Books of 2025

  

Annually, I write a post listing almost all of the books I read during the calendar year. It seems kind of hard to believe, but I have produced such a post every year since 2005. This is a link to the 2024 list if blog readers want to work backwards. You will find that the books are loosely ranked within categories. 

Nonfiction:

John Owen, Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order (Grawemeyer winner for 2025)

Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

Jonathan Caverley, Democratic Militarism

Ronald Kramer, Apocalyptic Crimes; Why Nuclear Weapons are Illegal...

Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

Michael Lewis, The Premonition

These were all good books, though the Lewis work is not as tight as the ones he often produces. I've previously disclosed a writing project that explains several of these choices and I was solicited to review Kramer for a journal.  

I read several other books for this category that I am not listing here. This is because I do not include works that I did not read cover-to-cover even if I read huge chunks of them. 

Also, I do not include any works that I reviewed unless those reviews were published. In practice, this means that this post will not include the books I reviewed for the Grawemeyer Awards in Ideas Improving World Order. I generally won't disclose reading a book in that process unless it happens to win. Even then, I mostly read those winning books after they have advanced in the process, it is very rare that a book I was asked to read advances to win. I can think of maybe 2 or 3 examples over a period of decades.

Baseball/Sports Non-Fiction:

Joe Posnanski, The Soul of Baseball; A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America

Jane Leavy, The Last Boy; Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood

Ted Williams with John Underwood, My Turn at Bat

Bob Gibson with Lonnie Wheeler, Stranger to the Game

Dan Gutman, The Way Baseball Works

Philip Lowry, Green Cathedrals

John Dewan, The Fielding Bible 

KC Star, George Brett: A Royal Legend

Jeff Montgomery with Matt Fulks, If These Walls Could Talk: KC Royals Stories... 

Anthony Castrovince, Fan's Guide to Baseball Analytics

Chuck Woodling, Against All Odds: Kansas Won the 1988 NCAA Championship

Steve Cameron, George Brett: Last of a Breed

I continued my trend of reading lots of baseball non-fiction. Most of these books I own and I'm trying to decide what might be worth keeping. 

Posnanski's book is well worth your time and I really enjoyed the books about Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, and Bob Gibson. Your experience may vary. For more information I recommend you read my reviews at Goodreads. 

Several of the books on this list I read a few pages at a time over breakfast or lunch. These include the works on George Brett, the 1988 Kansas basketball champs, Lowry's Green Cathedrals (about stadiums), and Dewan's Fielding Bible. 

Literature and Genre Fiction:

Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys

John Updike, The Coup

Jonathan Lethem, Brooklyn Crime Novel

Samantha Harvey, Orbital

Depending upon who is reading them, two or three of these works might be considered genre fiction. However, the authors and/or subjects are often considered literary. The books by Towles and Whitehead are highly recommended. One is about half the length of the other and it does not lose much in its efficiency. 

I was disappointed in this Updike work, but really disappointed in Lethem's book. And Orbital was too unconventional for my tastes. 

Genre Fiction:

Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark), Butcher's Moon (Parker #16) 

Chris Pavone, The Expats

Kate Atkinson, Started Early, Took My Dog (Jackson Brodie #4)

Philip Kerr, A Quiet Flame (Bernie Gunther #5)

Eric Ambler, Passage of Arms

Lawrence Block, Hit List (Keller #2)

Stephen King, Colorado Kid

Helen MacInnes, Assignment in Brittany

Ruth Rendell, Wolf to the Slaughter (Inspector Wexford #3) 

Mick Herron, Slow Horses 

Michael Dibdin, Cabal (Aurelio Zen #3)

Lawrence Block, Out on the Cutting Edge (Matthew Scudder #7)

Ian Fleming, Man with the Golden Gun (James Bond #13)

Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot #24)

Walter Mosley, Six Easy Pieces (Easy Rawlins #8) 

Everything above this paragraph is superior to the fiction that follows. I actually gave Butcher's Moon 5 stars on Goodreads but it is for long-time Parker fans -- don't start there if you are unfamiliar with the series.

Beyond crime novels, this list includes quite a number of spy stories. The Slow Horses TV show is so loyal to the book that it is hard to recommend the book if you already watched the series. I doubt I'll read more of them as a friend said the series was generally loyal and he's read all or most of the books. 

I'd recommend these listed books by Pavone, Ambler, MacInnes, and Fleming. Apparently there are more Kate Moore stories by Pavone, but this is the first, so you don't need to read any of these others after reading something else. That goes for James Bond because I assume you are familiar with the character.

Donald Hamilton, The Wrecking Crew (Matt Helm #2)

James Burke, Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux #7)

Joel Goldman, The Last Witness (Lou Mason #2)

Garrett Epps, The Floating Island

William Forstchen, One Second After

John Grisham, Calico Joe

Ross Macdonald, The Ferguson Affair

Robert Parker, Crimson Joy (Spencer #15)

PD James, Unnatural Causes (Adam Dalgliesh #3)

Joseph Heywood, Ice Hunter

Philip K. Dick, Time Out of Joint

Sue Grafton, O is for Outlaw (Kinsey Millhone #15)

James Michener, Legacy

James Crumley, The Right Madness (CW Sughrue #4)

Most of the rest of the books on my list received 3 stars on Goodreads, though the last few here were unimpressive and disappointing. Grafton's books have appeared near the bottom the last two years but I'll probably plug along anyway. A couple of the books are the first in a series and I'm not sure I'll be reading more of them (Forstchen and Heywood). Many of these authors have written books that I enjoyed more than the ones I read in 2025. 

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Films of 2025

 

Attribution: Steve Morgan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

As usual, there are numerous well-reviewed 2025 films that I did not yet see during the calendar year. Many have been released in recent days and weeks and I won't see them until 2026 -- or later. Still, this year I saw many very good to excellent films from 2025. 

Long-time readers may recall that it used to take great effort to figure out which movies were released this year and which movies I saw. I used to consult various lists, box office numbers, etc. However, now that I'm using Letterboxd, I have a really good feel for the exact movies I saw this year -- and a fairly good idea of which of them were released in 2025. A few of these titles are listed with 2024 production dates, but I'm fairly confident that if they are here, they were not widely distributed in the US until 2025. This includes some that my spouse and I saw at film festivals. 

FWIW, I saw a large number of 2024 films this year too and if I was writing it now, would significantly revise last year's post on the Films of 2024. Indeed, I logged 92 films this year on Letterboxd so the list below is obviously only a sliver of my viewing. 

I write an annual version of this post so anyone interested an use that link to work backwards -- or simply click on the film labels below the post to see a list. 

We attended festivals in Collingwood, Ontario (Blue Mountain viewings are noted with ***) and Indianapolis, Indiana (Heartland is ****) and saw five films in total at those events. We also saw a couple of other films in theaters while traveling -- on a really hot day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and on a festival day in Indy when we could not get good seats for a different movie (** below). Mostly, these movies were streamed on our television, though a few involved library DVDs. 

The first few films I discuss are excellent, but really the top 15 are all worth seeing.

Both of the top 2 films deal with immigration, which confirms that this is a globally important political issue since one is from the US and the other is from France and the immigrants are from Latin America in one and Africa in the other. Paul Thomas Anderson has made a Tarantino-style movie with previous Oscar winners in key roles and Souleymane's Story is a relatively small film with a novice actor. 

Black Bag is a fun spy film that is exceptionally well done with a great cast. 

One Battle After Another

Souleymane's Story ***

Black Bag

It's hard to separate the dozen films in the next group and they cover a diverse array of topics. An interesting spin on a crime story set in Ireland, a modern take on the continuing problem of nuclear armament, and a film about recovery from sexual assault top the list, but the remainder of the films offer something for everyone -- interpersonal drama, the COVID pandemic and its politics/conspiracies, a small town baseball film, a human interest story based on a true story, a UFO movie, etc. Several are subtitled foreign films. 

Sinners has been getting substantial attention so you probably already know about it. I liked the film, but it was not among the very best movies I saw this year. 

Aontas ***

House of Dynamite

Sorry, Baby

Ballad of Wallis Island

Holy Cow ***

Eddington **

Sinners

The Phoenician Scheme

Eephus ***

Roofman **

Bugonia

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Hello Out There ****

This final group includes films that could be worth watching, but I found them to be flawed in meaningful ways. At the top is an AI story, but there's also comedy, social commentary, fun sequels, attempted satire of billionaires, a retelling of a classic superhero story, and the final Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movie. The latter was overly long and predictable, sadly, and far from the best in the franchise. Bridget Jones was a better sequel. 

I was probably most disappointed in Mountainhead because it sounded like a sharp critique of economic inequality and the "billionaire boys [tech] club." Unfortunately, the writing was just so-so and I did not find it that engaging. 

Companion

One of Them Days

Materialists

Friendship

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

Mountainhead

Superman

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning

I will update this if I watch any new films before midnight on the 31st. I'm scheduled to be on a long flight and it is hard to predict what might be available and worth viewing. 


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