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The Ten Best Books I Read in 2025
For the 7th year in a row, I'm posting the ten best books that I read in 2025. I'm posting them in the order that I read them, regardless of publication date or preference within the Top Ten. I've been thinking a lot this year about the virtues of re-reading books. As the years go by, it seems more likely that I will find enjoyment and wisdom in re-reading something that I've loved before, rather than another new read. This however, is a bit of a challenge in making a book list, since I could easily have a Top Ten that were books that everyone already knew were great. So, there is a bit of fudging on that front, but hopefully the list finds the median between true and interesting.
This was a recommendation from Doug McKelvey that I actually finished just before January 2025, but I had already put out the 2024 list. It's an epic mid-20th century European espionage novel with an original twist. As I understand it, it is strict history (in so far as it's known for all people and events) overlaid with a battle of great spiritual forces filling in the gaps that are the key to understanding global events. It's the kind of story I hadn't ever really imagined, much less read.
Like many people, I read this and then found myself talking about it to everyone for the rest of the year. Surely I'm not done yet. Haidt does a great job talking about technology and social media and the mental illness epidemic. He's well-researched and practical. In addition to that, he opens the discussion on another aspect of current childhood life that few people are talking about, namely the lack of unsupervised free play and the way that creates anxiety by limiting opportunities for kids to learn how to navigate risk. I've learned a lot, and grown in my gratitude to get to raise my kids at Kibuye.
I love the great Russian novels, and this is arguably the last giant I had never read. It was already on deck when my teammate Sam confided (independently from me) that he was wanting to read it, so the experience was richer for chances to get together and chat about it. It's famously epic, which means the deep character profiles, world events, and long story lines that Tolstoy does so well. It seems like the gift of Russian literature to the world is a full view of what it means to be human.
He [God] is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life.
...the despairing vehemence with which people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves caused.
Ben Roose brought this to Kibuye, and I realized that I had read (and remembered) an essay by C. Plantinga on addiction and sin over twenty years ago, and still remembered it. "A book about sin" sounds boring, and it might be if it wasn't so well-written and so crazy insightful. I don't know what else to say. Just sample some quotes:
We ought to pay evildoers, including ourselves, the “intolerable compliment” of taking them seriously as moral agents, of holding them accountable for their wrongdoing.
[we live] in a culture that teaches him that we are our own creators. A person who has succumbed to an addiction thus imagines a derisive question coming at him from his culture: What kind of moron creates but cannot control himself?
Since faith fastens on God’s benevolence, it yields gratitude, which in turn sponsors risk taking in the service of others. Grateful people want to let themselves go; faithful people dare to do it. People tethered to God by faith can let themselves go because they know they will get themselves back.
2025 was kind of the year of Brandon Sanderson in the McLaughlin house. I don't usually go in for the long epic fantasy (with the obvious exception of the next book in this list), but I read three stand-alone Sanderson novels this year, and they were all great. His imagination and world-building is just skillful and fun. His plot turns can be complicated, but he knows how much explanation the reader needs. "Yumi" is the story of two-worlds inexplicably linked, and it stays interesting until the end.
I (re)read aloud all three Lord of the Rings books this year with Toby. I doubt anyone will read this and say "Never heard of that! Maybe I should check my local library." But I'd be lying if I didn't say this was one of the best I read this year. Interestingly, in Roald Dahl's Matilda, little precocious Matilda reads Tolkien and asks the librarian for "more like that". Matilda is disappointed with all the other fantasy books. Then the librarian gives her War and Peace, and Matilda exclaims that that's exactly what she was looking for. At the very least, Tolkien is still in a class of his own.
Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach… Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s ceased to trouble him.
Wonder makes the words of praise louder.
Wolk's Beyond the Bright Sea made this list in 2021. Alyssa brought Candle Island to Kibuye, and I loved it. The setting is an island community in Maine. The main character is reminiscent of Gary Schmidt's protagonists in terms of being way more mature than any twelve-year old I know, but somehow that doesn't bother me at all. The characters and the setting would have been enough, but it's got some great plot twists as well. It's enough to make me go and read anything else Wolk has written.
Years ago, in a webinar that hosted my friend Jeff Liou, there was a question to an expert panel about a good book to read to understand American race relations. Someone suggested The Souls of Black Folk, and I've been thinking about it since then. Published in 1903, I expected interesting history (the Civil War being still in relatively recent memory) and some enduring wisdom. I got that (including a new appreciation for my native Nashville's Fisk University), but what I didn't expect was a beautiful and poetic voice.
How curious a land is this, - how full of untold story, of tragedy and laughter, and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a tragic past, and big with future promise!
The human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.
This debut novel was a re-read for me, and it's been a family favorite for several years. The story of two magicians' contest to train up the better protégé results in a truly unforgettable setting. Everything about La Cirque de Rêves makes you desperately want to go there. If Morgenstern never produces another masterpiece, she's at least go this one.
Honorable Mentions
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
Remember Death by Matt McCullough
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers
The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers
Ghost, Patina, Sunny, Lu (series) by Jason Reynolds
Zero at the Bone by Christian Wiman
Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton (re-read)
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
The Chosen by Chaim Potok (re-read)
Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
The Miracles of Christ by David Redding
2025 Newbery Medal Winner:
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