Reading Rewind: 2025

Review of books read, books reread, and books thrown from my moving car.

I made it a goal in 2025 to read new fiction, “trending” titles, and more books by women, particularly young women coming out of MFA programs.

I will not be doing that again in 2026.

❦: book was written by someone with an MFA in Creative Writing
✓: listened to on audiobook
☂︎: highly recommend

BEST

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga ❦ ☂︎

Novel about a sad love story in post-Spring Cairo

Human Sacrifices by María Fernanda Ampuero ☂︎

Read this gothic short story collection in two days

GOOD

Chainsaw Man, Vol. 1-11 (Part 1) by Tatsuki Fujimoto ☂︎

My Work by Olga Ravn ☂︎

The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov ☂︎

The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille

Didion & Babitz By Lili Anolik ☂︎

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai: I read Junji Ito’s manga a few years ago and didn’t realize that it’s normal in Japan for retellings of stories to add material and make the story “new”; I think it’s ridiculously inappropriate to fabricate parts of someone’s biography; my attitude towards Dazai completely changed after reading his own version

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector: My first Lispector

Cathedral by Raymond Carver: My first Carver ☂︎

The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski: Wanted to read something shorter before tackling House of Leaves, great Halloween read

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace ❦

Bough Down by Karen Green: Followed up my first reading of Infinite Jest with the poetry collection his widow made, it was very good

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty and Beauty’s Punishment by Anne Rice: I tried to buy this from a rare, out-of-print and collectible book store when I was twelve and my dad said no

Beethoven by Jan Swafford ✓

BAD

The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman: First place runner up worst book of the year ❦

Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman: Second place runner up worst book of the year ❦

The Vegetarian by Han Kang: Loved the first two parts, third act ruined it

Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird by Agustina Bazterrica: Booktok strikes again, deplorable shit, never reading anything by her again

The Girls by Emma Cline: It’s hard to believe anyone actually enjoys Charles Manson fanfiction, incredibly stupid, not even a good as a period piece ✓❦

Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison: Making shit up just to sell books to writers is a social harm

WORST

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors: Possibly the worst book I’ve ever read in my fucking life, I finished it out of spite ✓❦

Here’s my review:

The Book of Ayn has been dethroned: Blue Sisters is the worst book I read in 2025. Beans on toast with a side of cold hotdog water and shame.

The bones of this book mimic a few of the defining features of Infinite Jest: a book about same-sex sibling relationships, professional sports, and substance abuse/sobriety. This thought occurred to me about ten seconds before Mellors dropped a DFW quote in the middle of the story. Yikes. But Blue Sisters is NOT Infinite Jest for Tumblr girls—it is a hollow, rambling fantasy (and I mean fantasy in the worst way, to the point of absurdism, in a book meant to be realism) of a woman who fancied she could write a book because she thinks being hot and fucked-up is the primary criteria for having something interesting to say. “I am a hot mess, therefore I am.” This is an objectively hilarious thing to think as a British woman with no eyebrows.

The first tip-off that the book was going to be 100% balls: pages and pages of surface-level character description, which continued throughout the entire text regarding characters that pop in and out of the story like scare actors in a haunted house. Let me just say that I am dog-tired of reading what people look like and what they’re wearing—especially when written by an unimaginative, shallow, upper-crust normie. The sisters get to blame their drug addictions on their alcoholic father. Maybe Mellors can blame her obsession with appearances on her advertising executive father. It’s as boring as an advertisement. Everyone is hot, everyone is cool, everyone is fuckable.

And speaking of fuck: the sex scenes were so canned and bloodless, Mellors should consider writing smut for Hallmark. Mellors is one of many recent women writers* who are very anxious to let the reader know that they can achieve orgasm and are willing to go into great detail of the many ways that they do in order that the reader is absolutely sure it isn’t performative. The only problem: it is a performance AND I don’t care. I read an article the other day about how photography changed trends regarding description in literature; suddenly, rich, in-depth images were no longer entertaining, because people were seeing more things outside of their surroundings through photography. They didn’t need the long descriptions of fabric or furniture or machinery or kinds of animals, because people already knew what it was and what it looked like by knowing its name. Arguably, the point of description is to explain something that might be unfamiliar to the reader OR to assist in immersion. Who, in 2025, is unfamiliar with the female orgasm? And who wants to be immersed in vicarious sex in a book about… family.

The opposite of arousal is cringe. It is cringe when someone who writes at a PG-13 level tries to be adult for a few pages. Please, for the love of God, Mellors, forgo your pretensions towards literature and write straight-to-Kindle Amazon smut. In over one thousand pages DFW never mentions “fluids” and he’s one of the greats, possibly for that reason alone.

But wait, there’s more! One of the characters is sexually assaulted by a woman while coming out of a black-out and it is literally never mentioned again? Ok? When two characters finally get together, Mellors curdles the moment by writing, AND I QUOTE, “snuffling towards each other like animals in the dark.” Snuffling? Like animals? You’re a writer? Snuffling is what a person does when they have a nose full of mucus. I thought I was going to be sick. But the worst offense: one of the seen-once-and-never-again characters is a Black poet described as “unconventional looking” and “ugly”! Pause. This is written about one of only two Black characters in the entire book and he is the ONLY character in the entire book who is described as NOT gorgeous or handsome. Now understand that this character was without a doubt based on a real person Mellors knows in London. There is an article in the Guardian about the accusation with a statement from the man and, of course, none from Mellors or her publisher. Bad girl, Mellors. Bad girl. Racist. (Sorry, I’m just trying to put it in words she’s understand.)

Blue Sisters is a corny, gauche recovery book that treats the twelve step program like a rocket ship to sobriety which is a dangerous and stupid way to approach the desire to get clean. Although Mellors herself has eight years of sobriety, the narrative felt at times like a reminiscence of active addiction. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone, be it the puddles on the sheets, the racism, the absolute inanity of thinking people will be interested in a story just because the characters (whom you have to imagine) are hot.

I can’t let go without mention: one of the main characters is named Bonnie Blue. This book was published less than a year before the “real” Bonnie Blue did her thousand-man stunt on OnlyFans. One star for accidentally naming one of the main characters after a porn star, that shit is hilarious. Oh and it ends with the birth of a child named after their dead sister. A happy ending, hooray! Cue the kazoos.

NOT GOOD OR BAD

Bluets by Maggie Nelson: I can’t stand Maggie Nelson but there are some bars

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty: Honestly it is bad, but the writing is pretty and I have a soft spot for the main character, a teenager who wants to be a saint ❦

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata: Autism-based entertainment always sucks

My First Book by Honor Levy: This book will be much less hated over time, arguably important from an anthropological standpoint, just not yet or for me

Lit by Mary Karr: Had to read the blueprint muse behind DFW’s Madame Psychosis

DID NOT FINISH

Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress: Recommended by Ottessa Moshfegh, Angress was allegedly one of her only students who was a “good writer”, if good writer means “person who performs the action of writing” then yeah I guess so, wretched crap ✓❦

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami: Too stressful to read about a surveillance state with mind-reading technology at this time, writing was so-so

Down the Drain by Julia Fox: Wasn’t the vibe when I picked it up, maybe I’ll revisit it

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki: I could only find an e-book and I just couldn’t stare at my phone like that, want to revisit her work at some point

Clown Girl by Monika Drake: Same situation as Suzuki ❦

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado: Recommended to me by a friend, I thought it was a novel, too stupid to put up with ❦

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler: Really fucking stupid, didn’t even make it to chapter two ❦

My Mother: Demonology by Kathy Acker: Didn’t have the time to finish and couldn’t renew the loan but I will be revisiting it in 2026 ☂︎

Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa: Silly, boring, lukewarm, mid as fuck ✓

Dearest Father by Franz Kafka: Started reading it on Father’s Day and had a panic attack, will be revisiting in 2026

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: Gave up after the first ten pages because the writing was so fucking bad ❦

The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector: Slowly reading this one ☂︎

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: Slowly reading this one

The Trouble With Being Born by Emil Cioran: Slowly reading this one ☂︎

90 Day Novel by Alan Watt: Gave up on the program around day thirty-something but I’ll return at some point

REREAD

Tao Te Ching ☂︎

Macbeth by Bill Shakespeare

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh: Wanted to revisit this one to see if I still hated it as much as I did the first time, it’s grown on me a bit ✓❦

Sections of Will to Power, Gay Science, Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche ☂︎

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Anyway, happy new year! Cue the kazoos.