This year I read a lot of plays, a lot of advanced reader’s copies of books I had collected from publishers over the years that built up in my office, and several books I picked up from our staff recommends lists at the library. The first three title discussed here are taken from each of these categories.
#20 – Infinite Country by Patricia Engel (2021)
Anchoring my Top 20 is a book I picked up off the BPL’s display of staff recommendations. Patricia Engel’s novel about a Colombian family town between two countires, struggling with political unrest and violence, deportations, cruelty, and the harsh immigration climate in the United States, is so personal and yet so mythic in scope. Mauro and Elena grew up in Colombia during a time of political uprisings and mass executions. Somehow they meet and fall in love, have their first child, then flee to United States. There they struggle to make a home for themselves, despite the lack of money, the scarcity of work, and the mistrust of their neighbors and the law. Two more children follow before Mauro is torn from the family and sent back to Colombia.
Engle weaves the mythological beliefs of the Colombian culture with a love story about a family. There is danger, there is injustice; but through it all family is the central theme that keeps the characters bonded together despite years of physical separation and isolation. Both devastatin and uplifting, Engle creates a memorable tale.
#19 – Regrets by Matt Charman (2012)
I’m not sure what drew me to read this play by Matt Charman, other than it was set in the 1950’s, as is the play I’m about to direct. What I didn’t know until I was well into the reading was that they shared similar themes. Regrets is a nicely constructed play about a post-divorce camp for men in the 1950’s. When a young man arrives and joins the other men, all in their 40’s, curiosity turns to suspicion as secrets are revealed as to the true reason for his arrival. Powerful and unexpected finale.
I generally read plays in search of intersting ones to produce. Regrets certainly falls into this category, but with my next play, After the Revolution by Amy Herzog, exploring similar themes, I will probably hold off on Regrets.
#18 – Mislaid by Nell Zink (2015)
This sharp satire that explores race, gender, sexuality, and class in the latter half of the 20th century tears apart the American family in new and startling ways. Mismatched pair, college student Freshman, Peggy and poetry professor, Lee find themselves in passionate but awkward affair that yields an unhappy marriage and two children. Doomed from the start (she’s a lesbian, he’s gay), Peggy eventually flees with one child leaving her older son behind with her husband. From their, all four spiral into unconventional lives that won’t cross paths again for years.
Author Nell Zink has a pointed style poking fun at the establishment and counter-culture society alike, with some special barbs for the South. After a sizzling opening, things bog down a bit in the middle, before amping up again for a rousing conclusion.
A year ago as I pulled together my list of my favorite books read in 2024, I decided I had to up my game. After dipping to a low of reading fewer than 20 books in a year, I’d been slowly bringing that number back up, but slipped in 2024 to reading just 17 books. I decided to give myself ambitious goal to read 50 books in 2025. It was definitely a stretch, but I wanted to commit to reading more. While I didn’t make my goal, I did complete 45 books in 2025, and felt very good about that. This year, I will maintain that same goal and see how i do. With my impending retirement approaching, I hope I spend some of that tie reading more.
Before I start to write about my favorite books of the year, I would like to mention some disappointments, also rans, and other titles that fell outside of this list. I am going to start with the best book I read this year — that also happened to be a re-read.
Favorite Book Read in 2025 – The Forgotten Beasts of Eldby Patricia A. McKillip
First edition cover
Patricia A. McKillip, absolutely my favorite fantasy author, and certainly one of my favorite authors period, got her start writing young adult novels in the 70’s. The first book of hers that I read was The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, published in 1974, and winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1975. It was her third published novel.
When I finished my re-read (probably my fifth or sixth over the years), this is how I reviewed it: “Re-read this classic fantasy novel by Patricia A. McKillip for the fourth or fifth time, and honestly it gets better and better every time. Quite possibly my all-time favorite fantasy novel. The way McKillip intertwines such disparate themes as love, power, revenge, self-reflection, manipulation, and family with her consummate skill at crafting poetic language is astounding. And it packs such a powerful emotional punch.”
The fact that this complex novel, with its adult relationships and hard-to-like female protagonist was marketed to young adults astounds me to this day, but it clearly worked, launching a major career for McKillip. The main character, Sybel, is one of the all-time great flawed heroes, and her journey to adulthood is a masterpiece. I remember I was enchanted by the “beasts” of the tale, mysterious, magical creatures that were enough to enthrall any young, fantasy-lovers mind, but i remember as a young boy how taken i was by Sybel’s tragic story. I look forward to reading this book over and over again.
Biggest Disappointment of 2025 – Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie by Lesley Ann Jones
Not every book can be great… many aren’t even that good. If you’ve looked at my lists of favorites books of the past couple of years, you know that I have been on a journey reading memoirs of female rock & rollers for sometime. After the tragic loss one my all-time favorites, the incredibly talented Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac, i was thrilled that, if not a memoir, at least a biography was being published about her. Sadly, it turns out to be my biggest disappointment of the year. I will let my review speak for itself.
“This was a tough one: a mediocre biography about a fascinating, beloved icon. Lesley-Ann Jones “intimate biography” of Christine McVie is about a lot of things, but as an intimate look of the legendary performer’s life is not really one of those things.
“Fleetwood Mac front-woman and keyboard player was a very private person, and when her family refused to participate in the writing of her biography, there aren’t a lot of avenues to explore someone who has died. Instead Jones spends the first third of the book telling us about the history of the British village of Wickhambreaux and the region where Christine was born and raised. Slightly interesting, but adds way more than it needs to to provide some color to our subject.
“Granted, Jones was a casual friend/acquaintance of McVie’s, in the way many of the very extended Fleetwood Mac family were. In addition, most of the information she provides in the book seems to come from interview with other who either provide expert opinions (therapists) or were three, four, or five levels away from the woman in question, part of that massive entourage. Sure there were some quotes from her fellow band-members, but most of them came from previously published interviews.
“In the end, Songbird: an Intimate Biography of Christine McVie provides a whole lot of conjecture — some of which conflicts with other conclusions the author made. Surely any person, especially an internationally famous celebrity, can be painted with different brushstrokes in a 300-page book, sadly, Jones’ over-written book doesn’t give us much more than an article in the Rolling Stone magazine.”
Finally, before launching into my actual Top 20 books of the year, I include my list of also-rans” books that I enjoyed and are notable enough to mention here. Three books earned a spot on this list, a look at the roles of women in rock during the 90’s, a excerpt about chickens from a Sy Montgomery book, and a play that hit really hard
Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar – Powerful, visceral examination of a successful lawyer confronted with this deeply ingrained Muslim upbringing and his own an his contemporaries beliefs and assumptions.
What the Chicken Knows: a New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird by Sy Montgomery – Originally written as a chapter in the book Birdology Sy Montgomery, author of The Sould of an Octopus remarkably does for the most prevalent barnyard fowl what she did for the massively intelligent cephalopod. Perhaps that’s a bit of hyperbole, after all, if you can pack everything there is to know about a chicken into a single chapter, perhaps they are not quite on the same level as an octopus? Still, Sy loves her flocks of chickens, and she conveys their intelligence, playfulness, and emotional lives convincingly. Of course, as you could no soubt surmise from the title of this blog, I already loved chickens, so it wasn’t too hard a sell.
Pretend We’re Dead: the Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the ’90s by Tanya Pearson – Tanya Pearson spotlights women who fronted or filled out alternative rock bands throughout the 90’s and goes on to explore how politics and society removed these counterculture women from pop culture after 9/11. Some unnecessary repetition keeps the book from taking this important topic to a more energizing read, but still well researched with some great interview by such 90’s icons as Shirley Manson, Tanya Donnelly, Liz Phair, and Kristin Hersh.
