The Literary Entirety of 2025

You might think it is odd but I started this list on the first day of 2025 and it includes absolutely everything I have read this year in order of when I read it. Last year, I published the Literary Entirety of 2024 and I hope some of you enjoyed it. There is also a "Best Books" series for this year to accompany this list if you're only looking for the stuff I enjoyed most. But here, you'll find everything - even the stuff I haven't reviewed (yes, some books I just read and don't review either because I didn't like them very much or I simply didn't get around to writing a review for it).

Note: some of these reviews will be coming out in the new year of course, but for now - you've got something to look forward to!

Have a great new year.

The Literary Entirety of 2025

1. The Illusion of Choice by Richard Shotton
2. Empire of Things by Frank Trentmann
3. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
4. Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
5. The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton
6. Eventide by Kent Haruf
7. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
8. Poetry for the Feeble Minded by KG Miles
9. The Light in the Dark by Horatio Clare
10. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
11. Several Perceptions by Angela Carter
12. The Picador Book of 40
13. Love, Poverty and War by Christopher Hitchens
14. The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin
15. Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux
16. The Memory Illusion by Dr Julia Shaw
17. Out of the Past: Tales of Haunting History edited by Aaron Worth
18. Eerie East Anglia: Fearful Tales of Field and Fen edited by Edward Parnell
19. Parasites by Daphne Du Maurier
20. The Haunted Vintage by Marjorie Bowen
21. Twopence Coloured by Patrick Hamilton
22. He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond
23. Monday Morning by Patrick Hamilton
24. Summoned to the Seance: Spirit Tales from Beyond the Veil by Emily Vincent
25. Diavola by Jennifer Thorne
26. A Simple Murder by Eleanor Kuhns
27. Cultish by Amanda Montell
28. The Eyes are the Best Part by Monica Kim
29. Fake Heroes by Otto English
30. The Rub of Time by Martin Amis
31. Open When by Dr Julie Smith
32. Fear by Robert Peckham
33. Fake History by Otto English
34. James and John by Chris Bryant
35. How We Break by Vincent Deary
36. This is Why You Dream by Rahul Jandial
37. I've Been Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett
38. Music as Medicine by Daniel Levitin
39. The Penguin Book of Elegy
40. Fugue for a Darkening Island by Christopher Priest
41. Seven Myths About Money by Rob Dix
42. Orpheus Emerged by Jack Kerouac
43. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
44. The Evil Eye by Joyce Carol Oates
45. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins
46. My Week With Marilyn by Colin Clark
47. Girls Just Wanna Have Funds by Camilla Falkenberg, Emma Due Bitz and Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen
48. How We Are by Vincent Deary
49. The Science of Happiness by Professor Bruce Hood
50. Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
51. Entertaining Strangers by Jonathan Taylor
52. House of Trelawney by Hannah Rothschild
53. Pure Evil by Geoffrey Wansell
54. Transit by Rachel Cusk
55. What's Your Dream? by Simon Squibb
56. Sensitive by Jenn Grannemann and Andre Sólo
57. Feeding the Monster by Anna Bogutskaya
58. The Sound of Being Human by Jude Rogers
59. Shiny and New: 10 Moments of Pop Genius That Defined the 80s by Dylan Jones
60. Barrowbeck by Andrew Michael Hurley
61. The Last Witch of Scotland by Philip Paris
62. Elektra by Jennifer Saint
63. Home by Marilynne Robinson
64. The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin
65. The Age of Magic by Ben Okri
66. Withered Hill by David Barnett
67. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
68. Murder as a Fine Art by Carol Carnac
69. The Picador Book of Funeral Poems
70. The Complete Short Stories of Muriel Spark
71. Black Days by Jackson Ellis
72. My Life as a Rat by Joyce Carol Oates
73. The Great Passion by James Runcie
74. Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates
75. The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham
76. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
77. The Men Who Made Hollywood by Michael Freedland
78. Spectacular by Stephanie Garber
79. The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
80. Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac
81. The Ten Teacups by Carter Dickson
82. The Genius of Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
83. How to Sleep Well by Dr Neil Stanley
84. Monumenta by Lara Haworth
85. Mozart in Italy by Jane Glover
86. For the Culture by Marcus Collins
87. The Long Song by Andrea Levy
88. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
89. Literature for the People by Sarah Harkness
90. The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut
91. Until August by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
92. Hivemind by Sarah Rose Cavanagh
93. The Hanging of Hettie Gale by Tess Burnett
94. The Hotel by Daisy Johnson
95. Deadly Dolls: Midnight Tales of Uncanny Playthings edited by Elizabeth Dearnley
96. The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni
97. Middle of the Night by Riley Sagar
98. Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu
99. A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez
100. The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates
101. Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis
102. We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets
103. Bloody Hell edited by Sarah Jules
104. Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán
105. Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
106. HappyHead by Josh Silver
107. How the Classics Made Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
108. Mad About Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
109. Shakespearean by Robert McCrum
110. Shakespeare's Book by Chris Laoutaris
111. Three Burials by Anders Lustgarten
112. My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunket
113. I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There by Róisín Lanigan
114. The House of Mirrors by Erin Kelly
115. 1000 Coils of Fear by Olivia Wenzel
116. The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones
117. The Lamb by Lucy Rose
118. Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
119. Okay Then, That's Great by Susannah Wise
120. The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay
121. Falls to Pieces by Douglas Corleone
122. The Only One Left by Riley Sager
123. Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker
124. The Ridge by Michael Koryta
125. All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes
126. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
127. Hermit by Chris McQueer
128. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
129. A Fool's Alphabet by Sebastian Faulks
130. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
131. An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West by Konstantin Kisin
132. Liquidation by Imre Kertész
133. Butcher by Joyce Carol Oates
134. Here by Richard McGuire
135. In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova
136. Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
137. A Small Revolutionary in Germany by Philip Hensher
138. Reliable Essays by Clive James
139. An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor
140. Koba the Dread by Martin Amis
141. On Swift Horses by Shannon Pufahl
142. The Man Without a Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates
143. The Blood of Others by Simone de Beauvoir
144. Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey
145. A Girl's Story by Annie Ernaux
146. How It Is by Samuel Beckett
147. Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson
148. How It Is by Samuel Beckett
149. Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates
150. The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett
151. Arguably by Christopher Hitchens
152. Isaiahs in the Void by Kendall Defoe
153. A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand
154. Herzog by Saul Bellow
155. A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir
156. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
157. Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
158. Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney
159. Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall
160. The Night Visitors by Jenn Ashworth and Richard V. Hirst
161. The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk
162. Less by Patrick Grant
163. Gallows Court by Martin Edwards
164. Small Rain by Garth Greenwell
165. Early Sobrieties by Michael Deagler
166. Chord of Evil by Sarah Rayne
167. All Desire is a Desire for Being by René Girard
168. A Hitch in Time by Christopher Hitchens
169. Dublin Palms by Hugo Hamilton
170. And Yet... by Christopher Hitchens
171. Spores of Doom by Aaron Worth
172. Exhausted by Anna Katharina Schaffner
173. The Moronic Inferno by Martin Amis
174. Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
175. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
176. The Grammar of Angels by Edward Wilson-Lee
177. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
178. All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt
179. Derek Jarman by Tony Peake
180. On Suicide by David Hume
181. The Portable Atheist edited by Christopher Hitchens
182. Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens
183. A Passion for Books ed. by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan
184. Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
185. The White Ship by Charles Spencer
186. The Florentines by Paul Strathern
187. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
188. Spoilt Creatures by Amy Twigg
189. Breathe by Joyce Carol Oates
190. How to Read a Book by Mortimer J Adler and Charles Van Doren
191. A Therapeutic Journey by Alain de Botton
192. Heaven and Hell by Bart D. Ehrman
193. A Billion Years by Mike Rinder
194. Happy by Derren Brown
195. Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles by Harold Bloom
196. Careless People by Sarah Wynne-Williams
197. Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
198. Chameleon in a Candy Store by Anonymous
199. Pitch Dark by Renata Adler
200. Mr Perrin and Mr Traill by Hugh Walpole
201. A Very Short Introduction to Heidegger by Michael Inwood
202. Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood
203. Home is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose
204. Love in a Wych Elm and Other Stories by H.E Bates
205. The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
206. The Magic of the Mountains by Tim Carmichael
207. High Crime Area by Joyce Carol Oates
208. Sandwich by Catherine Newman
209. A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess
210. The Hanging Garden by Patrick White
211. The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
212. We Are Water by Wally Lamb
213. The Room in the Attic by Louise Douglas
214. Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
215. Strange Pictures by Uketsu
216. Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo
217. The Drinking Den by Emile Zola
218. The Only Story by Julian Barnes
219. It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken
220. Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang
221. The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O'Sullivan
222. Dis Mem Ber by Joyce Carol Oates
223. After Annie by Anna Quindlen
224. Mephisto by Klaus Mann
225. Woes of the True Policeman by Roberto Bolaño
226. On the Calculation of Volume: 1 by Solvej Balle
227. Who is the Liar by Laura Lee Bahr
228. You Invited It In by Sarah Jules
229. The Director by Daniel Kehlmann
230. You Need to Leave by Sarah Jules
231. Graveyard Shift by ML Rio
232. The Bombshell by Darrow Farr
233. The Artist by Inigo Mort
234. This Book Will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead
235. The Intercepts by TJ Payne
236. American Rapture by CJ Leede
237. The Village of Stepanchikovo by Fyodor Dostoevsky
238. Six Stories by Stefan Zweig
239. The Retirement Plan by Sue Hincenbergs
240. Maggie's Grave by David Sodergren
241. Out There by Kate Folk
242. Phantoms of Kernow edited by Joan Passey
243. The Travelling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon
244. Cows by Matthew Stokoe
245. Summer of the Monsters by David Sodergren
246. The Complete Stories of M.R James
247. Night Watching by Tracy Sierra
248. Ghost Music by Graham Masterton
249. Are Your Parents Home? by Jon Athan
250. Youthjuice by E.K Sathue
251. The Glow by Jessie Gaynor
252. Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter
253. Recollections of My Non-Existence by Rebecca Solnit
254. Let the Lord Sort Them by Maurice Chammah
255. Visions of the Vampire edited by Sorcha Ni Fhlainn and Xavier Aldana Reyes
256. Victory by Joseph Conrad
257. Life with a Capital L by D.H Lawrence
258. It's Always the Husband by CL Taylor
259. The Other Side of the Wall by Andrea Mara
260. The Guilty Couple by CL Taylor
261. The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
262. Freakslaw by Jane Flett
263. Found You by Sarah Jules
264. A Girl Walks into the Forest by Madeleine Roux
265. His Black Tongue by Mitchell Lüthi
266. Don't Lie by Sarah Jules
267. The Truth About the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline
268. The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran
269. The Fog by James Herbert
270. Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin
271. Are You Mad at Me? by Meg Josephson
272. Siblings by Brigitte Reimann
273. Death Spell by David Sodergren
274. The First Witch of Boston by Andrea Catalano
275. The Borgias by Paul Strathern
276. The Cursed Friend by Beatrice Salvioni
277. Selected Poems by W.B Yeats
278. American Housewife by Anita Abriel
279. The Bad Popes by E. R Chamberlin
280. Perspectives by Laurent Binet
281. My Dining Hell by Jay Rayner
282. Carrion Crow by Heather Parry
283. Exterminator! by William S. Burroughs
284. Night Walks by Charles Dickens
285. The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux
286. Glamorous Notions by Megan Chance
287. Selfish Girls by Abigail Bergstrom
288. The Scent of Dried Roses by Tim Lott
289. The Collected Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
290. Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
291. Behave by Robert Sapolsky
292. Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk
293. Baron Bagge by Alexander Lernet-Holenia
294. Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
295. A Quiet Evening: The Travels of Norman Lewis by Norman Lewis
296. What a Time to Alive by Jenny Mustard
297. Aftermath by Rachel Cusk
298. Nostalgia by Mircea Cărtărescu
299. The Ten (Food) Commandments by Jay Rayner
300. Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
301. Evenings and Weekends by Oisín Mckenna
302. The Artist of Blackberry Grange by Paulette Kennedy
303. House of Monstrous Women by Daphne Fama
304. The Running Man by Stephen King
305. Junky by William S. Burroughs
306. Into the War by Italo Calvino
307. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
308. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
309. Imagist Poetry edited by Peter Jones
310. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol
311. Night by Elie Wiesel
312. The Holy Sinner by Thomas Mann
313. Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac
314. The Butcher by Jennifer Hillier
315. POPism by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett
316. Flight to Arras by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
317. Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
318. The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
319. Wake Up by Jack Kerouac
320. Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
321. Selected Poems: 1947-1995 by Allen Ginsberg
322. My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories by Frank O'Connor
323. Southern Mail/Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
324. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
325. Milkman by Anna Burns
326. Vagabond by Tim Curry
327. The Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory
328. Q by Luther Blissett
329. Paris Stories ed. by Shaun Whiteside
330. The Graduate by Charles Webb
331. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
332. Manituana by Wu Ming
333. Maldoror and Poems by Comte de Lautréamont
334. The Prussian Officer and Other Stories by DH Lawrence
335. New York Stories ed. by Diana Secker Tesdell
336. Shaken and Stirred ed. by Diana Secker Tesdell
337. Love and Friendship by Jane Austen
338. Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels by Nancy Mitford
339. Love, Sex and Frankenstein by Caroline Lea
340. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
341. The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
342. Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
343. The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
344. Ending Up by Kingsley Amis
345. The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time by Will Durant
346. Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man by Thomas Mann
347. From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough
348. Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Miklós Nyiszli
349. The Europeans by Henry James
350. Ageless by Andrew Steele
351. The Knot of Vipers by François Mauriac
352. More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow
353. Scotland Yard: A Bloody History by Simon Read
354. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
355. Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively
356. How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
357. Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
358. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
359. The Feast edited by Simon Winder
360. Meeting Dr Johnson by James Boswell
361. Blueprint by Robert Plomin
362. Selected Poems by Charles Baudelaire
363. The Plague by Albert Camus
364. Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
365. Food Isn't Medicine by Dr Joshua Wolrich
366. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
367. Technopoly by Neil Postman
368. Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich
369. Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther
370. A Book Forged in Hell by Steven Nadler
371. The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz
372. Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
373. Selfie by Will Storr
374. An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame
375. Unbound by Richard L. Currier
376. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
377. Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam
378. The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher
379. The Cure for Loneliness by Dr Bill Howatt
380. A Sense of Belonging by Dr Holan Liang
381. Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
382. The Good Samaritan by John Marrs
383. You Weren't Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
384. Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney
385. Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
386. The Plague Stones by James Brogden
387. The Scapegoat by Daphne Du Maurier
388. Human Monsters: A Horror Anthology by Various Authors
389. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
390. Hotel World by Ali Smith
391. Julia by Sandra Newman
392. Walkers by Graham Masterton
393. Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
394. What Waits Below by Caleb N. Stephens
395. We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman
396. It's Probably Nothing by Naga Munchetty
397. Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
398. Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
399. Nightmare at 20'000 Feet: The Horror Stories by Richard Matheson
400. Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
401. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
402. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
403. Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant
404. All the Fear of the Fair edited by Edward Parnell
405. A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble
406. Escaping the Rabbit Hole by Mick West
407. Coffee by H.E Jacob
408. The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry
409. I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That by Ben Goldacre