The State of the Art: Books 2025

As a year, holistically, 2025 has been terrible. For society, that is. I can't claim a lot of personal tragedy, but I'm certainly attuned to how bad things are in general. Normally, when things are dour like this, I turn to bright, cheery music or upbeat movies. Books, however, are where I go to wallow. Nothing enhances a bad mood like a grim or pensive book. As always, I looked over the year's offerings to see if I could identify a "theme": 

2019: "Anywhere But Here"
2020: "Dealing with Loss"
2021: "What We Owe to Each Other"
2022: "Look Behind the Curtain"
2023: "Stay In Your Lane"
2024: "The Ones Who Are Overlooked"

In 2025, to my initial point, it appears that I'm embracing this downbeat year with a theme of "The End". Whether it's suicide, pending apocalypse, an apocalypse that has already happened, war, revolution, or murder, the books I read this year tended to focus on humanity reaching the end of the road, in one way or another.

I didn't read as much as I'd have liked in 2025, but the good news is that I achieved my evergreen resolution to make sure that I'm reading books by authors from a wide spectrum of races, genders, sexual orientations, and nationalities. That's always something to celebrate. There was a lot of genre-hopping, too. From sci-fi to mystery to non-fiction to fantasy, I had a little of everything this year. So what earned the top spot? Let's get to the list!

Sea of Tranquility (Emily St. John Mandel) (2022) (A)

Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders) (2017) (A-)

Cuba: An American History (Ada Ferrer) (2021) (A-)

She Who Became the Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan) (2021) (A-)

Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths (Natalie Haynes) (2020) (B+)

The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune) (2020) (B+)

When the Moon Hits Your Eye (John Scalzi) (2025) (B+)

Landline (Rainbow Rowell) (2014) (B+)

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires (Grady Hendrix) (2020) (B+)

Starling House (Alix E. Harrow) (2023) (B+)

Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen #1) (Steven Erikson) (1999) (B)

The Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Hisashi Kashiwai) (2014, translated 2024) (B)

The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands (Sarah Brooks) (2024) (B)

Someday, Maybe (Onyi Nwabineli) (2022) (B)

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone (Benjamin Stevenson) (2022) (B)

The End of the World as We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand (edited by Christopher Golden, Brian Keene) (2025) (B)

We Used to Live Here (Marcus Kliewer) (2024) (B)

What If It's Us (Becky Albertalli, Adam Silvera) (2018) (B-)

They All Fall Down (Rachel Howzell Hall) (2019) (C-)

The City We Became (N.K. Jemisin) (2020) (abandoned)