I had a couple of underwhelming reading years in the past but 2024 was excellent. I can’t remember why I never posted my best of that year but, sadly, I didn’t. This year wasn’t as excellent as 2024, but it was still a very good year.
In 2025 I did something I haven’t done for a very long time which is reading several books by the same author. I’m usually not only not a rereader but also known for rarely reading the same author more than once in any given year. This year there were three authors of which I read several books, and I loved them all. I will get to these shortly but before I post them, let me mention my three standout reads for this year.
My favourite novel of the year is hands down Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain/Zauberberg. I dedicated a whole week of this year’s German Literature Month to it.
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My favourite nonfiction book was Courtney Gustafson’s Poets Square. It tells the story of how Courtney began to take care of stray and feral cats and finally made rescuing and caring for strays her profession. She has a wonderful Instagram account in which we are introduced to most of the cats in this book and to many more. While it is mostly a book about caring for stray cats, catching them, having them neutered, homed or released into the wild again, Courtney writes about so much more. Grief and anticipatory grief are as much topics of this book as mental health. I highly recommend this to cat and animal lovers and to people who have mental health problems. It has sad moments but is ultimately very uplifting.
My third favourite book this year was Difficult Light, a novella from Colombian writer Tomás González. A very poetic book about loss and grief.
One author I read for the first time in 2024 is Alan Hollinghurst. If I had written a best of, The Line of Beauty would have been on it. I think it was my favourite book of the year. This year I read The Sparsholt Affair and his latest Our Evenings both of which are making this year’s best of. At first, I didn’t really like The Sparsholt Affair because the book cover made me believe it was a story set entirely during WWII but only the first chapter is set at the beginning of the war, in Oxford.
This year I discovered German author Kristine Bilkau and read three of her novels one after the other. All three deserve a spot on the best of list. Unfortunately, her novels haven’t been translated into English yet. She reminds me a bit of Sarah Moss who is also excellent at describing the way we live now. I found her characters, their fears and joys extremely relatable.
There were three older English books that I enjoyed a great deal.
The first is the shorty story collection Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Molly Panter-Downes. The second Barbara Noble’s The House Opposite. It is the best novel about the Blitz I’ve read so far. Here is Jacqui’s review. If I hadn’t read that I might not have picked it up. The third was Elizabeth Taylor’s Palladian. It’s very different from her other novels. Probably the one with the strongest Jane Austen influence. It’s not my favourite Elizabeth Taylor but still very good.
A book that made a huge impression was Maylis de Kerangal’s Passage vers l’Est or Eastbound. The book tells the story of a trip with the Trans-Siberian Railway. The way she describes these endless, huge landscapes of Russia is amazing. She wrote this before the war in the Ukraine started but it shows the problematic way in which Russia drafts soldiers and the cruelty and violence they are exposed to. Her writing is some of the best I read this year.
Another author I returned to this year and read several books of was Elizabeth Strout. I loved both Olive Kitteridge and Tell Me Everything.
Beauty is a Sleeping Cat 
I love Maylis de Kerangal generally, and Eastbound and Mend the Living were my favourites so far. I believe that Kristine Bilkau has at least one of her books featured on New Books in German (Halbinsel), so is guaranteed translation funding if any Anglo publishers chooses to pick it up. So let’s hope it does find its way into English soon!
I need to read more of de Kerangal. I always thought she was overhyped. I saw that at least one other of Bilkau’s novels had an excerpt translated so there is a chance. I liked her books so much.
I’m glad you had a good reading year, and definitely agree about The Magic Mountain – what a masterpiece!
Thank you. I’ll be reading Buddenbrooks soon. It will be interesting how it compares. Dr Faustus is amazing.
Eastbound was a bookclub book a couple of years ago (when we also went to hear Maylis de Kerangal talk about it) and went down very well. I’ve read Tomas Gonzalez’s In the Beginning was the Sea but not Difficult Light. And as I’ve been reading all of Elizabeth Taylor’s work I’m pleased to see her get a mention! It seems like a very varied reading year.
Very varied. There’s always an Elizabeth Taylor in my end of year list. She’s just so wonderful. I have two left to read.
I heard de Kerangal speak in a literature podcast and it was so interesting. I will read more of her soon. I also want to explore more of González work. I’m sure would like Difficult Light.
Beautiful post, Caroline 😊 I read a little bit of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain sometime back. Love his writing. His prose is so beautiful. Sorry couldn’t join your readalong during GLM. Hoping to read the book properly one of these days. I have Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst with me. Will try to read it soon. Difficult Light also looks very appealing to me. Thanks for sharing your favourites from 2025 😊 Hope you have a wonderful reading year in 2026 😊 Happy reading!
Thank you so much, Vishy. I enjoyed Der Zauberberg so much and writing about it like this will make it stay so much longer.
Difficult Light is beautiful. I will continue my Hollinghurst journey this year. Writes beautifully.
Thank you for the wishes. I wish you a great reading year as well.
Some nice choices here, especially the Mann, of course!
Interestingly, I read another Hollinghurst that did the same thing – I loved the first chapter, and then we were thrust forward in time…
Mann was excellent. I have to keep this in mind about Hollinghurst. I got two of his novels I want to read soon and am pretty sure the one you read might be among them. Better to know in advance he might jump like that again. Not my favorite technique as it felt like something was missing.
Nice roundup, Caroline! I’ve read and enjoyed a few of them, including the Strout books, Line of Beauty, and of course The Magic Mountain as you know. Thanks for giving me the impetus to read that one – it was a wonderful experience. I did a little extra Mann-related reading recently with Colm Toibin’s novel The Magician. It was good to learn a little about the life of the man behind the story.
Thanks, Andrew. I hadn’t realized Toibin’s book was about Mann. I’m eager to read that now.
I was so glad to read Mann with you. It’s nice to be able to read another take on a book. Let’s hope next year will give us another opportunity. Something shorter, maybe.
Such a great selection of books, Caroline, and I’m so pleased to see the Barbara Noble included here – as you say, it really is an excellent evocation of what it must have felt like to live through the Blitz.
Alan Hollinghurst is a terrific writer, so I’m glad you’ve been enjoying him in recent years. Our Evenings felt like a major omission from last year’s Booker longlist, but each to their own. And Mollie PD’s stories are wonderful – they deserve to be better known!
I’m very glad I discovered it in your blog. It didn’t make your best of though, didn’t it? I will comment on your blog soon but I had a look already. You had a terrific reading year.
Thanks very much for this Caroline. I often think about focusing on one writer, but just get too distracted by others. It was good to read about Kristine Bilkau, whom I haven’t heard of- I’ll look out for her. Also the Tomas Gonzalez. I also loved Eastbound and also read The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal this year which was sublime-the writing so powerful.
I’ll be reading The Magic Mountain soon, very soon.
My pleasure, Mandy. There are so many writers to discover that it’s hard to return to those we already know. But I have huge piles of unfinished books so I figured reading those authors I know and love might be a better choice. I really like Kristine Bilkau. I hope you get to read her. Difficult Light is so moving. Archipelago Books is an amazing publisher. I want to read more from
de Kerangal. I hope you’ll like The Magic Mountain. It has some dry parts but overall it’s really something else.