The Ultimate 2025 Reading Guide: PART 2
I asked 30 of the chicest readers I know what we should be reading this year. Here's what they said...
As the new year chugged its way into view, I asked 30 of the most well-dressed, well-traveled, and, of course, well-read people I know for the single book that we should all read in 2025. These are their recommendations — PART TWO! If you somehow missed Part One, it’s available here. You can also see the full list on Bookshop.
Quinton Mulvey recommends Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara.
“As we face the turbulence of the political changes ahead in 2025, Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency feels more relevant than ever, offering solace and clarity in times of upheaval. His poems remind us that, amidst uncertainty and the chaos of modern life, love, passion, and human connection remain constants that ground us. By balancing deeply personal tributes and often humorously mundane details of his life with more profound reflections on the universal, O’Hara provides a contemplative and intimate lens through which we can navigate existential crises, and life at large, with renewed hope and meaning.”
Caitlin Dee, author of Meditations for Party Girls (Dream Boy Book Club, 2024) recommends Notes of an Indigenous Futurist by Cliff Taylor.
“This is a collection of Cliff's poetry and prose that sways from intimate realism to sci-fi visionary fantasy so gracefully that it ceases to matter which is which. This book is not only a breath of fresh air and a welcome respite from the landscape of dystopian cynicism which places humans at the fulcrum of all that's wrong with the world, but a revolutionary wake-up and shake-up to remind us all that the future is ours to dream up and that humans have an important place in this beautiful world.”
Chloe Pingeon, writer of the arts & literature newsletter Collected Agenda, recommends Milkman by Anna Burns.
“I rediscovered Milkman on the bookshelves of my childhood home over the holidays, and it quickly became my favorite read of 2024. This book is tortuous — a slow descent into subtle terror in 1970s Belfast, as the teenage protagonist is quietly and inescapably stalked by The Milkman. It's beautiful, too. Wonderful sentences full of clarity. Milkman is also the winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize. My sister, who knows more about publishing than me, says this is one of the prizes that you can trust.”
Letitia Asare, the voice behind the Bookstagram @bookshelfbyla, recommends The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas.
“This is for those who love to people-watch. This short novel is thoughtful, observant, bittersweet, and honest, told through brief vignettes. A needed reminder to enjoy the quotidian moments of life as we follow a foreign couple creating roots in an unnamed city as they navigate the liminal space of adulthood.”
Lucy Dolan-Zalaznick, at Vogue, recommends Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.
“I just can’t stop reading Ann Patchett’s fiction and non fiction, and so I was long overdue to read up the book that originally put her on the map. By chance, it was at the house I’m staying at for the week so it felt like fate! And now maybe it’s your fate?”
Daniel Emilio Soares, owner of Alimentari Flâneur, the sexiest shop in town, recommends The Bible! (And I, Scremes, recommend you get yourself a copy that really relays the heft of the text.)
“You bitches would benefit immensely from the teachings of Jesus. Start with the Song of Songs — it’s poetic, sensual, and imbued with timeless wisdom that many interpret to be metaphors for Christ’s love of the church but its suggestive language leads me to believe otherwise.”
Myka Kielbon, producer of the poetry podcast The Slowdown, and co-host (with moi!) of the bicoastal reading series Boyfriends & Family, recommends The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather.
“I often think about how Cather believed this book did poorly because it had a negative arc (if you don’t include the post-haste final chapter). It’s a startingly clear story about success and the strangeness of it, and most importantly, the people who help us along the way. This book is both gorgeous and timeless.”
Madeline Taylor, the mind behind Mini Book Wellington, recommends Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte.
“Rejection is bizarre, feverish, wildly clever, and hands down the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read. It’s a meta skewering of modern society and rejection in all its forms. I was, and continue to be, frantic to discuss, and revel in, this masterpiece with anyone who will indulge me.”
Clarke Sonderman, who makes music as Pleasure Systems, recommends Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique by Sa’ed Atshan.
“It cuts through the veil of pinkwashing more effectively, exhaustively and coherently than anything else I’ve read while maintaining a propulsive pseudo-memoir narrative structure. But most importantly, it feels genuinely hopeful in a time where not much else on this subject does. Way less of a downer than it sounds like it’d be!”
Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation (Jonathan Cape, 2021) and Ordinary Human Failings (Little, Brown & Co., 2024), recommends Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.
“I’ve loved this book since I was 16, but I reread it and think about it more often the further into my thirties I get. Partly this is because it’s an objectively satisfying read — I love a sprawling Dickensian birth to death read — and it’s full of appallingly accurate snapshots of how degrading it is to unrequitedly love someone and the sadness of pitying a person you once loved. But chiefly it’s because of Philip’s central tension which is also my own: whether to seek novelty and artistry and adventure, or contentment.”
Heather Akumiah, author of Bad Witches (Blackstone, 2024) and co-host of the podcast and reading series Limousine, recommends A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin.
“This is on my list to reread this year. She’s one of those people who make short stories look easy.”
Leah Abrams, the other half of Limousine, recommends The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow.
“If you, like me, saw the Bob Dylan biopic and were left with blue balls (Bob balls?), yearning for a clearer depiction of the cultural and political landscape of the 60’s New Left, then I highly recommend The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. It’s a voicey, semi-historical novel centered around the execution of Rochelle and Paul Isaacson (wink wink, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg). The perfect read for the revolution.”
Miriam Gordis, co-editor of Angel Food Magazine, recommends On the Clock by Claire Baglin, translated by Jordan Stump (New Directions, 2025).
“I read this when it came out in the original French a few years ago and was totally blown away by it. It's this really compact spare little book so it's startling how much it manages to weave together: a young woman working at a fast food restaurant details the boredom, the indignities, the repetitiveness, and the workplace conflict of her job, while also recalling her childhood in a series of vivid memories. It's everything a book should be and everyone should read it.”
Sophia Kaufman, the other co-editor of Angel Food Magazine, recommends A Fine Old Conflict by Jessica Mitford (out of print, originally published by Knopf in 1977, you can find used copies online).
“A few years after I read Jessica Mitford's memoir Hons and Rebels (kept in print by NYRB) I happened across a used hardcover copy of this follow-up, which I hadn't known existed, and bought it immediately. It picks up where Hons left off, chronicling her time wheedling her way into the Communist Party (and then leaving it), getting involved in various labor struggles, working with the Black Panthers, and more. She's wickedly irreverent; the book is funny and witty and out of print, and so, in my opinion, ripe for reissue…”
Giulia Bencivenga, author of Comorbidity, Or The Reckoning (Dirt Child Press, 2024), recommends Who Is Wellness For? by Fariha Róisín.
“Keeping with the revolutionary ethos spawned by my compatriot, Luigi, I'd like to recommend Who Is Wellness For? by Fariha Róisín. It's an important book, one that dismantles the idea of wellness to dive into the liberatory potential of eroticism and self-care with ardent candor. It will leave readers with their heart ripped open, ready to fight.”
You can shop the full 2025 Reading Guide on Bookshop. Here’s to a year of good reading!
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