It has come to my attention that a lot of people don’t like New Year’s. So, here, in my first Substack post, I will officially come out as a New Year’s Lover. It’s the envisioning that I like. In 2026 I can be someone who leaves their phone charging in the kitchen when I go to bed. I will stop watching short form video. I will keep a run streak going for 365 days no matter how icy the sidewalks or tired my legs or annoying my cough. I will practice gratitude. I will not forget friends’ birthdays. I will write thank you notes promptly. I will use my planner all year long. I will spend a little time at my desk every morning reading a poem or tinkering with my novel. 2026 Me is a person I love.
At the end of 2024 I made a list of resolutions on the final page of my journal. (I also embrace the word resolution because I like familiar language that does its job.) In 2025 I would stay sober. I would run a marathon. I would read more and write more. And not to brag (totally to brag) I did all of those things. This year I consumed zero alcohol. I ran the Chicago Marathon in October. And I did, in fact, read and write a lot more than I had the year before.
As Stephen King says in On Writing, a book I reread every year and never tire of because I love our Maine folk hero:
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”
So I will come out again here and admit that in 2024 I read fewer than ten books. There are many reasons for this: work stress, unhealthy coping mechanisms for said stress, scrolling… But, in truth, it was hard for me to get over feeling inadequate about my own writing every time I read someone else’s. I sank deep into the bad habit of comparing my drafts to others’ published work. So I ignored Mr. King’s advice and I read very little. I averaged less than a book a month and fell out of love with my novel. It was a bad time.
In 2025 I read forty five books. I faithfully kept a list of them in my journal and intermittently tracked them on Goodreads. It’s easy to read when you’re not drinking every night. It’s easy to read when you let yourself do it for fun. And it’s easy to read when you remind yourself that, yes, Stephen King is right on this one. Reading a lot made me a better writer.
These are the twelve best books I read this year, ranked.
Despite being published in 1985 and adapted into a TV miniseries in 1989 it seemed like Lonesome Dove was really popular this year. (If you know why everyone read this book in 2025 please enlighten me!) For the life of me I don’t know what inspired me to pick up a massive Western novel and spend most of the late summer and early fall slowly savoring it. I know the what brought the Pulitzer Prize winner into my life. I bought it because it was faced out at Atticus Bookstore in New Haven. I looked at the cover and held the book in my hand and I thought people like this book, right? I started reading it while camping for nearly a week in Baxter State Park, in a remote part of my remote state. I read by the fire and read by the river and read in my tent. Then I kept reading, taking bigger and bigger bites of the story until I couldn’t put the book down. It creeps up on you. The prose is clean and precise. It’s the kind of writing that never distracts you but always works. In some ways, McMurtry reminded me of Steinbeck. They both write beautifully, the words slipping into just-right groves like one of those timberframe homes built without nails. It’s a style of writing I know I can’t recreate. But reading novels like Lonesome Dove and East of Eden (more on her later) make me love the novel as an art form. Lonesome Dove is an incredible story. If I could tell you to read one book it would be this one. I finished the book before driving to school. I spent my twenty five minute, pre-dawn commute winding through back roads in silence. The sunrise made me cry. I missed the characters. What a gift.
People kept telling me to read this and I kept not reading it. I love George Saunders as both a writer and a human but I sometimes get weird about craft books. Is there a correct way to make art? Can writing be taught? What does craft actually mean? I ask these questions as someone who teaches creative writing to both children and adults. I don’t know the answers. But I think George Saunders does. This book is a 400-page document supporting the Stephen King quote I shared above. There is nothing prescriptive here. There are lessons and exercises and examples. This book feels like taking a class with a very kind and very funny teacher. For a craft book it was a fun read. I laughed out loud and underlined nearly every sentence. I will revisit it again and again. So I lied before when I said if I could tell you to read one book it would be Lonesome Dove. I think you should read this one, too.
I read this book in two days while at Hewnoaks Artist Residency in July. There was a heatwave and I sat in my cabin’s screened-in porch with sweaty glasses of sun tea and two box fans rumbling warm air at my legs. (This is fairly close to how I imagine heaven.) This book was moving and sexy and smart. I adored the characters and was so gripped by their love that I couldn’t put the book down. So many queer romances feel didactic to me, like they’re trying to explain queerness rather than embody it. This book embodied it. This novel was immersive and honest and true. And it was a page turner with beautiful writing. What more can you ask for!
Only one other time have I finished a book and thought, well fuck, someone wrote the book I was trying to write. Both times I have been okay with it because the books were, upon second thought, very different from my novel and because both books were genuinely wonderful to read. This book is all gender and grief and substance use and first love. This book is, as my mother would say, “right up my alley.” Read it for the bathtub scene alone. I wished the book was as long as Lonesome Dove because I needed a lot more time with these characters. I’m eager to read Mac Crane’s other work, particularly, Perverts, their forthcoming collection of stories.
I don’t think I’m going to say anything new about Steinbeck or East of Eden. Callie (my wife for the one person who might ever read this who doesn’t know me personally) and I started listening to this as an audiobook on the big Out West Roadtrip we took for our honeymoon in the summer of 2024. If I recall correctly we both said we felt like we needed to pull the car over and listen because, while this was an incredible audio performance, it’s the kind of writing you really need to focus on. I didn’t quite expect East of Eden to be so engaging, however. It’s kind of a crazy book! The prose is gorgeous, the characters feel like real people, and the parts of it that feel like political essays really work. And has there ever been a better villain than Cathy? (No, there has not.)
I read Prep, Sittenfeld’s first novel, the summer before starting high school and promptly begged my parents to let me apply to boarding schools. For years I wondered if I only loved the book so much because it was smart and alluded to queerness in a time when most of the YA novels I read were about cute boys and feeling fat (I am explicitly calling out Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging here.) Because of Prep, I nearly went to a boarding school in Indiana and often wonder what my life would have become if I’d chosen that path instead of attending the big suburban public high school I went to instead. I reread Prep a few years ago for an essay I was writing about girlhood for grad school (does a more grad school essay topic exist?!) and realized it’s an incredibly good book and that I love it just as much as an adult as I did as a teen. And I loved Romantic Comedywhen it came out. Few writers make me feel like someone knows the inside of my brain like Curtis Sittenfeld. Maybe if I can get myself to read even more in 2026 I’ll read all of her stuff.
I think everyone should be reading more Peter Cameron. I only found out about him when I first moved to Portland. I happened to pick up one of his books off a table of recommended reads at the library. He is a sharp observer and very funny and writes some smooth-ass prose. Weirdly, when I went on Goodreads to see what other people thought of The Weekend most of the reviews were in Italian. I think A24 should adapt this novel into a perfect queer dramedy starring Jonathan Bailey whose talents I think were mostly wasted in Wicked. But that’s another essay that no one needs to read.
I will read anything Nina LaCour writes. We Are Okayis one of my top five favorite novels and Yerba Buena, her adult debut, is among my top twenty five favorites. The structure of this novel is so smart and although the subject matter is heavy, it is a beautiful joy to read. Nina is also an incredible teacher. I loved having her as my instructor at the Tin House Workshop in February and the classes she teaches online are also fantastic!
Like any lesbian worth their salt, I love poetry about nature. I love Mary Oliver. Reading The Sea was more like reading 200 pages of poetry about loss and beauty than a plotted novel. I loved it. As a writer and a reader I have kind of a fraught relationship with plot. Maybe I’ll write more about that later, but suffice it to say, I didn’t really mind that nothing much happened in this book. Every line was perfectly crafted. It was atmospheric and gorgeous and I’m glad books like this exist.
I loved so many things about this book. I want to read more YA novels like this that assume the teen reader is smart and attentive. But my favorite thing about this novel was the setting. My dad grew up in this part of the Catskills and it was gratifying to read a book set so perfectly in a place I love. Get this book for the cool teen in your life!
One of my coworkers was reading this and I was so intrigued by the cover I asked about the book. She loaned it to me and it was the exact book I needed to end the year. I love literary fiction with teen protagonists. I would have loved this book at seventeen and I loved it at thirty four.
I probably have nothing to say about All Fours that hasn’t already been said but I devoured this book in a single sitting. I thought it was honest and hot.
In 2026 I resolve to read all of the Printz Award Winners because in theory I write YA literature and read very little of it this year. I have never read a book by John Greene so I plan to start with Looking for Alaska, a novel that came out when I was in high school. I decided at the time that I was actually way too sophisticated to read books written for teens and spent my time slogging through novels like Middlemarch and Kafka on the Shore (two books I still love!)
In 2026 I resolve to read more romance and poetry and, yes, to charge my phone in the kitchen and set my alarm clock and fall asleep reading instead of scrolling. Wish me luck.
