Here are my favorite things I read in 2025:

Books

• Acceptance, Emi Nietfeld
• All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald
• Death at an Early Age, Jonathan Kozol
• The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
• No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
• Not Too Late, Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua
• The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
• Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte
• The Wedding People, Alison Espach

2024:

Short Stories

• “Ambrose,” Allegra Goodman, The New Yorker
• “Falling,” Hadley Franklin, Eleven Stories
• “The Hostages,” Drew Calvert, Ploughshares
• “Leashed,” Aidan O’Brien, Cagibi
• “My Refugee,” Juan Martinez, Ploughshares
• “On the Honeymoon,” Javier Marías, New Penguin Parallel Text Short Stories in Spanish
• “Rubberdust,” Sarah Thankam Mathews, Kenyon Review Online
• “The Swimmer,” John Cheever
• “Wedding Favors,” Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, ZYZZYVA
• “We’re Not So Different, You and I,” Simon Rich, The New Yorker

Books

• All Fours, Miranda July
• Chilean Poet, Alejandro Zambra
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• Molly, Blake Butler
• Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
• On Call, Anthony Fauci
• Sam, Allegra Goodman
• Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
• Thus Bad Begins, Javier Marías