Tonya's List: What I Read in 2025
It'd never occurred to me to keep a record of books as I read them...
Happy New Year, everyone. I’m staying in Florida right now, escaping the waves of arctic air up north, and so 2026 began for me with a barrage of fireworks and celebratory gunfire that filled the air for four hours, beginning around 10pm. Up in New York, I’m assuming thousands of people spent those hours cheering and dancing around in adult diapers inside the roped-off streets of Times Square. I hope the rest of you managed to bid farewell to our collective recent past with all the joy and dignity you could muster.
I’m more inclined to look forward this year, rather than backward, but I did want to share this last 2025-related post. On Monday, we all read Damon’s reading list from the past year. It’s a tradition he continued from 2024. One that I found sort of revelatory. Until Damon sent me that first list of books, it had never occurred to me to keep a record of what I was reading.
My whole life, books have just drifted in and out my hands. I’ve returned them to the library, placed them back on to the shelf, and donated or gifted them away. Within a few months, I’ve almost always forgotten about them. A few exceptions do remain at the tip of my memory, but even in those cases, the title tends to bring back a limited series of images, a vivid scene or set of characters. Sometimes only a mood.
In any case, I was intrigued by Damon’s list and inspired to begin my own. I wondered if it would help me to remember the books I’d read. If nothing else, I thought it would be interesting, after the fact, to look back and find patterns or obvious gaps.
So, for the past year, after I closed the last page of a book, I wrote down the name and author on a list in my Notes app. The first book I finished was “Forever” by Pete Hamill, on New Years’ Day. A nice beginning to the year, given I’d read that book ravenously for days, unable to put it down. Other books didn’t seem as worthy of a place on the list. I can barely recall reading a few of them, even after noting them. Others, I finished under protest. Instead of throwing them at the wall, I plugged the title into the list. I took note of the high-brow stuff I read to educate myself as well as the low-brow snack-type books I picked up for comfort or escape. Brick-heavy sagas, collections of short stories, a couple of novellas.
I’ve always read voraciously, if not discriminately. Absent other reading material, I will read the backs of toothpaste tubes (though I didn’t include them on my list.) A few books did lose me mid-way, which happens sometimes. I left those un-recorded. Everything else is on there.
I do think the list has helped me to remember. I can look back at the titles now and summon a sensation for each book. And I can see patterns, too. For one, I deliberately read a few “classics” this year that I’d missed in school—The Great Gatsby, Emma, The Voyage Out, The Talented Mr. Ripley. That’s something I’d like to continue in the next year.
Otherwise, I read at least four different books based in Greek Mythology, hoping to inspire myself as I struggled to learn the rudiments of that language. And there were, as always, a whole host of British mysteries scattered throughout for comfort. A few of the best titles I read were staff recommendations from Three Lives and Co. bookstore, a favorite haunt near my apartment. A few others I only picked up because so many people were reading them on the subway.
But no poetry?! I was a little shocked to realize there was no poetry on the list. After all, I read poems every day, but in a scattershot way. Generally online. Now that I think about it, I realize I haven’t sat down and finished a full collection of poems in years. So I know what to reach for next.
The full list is below, concluding with the James Salter book I finished this week. I’ll forgive you for skimming it. You can thank my library card for the length. But, unlike Damon, I couldn’t help but nudge everyone (via asterisk) toward a handful of my absolute standout favorites. Your literary mileage, obviously, will vary…
Who feels like doing this in 2026?
—TM
Forever by Pete Hamill *
Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth
Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar *
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell *
The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer
Strange Pilgrims: Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
The Death of the Rook by Kate Atkinson
Good Material by Dolly Alderton
Etchings in an Hourglass by Kate Simon
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Plant Dreaming Deep: A Journal by May Sarton*
Foster by Claire Keegan*
The Word Pretty by Elisa Gabbert*
White Sands by Geoff Dyer
If Only by Vigdis Hjorth
Enigma Variations by Andre Aciman
Circe by Madeline Miller*
House of Names by Colm Toibin
Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk*
Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
Aflame by Pico Ayer*
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
The Spell of New Mexico, edited by Tony Hillerman
Normal Distance by Elisa Gabbert
Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd
Any Person is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert
Springtime: A Ghost Story by Michelle de Kretser
Endgame: a Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year by May Sarton
American Bulk by Emily Mester
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Notes to John by Joan Didion
Journey to the Edge of Life by Tezer Ozlu*
The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton*
The Furies by Janet Hobhouse
The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths
Less by Andrew Sean Greer*
Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Death and the Conjurer by Tom Mead
Consent by Jill Ciment
The Gods of New York by Jonathan Mahler
The Murder Wheel by Tom Mead
Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead
Emma by Jane Austen
Life in a Day by Doris Grumbach*
Long Distance: Stories by Aysegul Savas
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
A Guide to the Good Life by Williams B Irvine
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Flashlight by Susan Choi*
All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver*
The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
Feng Shui Modern by Cliff Tan
Big Kiss, Bye Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett
The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard*
Like Family by Erin O White
Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor
You are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego
Bury our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson*
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
Tonya Morton is, among other things, the publisher of Juke.
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