Gentle readers, thank you for reading this blog! We’re continuing our series of the best of 2025. This edition is all about books. 2025 was the year that I bought many a physical book, although I am a patron of the library on a regular basis. (Actually, I just got my library card renewed recently.) My taste in books are pretty firm now, though they’ve shifted over the years. My rough percentage breakdown includes 60% cozy mystery novels, 20% faith (although I do love when those combine) and 20% of a mishmash – a rare biography, historical fiction, science fiction, etc. At this point in time, I’ve read 76 books. Fingers crossed, I’ll read a few more before year’s end.
Below I am sharing with you the books that compelled me this year, books that haunted my imagination, struck me emotionally, the books that led me to a new way of thinking. Perhaps you can explore some of these and choose on as your next read.
Paradise Lost
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.
I started Paradise Lost in December of last year. I decided that I would read it aloud, after all, it is a poem, and it took me months to get through, but it was worth the struggle. Milton is a fantastic poet, and though I likely missed half of the mythological references (thankful for footnotes), the creativity and the depth into the Genesis narrative was amazing. I asked questions of the biblical text that I had never even thought to ask before. The language was rich and the characters were alive. The bold fight in heaven. Satan manipulating in hell. The birth of sin and death. If you want to be compelled, to have your biblical narrative renewed, you need to pick up Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Side note: you do not need to have an English background, but it would help to have a decent understanding of the broad narrative of the Bible and the first few chapters of Genesis.
Your Absence is Darkness
The past is always within us. It’s the invisible, mysterious continent that you sometimes feel when you’re half-awake. A continent with mountains and seas that constantly influence the weather and the shades of light within you.
This year I joined a book club in which the premise was reading translated works. Somehow, perhaps inspired by my book club, I picked up Your Absence is Darkness by Icelandic author Jon Kalman Stefansson. I do appreciate Philip Roughton’s translation, and the work of translators needs to be recognized. Stefansson writes about a small town in Iceland through the eyes of a very lost, very confused narrator. As a person who grew up in a large city, I’ve always longed for the ways of a small town, where the land is its own character, shaping the lives of its inhabitants. The fjord is so big that it almost makes you seem small by comparison, and the weight of life is heavy for these people in this small town far away from Reykjavik. Stefansson draws up a poignant portrayal of grief and you feel compassion for every character you meet. Every one has a story, and we’re all linked up in this wide web of humanity. Here today, gone tomorrow.
Tell Me Everything
Yet one has to wonder about the toll it takes, the lack of being touched or held. So many people are not.
I had popped into Waterstones in London, narrowly avoiding a downpour when this book caught my eye. Funny to pick up a book about someone in Maine when you’re across the pond. Maybe it’s in the tiny things that we reach for home. Tell Me Everything has a sassy character named Olive, who doesn’t seem to like many people at all and Lucy is one of the people she likes. The theme of this novel is that people are often complicated, assigning one another false notions and letting that guide our lives. But boldness—as scary as it is—it’s good to be bold and say what you know is true.
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Fatal Discord
Erasmus’s God is an even-tempered rationalist who sagely judges men and women by how they behave in the world. Luther’s God is an inscrutable being who acts according to his own unfathomable logic, apart from human understanding and expectation. Erasmus’s God requires the existence of free will to ensure that his rule is just; Luther’s God has to reject free will to make sure his power is unbounded. Whereas Erasmus wanted to protect the freedom of man to choose, Luther wanted to safeguard the freedom of God to act.
Outside the realm of my usual novel, I picked up some history. After last year’s journey into Wolf Hall, I wanted to connect with more of the real history behind the glorious wonders of Mantel’s prose. Fatal Discord takes you into the worlds of Erasmus and Luther as they battle intellectually in a changing world with the age of the printing press, the rise and spread of the Reformation, and shifting authority of the Catholic Church. Despite the length of the text, it works beautifully to divide their biographies as the chapters draw to a close to keep things interesting.
If anything, this work really made me want to read the stories of all the Thomases during this era: Thomas Cramner, bishop of Canterbury and author of the Book of Common Prayer; Thomas Wriothesley, perhaps betrayal of Thomas Cromwell; Thomas More, enemy of Thomas Cromwell, friend to Erasmus, died loyal to the Catholic faith; Thomas Wolsey, cardinal at the time of Henry VIII and employer of Cromwell. It was a wild time in history with the English Reformation. And Fatal Discord details the German Reformation that would provide the foundation for one of the greatest shifts in the history of religion.
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Father Elijah: An Apocalypse
Love bursts forth from the springs of the heart as raw material. It takes many shapes. It asks us to go forth and die, over and over again. It always asks this terrible price. It wants our life—all of it. Then gives it back again.
After seeing Blaine Eldredge mention this book on one of his Substacks, I decided to pick it up. A mention of a priest or a pastor is enough to garner my interest. Father Elijah isn’t for everyone, particularly if you are negatively inclined towards the Catholic Church. With that disclaimer, I found it a riveting read, reckoning with the issues of our age, in particular the myth we believe about never ending progress. Father Elijah is a man of faith who carries grief with him in such an honest way, not like those who pretend that all is well, but continually returns to God in his grief and finds himself comforted. The truth is God is more real than we can ever imagine and his mercy is boundless.
Against the Machine
I think of the words we use to describe this interface, which we carry with us in our pockets wherever we go, as we are tracked down every street and into every forest that remains: the web; the net. I think: These are things designed to trap prey.
Another Substacker I follow, Paul Kingsnorth, released his book of essays on the Machine, which is his terminology for our modern moment. We were once people of the land, then people of industry, now we are people of technology. Paul Kingsnorth has written both fiction and poetry and this is just the latest of his foray into the world of nonfiction. He writes about our disconnectedness from one another, his way into the Orthodox faith, the way that we are chained to this unsustainable way of living (after all, the amount of energy we’re consuming is depleting our earth). He has an unique perspective on AI and what its progression means for us. If you want to be confronted, this is the book for you.
Share your favorite reads of 2025 below!
Signing off,
Gigi
Studying Life with Gigi 
Wow! Thank you for some great titles to add to my list!
I’ve enjoyed many books by Lynn Austin. She is careful in her research as she writes her fiction set in real times places. I recently finished Wings of Refuge, which juxtaposed past and present Israel.
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