favorites

of the first half of 2025

Jul 08, 2025

‘Favorite’ is obviously a completely subjective descriptor so I’m trying to figure out why these five books1 get that label. I’m usually, at least at a basic level, interested in most of the books2 I pick up. But I was invested in these five. They had layered, even ‘unlikeable’3 characters whose stories were grounded in reality and tangible emotions. All of these books were shrewd and canny, treating conflicts and characters with nuance, heart and humor while acknowledging the gray, absurd messiness of life, love, relationships and just being human. All were amusing and gripping and a few made me cry, which is hard to do! Interestingly, to me at least, these are all literary fiction with one having a dystopian bent. Wonder where my romances, my fantasies, my non-fic fascinations were this year… perhaps those favorites are waiting for me in the next half of 2025. I guess I’ll stay tuned!

Put on your favorite clothes, grab your favorite beverage and settle down in your favorite reading nook as you find a new favorite4 book in one of these.

BRING THE HOUSE DOWN by Charlotte Runcie

During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a woman wakes up to realize that her one night stand is the critic who just eviscerated her performance in print. She decides to incorporate this turn of events into the rest of her show’s run but that is only part of the story.

Stay tuned for more about this one on an upcoming shelf!

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang

from the hungry girl shelf

Not long after a toxic smog has spread over most of the planet, killing off entire ecosystems of plants and animals, a desperate5chef takes a job cooking at the mountaintop retreat of a reclusive billionaire and his genius daughter.6This ‘colony’ has access to clean air, unimagined technology and the most extravagant ingredients the old world had to offer. As she uses these precious items to cook meals for the elite, they begin to slowly re-awaken her hunger, her creativity and her desire that has laid dormant since long before the smog arrived. As our nameless protagonist gets further enmeshed in the lives of her clients and her luxurious, mind bending surroundings she cannot completely forget the world below and when the truth of the colony is revealed, she is forced to choose between her appetites.

This is a beautiful feast of a book. The writing is filling, lush and decadent as our chef works through the loss of her ambition, drive and appetite. Upon arriving on the mountain she “felt myself to be a void, a null space, a set of hands for hire” and I was invested in every step of her journey. Thrown immediately into a horrific setting with no fresh produce, no flavor, no color we as readers are as desperate as the chef is to escape to a mountain oasis filled with abundant, vibrant life, energy and taste. Soon though, I (like our chef) became wide-eyed and sickened by the greedy, ever consuming nature of the entitled clients and the waste that would be repellent even without a worldwide famine. I love a first person narrator and she contains mysterious layers and many contradictions as she eventually realizes her hunger and just what she is actually hungry for.7She’s a detailed, well described and relatable narrator with terrific bite, but not without her complications and I love a story about the self: its loss and erasure and its discovery.

The story is filled with food of course, but also love, desire, sex and the erotic, the somatic. Filled with poetic sometimes even mythic language, we are inundated with textures and tastes, glorious meals8 and bizarre Jurassic park levels of science and technology which all served character and plot. This character driven story also had light sci-fi qualities and there’s an ominous sense of slowly growing dread throughout as we realize that this ‘life’ cannot possibly be sustainable and observe the flat, unsettling nature of perfection vs the messy, creative, evolving ingenuity that is life.

Instead of section titles there are black and white thumbnail images which were unique and thought provoking. The sentences are skillfully and lovingly prepared, visceral, electric and oh so dreamy. This book has the sort of transportive writing that makes you experience the world differently, that inspires a more mindful, appreciation of the cheap and the luxe, of the delicious, alchemical, bittersweet dish that is life. I loved this and felt very moved while reading; it dug into my chest and sat down. I enjoyed the poignant ending and the author’s perfect closer of an Acknowledgements section. A delightfully idiosyncratic list, don’t skip it!

That day, I knew. A world was gone. Goodbye to all that, to the person I'd been, to she who'd abandoned, half-eaten, a plate of carnitas under blaze of California sun. It wasn't grease I missed so much as the revelation of lime. Waiting on grief, I met hunger. For radish, radicchio, the bitter green of endive.

MAGGIE or A MAN AND A WOMAN WALK INTO A BAR by Katie Yee

from the bite size shelf

While on a dinner date a woman9learns from her husband that he’s been having an affair with Maggie and is now planning a life with her, breaking up their family of four. A short while later the woman is diagnosed with breast cancer and names her tumor, this second life disruptor, Maggie. And so begins a story about a woman dealing with these monumental life shifts using her two Maggies as tools for self-introspection and interrogation.

This is one of my favorites of the year so far. Initially it felt a bit “Heartburn"esque, but it was quickly clear that it is much more internal, earnest and heartfelt than that. Our narrator’s voice is bewildered, funny and incisive though not snarky and I found the writing to be beautiful and piercing10. I loved how the protagonist decided to weave the Chinese folktales11of her own youth into her children’s life and utterly enjoyed their reactions and various interpretations.12I was also thrilled by all of the places and ways the narrator chooses to extrapolate meaning from: light, children, her own dead mother, folk tales, dreams, waiting room characters, kid’s games and more. A very inspiring and sticky exercise I want to practice myself.

Hide-and-seek: the pleasure in being sought. Also, the fear. The horror in being found. The way the game teaches you to be invisible. To fold yourself into something. My kids contorted to occupy the smallest possible space. (Once, we found my daughter inside the cold hollow of the fireplace, curled up on the metal rack like a sacrifice.)

Hot and cold: like hide-and-seek with pawns and hints. The ability to tell someone to go farther or come closer by degrees. The dangling of communication, a way to control the actions of others.

Duck, duck, goose: sitting in a circle, waiting for someone to tell you who you are.

Tag: you're it. Someone has to carry the curse. (It's the way the diagnosis feels.)

I Spy: the fun of defamiliarization! It's talking around. It's not naming the thing.

Red Rover: a game about celebrating the strength of someone who can break a bond.

Candy Land: Do you remember the first time you got a "go backward" card in Candy Land? Who knew that was even an option? The shock of non-linearity.

This novella was weighty, vibrantly alive and deeply affecting in a lovely, everyday sort of way. It is formatted in fragments that sort of jump around a bit but I wasn’t bothered by that.13All these vignettes were important, substantially explored and well placed to raise the stakes, heighten the tension and deepen the emotion even in a short amount of words. There were a few times I got frustrated because I craved a more detailed conversation or experience to sink my teeth into but once I accepted it was not that sort of book, I could wholly appreciate and love it for what for chose to share.

But when we hang up, I sink down on the kitchen floor. Her pity does something to me. The final blow to the hinges barricading my sorrow.

The last time I would set foot in that summer house. The last time I would dry my face with a sun-warmed beach towel and steal a spritz of that sweet, earthy perfume that smelled sort of like tomatoes, which Mrs. Moore kept in her upstairs bathroom. The last time I would wake to waves or see the daylight slip away from the guest room. Are you ever nostalgic for the way the light touches a place? The way the sun holds on to a room? Could you mourn the loss of that arresting sight—the way the light fingerpaints the wall with colors of its own, playful and daring and unselfconscious? The sunset throwing colors like a child before lights-out. One final burst of what's inside.

The last time I would see Noah's hair thick with sea salt, a little wavy like his father's. The last time we four as a family would collect cool-looking rocks or hunt for sea glass. Now they'd just hand me pebbles as a token souvenir from their stay, and that day on the beach would be the last time that a rock looked like magic; without the wink of the sun and the sea around it, it would just look like a hunk of earth in my home.

Did you know I do more than read and tell you what to read? I also edit podcasts and fiction. If you’ve got an audio project that needs a skilled ear or a fiction manuscript that needs a detailedeye, send me a message, or leave me a comment.

KAKIGORI SUMMER by Emily Itami

Three sisters reunite at their childhood home to confront their past, escape their present and hope for their future. Includes a very ornery grandmother, a precocious kid and mouthwatering meal descriptions.

Stay tuned for more about this one on an upcoming shelf!

SORROW AND BLISS by Meg Mason

from the cackle and cry shelf

Ever since she was a teenager, Martha has had times of incredible highs and devastating lows without any clear understanding why. No doctor can explain why there are days she weeps unceasingly, is in too much pain to leave bed or reacts in explosive anger at those she loves and other days when she’s adept, lively and charming. When her husband Patrick moves out after throwing her 40th birthday party, she moves back into her childhood home with her parents, who are of questionable sanity themselves. Back in the place that made her, Martha must confront her past, her family and her own actions to see if she can make a different sort of future.

Though a fairly simple story, I found this to be deeply stirring, rich with feeling and I laughed aloud by the third page. It’s got one of my favorite things— a complicated, voice-y protagonist who is ‘unpleasantly superior’ and ‘aggressively conceptual.’ It’s formatted in addictive vignettes that give it a staccato energy and though the voice is matter-of-fact, acerbic and glib, I was often incredibly moved by the writing and the well of emotion it contained. I teared up and guffawed on the same page multiple times. Long sentences with multiple internal asides, qualifiers and excessive context created a gossipy, dry, confessional air and the specificity and detail work really packed a punch. There’s also a puzzle like quality that felt engaging and full of tension, encouraging the reader to take apart information and put it back together again and again as more gets revealed which resulted in evolving layers of understanding. The last third is especially emotionally brutal and, while still funny, it got quite rough to read at times as the humor made way for intensity.

I loved the supporting characters, especially the sister, and Patrick and Martha’s connection and trials gripped me. I stayed up until 2:37 am reading this but decided to leave the final 10 pages for the morning because I wanted to savor them. I was worried but the ending was terrific- it was realistic but still subsumed with hope and I felt a roller coaster of emotion14by the end. This book felt so human as it reveled in its contradictions. It was ugly and beautiful, sweet and horrifying, hysterical and devastating all tangled up together which means it was titled perfectly. Don’t miss the author’s note at the end which explains a very specific choice she made in the book which I think was quite shrewd.15 I also loved the Ralph Ellison quote that frames the whole thing: “The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.”16 Much to think about.

I stopped and looked at them [gratitude journals] in search of the worst one to buy and send to my sister. Although there were so many individual injunctions on their mint and glittery lilac and butter yellow covers—to live and love and laugh and shine and thrive and breathe-considered together, it seemed like humanity's highest imperative is to follow its dreams.

I chose one that was inexplicably thick, with twice as many pages as its shelf mates, because it said, on the cover, You Should Just Go For It. It was meant to sound carefree and motivating but for want of an exclamation mark, it came across as weary and resigned. You Should Just Go For It. Everyone Is Sick Of Hearing You Talk About It. Follow Your Dreams. The Stakes Could Not Be Lower.