A Year in Books 2025, Part II

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Happy New Year!  Let’s hope 2026 will be a terrific reading year! 

Here is Part II of my Year in Books, July to December.

July 2025

Carol Shields’ The Box Garden. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Carol Shields’The Box Garden is is a gentle comedy. She breezily sketches family problems in the context of a domestic comedy.  Charleen, a poet and part-time assistant editor at a botanical journal, attends her 70-year-old mother’s wedding in Toronto with her dentist boyfriend, whom friends consider unhip. Her ex-husband left her to live in a commune near Toronto: she intends to track him down. And she has a crush on her penpal, a man whose philosophical essay on grass was rejected by the botanical journal.

Charming, sweet, and funny.

August 2025

Set in the 16th century, Allegra Goodman’s stunning historical novel, Isola, is part coming-of-age story, part survival story. The heroine, Marguerite de la Rocque, orphaned at the age of three, inherited a fortune and lives comfortably with her nurse. Then her guardian, Jean-François Roberval, squanders all her money and sells her house. He insists that Marguerite and her nurse accompany him on a sea voyage to New France (Canada). At sea, in sight of the shores of Canada, he dumps Marguerite, his secretary, who has become Marguerite’s lover, and her elderly nurse on an uninhabited island. Based on real events, this novel is an elegantly-written page-turner.

September 2025

Fanny Burney’s 941-page novel Cecilia, her masterpiece, was one of the pleasures of the year.  Burney (1752-1840) influenced Jane Austen, who took the title, Pride and Prejudice, from a passage in Cecilia. Each of Burney’s lively sentences is exquisite, the narrative is lively, and the saucy dialogue made me laugh. Burney portrays silly rich people living on the edge of bankruptcy, glitzy, decadent parties, and suitors who want to marry her for money. Cecilia is not a typical heroine:  she is not interested in marriage.  She fobs off the suitors!  What next?

October 2025

Jean Rhys’s After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie is a novel of desperation. Rhys’s style is so spare that it complements the heroine’s bare, squalid life. Julia, a rich man’s ex-mistress, doesn’t know how to survive on her own. . Her beauty is waning, she has no job, she seldom leaves her hotel room, and in the evening drinks a little too much in cafes, often with strange men.   After Mr. Mackenzie’s lawyer informs her that there will be no more checks, she teeters on the edge of prostitution. What can she do?

November 2025

Joseph Conrad’s short, dense political novel, The Secret Agent, is a spy story, but it also charts the the destruction of the nuclear family.  Mr. Verloc runs a porn shop as a cover for his work as an anarchist and second job as a secret agent. His young wife, Winnie, helps with the shop and takes care of her mentally disabled brother Stevie. Surprisingly, Mr. Verloc finds a way to use Stevie:  he becomes the unknowing agent of Mr. Verloc, after Privy Councilor Wurmt of the Russian embassy orders Verloc to commit a radical action to rouse the public against anarchists.  Beware of the twisted plots of double agents!

In Henry James’ convoluted novel, The Awkward Age, there is very little action.  Much of the plot unfolds in oblique dialogue.  At her salon, Mrs. Brookenham sighs over the fate of her attractive daughter, Nanda, who knows too much for a marriageable woman, and, as a duchess says to Mrs. Brookenham, will drive away eligible men.  Mrs. Brookenham is ambivalent toward her daughter: she is competing with Nanda for the admiration of her friend, Mr. Vandenbank.  But nothing goes terribly wrong until Mr. Longdon, a stodgy man in his fifties, arrives in London to research the history of Lady Julia, who was Mrs. Brookenham’s late mother.

A compelling novel, written in Henry James’ incomparable, convoluted style.

Happy reading! See ya next yea!

A Riveting Biography: “Marcus Aurelius Stoic Philosopher”

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“Accept humbly: let go easily.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.33 (Penguin)

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121- 180 CE), son of Domitia Lucilla and adoptive son of Emperor Antoninus Pius, was a Stoic philosopher best-remembered as the author of Meditations. This popular book is often called “the best self-help book.” Marcus Aurelius’ stoic sayings can be short and pithy; sagacious and complex; or even lessons in etiquette and diplomacy. 

Though I’m not a great fan of Meditations, I was fascinated by Donald J. Robertson’s lively biography, Marcus Aurelius Stoic Philosopher. This short, riveting book is crammed with action, political maneuvering, warfare, thoughts on the advantages of mediation with the enemy, decadent co-emperors, the solace of philosophy, and the spread of the plague that decimated Rome.

The truth is, Marcus Aurelius was a reluctant emperor. He preferred philosophy to politics. Nonetheless, he was well-prepared for the job: he was fast-tracked through several high-level political offices after the emperor Antoninus, his adoptive father, named Marcus his heir. (Antoninus’ predecessor, Hadrian, had also taken an interest in Marcus.)

Marcus’ stoicism directed his political decisions. Philosophy had intrigued him since he was a boy. His mother, Lucilla, was his role model:  she was gentle, calm, well-spoken, and in letters he called her his “little mother.” She directed his education: the curriculum was divided into two parts, Greek rhetoric and philosophy, the former for the sake of public speaking and the law, the latter for critical thinking and pursuing wisdom. Sometimes Marcus managed to turn a negative into a a positive. No wonder Meditations is so popular.

Marcus Aurelius was popular with the Roman people. But he had to work with, and cover for, his decadent co-emperor, Lucius Verus, a slacker who, even in wartime, loitered and partied at luxurious resorts before arriving late to the scene of war. Later, after Lucius Verus’ death, Marcus Aurelius was full of grief when he had to name his son, Commodus, co-emperor. Commodus was another party boy, very like Lucius Verus, but the people did not know that. One can only hope poor Marcus’ meditations helped him. In 190 CE, Marcus died of what was probably the plague.

Meditations is now on my bedside table. Some of his maxims are inspiring; other times I raise my eyebrows.

But he is often curiously modern.  There used to be a sweatshirt slogan: “Living well is the best revenge.”  Marcus Aurelius put better:  “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”

A Year in Books, Part 1:  Avoiding a Nervous Breakdown

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During this long, strange year, I made three rules to avoid a nervous breakdown.  First, avoid the news; second, read classics; and third, scan book reviews carefully.

I may have avoided a nervous breakdown:  it depends on your definition. I recently considered putting a SUPPORT THE LIBERAL ARTS sign on the  lawn.  I decided not to, though. It’s too wordy. It’s a bit mad!

And now for the list of some books that characterized my year of reading. I have selected one book for each month.

My Year in Books, Part I

January 2025

Elizabeth Bowen’s To the North is an exquisite novel, one of her best. Two sisters-in-law share a house to save money:  Cecilia, a vivacious widow, travels frequently, and Emmeline, who owns a travel agency, seldom travels. When worldly Cecilia introduces Emmeline to charming Markie, she does not anticipate that Emmeline will fall in love with him.  Cecilia does what she can to help starry-eyed Emmeline, but there are limits. I was especially fascinated by Bowen’s detailed description of Emmeline’s work at the travel agency. 

February 2025

Howard Sturgis’ Belchamber, published in 1904, is “the portrait of a sissy…,” writes Edmund White in the introduction to the NYRB edition. Sainty, an idealistic, sickly hero, prefers knitting and embroidery to sports. (His mother fires the governess who taught him to do needlework.) Bookish Sainty surprises everyone by becoming a superb businessman when he inherits Belchamber.  But before he takes control of the estate, he insists on finishing his classics degree.

In many ways, this reads like a Victorian novel gone rogue.  One can see the influences of George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Robert Elsmere. Sainty dreams of reforming society: he wants to build  a school for the working men in London. That doesn’t work out.  Still, he and his mother work to improve the houses of the poor. (Very Dorothea Brooke-ish. )

Charming, absorbing, funny, sad – I loved this book!

March 2025

In the introduction to the Faber Finds edition of C. H. B Kitchin’s  Mr. Balcony, Francis King says it is “both the strangest of Kitchin’s novels and one of the strangest of the twenties.” 

And it is pretty strange. The protagonist, Mr. Balcony, is a confirmed bachelor, i.e., gay, and a homespun philosopher who rejects not only the humdrum routine of “quiet lives of desperation” but deconstructs the English language.  He’s not quite a 1920s hippie, but he invites a group of people at at a party to accompany him on a trip in his yacht to Africa.

Mr. Balcony has divested himself of all his stocks and money to hire the yacht. He even persuades Aubrey, Lady Hoobrake’s witty slacker son, to quit his deadening job and refuse to waste his days doing repetitive tasks.  Hurrah!

Witty, surreal, charming – far from Kitchin’s best, but I enjoyed it.

April 2025   

Ross MacDonald’s The Underground Man.   Lew Archer,  a private detective, is the protagonist of MacDonald’s well-known classic mystery series. Lew is aloof, observant, and intuitive, a quiet man who tracks suspects with minimal fuss.  In The Underground Man (1971), set in the hills and canyons of West Los Angeles during a wildfire, he solves a string of related murders and disappearances. One body leads to another, and with the fire in the background, the drama is intense that. The style is spare and taut, the characters range from housewives to crooks, and the dialogue is quick and short.

May 2025

Ann Stafford,  who co-authored a comic novel about working in a department store, Business As Usual, is also the author of an autobiographical novel, Army without Banners. This charming book is billed as a novel, but reads more like a collection of sketches. Set in London from October 1940 to December 1941, it is based on Stafford’s experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver during the Blitz in London.   It is not what I’d call a literary book, but it is an interesting history of women volunteers in World War II. The last few chapters make it worthwhile.                    

June 2025

Rebecca Romney’s entertaining book, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend, provides a fascinating list of 18th-century women’s literature.  In this charming book, Romney talks about Jane Austen’s favorite novels and their status in the antiquarian book market. For instance, the copy of Emma Jane Austen sent to her favorite writer, Maria Edgeworth, was sold at auction for £79,250. 

By the way, Maria Edgeworth hated Emma.  Well,  I have never been  a fan of Maria Edgeworth.  But I adore Fanny Burney’s novels – and she was one of Jane’s influences, too.

A good, readable, enthusiastic book. But I have to settle for the paperbacks rather than the rare books.

Talk in Henry James’s “The Awkward Age”: The Brookenham Women Speak Forbidden Words

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Henry James’ modernist masterpiece, The Awkward Age, was published in 1899, four years after he was booed off the stage at the premiere of his play, Guy Domville. Drawing on his experience as a playwright, James purged the demons of failure by composing The Awkward Age mostly in dialogue.

In this intricate novel, the characters reveal themselves through words. They speak urbanely, indirectly, sometimes falsely:  what is too indirect and verbose for the stage works in a novel. 

At the center of the novel are Mrs. Brookenham, nicknamed Mrs. Brook, and her 20-year-old daughter Nanda.  Mrs. Brook is a beautiful, savvy, seductive woman who entertains the wittiest society people in her salon, and manages to be charming when she talks about them behind their backs. Nanda is a free spirit who has many different kinds of friends: she spends time with Tishie, an unhappy woman whose husband has left her, and Aggie, a young woman so pure and sheltered she knows nothing about sex.

 But Mrs. Brook fears sexual competition with Nanda.  When she finally decides to allow the lovely 20-year- old to go about freely in society, she pretends to her friends that Nanda is 18 instead of 20:  Mrs. Brook wants no one to know her own age, 41. 

The two most important male characters, who are on the surface almost non-sexual, are both under the Brookenham women’s spell.  Though witty, smart, charming Mr. Vanderbank (Van) is the secret lover of Mrs. Brook (it takes a while to intuit this), he also admires Nanda. When Mrs. Brook and Van discuss Nanda’s future, Mrs. Brook reveals her jealousy.  “Are you ‘really’ what they call thinking of my daughter?”

Van reminds her that since Nanda has been allowed to come and go freely, he and Mrs. Brook have “put their heads together over the question of keeping the place tidy… for the female mind.”  And Mrs. Brook says she feels inhibited by Nanda.  “…Good talk: you know – no one, dear Van, should know better – what part that plays for me.  Therefore when  one has deliberately to make one’s talk bad – !”

And then there is another unwelcome intruder in Mrs. Brooks’ salon, Mr. Longdon, a stodgy man in his fifties, who by chance met Van at a party. Mr. Longdon has come to London to research the history of Mrs. Brook’s beautiful mother, Lady Julia, who rejected his proposal of marriage decades ago. He becomes obsessed with Nanda, because she looks exactly like her grandmother.

Mr. Longdon is an innocent, but he is also judgmental.  He shows his disapproval of Mrs. Brook:  she calls him on it. He also dislikes Nanda’s manners and free talk, but, before you know it, he has given her a reading list, been her personal docent at museums, and invited her to his house in the country.  Nanda thinks he is a “beautiful” person. Perhaps she likes him because there are no boundaries in her world, and Mr. Longdon knows the rules.

Mr. Longdon is an odd fish.  He hatches a monetary scheme that will benefit Van and, he thinks, Nanda.The scheme is a disaster. But it wasn’t actually Longdon’s scheme: Mrs. Brook’s friend the Duchess suggested it.

Nothing prepares the reader for the ending.

My Favorite Fiction & Nonfiction of 2025

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I’m posting my Favorite Books of the Year list a week early.

I’ve read so many lists that I feel behind, though I’m ahead of myself. I’ve read the 100 Notable Books of the Year list, dozens of Best Books of the Year lists, some behind paywalls so I only see the top of the list, and even Books That Almost Made My List lists. On my list, all the fiction writers are dead, but only one of the four nonfiction writers is dead. I’m not quite ready for the 21st century, though we’re a quarter of the way through.

I hope you had a good Christmas and Happy Reading! I plan to read some more lists… seriously.

FAVORITE FICTION (in no particular order)

Kingfishers Catch Fire, by Rumer Godden

The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot, by Angus Wilson

The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith

Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh

The Corner That Held Them, Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope

The Underground Man, by Ross MacDonald

The Moonlight, by Joyce Cary

Cecilia, by Frances Burney

Don’t Tell Alfred, by Nancy Mitford

FAVORITE NONFICTION (in no particular order)

The AI Con, by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

The Good Word and Other Words, by Wilfrid Sheed (essays)

The Sirens Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes

Electric Spark: The Engima of Dame Muriel Spark, by Frances Wilson

Obama’s List:  A Literary President Comes through

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Every year American readers look forward to Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year list. 

A savvy politician, writer, and avid reader, Obama is the only literary president of the twenty-first century.  We have heard nothing of Biden’s, Trump’s, or George W. Bush’s reading. During Obama’s presidency he showed his passion for literature by buying books on Small Business Saturday at Politics and Prose, a D.C. bookstore, and posting his Favorite Books of the Summer and Favorite Books of the Year lists. 

Perhaps our last literary president was Jimmy Carter, a writer of novels, memoirs, and nonfiction who loved Dylan Thomas’s poetry and sent a fan letter to Erica Jong.  (The latter makes sense: he told Playboy that he lusted in his heart.) 

As usual, Obama’s Favorite Books list is inspiring. We have read three on the list: Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know, and Susan Choi’s Flashlight.

Some Obama fans are over-the-top.  Eric Anderson of the Lonesome Reader vlog gushed about Obama’s “charming” book list tradition and suggested that Obama should be a Booker Prize judge.

“Is he saying he’s going to make this happen?” someone asked from the couch.

I’m Bookered-out this time of year. A great longlist and shortlist in 2025 – but I don’t want to think about it again till next summer. Of course Eric has always been Booker-crazy – he even films the award ceremonies. He does a good job.

Would Obama make a great Booker judge?  Yes, of course.  This year Sarah Jessica Parker, next year Obama – great for the Booker Prize. Great PR!  Perhaps not that much fun for Obama, though. Roddy Doyle said they had to sift through a lot of very bad books.

We’ll see what happens.

Here is Obama’s Favorite Books of 2025 list.

  • “The Paper Girl” by Beth Macy
  • “Flashlight” by Susan Choi
  • “We the People” by Jill Lepore
  • “The Wilderness” by Angela Flournoy
  • “There Is No Place for Us” by Brian Goldstone
  • “North Sun” by Ethan Rutherford
  • “1929” by Andrew Ross Sorkin
  • “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai
  • “Dead and Alive” by Zadie Smith
  • “What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan
  • “The Look” by Michelle Obama

Going Too Far: Christmas Shopping Book List

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One year I went too far in shopping for Xmas gifts. I had a panic attack and had to sit down abruptly in the aisle of a bookshop, trying to look like the kind of person who likes to sit down in the aisle.  I wanted to lie down, but that would have been going too far – I am happy to say that people walked around me without paying attention.

FAVORITE NEW BOOKS OF THE YEAR

But I learned that it is much easier to shop if you have a list.  Below is a list of new books that might help you out of a jam and charm the readers in your life.

FAVORITE NEW LITERARY FICTION 2025

What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan

Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai

Audition, by Katie Katumura

FAVORITE NEW BOOKS IN TRANSLATION 2025

There’s No Turning Back, by Alba de Cespades

The Colony, by Annika Norlin (I loved this Swedish novel, but didn’t write about it. See Europa Editions page.)

The Brittle Age, by Di Pietrantonio

FAVORITE SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY 2025

Written on the Dark, by Guy Gavriel Kay

The River Has Roots, by Amal-El Mohtar

FAVORITE MYSTERIES 2025

The Silver Bone, by Andrey Kukov, a Ukrainian writer, nominated for The International Booker Prize 2024

The Stolen Heart, by Andrey Kukov, sequel to The Silver Bone (a new hardcover)

Lessons in Etiquette: Dissed at a Bookstore!

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As a Woman of a Certain age, I encounter two kinds of strangers: the charming, helpful kind, who grab my suitcase and heave it into the overhead compartment (unnecessary, but I’m touched and grateful); and the unmannerly kind who are incredulous that a Woman of a Certain Age can walk, talk, ride a bike, and browse at a bookshop.  

Why, I wondered, on a trip to a bookshop, was I dissed by an employee? 

Call him Mr. Game of Thrones. He has long hair, a partially braided beard, and a Tormand Giantsbane t-shirt. He used to work on the floor; now he has been promoted, or perhaps demoted, to the cafe. He used to be chatty. Now he is sullen.

I kept my order simple, because I didn’t like the vibe. After tapping repeatedly on the the decline-to-tip feature on the card machine – it is determined to get a tip – I received my drink and cookie, and Mr. GOT vanished without giving me a straw.  “Sir? Excuse me?”  No answer. So I nipped behind the counter and grabbed my own straw. 

And then I tried to find the poetry section.  The manga now occupied those shelves.   Perhaps the poetry was in the old manga section?  No. So where?

Once or twice a year, the store is mysteriously rearranged, seemingly by faeries and hobbits.  By night they move the tall bookcases of knicknacks and notebooks from the back to the front of the store where they block the excellent fiction section.  Or they move the fiction upstairs, and the nonfiction downstairs, or vice versa

I was stumped.  Where was the poetry?

All the clerks were frenziedly working as cashiers at this busy time of day.

I was on my own.

Then I glimpsed Mr. GOT, who had broken out of the cafe and was talking (conspiring) with a fellow employee, who had come from somewhere; who knows where?

I said, “Excuse me.  Could you tell me where the poetry section is?” 

Mr. GOT pointed. “Over there.” 

“I looked.  I couldn’t find it.”

He pointed again.  “Right there.”

“I don’t see it. Could you please show me?”

“Over there.”  He turned away.

And so I walked away, bemused and solitary, and finally found it on the far side of the self-help section, which would not have been my first place to look.  And, as usual, the poetry section had shrunk, this time from five to four shelves. I’m not criticizing, but couldn’t they stock a little more poetry just for the look of things? Wouldn’t the manga sales make up for the lack of poetry sales?

Anyway, I found what I was looking for, so I left, more or less, a satisfied customer.

Dissed, though!

Out of Print, Out of Sight:  Joyce Cary’s “The Moonlight”

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One of my favorite books of the year is Joyce Cary’s out-of-print novel, The Moonlight (1946).

This mordant novel chronicles the lives of three women in a dysfunctional family, two elderly sisters and their niece, who live in their family’s historic home in the country. It is also a “loam-and-love-child” novel (think Thomas Hardy’s pastoral novels and the lyrical tales of country passion by Mary Webb and Sheila Kaye-Smith), with a trace of histrionic Tennessee Williams.

Cary is nostalgic for Victorian manners but concentrates on the changes in the 20th century. He describes the psychological problems of the conflicting times:  the destructive envy, the dangers of repression, and the clash of Victorian morals with 20th-century mores.

The family issues are complicated by the issue of sex, or the lack thereof.  The two sisters, Rose Venn and Ella Venn, born in the Victorian age, are now in their seventies.  Rose is still a stuffy, gung-ho Victorian, but Ella wants to break the rules and embrace modernity.   She is determined to save their niece, Amanda, from spinsterdom and childlessness. (There is a twist: Ella’s life is not as it seems.)

Rose is the oldest sister. She has had no sex life. When she was in her twenties, she sacrificed herself to keep house for their widowed father: she broke off her engagement to an older man she loved to do so.  Later Rose martyred herself again by urging her younger sister, Bessie, to marry her ex-fiancé, whom, by the way, Bessie hated. Now Rose is an imperious invalid who still rules the household from her sickbed.

The sister who gets on our nerves, Ella, emerges as our favorite character. This 74-year-old youngest sister helps take care of Rose, but can leave her in the nurse’s care while she attends to her own affairs without interference. Most of all, she wants to free Amanda from Rose’s moral rigidity and spinsterdom.

Cary’s writing is always a delight. I was hooked from the opening paragraph.

Miss Ella Venn, aged seventy-four, coming downstairs, just before dinner, saw her niece in the arms of a young farmer called Harry Dawbarn, who had just entered the house by way of the garden.  The sight gave her such pleasure that she ran back to her room.  “Oh, thank God!” she said to herself.  She was tearful with joy.

It may not be a classic, but it’s a great read.

It Wasn’t Like That

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Elderly woman watching TV.

“No, of course not.  Nothing like that.”

Perhaps she had been watching The View, The Talk, Ellen, Oprah, Dr. Phil, or Dr. Oz.  Mom and I sat through hours, days, weeks, months, it seemed years, of  TV shows in her apartment at the Assisted Living Facility. 

She began watching afternoon talk shows after her favorite soap operas were canceled.  No more evil twins! No more torrid affairs with landscapers!  Now she was stuck with “women’s magazine problems.” It was that, or Let’s Make a Deal.

One day she presented me with a checklist.  She had kept track of the talk show guests’ financial problems, psychological conditions, and even metaphysical angst.   “Honey, do you ever have insomnia? Or anxiety?”

The checklist was adorable. And it showed she was well-organized. One of my relatives was convinced Mom had Alzheimer’s.  I kept the list to show him/her she still had her marbles.

“No, no, nothing like that,” I said. ” My only problem is an allergy to eye liner.”

“What a waste of time eyeliner is!” she said.  “Makeup is stupid.”

Neither one of us “painted,” as they say in 19th-century novels. Aside from occasional lipstick, that is. I had a 1990 sample from Elizabeth Arden.

We tried to figure out what kind of makeup the talk show hosts were wearing.  They looked great, but their guests looked disheveled and trashy. 

“I think all those guests are actors, don’t you?” Mom asked.

I laughed.  “I never thought of that!” 

Not only did she have all her marbles, she was canny.