Going to try actual formatting here - let me know if this works. A complete list (as of 9/25) of everything I've read in 2025.

Books I have read this year

The President by Miguel Angel Asturias

God this book was depressing I kept expecting some grand victory but I guess that's why its such a good depiction of living under facism. Just truly soul crushing at every opportunity.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Damn I do love a vampire tale especially one where we're killing the shit out of trappers & US Army field scouts & profiteers. With that being said, thought the end was kinda corny. Works best as a bit of a period piece and even then I think I'm just a sucker for native American lore.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (again)

I think the pieces that I always come back to are the ones where you feel the primacy of it all, the parts where it gets closest to that Ur myth of an America that's not framed by slaughter.

"When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

That’s my Middle West — not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family’s name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all"

Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

hard to keep my head in bc one of the main characters is named Homer Simpson (this is where Matt Groening got the name from). Joan Didion famously hates this book but it was a fun 'read it in a day' kind of novella that I think sits nicely alongside 'The Last Tycoon'

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Yeah this shit fucking rips shoutout my GOAT Mary Shelley! Frankenstein as Prometheus! His monster reading Milton! Incredible that Hollywood said “yeah this is a big green guy with a bolt in his head that moans”. Tbh going to be such a hater on the movie

The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Sadly I am better than everyone else because I read this. Anyway fuck Robert Moses I hope he burns in hell (but a good point on how he grew up a progressive)

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

It was good but not overwhelmingly so. Wonder if I’ll get something out of reading David Copperfield in concert with this

Eve’s Hollywood by Eve Babitz

Eve is….Eve. Worth the read but Didion laps her

Democracy by Joan Didion

Read a bit too much Didion so a bit fuzzy on the plots but remember liking this one best

Demian by Herman Hesse

First Hesse. Sadly the main character is me if I was the right age to die in WW1. Should take an edible and reread.

Salvador by Joan Didion

This felt like the influence for The Last Thing He Wanted. Cool to see Didion boots on the ground

Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion

I don’t know if I remember a single thing from this book but remember it was good!

The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion

This was great. Maybe second favorite Didion I read this year? I remember Democracy being #1 I think

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Pynchon is so horned up man it’s crazy. Good period piece but liked Crying better.

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

Yeah I didn’t get anything out of this I can’t lie

The Man That Nobody Killed by Elon Green

Really interesting study of early 80s NYC and how the transit PD killed this artist for tagging a subway stop. They beat a man to death in front of 100 NYU students and nobody got convicted! Also crazy that Eric Adams saw this and joined the transit PD the next year.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Baldwin is Baldwin! The bit where he talks about having to go to France to see himself as him is a fair point

The Great Gatsby (again)

What else can I say…I forget which novelist had the line where they said “I keep trying to write the great American novel but all I keep coming back to is damned Gatsby.” It’s just so good! He doesn’t miss!!!! Every bar is so good everything feels immediate and yet always locked away behind glass

Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik

The one that started the above inception. Pretty good read overall, felt a bit gossipy

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Reread but helped that I was less ready to be physically disgusted by this one

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

The first time that I think I may have “got” Pynchon. Fun period piece that feels like 5 years ahead of its time

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Shoutout the barista Margaret at the Grumpy’s Coffee on West 40th for lending this to me, imagery was insane and now I have to watch the Hitchcock movie

The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

Disgusting but incredibly well written. Not great for my doomerism

Chronicles of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Investigative novella

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Magical in the way a leaf floating down a clear stream is magical.

Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Ward

Often don’t know what my take on non-fiction music biopics should be. Slightly better than some other stuff I read this year and had me on a music kick for a bit.

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

At this point you just kinda have to read it given how often it’s referenced but no real surprises. Liked that the husband is the ‘nice liberal boy’ as opposed to those brutish other guys…but the ending is always the same its just a different flavor

Blindness by Jose Saramago

Saramago is difficult for me and especially as someone who doesn’t like apocalyptic stories. Well written overall

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Reread. Bolano is so fucking good man I didn’t get this the first time I read it but it’s just such an interesting tale of what US intervention and genoicde does to a collective memory. Its about chasing a past that doesn’t exist anymore and when you get there what’s the point

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

He has this line right after he’s shot by a real sniper’s bullet talking about the leaves of a tree he passes under and how lucky he is to live in a world where those leaves exist and while I’m not a big cryer if I were I would be crying

Americana by Don DeLillo

Lost me a little on the backend but felt kinda like an American Psycho before American Psycho. First DeLillo and would read more

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

Found at a little free library and can’t recommend those things enough. Incredible place setting via the music playing in each place, song of the summer (Shadow Dancing by Andy Gibb) was discovered via this book. Maybe best new book I read this year? Also put me on a reggae summer

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

Beautifully written and a bit targeted given the main character is actively drinking himself to death. I’m a sucker for most lit set in Mexico

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin

My second Godwin book and my same gripes as the first one in that I think he cares more about white farmers losing their property vs colonialism. Maybe that’s a bleak way to look at it but interesting tale of identity nonetheless and a bit more complex than his other

The Lumumba Plot by Stuart A Reid

Much like Jakarta Method you come out of it feeling disgusted but I thought this did a really interesting job of showing Lumumba not as saint or commie devil but as a real person who made real mistakes but was never given an inch of rope by a State Department and UN eager to give every benefit of the doubt to colonials

9/10:

alright pretty late on the game here for this year but in a quest to be less of a passive reader i'll be trying to throw my thoughts down on every book i've read/am reading this year. FWIW Gatsby is THE great american novel and I don't think its close.