FAVE RAVES OF 2025 - Novels, Non-Fiction & Music

Books - Novels

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
By far my favourite novel of 2025. hilarious, poignant, bitchy and just so exquisitely written. This recounting of an affair that was inevitably going to end badly, does indeed not spare us the consequences to an almost Greek level of tragedy. 

The Factory -Hiroko Oyamada
A short novella, that is so carefully and succinctly written. It's a book about alienation from meaningful work. Recounting how one person gets drawn into employment in the ubiquitous Factory. But quickly discovers no one appears to know what the companies economic mission is, nor what it is they are making.

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong
A debut novel that has only grown in my admiration since reading it. A man is writing home to his mother to tell her about his life, telling her who he truly is. Fully knowing his Mother will never be able to read or understand his words. The second half is so gorgeously written, as though Vuong suddenly found his authorial voice.

Trust - Hernan Diaz
A classic book about unreliable narrators, what makes them unreliable, the prejudices and assumptions we all make when reading an account of someone's life. What makes us believe a story, what is it that makes us place our trust in one account, but not the other?

Butter- Asako Yuzuki
A female journalist decides she needs to make a name for herself, and chooses to write an article about an infamous female serial killer who is obsessed with butter, allegedly murdering her victims by feeding them extremely rich food. Part investigative thriller, part psychological study of manipulation and discovering who you really are.

Books -Non  Fiction

Fractured - Jon Yates
Accessible whilst simultaneously a gently challenging book, this is actually much more optimistic about how we can rebuild a sense of agency and community in our divided world. How actively engaging with People Who Are Not Like us is good for us and society more broadly.

The Roots of Goodness - Dogen / Uchiyama Roshi
I studied this originally as part of an online three month retreat programme. As ever the combination of Dogen, with Uchiyama's clear, pithy and at times pokey exposition, is a priceless combination. 

Heresy - Catherine Nixey
A fascinating run through of how the religiously unorthodox were systematically erased by Christianity. It also dispels a few assertions about the supposed uniqueness of the Christian story. Sons of God being an extremely common phenomena, apparently.

One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This - Omar El Akkad
A blisteringly passionate condemnation of Western moral attitudes and ways of forgetting its own duplicity in world atrocities. Obviously with the genocide in Gaza very much in mind, as just another example. Both a sobering and deliberately confronting book to read.

Trading Game - Gary Stevenson
Nowadays, he is a bit of a podcast sensation and pioneer in calling for a wealth tax. This autobiography focuses on his working class origins and time as an extraordinarily successful city trader. His descriptions of the various misfits and ethically dubious characters occupying a trading floor, is alternately hilarious and slightly concerning.

Music - Albums

Lux - Rosalia
From the first time I heard this album, I've become a man obsessed. You want to intravenously imbibe it constantly, but simultaneously treat it as though it were this rare precious object forged out of four carat gold, that needs to be paused and savoured. It is by turns so ravishingly sung and full of beauty, but then profoundly startles you with how shocking it can also be. Probably the most adventurous album of recent years, this is going to be a hard thing to follow up. 

Iconoclasts - Anna Von Hausswolff
A strangely daunting yet impactful album, Iconoclasts has this febrile gargantuan feel to it, the sheer size of its soundscape hits you like huge slabs of concrete. You have to be in the right mood for this I find, but when you are it is utterly magnificently dark baroque. 

Tarkus - Emerson Lake & Palmer
Seventies progressive 'supergroups' like ELP fast became highly pretentious behemoths. But in the early days of 1971 the opening twenty minutes plus of Tarkus is the most powerful piece of driven tour de force music Progressive Rock ever produced. Lyrics, however, were never their strongpoint.

Mad! & Madder! - Sparks
The album Mad! for me was unfortunately a patchy affair, some top notch brillant Sparks spoiled by rather weak sentimental whimsy. Madder! their first EP, is a more cohesive quartet of songs, Fantasise and They in particular are classic deceptively edgy Sparks and I love them to bits.  

To Each - A Certain Ratio
Albums find their moment with me. I never quite got into To Each in the 80's. But I rediscovered the album this year, and its rarely off my playlist. Recorded in 1981, it has this soured atmospheric mood, a mixture of oppressive foreboding and darkly echoing underground tunnels of industrial funk. A soundscape that ACR were the pioneers of.