Books that stayed with me in 2025

THIS year’s Booker Prize jury panel included Sarah Jessica Parker who said that she had to read 153 novels before selecting the winner.

- VR FEROSE

To read that many books requires a kind of monastic discipline — you must renounce most of life to inhabit someone else’s imagination. By that measure, my year was modest. I read around 25 books cover to cover, skimmed another 50, and bought almost one book every day. So, this list is not a proclamation of the “best books of 2025,” but a gentle acknowledgment of those that stayed with me.

This was a difficult year, one marked by too much travel, too many medical appointments, and a mind that often refused to linger on a sentence. Books became my refuge and my mirror as I traversed the arc of healing, and I found myself circling, almost compulsively, around mental health.