Quick Lit: Favorite Reads of 2025

If you read here regularly you’ve seen these before, but now they’re all gathered in one place. These seven books were my favorite reads of the year, including one short story collection (with commentary), one graphic novel, two regular-ol’ novels, one middle grade, one sci fi and one speculative. I’m curious if you’ve read them too!

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

My book club reads a Russian novel every January. This year our choice was a little different. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is collection of short stories with commentary from novelist and MFA teacher George Saunders. WOW. I loved it.

A Swim is part literature class, part book club discussion, part writing critique group. Saunders gives his thoughts — sometimes page by page — on seven different short stories. These are stories he’s taught his Syracuse MFA students for twenty years. He says, “These stories I teach [in the class] are constantly with me as I work, the high bar against which I measure my own. I want my stories to move and change someone as much as these Russian stories have moved and changed me.”

This book was so satisfying. I’m sure you’ll see various quotes from the book in future Why We Read and On Writing posts.

Watership Down: The Graphic Novel by Richard Adams; adapted and illustrated by James Sturm and Joe Sutphin

From the publisher: “A beautiful and faithful graphic novel adaptation of Richard Adams’s beloved story of a group of rabbits on an epic journey in search of home.”

Watership Down is my family’s novel. It’s my husband’s favorite book that I ended up reading during exam week my freshman year in college because he liked it so much. (Anyone else save a special book for an end-of-studying reward?) Dan read it to our boys when they were little. (Hazel and Fiver and Bigwig and the others became part of their regular play). All of us have read the book multiple times. I’ve even written a book that was influenced by Adams’ s story. Let’s just say I had a lot of expectations going in. This adaptation exceeded them.

The graphic novel serves as both a reverent introduction to the original story and as a reliable companion read. I’ll never tire of Watership Down. All the characters! All the adventure and suspense! All the complex and varied rabbit cultures and lore! All the moving parts! And all the moving parts. What beautiful, vibrant storytelling.

Heft by Liz Moore

You might remember how much I enjoyed The God of the Woods last year. After reading a Lit Hub article Liz Moore wrote about her writing process, I knew I wanted to read more of her books. I started with an early novel, Heft.

The book is narrated by two voices. Arthur Opp is a former professor who is now a recluse living in a Brooklyn brownstone. He hasn’t left his home in ten years. He is brilliant. He is lonely. Kel Kellar is a poor kid from Yonkers going to school in the rich part of town. He’s not a great student and has pinned all his hopes on playing professional baseball, hopefully right when he graduates. Their two lives are connected through Kel’s mom Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. This book was 100% different from The God of the Woods, and I absolutely loved it. I am not exaggerating when I say Arthur and Kel are now two of my favorite characters of all time. Truly a beautiful story.

The Trouble with Heroes by Kate Messner

Wow, wow, wow. You might remember I did an interview with Kate this spring about our nature-centric verse novels. Kate Messner is a standout children’s author, and this is her very, very best.

Thirteen-year-old Finn Connelly must make reparations: In his sad-angry grief over losing his father, he kicked over the headstone of Edna Grace Thomas, “beloved Trail Mother” of the Adirondack 46ers — hikers who have summited the Adirondack’s highest peaks. Edna’s daughter says instead of paying for a replacement, Finn can hike the 46 mountains along with a few “trail nannies” (to assist him if ever he runs into trouble). Finn must finish before Labor Day. He’s also working on an incomplete assignment from seventh-grade English: a collection of essays about heroes. But the trouble with heroes is that sometimes they give and give and give to everyone but their own families — at least that’s what Finn believes about his hero dad.

This is such a heartfelt, honest, funny, tender look into a young life processing hard things. Truly a must read. I predict The Trouble with Heroes will be the next Newbery winner.

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Oh my goodness, this book. Structurally, it is a masterpiece in storytelling. (I returned to the opening page probably a dozen different times. It can be interpreted in a lot of ways, and I found the story kept shifting the more I read.) The whole thing felt Shakespearean — both tragic and beautiful.

That first page I mentioned opens with a murder. But whose, exactly? And what led to it?

Here’s the premise: Beth and Frank are happily married. Two years before the book begins they lose their young son to an accident. Years before that a teenage Beth meets her first love, Gabriel, a young aristocrat in their country village. Months after Beth’s relationship with Gabriel abruptly ends, Frank and Beth marry. As the book opens Gabriel is back, newly divorced, and with a young son of his own. This sets a whole cascading story in motion.

One of my favorite reads of the year.

And from my ultra quick lit posts

A really, really fun save-the-world sci-fi my son and I read at the same time: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
A fascinating speculative novel about a world where the same community exists over and over again with twenty years (and barbed wire) in between: The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

What were your favorite reads this year?