The Best Books of 2025
Our Best Books of 2025 draws from inventive authors and scrappy publishers. Has there ever been a better time to be a reader than in tumultuous 2025?
Books
Features, reviews, interviews, and lists about books including cultural commentary and history, non-fiction, literature, and more.
The ‘Shōgun’ Series Is Like a Beautiful Car with No Engine
James Clavell’s Shōgun is about profound transformation through understanding, but FX’s Shōgun is just a spectacle of surfaces with no meaningful drive.
Andy Weir in the Spirit of Jules Verne
Andy Weir, sci-fi author of The Martian, cites Asimov and Clarke as inspirations, but he’s more likely the cosmic literary incarnation of Jules Verne.
Rock of Pages: The Literary Tradition of 1980s Heavy Metal (excerpt)
In this excerpt of Rock of Pages, Jesse Kavadlo shows how heavy metal, literature, and the Cold War were bonded from the beginning.
‘Damaged People’ and the Inescapability of Intergenerational Trauma
Joe McGinniss, Jr.’s memoir, Damaged People takes on intergenerational trauma, familial curses, and true crime’s tenacious hold on art.
Lemonheads’ Evan Dando Authors His Addictive Hooks
Lemonhead Evan Dando’s long-awaited memoir is an engaging, sometimes harrowing, trip through the 1990s alternative rock boom.
Video Game Storytelling Is a World-Colliding Reinvention
Whereas the novel specializes in psychological interiority, video game storytelling allows players to experiment outwardly in world-colliding fashion.
The Beach Boys Sing for Peter Doggett
The Beach Boys’ biography Surf’s Up is Peter Doggett’s way of making sense of a clan of brothers who created some of the most dazzling pop of the 20th century.
Bob Dylan Rings in His Ears
Music theorist Steven Rings helps readers understand Bob Dylan the performer, not the lyricist or songwriter, in a welcome and indispensable addition to Dylan scholarship.
‘Things in Nature Merely Grow’ Tackles Death Differently
Yiyun Li’s beautiful and complex autobiography Things in Nature Merely Grow is not about death or loss; it is about who we become when we lose.
How Vampires Became Rock Stars
The mythical creature of ancient folklore relentlessly feeds on our creative works, and through generations, we willingly succumb to the vampire made rock star.
Dickon Edwards of the Dandy Underground Surfaces
Dandy diarist extraordinaire Dickon Edwards talks about how his diary writing is a queer, articulate, and pointed retort to the pressures of conformity.