Have you gotten a bingo yet? I’m referring to the IJN’s 5786 reading challenge, currently underway. I’ve knocked off three squares, so I still have a long way to go. Fortunately, the challenge follows the Hebrew calendar, so there’s still plenty of time to complete — or even begin — the reading challenge.
Books are on the brain because with the end of December on the horizon, it’s time for my best books of the year list. I had a lot to choose from — 106 completed books in 2025!
Here we go!
Christian Kracht’s Eurotrash is autobiographical literary fictionthat gets into European identity, German guilt and Swiss privilege, but also succeeds in telling a family story. The metaphor may be a little on the nose, but Kracht’s observations are spot on. I found myself shouting “Amen” during a particular passage about never-ending road construction in Zurich.
Thrillers accounted for at least half of what I read this year, so I allowed myself two selections.
The Quiet Librarian by Allen Eskens is more of a literary thriller told in dual storylines, during the Bosnia war and in present-day Minnesota. The reader is thrust into the ethno-religious conflicts that exploded in the former Yugoslavia and still haunt and threaten the main character, Hana.
In her extremely atmospheric The Surf House, Lucy Clarke transports the reader to the Morocco coast for a disappearance mystery. The descriptions of a small hotel and its beautiful breakfasts had me considering Morocco for my next vacation.
Most unexpected was Unorthodox Love by Heidi Chertok, a romance set in Minneapolis about an observant Jewish woman looking for her match. Unexpected because I found the book in a small bookshop in a small town in northern England! Like most romances it’s not especially realistic, but Penina is a character you can’t help but root for.
Unintentionally, I read a lot of debut authors this year. One of the best was Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild, about surrogacy and parenthood. It’s almost impossible to describe this book without giving it away and though there was some unevenness in the characterizations and plot, the writing alone makes it a certainty that I’ll pick up her next book.
I managed a bit more non-fiction this year, including a biography of Garth Williams, one of my favorite children’s books illustrators, and a memoir by Michael J. Fox about filming “Back to the Future.”
The latter, Future Boy, was one of only two five-star reads for me this year. The other was Whale Fall, a novel set on a remote island off the Welsh coast. Elizabeth O’Connor’s evocative debut explores colonization as well as the fetishization of the “simple” life and the exotification that can permeate anthropology and other academic studies of people and cultures.
What were your best 2025 reads? I’d love to get your tips: shana@ijn.com.
