2025 - a Year in Reading and Writing

Including a historic coming-of-age comedy and a cat-and-mouse horror

In early November, I started writing an end-of-year roundup for all the things I did in 2025. But then I realised it would be about a twenty-minute read, so I have decided to break it up into sub-categories. First is what I read and what I wrote.

A Year in Reading

All art-forms have their lifespan, and books seem to be past their prime. This year, a study found that the proportion of people reading for pleasure daily in the United States has declined by more than 40 percent over the last 20 years. In the UK, only 25 percent of boys read regularly during their spare time, and 30 percent of girls.

I am nothing if not unfashionable. So as with most years, I read on average about six books a month. As well as classics that I had meant to read for many years, including ‘The Woman in White’ by Wilkie Collins, ‘The Bad Girl’ by Mario Vargas Llosa and ‘The Pearl’ by John Steinbeck, I tried to keep on top of publishing trends.

I binged some of the latest genre fiction. ‘The Tenant’ by Freida McFadden and ‘Everyone in the Group Chat Dies’ by LM Chilton both took less than 24 hours to devour. But they were superficial to think about, and the line-by-line writing contained few flourishes.

The handful of contemporary books that were both suspenseful and substantive were published as literary fiction. The best novels I read were ‘Old Soul’ by Susan Barker, ‘Tiananmen Square’ by Lai Wen, and ‘The Gentleman from Peru’ by André Aciman.

‘Old Soul’ is a continent-spanning cat-and-mouse horror. The antagonist, in her quest for immortality, leaves a trail of murder victims around the world because ‘part of her wants to stick around out of sheer voyeurism to see how far the conquering species will fall’. As with Barker’s previous novels, afterlife and ancestry are a constant theme. One chess game is described as being played ‘beneath the watchful gaze of older generations.’ I reviewed it for Asian Cha Journal.

‘Tiananmen Square’ is over 500 pages long and is mostly a coming-of-age comedy set in post-Mao China as the People’s Republic began its economic miracle. Lai Wen is the pen-name of a Chinese author based in the UK, and having experienced the 1989 massacre, the account of it is all the more harrowing because we have spent hundreds of pages getting to know the characters involved.

Standout quotes include: “As I say, in China, you may not be particularly interested in politics. But politics sure has an interest in you.” And “life’s inevitable corollary; that imagination would always be papered over by propaganda, that the poets and peacemakers would always be stamped out by those who had force on their side.”

In ‘The Gentleman from Peru’, a group of tourists finds themselves marooned at a luxury hotel in Italy. They encounter a mysterious stranger who is full of life-affirming wisdom. Standout quotes include ‘Whoever bruised us left a mark that stays there forever. Do we ever recover from our parents? Or from the cruelty of our first arithmetic teacher? Or from someone loved in adolescence?’.

It is well under 200 pages and can be read in one sitting. Other standout quotes include “Any idea what a privilege it was to have you for two lunches, to walk with you in the sun, to swim with you and let myself dream I was a young man again, eating fruit on the rock by the old lighthouse that isn’t even there any longer?”

If recent awards shortlists are anything to go by, literary fiction is suffering from a readability shortage (most recent Booker Prize winners have bored me to tears). But these three novels are evidence to the contrary.

What I Wrote

A mediocre plumber, or lawyer, or locksmith has their uses. A mediocre writer does not. That is why I am so reluctant to commit to any major writing projects. Publishing a book is one of the most deflating experiences a human can go through.

Still, this year I wrote several essays. Subjects included the history of music, comedy, musical comedy the best novels in history, and the best non-fiction books I have ever read.

I wish I was working toward some grand finished product, a magnum opus. But these things just fall flat when I attempt them.

Several people I know published books this year. All have had positive reviews and all have had at least one media appearance because of their book. But even if they had had rave write-ups in The London Review of Books and sold the film rights, I still wouldn’t get envious, knowing how much writing a book takes out of a person.

Poem of the Year

As a musician and comedian, it is still technically possible that I will be ‘successful’. In practice, success would mean winning the admiration of thousands of nut-jobs who I’ve never met. Eek!

Poetry is another art-form that is long passed the stage where it can provide wealth or social status for its makers, but that is partly why I like it. Poetry is one of the main sources of inspiration I go to, so the poem I will remember this year by is ‘I’m Nobody’ by Emily Dickinson. Here is an excerpt:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!