2025 was a beautiful and fulfilling year of reading; so many great titles to devour. I read thirty books in twelve months this year, which honestly feels amazing. I am truly grateful for all the writers out there who toil over their keyboards and notepads to bring new worlds to our nightstands.
Already, beneath him, through the golden evening, the shadowed hills had dug their furrows and the plains grew luminous with long-enduring light.
– Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Smooth as butter. I love the beauty of imagery in the hands of talented writers. What is better?
Think of all the wonderful tales that have been told, and well told, which you will never know. – Painting as a Pastime by Winston S. Churchill
This thought keeps me up at night. I hope I will at least have read most of the best books of my lifetime! And I will certainly never stop trying. My favorite books this year were:
My Dear Hamilton: a novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie. {Loved, Loved, Loved this thoroughly researched and richly detailed historical fiction novel. If you care about anything at all about history, strong women, empathy, love, heartbreak, bonds that cannot be broken, read this. I was transported to the mid-1700s and to the extraordinary life story of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, as told from her perspective as Alexander Hamilton’s wife. Living in New England provided an extra layer of delicious reality as I found myself geographically entwined, traveling in upstate New York, Western Massachusetts, and Rhode Island as I turned each page.}
The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See. {Historical fiction set on the Korean island of Jeju in the early to mid-1900s. The main characters grew up diving in the sea with their village’s all-female group called haenyeo. Through motherhood, bonding, devastation, horror, and decades of Japanese colonialism, World War II, and the Korean War, these women remained fierce as the sole breadwinners for their families. Absolutely beautifully written, and I learned about a part of the world I knew little of before.}
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. {Holy cow, Frozen River. A dramatic, fast-turning historical fiction set in Maine in 1789. This book was love at first sentence. Based on real diary entries by midwife Martha Ballard, a gripping, captivating story unfolds. This was my most gifted book of 2025! So wonderful. NPR Book of the Year.}
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. {Masterful historical fiction writer James McBride pulls from his family history to tell the story of a Black and Jewish migrant community in Pennsylvania during the 1920s. Community crossed with adversity, crossed with compassion, racism, family, love, and… a murder. What McBride brings to this book is truly amazing. Winner, 2024 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.}
James by Percival Everett. {A brilliant re-telling of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of the enslaved character we all knew as “Jim.” James is a profound and essential new literary work; Twain’s books should be read/studied only alongside it. Pulitzer Prize Winner, 2025, and National Book Award Winner, 2024.}
This year I am going to add another category other than just, “favorite.” Some books I read were impactful, meaningful, and/or relevant, and I am better off for having read them. In this “other” category are:
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen by Camille Laurens. {There are fewer than 40 known renditions of Degas’ Little Dancer, of which I have seen five: in Copenhagen (The Glyptotek), Paris (Musée d’Orsay), Washington, D.C. (the original at The National Gallery), New York (The MET), and most recently at the Clark Museum in Williamstown, MA. I had always thought Degas’ dancers were an artistic representation of the lucky and wealthy children in Paris who were gifted dance lessons. In contrast, Degas created his dancer series to shed light on the mistreatment of the city’s poorest. The young dancers were “street urchins” who were paid a pittance to dance for the wealthy, and many were forced into prostitution. Degas’ social defiance illustrates the history of the abuses of child labor in Paris in the 1880s, and the power of art to make a difference.}
(The image, above right, is a watercolor by William Heydt called, Texting in the Degas Room at the Met.)
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Defying all odds, Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, was one of the most powerful women in New York in the early 1900s as she researched and created one of the largest personal libraries we know of. An incredible (true) story: da Costa Greene was a woman of color who had to hide her identity, living a double life, rebelling against her family and personal history to keep her job. We visited the JP Morgan Library in September, and it is extraordinary. Highly recommend. }
(Photos from the beautiful JP Morgan Library.)
The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century by Moisés Naím.{ Naím surveys the history of autocratic leaders worldwide. The book lays out in plain speak a formula for autocrats and dictators, and once you learn this predictable and effective method, you can’t unknow it. Naím’s ‘3Ps’ of note are: Populism, Polarization, and Post-truth; autocrats are defined as political leaders who gain power through a reasonably democratic means and then set out to dismantle the checks on executive power for their own personal gain. Enlightening.}
Below is the complete list of books I read in 2025:
House of Light (poetry) by Mary Oliver; The Very Best Christmas Tree by B.A. King; A History in Stories by Eugene L. Schuler; Sargassa by Sophie Burnham; Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver; James by Percival Everett; Gmorning, Gnight! by Lin-Manuel Miranda; Why I Wake Early (poetry) by Mary Oliver; Blue Horses (poetry) by Mary Oliver; My Dear Hamilton: a novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie; Ferdinand Life: How we Lived and Ate by Phyllis A Trout Johanneman; Little Dancer Aged Fourteen by Camille Laurens; Still Life by Sarah Winman; Funny Story by Emily Henry; A Room with a View by E. M. Forster; The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See; The Art Thief by Michael Finkel; The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray; The Things We Do for Love by Kristin Hannah; Good Material by Dolly Alderton; All The Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley; Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall; The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon; The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese; Oil and Marble by Stephanie Storey; The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century by Moisés Naím; The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey; The Sports Gene by David Epstein; The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride; Christmas Poems (a compilation).
Happy Reading, and Happy New Year, from our library to yours,
– L
Clicks 4u:
The Clark Museum, Williamstown, MA
The Glyptoteket Art Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark
Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France
The National Gallery, Washington, DC
The Metropolitan Museum, New York
©2026 Lynne Rey
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