The 60 Best Books of 2025, based on a best-books round up
It's here -- the results of my Best-Books-of-2025 round up.
My process:
1. I consulted 59 best-books lists from all over the English-speaking world, confessing the list is very USA-heavy. Here are a few of those sources I used: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Amazon Editors, Libby, Chicago Public Library, The Guardian, The Post (NZ), +50 more lists.
2. I created a spreadsheet which ultimately ended up with over 900 titles on it. (Yes, that is a big spreadsheet!) 450 of the titles got only one vote and only 300 books got three or more votes. Narrowing that down to a digestible number for publication I'll be focused on the books which got eight or more votes -- that is 60 titles.
3. Of the 60 Best Books of 2025, 13 are nonfiction (NF), 21%. The remainder of the list is made up of not only literary fiction, but also romance, horror, fantasy, YA, Sci-Fi, dystopia, historical, short stories, LGBTQ-themes, mystery, and thriller genres. The authors come from all over the world supporting a variety of viewpoints. There is probably a book for everyone to love on the list. I've read and liked 15 of them.
Without further ado... The list!
On 23-21 lists:
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| ⭐Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (23, NF) The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (22) Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (21) |
On 20 lists:
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| The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones Heart the Lover by Lily King |
On 19 lists
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| Audition by Katie Kitamura The Guardian and the Thief by Megha Majumdar Katabasis by R.F. Kuang |
On 18-17 lists
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| Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (18) The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy (17) Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (17, NF) One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (17, NF) Flashlight by Susan Choi (17) |
On 16 lists
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Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (NF) Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins Flesh by David Szalay We Do Not Part by Han Kang Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie What We Can Know by Ian McEwan |
On 15-13 lists
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| King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (15) The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (14) Antidote by Karen Russell (13) A Flower Traveled in My Blood: An Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children by Haley Cohen Gilliland(13, NF) A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst (13, NF) Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (12) Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (12) |
On 12-11 lists
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| Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (12) Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (12) The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin (11) Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (11) Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (11, NF) Raising Hare: a Memoir by Chloe Dalton (11, NF) Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (11) Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (11, NF) |
On 10 lists
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| Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (NF) Heartwood by Amity Gaige Isola by Allegra Goodman Stag Dance by Torrey Peters The Names by Florence Knapp |
On 9 lists
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| Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz Book of Lives: a Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood (NF) Memorial Days: a Memoir by Geraldine Brooks (NF) My Friends by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith Endling by Maria Reva |
On 8 lists
My thoughts:
I was surprised and delighted that Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy got the most mentions of all the 900+ books listed. Surprised because I'd barely heard of it before this exercise and it is memoir! Delighted because I love everything I've read by this author. I'm adding it to my TBR right now.
I always expect award-winners to percolate to the top. In some cases they did but in others they didn't. For example, of the five winners for the 2025 National Book Award, only the nonfiction winner, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, made the list with 17 votes. The fiction winner, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible got 6 votes. Two finalists for the NBA did better -- The Guardian and the Thief with 19 points and Antidote with 13. Theory and Practice cleaned up in the awards in Australia this year but only got 5 votes here. Not to pick on that book because Heart Lamp, the winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize also only got 5 votes.
If your favorite book wasn't among the top 60 books published this year, don't despair. It is likely just below the cut line or somewhere on the list. I was amazed at how many books got just one vote, yet that book got such praise by whoever published the list. Clearly 2025 was a year of a lot of good books! One example of that is the winner of the B&N Best Book of the Year honor, Mona's Eyes. No one else mentioned this book and they picked it as their best. Another way of looking at this is the top book on my list this year got 23 votes, that is 38% of the lists mentioning it. By contrast, last year I only looked at 37 lists before I published the round-up of the best-books-of-2024 list. James won top honor with 31 votes. That is 83%. I think the wealth was really spread out this year.
What books are you happy to see in the top 60 books of 2025? My three favorites of the year -- Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Heart the Lover, and Antidote -- are the list. Woot woot!
PS: I started wondering if this was truly a world-wide list so I investigated the nationality of the authors of the top 60 titles. Here is the breakdown: Australia -- 3; Britain -- 5; Canada -- 3; China -- 1; Denmark -- 1; Egypt -- 1; Germany -- 1; Hungary -- 1: India -- 4; Italy -- 1; Jamaica -- 1; Malaysia -- 1; Mexico -- 1; Nigeria -- 2; New Zealand -- 1; South Korea --1; Sweden -- 2; USA -- 27; Vietnam --1.
-Anne
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