recommended reading
volume 1: awoe, ben, jalen, juliette, noah, persimmon, sabrina, tommy, and will
In the spirit of letting things go, I deleted my Goodreads account. My favorite aspect of the platform was seeing what others are reading; I found so many wonderful reads via friends’ reviews and recommendations there. I’m determined to continue nosily browsing other people’s bookshelves, so I reached out to nine of my dear friends, all of whom have impeccable taste. Below, you can peruse their favorite reads of 2025—as well as their top picks for 2026 and their favorite independent bookstores.
Awoe Mauna-Woanya
(You can follow Awoe’s personal Substack here and his sustainability-oriented Substack here; both have book recommendations!)
My favorite book of 2025:
As the only book that brought me to tears this year, There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone holds a special place in my heart. This book is about the working homeless, exposing how poorly designed our housing systems are in the U.S. We typically measure homelessness by counting how many people are on the streets, but this misses tens of thousands who are experiencing housing insecurity invisibly. These families are housing cost burdens, surf friends and family’s couches, or are victims of cruel housing shelter lottery systems. Goldstone follows five families as they navigate these housing challenges in Atlanta. These stories moved me to tears and may leave you wondering how many people you know are struggling with housing insecurity. You may even feel fearful of how a little bad luck can lead you there yourself (trust me; all it might take is an injury and a job loss!) Housing is important to me; outside of my main work, I volunteer with housing advocacy groups in Los Angeles. Housing, where we build or not, why we build, how we build, whether we build influences every aspect of our lives whether we realize it or not. The centrality of housing to our politics, our health, and our daily lives inspired me to fight for a better system; this book stokes the flames.
The books I want to tackle this year:
I’m looking forward to reading N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. I’ve heard so many positive reviews about N.K. Jemisin and her writing so I want to experience it myself!
My favorite independent bookstore:
Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, CA
Ben Kesslen
(You can keep up with Ben on Twitter @benkesslen)
My favorite book of 2025:
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig follows two men imprisoned in Argentina, one for being gay and the other for organizing against the fascist government, and is told almost entirely in dialogue. It’s brilliant, funny, moving, and a masterclass in writing dialogue.
The books I want to tackle this year:
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, Ruth by Kate Riley, Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, The Bell by Iris Murdoch, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter, The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans.
My favorite independent bookstore(s):
Spoonbill & Sugartown Books in Williamsburg, NY.
Jalen Giovanni Jones is a writer, social media editor for Electric Literature, and editorial assistant for The Southern Review.
(You can follow Jalen’s Substack here and find him on Instagram @jalen_g_jones)
My favorite book of 2025:
God-Disease is the debut story collection of a dear friend of mine, an chang joon, but I call him David in real life. He graduated from my MFA before I arrived, so I never read his writing until picking up the indie press book.
Biases aside, I found myself genuinely challenged in the best ways by these stories. joon writes denial and avoidance with mature precision and nuance. His prose is layered and beautiful, and his careful dispersal of information feels like playing an expert-proof, next-level Rubik’s cube. The characters in these Southern Korean Gothic portraits can’t face themselves. They are plagued with terminal anxiety, self-loathing, and claustrophobic states of both mind and place. In the wake of each short story, we’re left with questions of eternal quality — about forgiveness, about trauma, and most of all, about our mortality. The stories I typically tend toward don’t go so gothic and aesthetically dark, yet this collection still came out on top as the one that burned into my mind most this year.
The books I want to tackle this year:
Aiming to tackle so much this year, oh gosh. Starting by finishing books I’ve started: The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy. I Could Be Famous by Sydney Rende. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. Monsters by Claire Dederer. Starting to read a lot more California literature, specifically Los Angeles—not sure why it took so long for me to realize that was one of my “literary lineages.” Also looking to read more Black satire.
My favorite independent bookstores:
All Powers Books. Reparations Club. Skylight Books.
Juliette Neil is a writer and translator based (for now) in New York City.
My favorite book of 2025:
I am always on the lookout for slim epics, books that will hit me hard in a single sitting. Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, which covers the 80-odd years of Robert Grainier’s life in just 116 pages, stuns with its simple, rending prose; its capacity to cover vast swaths of time while also slowing everything down; and its sharp attention to both the natural and the otherworldly. The book begins with an incident that Robert becomes a part of: the execution of a Chinese man, a fellow laborer on the Spokane International Railroad. Though it is hardly mentioned after the first chapter, we understand that the killing will continue to haunt him. Robert, in his quiet, semi-aware way, attempts to contend with this and the other violences of his life in the 20th-century American West, retreating further from his fellow humans as he does. Part elegy, part ode, Train Dreams is marked by deaths-- of trees and wilderness; of companions and acquaintances; of ways of working and living-- but also by moments of intense desire, humor, and awe:
“He [Robert] saw the moment with his wife and child as they drank Hood’s Sarsaparilla in their little cabin on a summer’s night, then another cabin he’d never remembered before, the places of his hidden childhood, a vast golden wheat field, heat shimmering above a road, arms encircling him, and a woman’s voice crooning, and all the mysteries of this life were answered.”
Embarrassingly for a fiction writer, but not for a movie-lover, I found out about this book through the recent film adaptation, which was (nearly) as wrenching as the book. In my ideal world, I would have made a day of it, which maybe you can: I’d recommend reading in the morning, then going to a theater showing in the early evening, with tissues.
The books I want to tackle this year:
To name a few: The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard; The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt; A Very Cold Winter, Fausta Cialente
My favorite independent bookstores:
Unnameable Books, on Vanderbilt Ave in Brooklyn, NY and Prince Street Books in Norfolk, VA.
Noah Grey
(You can follow Noah’s bookstagram @noahsbookshelf)
My favorite book of 2025:
It’s hard to say what my favorite book of 2025 was—I read so many books, started and paused so many, finished ones that were amazing and disappointing and lackluster and too short and too long. Between all the new titles, I managed to fit in some classics and I think that’s where I found real refuge this past year, which was one of a lot of chaos and a lot of hardship and, fortunately, a lot of joy. I found myself re-reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin, which I had not picked up since high school but had thought of off and on since my first reading as a teenager. In the re-read, I found myself picking up on so many subtleties I missed ten years ago—though it makes sense, what 16 year old is really focusing on an early feminist novel in the middle of the afternoon when they could be thinking of literally anything else? I was touched by the sharp, gut-wrenching despair that Chopin wrung out of her sentences, all of which were beautiful and light. The character is in such emotional tumult and yet her life and the world around her is adorned with beauty and wealth, down to the line level. The ocean is an ever-present symbol for Chopin in this novel, something that felt personally poignant then and now—the vastness of the water, the indifference of it to small and great human suffering... it’s incredible how timeless the book feels, though it was published in 1899 if you can imagine. There’s a lot of emotional depth, but i also found myself realizing how absolutely funny the book is, in a way I just was not able to grasp when I was reading it in order to be able to pass a test or write an essay about it later. It feels sort of ridiculous and massively important at the same time, which, honestly, feels like most of the things in my life, too. It doesn’t hurt that I am now nearly the exact same age as the main character, who I now realize was so very young.
It’s a short read that I think everyone should embark on if they haven’t, or even if they have. Haven’t you ever had a moment in your life where something becomes utterly, paradigm-shiftingly clear? And there’s no going back once you know something like that about yourself, about the world around you. We should all hope for those moments of clarity, as scary as they might be.
The book(s) I want to tackle in 2026:
An endless list! I started 2666 and really want to finish it this year, as well as The Brothers Karamazov and I would love to read some Martin Amis (for the first time!). I’ve also never read Moby Dick and I just must read that insane whale book... also Ulysses, also The Pale King... I could go on! I won’t, but I could!
Persimmon Tobing is a self-described resident literary aspirant + San Francisco Line Dance nut.
(You can find Persimmon on Instagram at @daik0ndyke)
My favorite book of 2025:
y by Marjorie Celona. This is perhaps unfair, because this was my advisor’s debut novel, but y has a lot of personal narrative importance for me. In terms of plot, its structure is twinned—we follow our main character, Shannon, from the moment she’s left at a YMCA after her birth up through to her early life, while also following her two parents up to the moment they decide to leave Shannon behind. And the way I came across it is quite silly—my friends and I were joking around in the bar after class, and as I pulled up my advisor’s book, I found the language of the opening almost unfathomably beautiful. I don’t know if it’s possible to recreate that feeling—or if it’s translatable at all, that sense of wonder and respect. I do think that if you love pretty books at all, you’ll like this one, especially, if you’re like me, you enjoy being a little bit sad.
The books I want to tackle this year:
In 2026 I would like to finally read Tell Me I’m Worthless by Allison Rumfitt. I’m bad with horror and I’m trying to make sure I have free time in case of nightmares :(.
My favorite independent bookstore:
East Bay Booksellers out in/near Rock Ridge. They had a horrible fire recently and you should support them! I miss their old space so much.
Sabrina Epstein
(You can find Sabrina on Instagram @sabrina.epstein)
My favorite book of 2025:
A stand out book when I look back on my year of reading (64 books and counting!) is Woodworking by Emily St. James. Woodworking is a story about a trans high school teacher in a conservative town who befriends a trans student. I came across the book because the author writes for the TV show Yellowjackets (which I love). When one of my closest childhood friends told me the book made her cry, I knew I had to pick it up. St. James perfectly captured the feeling of being in a conservative high school in 2016 during the rise of Trump, which is an experience that shaped my life tremendously. It’s also a story about queer community persisting despite the world trying to erase it, which is a theme that feels very relevant this year.
The books I want to tackle this year:
I want to read more poetry in 2026! I just started reading poetry this year, so I’m learning my preferences. My favorite poetry of 2025 was Kaveh Akbar and June Jordan—poetry recs welcome.
My favorite independent bookstore(s):
Villagewell Books and The Ripped Bodice in Culver City.
Tommy Kazamawa
(You can read Tommy’s Substack here)
My favorite book of 2025:
We Do Not Part by Han Kang. This was actually a gift from you, Morgan, so of course it was my favorite book from this year! I enjoyed the book’s quiet portrait of an enduring friendship as well as the examination of the atrocities committed during the Jeju uprising. If you enjoyed Han Kang’s Human Acts, I would highly recommend!
The books I want to tackle this year:
I am planning on rereading Kazuo Ishiguro’s first three novels: A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, and Remains of the Day. All of these novels are essentially the same: they involve a first person narrator who must look back into the past and confront the choices they once made. Ishiguro’s career-long exploration of memory is particularly felt in these novels.
My favorite independent bookstore:
Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights has a lovely selection of used books and they’re open very late!
Will Anderson
My favorite book of 2025:
I had a joint winner between 1993’s Such Times by Christopher Coe and 2023’s Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood by Jackie Wang. I love to read about queer desire in all its mess, and these two hit the sweet spot for me. Such Times follows a young man and his older lover over their two decades together (and mostly apart) in New York and Paris. When they both contract HIV, they have to negotiate care for each other with current partners, former flames, and Oliver Ingraham, an antiquarian who is one of the most quietly chilling villains in contemporary literature. Alien Daughters is the online diary and early writings of Jackie Wang, who became a lauded sociologist by living as a terminally online queer dirtbag at the height of the Tumblr era.
The books I want to tackle this year:
Every year, I write a list of topics I want to explore. So far, the no-brainers are Brazilian literature (because I’m learning Portuguese this year) and Québecois history in preparation for my annual summer trip (so that I can bore my friends with “fun” facts). I’m also excited to read The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus, who wrote my all-time favorite I Love Dick. I hope it’s nasty.
My favorite independent bookstores:
In D.C., where I live, it’s Capitol Hill Books, where you can get lost in the stacks and grab free wine and cheese the second Saturday of every month. My true favorites are all in France, where the sheer diversity puts almost any American bookstore to shame. L’Écume des Pages is around the corner from my grad school in Paris and closes at midnight. It’s hard to beat bookshopping after two glasses of wine on a rainy evening.
Interested in being featured for the next volume of recommended reading? Send me an email at morgan.ome@gmail.com!
recommended reading, volume 1:
There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
God-Disease by an chang joon
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
y by Marjorie Celona
Woodworking by Emily St. James
We Do Not Part by Han Kang
Such Times by Christopher Coe
Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood by Jackie Wang
omg so many faves here 💙 get on StoryGraph girlie !!