulx

Consider the first line of the first story in Bad Dirt: "On a November day Wyoming Game & Fish Warden Creel Zmundzinski was making his way down the Pinchbutt drainage through the thickening light of late afternoon." Are you kidding me? Perfection. I found these Wyoming (U.S.)-based stories while I was in Wyoming, ON and it was the reading highlight of my summer. Also led me to finally watch BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (screenplay by Larry McMurtry!) and made me really appreciate an ensuing road trip down Alberta's Cowboy Trail.

Radical Happiness, Lynne Segal

A compendium of collective joy and a calm, clear-headed argument against a world determined to dull every sensation. Made me actually miss academia, which rarely happens. Restorative and reinvigorating.

Two-Step Devil, Jamie Quatro

I was the only person on a Calgary-Montreal flight with my overhead light on because I simply couldn't put this book down. Outsider art excellence and a beautiful story about faith in a year filled with many beautiful stories about faith. One of the best endings to a novel I read this year.

Minor Detail, Adania Shibli

Stunningly sparse, incredibly effective. A two-part narrative about a real-life historical crime (the rape and murder of a Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers). Draws connections of violence and colonization over the years while collapsing the boundary between past and future. Reminiscent of THE SECRET AGENT, my favourite film of the year.

Minor Black Figures, Brandon Taylor

Fleabag meets Flaubert. A novel that should be read decades from now to understand what life was like in the 2020s. It's extremely hard to write fiction about art, and Taylor is simply the best at it. Film adaptation when?

Good Will Come From the Sea, Christos Ikonomou

Sharp, incisive short stories about economic precarity and modern life in Greece. A lyrical ode to losers and loss. Affirmed that I would really like to read less American fiction overall. Film adaptation when?

A Truce Is Not Peace, Miriam Toews

"The Gloombadeeboombadee Literary Prize, funded by banks, frackers, deep-sea mining venture money and the NRA, writes to ask if I'll attend this year's gala award ceremony." Is Toews the best living Canadian writer? This memoir confirms: quite possibly!

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

Post–Man, Alex Manley

It seemed unethical to include on the main list, but this was the book closest to my heart this year. What a delight to watch someone you love take a piece of themself, create a beautiful thing, and offer it to the world. I love Alex's brain!!!

Lives of the Saints, Nancy Lemann

The literary equivalent of this print. Predicting this now as 2026's cool-girl book (semi-derogatory)—it's being reissued by NYRB this year; see Geoff Dyer's introduction in Harper's. Read and then watch SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER.

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Buckminster Fuller

A lot of this book is sheer gibberish, a lot of it is physics, or maybe "physics" (not a scientist!), and a lot of it went over my head entirely. Still fun and occasionally even illuminating to read in these “cosmicly bankrupt” times.

Feeling at Home, Alva Gotby

One of the clearest-minded looks at housing policy I've read. Please email me if you want to join the 2026 commune planning chat (seriously).

A Way of Life, Like Any Other, Darcy O'Brien

I medically need to read a glitzy Hollywood book on the beach every July, and this hit the spot. Like SUNSET BOULEVARD narrated by a male Eve Babitz.

Train Dreams, Denis Johnson

A slim, sparse companion to Lonesome Dove. Much better than the film adaptation (they made a mistake not asking Kelly Reichardt to direct it).

Allegro Pastel, Leif Randt

Extreeeeemely German (complimentary).

MISCELLANEOUS RECENT READS:

Shira Erlichman asks: "Is 'New Year's Energy' a Problem? Dan Sheehan suggests: "Let's all have a difficult year." Kathryn Jezer-Morton agrees: "In 2026, we are friction-maxxing."

Ayesha A. Siddiqi on wellness and Western decline (pay for it, it's worth it). Genocidal cultures cannot produce an investment in public health because they never reached a committed consensus on who belongs.

Benjamin Moser on American exceptionalism and liberal Zionism. Simply because people respect something does not make it respectable; and the fact that people can be found to defend something does not, for that reason, make it defensible.

"Stupidology." In a fully platformized world, everything shrinks to the status of behaviors and patterns; meaning, intention, and explanation become irrelevant.

My brilliant friend Laurel's reading list ❤️

Alex on being a frog ❤️