2025 in Books

December

December in Books

78. Tethered Tracy Anne Ong

77. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Kiran Desai

76. The Woman from Tantoura Radwa Ashour

75. Brightly Shining Ingvild Rishøi

November

A Reading Girl in Kazakhstan

74. And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon – Nikolai Gogol

73. Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan

72. The Stronghold (The Tartar Steppe) – Dino Buzzati

71. WTF! (Woman Turning F*fty) – Marga Ortigas

70. And Quiet Flows the Don – Mikhail Sholokhov

69. A History of Pugachev – Alexander Pushkin

68. The Queen of Spades – Alexander Pushkin

67. The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine – Alina Bronsky

66. Notes from the Dead House – Fyodor Dostoevsky

65. Apples are from Kazakhstan – Christopher Robbins


“Reading… a special gift that showed you how much of the world still lay beyond the safety of your comfort zone.” — Marga Ortigas

October

October’s Horrors

64. Arturo’s Island – Elsa Morante

63. A Romance on Three Legs – Katie Hefner

62. Second Opinion – Gideon Lasco

61. Satantango – Laszlo Krasznahorkai

September

How This Reader Remembers September

60. Firewalkers – Erwin E. Castillo

59. Shattered Lands – Sam Dalrymple

58. Ravel – Jean Echenoz

57. Piano Notes – Charles Rosen

56. In Farthest Seas – Lalla Romano

August

Reading in August

55. Babylon, Albion – Dalia Al-Dujaili

54. Munting Aklat ng Baybayin – Ian Alfonso

53. Collected Works – Lydia Sandgren

52. Traces of Enayat – Iman Mersal


“That’s what literature was. Gathering, processing.” – Lydia Sandgren

July

Circumnavigating July

51. Rajah Versus Conquistador – Kahlil Corazo

50. A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile – Aatish Taseer

49. Homer’s Daughter – Robert Graves

48. Magellan – Stefan Zweig

June

“At that moment the power of reading made itself clear to me… It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.” — Percival Everett, James

June in Books

47. The Experiment of the Tropics – Lawrence Lacambra Ypil

46. Forbidden Notebook – Alba de Céspedes

45. Her Side of the Story – Alba de Céspedes

44. A Bookshop in Berlin – Francoise Frenkel

43. Background for Love – Helen Wolff

42. The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

41. James – Percival Everett

May

May Books and Friends

40. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

39. Erik Satie Three Piece Suite – Ian Penman

38.Concepcion – Albert Samaha

37. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Alba de Céspedes

36. There’s No Turning Back – Alba de Céspedes

35. On the Calculation of Volume I – Solvej Balle


“Because the paper remembers… And there may be healing in sentences.” — Solvej Balle

April

April in Books

34. Heart Lamp Banu Mushtaq

33. Covert Joy Clarice Lispector

32. Journey to the Edge of Life – Tezer Ozlu

31. To the Wedding – John Berger

30. The Glass Room – Simon Mawer

29. Canone Inverso Paolo Maurensig

28. The Dissenters – Youssef Rakha

27. Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves – Lio Mangubat


“It is the boundless realm of literature that has set me on this road, through words and beyond them…” — Tezer Ozlu

March

“Truth helps the story on.” – I, Claudius, Robert Graves


Feburary

February Reading Wrap-Up

17. The Golden Road – Willam Dalrymple

16. The Black Book – Orhan Pamuk

15. Nothing but the Night – John Williams

14. A Re-reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

13. Face Shield Nation – Gideon Lasco

12. Fires – Marguerite Yourcenar

11. A Month in Siena – Hisham Matar


“Only love and art can do this: only inside a book or in front of a painting can one truly be let into another’s perspective. It has always struck me as a paradox how in the solitary arts there is something intimately communal.” — Hisham Matar

January