Everything I Read in 2025
Here's the full list of everything I read in 2025 - with ratings and reviews.
Boy Parts, Eliza Clark
Want, Gillian Anderson
Kairos, Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Michael Hofmann)
Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zaumer
Landlines, Raynor Winn
Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
The Tales of Two Londons, Ed. by Claire Armitstead
My Policeman, Bethan Roberts
Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Foundling, Stacey Halls
The Vegetarian, Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)
Men Have Called Her Crazy, Anna Marie Tendler
The Pachinko Parlour, Elisa Shua Dusapin (translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins)
The Body Keeps the Score, Beesel van der Kolk
Rating and Reviews
Boy Parts, Eliza Clark - 4
I’m pretty sure I bought this on one of my birthday book crawls, but I just can’t remember which one. This is gritty and gross and deeply interesting and vulnerable and exciting. You can really dig your teeth into this. I keep thinking about this book and would LOVE to see it done visually, but it would have to be so good that I’m happy for it to exist forever in my head. It’s brilliant and questioning and so refreshing to see a flawed, unlikable, brilliant female protagonist exhibited in this way. I found myself disliking Irina, empathising with her, rooting for her, hating her, relating to her. The focus on power, and how it intertwines with isolation, independence, cruelty - stunning. Note to self: must read more Eliza Clark.
Want, Gillian Anderson - 2
Got this from Kensington Books in London, on a trip with Max to the Natural History Museum. I feel bad for how I felt about this but SNOOZE!!! I’m sorry. I think it was boring. The disproportionate amount of ‘I want to be caressed and cared for by a man that isn’t my husband that actually notices me and slightly dominates me’ was such a yawn fest. I understand these are real submissions but how the book needed to be that big when most of them were the same reincarnation of identical desires. Get a life. Get a new husband. If you’re submitting anonymous desires about how your husband doesn’t excite you… what are you DOING? I’m being purposefully harsh but this was painfully dull and only a handful of interesting entries. Don’t even get me started on how LITTLE Gillian Anderson contributed to this project. The most interesting part of it was the generous one pager before each chapter where she provided some very limited musings on the selection to come. Maybe I am not the audience for it. I imagine if I was about 30 years older it may have felt liberating to read some of these things, and I understand My Secret Garden being published in the 70s probably was groundbreaking and innovative, but this felt like, at best, low effort fodder for scandalising middle aged women while they get their hair done.
Kairos, Jenny Erpenbeck - 4
Harry (my brother in law) gave me this one to see how I’d like it. It was originally written in German, and details an age-gap relationship set around the fall of the Berlin wall. I haven’t stopped being able to think about it. I loved living among these pages, exploring the change in attitudes and perceptions and energy between these two figures. They communicate through words, and songs, and recordings, and letters. It is such an interesting way to see the world, romance, manipulation, politics. It’s uncomfortable and disarming at times, but it never stops being enticing and drawing you in, asking you to question what is happening in front of you.
Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zaumer - 4
Found this on the work book-swap shelves. I read it at the perfect time - sometimes that just happens. I read this while navigating some tough conversations with my parents, not long after my Dad had gone through a year of cancer and chemo and a bone marrow transplant. It hit me at all the right points, and was a truly worthwhile read. That being said, and I know it’s a memoir so it’s real people at stake here, but I could not let go of the first half to empathise with the second. I never forgave the mother for the way she treated her daughter, I never forgave the father for ignoring it while it happened, I never understood the daughters attitude switch. It felt like a narrator who simply could not remove herself from her mother's view of her, who never saw herself using her own eyes. I have seen people discuss it in context with Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, which I’ve just got, so I’m looking forward to looking at these two in parallel.
Landlines, Raynor Winn - 3
Bought this for Max for the first Christmas we knew each other (before I found out he didn’t really read physical books) and then got chatting to his Grandpa years later about The Salt Path, and decided to skip the others and read the one I had. Giirrrrl there is drama now!!!! The absolute tea that has been spilled about little miss Raynor Winn is WILD. If anything it doesn’t change my opinion on the mostly basic writing but occasional wonderful descriptions of wildlife, of people, of the joy of nature. Mostly I’m disappointed that people who may have been inspired to get out into the great outdoors will now be put off. I recently got into a lively debate about why it matters that it isn’t true, and if that suddenly makes it not a good book. I don’t believe that it has to be true to be impactful, but as a reader you enter into a certain contract when you pick up a book, depending on how it’s marketed. If it says ‘true story’, that’s the lens with which you begin to read. I don’t think the story sucks because it isn’t true, I think because it said it was true and wasn’t, it sucks. Had it been marketed as a novel, it would have been a badly written and underdeveloped one.
Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen - 5
Exceptional, of course. I read the edition I got at uni, the Oxford University Press edition. It’s fabulous. One fond memory was sitting in Green Park on a solo London day reading this, followed by a trip into Hatchards. I watch the 2005 Joe Wright P&P almost every day, and I wanted to revisit the words Austen actually wrote. It’s hard for me to not reread it with the film in mind, but regardless I love how Austen saw the world, and has these flawed characters interact, and mess up, and so often cling to the idea of second chances, of misunderstandings being resolved. Her characters are deeply human, and I find that wonderful to read.
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante - 4
Mum got me this for Christmas. I asked for it, but she delivered. This was an interesting read - a memoir that reads as a novel. An autobiographical novel. One I related to a lot. The clever kid that was too scared to disobey, that has studying to do because that’s how they saw their own worth. The friend that had the rebellious best friend. A best friend they looked up to, and saw as better than them, as more than them. I never felt jealous but I remember seeing the deficiencies I had, the differences, how I had been raised contrasted how they had. I don’t have much interest in reading more of this series, but I found it an interesting delve into female friendships, patriarchy, Italy, humans.
The Tales of Two Londons, Ed. by Claire Armitstead - 3
Lots of people contributed to this. It made me hopeful, it made me fearful, it made me sad, it inspired me. This was a collection of stories, essays, poems, art, all about the changing landscape and language and culture and experiences which happen over and over and over across London. I read this around the time I was shifting in my opinion of London as a destination for me. Working in London, seeing more of it slowly open up to me, this was important, but also shocking and terrifying and uplifting and horrible. Like any place, there are so many people contributing to it, good and bad. London has burnt so many and lifted so many up, it’s harsh and cruel, and kind and welcoming, it is so much.
My Policeman, Bethan Roberts - 3.5
I bought this from Max Minerva’s bookshop for my 24th birthday. It was fine. It was more than fine, it was interesting and enjoyable and I read it. But the writing was bland. The main characters at play were interesting. We have two narrators revolving their stories around a third, and that central figure is an absolute BORING man. How Marian and Patrick manage to spend their whole life fantasising and obsessing over the most plain ass bread of a man I will never know - is it JUST the love of the uniform? A police man no less. Sorry. No. However, the actual central concern of the book, forbidden love in 50s England, is absolutely interesting. What you do for a love you want but don’t get to have, how much pain you put yourself through at the expense of someone who doesn’t treat you right - riveting, interesting, compelling. And yet, the way this was written? Plain toast. Boring. Could have been so good.
Atonement, Ian McEwan - 5
I found this in a charity shop on Whiteladies a while ago, but I was not prepared for how brilliantly this story is written. I saw the film a while ago and of course it stayed with me (Joe Wright I love you). BUT, this book? Wow. The writing. Incredibly detailed, illuminating, makes you think, makes you feel. I am in awe. I want to read more McEwan. I want to write an essay on this, the construction of the self, of the forbidden love, the heartache, the class divides, the personification of lies, the switching narrative, how all these lives get tangled up together on the impact of one moment. Thrilling, shocking. Brilliant.
The Foundling, Stacey Halls - 2.5
Got this ages ago after reading The Familiars and loving it, but this was very very ok. I wasn’t gripped, nor was I immersed. I found the writing very lackluster, very basic, very pulled-me-out-of-the-moment a lot. But fine. I couldn’t really draw parallels that this could be the same author as The Familiars, because it felt so shallow and awkward. I think in trying to replicate the language and reality of the times, it felt clunky and very intentional, rather than natural. I found the protagonist dislikable, but that isn’t always a bad thing, but I enjoyed the time spent in Alexandra’s mind more. Shocked to see this has a better average score on Storygraph than The Familiars.
The Vegetarian, Han Kang - 4
Set in Korea, written in Korean, translated, bought for me by Max in Manchester. Originally published as 3 separate pieces, this is a 3 part novel which touches on bodies, minds, and the connection between them. This was one of those projects that feels so uniquely special - as I read I had this sense of being hit in the face by something so fresh and magical. The writing is sharp and meaty (pardon the irony) and you sink down deep into it and it just keeps getting better. You’re sucked into a world of misery and shame and pain and discomfort, and you’re right there with the narrators in that. You feel how ugly the world is and how messy our minds get, and how people treat each other terribly and how we let the cruel bleed out into every aspect of our lives. It’s a breathtaking thing to read, but it’s heavy, and it hurts.
Men Have Called Her Crazy, Anna Marie Tendler - 3
A memoir I picked up, thinking it sounded interesting, and then slowly drew parallels of the very little I knew of John Mulaney’s wife, only to realise it was in fact her memoir. I read it so fast, I related to a lot of it, I drew parallels to my own brain throughout. I didn’t enjoy it, but I couldn’t stop reading. I found her affronting and self-entitled, but I also found her generous in moments and I empathised with her greatly. I don’t really know why anyone needed to read it, why it was made, why it was published. I suppose it could be somewhat encouraging to see other people go through hardship, to see them get through their darkest troubles. It’s a memoir, in first person, but I found the writing felt really performative at times. Also bought for me by Max in Manchester.
The Pachinko Parlour, Elisa Shua Dusapin - 3
Bought for me by Max in Manchester, originally written in French, set in Japan, about Koreans, by a Swiss author with Korean heritage. Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins. I found this quite empty, quite bland, but perhaps I am not the correct audience for it. There were layers in there for sure, of interesting relationships both cross-culturally and cross-generationally. For me, though, I don’t see what it was trying to say. I liked the writing style, and I liked the world we lived in, but I think it felt quiet. I’m not someone who demands plot, or big feelings in my books, sometimes I like a slower pace that interrogates, rather than tells, but this just wasn’t it for me.
The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk
Holy smokes this knocked me down and brought me back up again. A foray into non-fiction. This I would call half scientific journal half memoir. We travel with van der Kolk from his time beginning with Vietnam Vets in the US, as we first begin understanding trauma from a real scientific point of view, taking images of the brain, realising how physical emotional distress really is. I found this so illuminating and important, having finally reached out for some medical assistance to support my horrible brain and experience with complex trauma. At one point I actually had a panic attack on a completely packed train whilst reading the step by step chemical occurrences that happen during a panic attack. I think everybody should read this. I am still waiting for therapy, and am far from doing fine, but understanding how our brains and bodies are never not interlinked has been so beneficial to helping me deal with what happens to me. This being the book I ended the year on feels extremely pivotal to how my year has gone. This year has been about finding my peace, pushing out what is not serving me, and digging deeper into how I work, and what I need.
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