Books Read in 2025

Here is a list of all the books that I read in 2025. My own personal favourites from within the list are marked with an asterisk (*).

I set myself a goal to read an average of 4 titles a month this year. My grand tally for the year is 50, which is a major leap from previous years even if some of these weren't exactly lengthy tomes. I do find that switching between fiction and non-fiction titles regularly is useful to keep up the momentum. I'm much more likely to give up on a book now if it doesn't seem to be sustaining my interest after ten or twenty pages, in order to avoid the error I've made many times in the past of stubbornly sticking with a book no matter what. The only resounding dud amongst this selection was The Testament of Mary but, mercifully, it was a concise and quick read. Three of these books (The Thin Man, Brighton Rock, Treasure Island) were bucket list titles of mine, and I'm happy to say that they all lived up to my high expectations. 

I seem to have developed an appetite for biographies. Unsurprisingly a lot of what I read was film related. Patrick McGilligan's superlative examination of the life and work of Woody Allen (himself the author or subject of several titles on here) sets an extremely high standard for this kind of non-fiction, and restored my faith in film studies texts after some truly loathsome and self-regarding volumes in recent times on Elaine May (by Carrie Courogen), Michael Cimino (by Charles Elton) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (by Ian Penman). Abel Ferrara's engaging memoir 'Scene' was a good title to end the year on; an honest and reflective work that manages to impart some hard earned wisdom and gratitude. 

*The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

 Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

 Jimmy the Kid by Donald E. Westlake

 Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir by Sylvia Kristel

 Blood on the Moon (Reel West) by Alan K. Rode

*Poems and Shorter Writings by James Joyce

*Silence by Shūsaku Endō

 You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense by Charles Bukowski

 High Noon (BFI Film Classics) by Philip Drummond

 I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

*England Made Me by Graham Greene

*Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre by Philip French

 A Congregation of Jackals by S. Craig Zahler

*Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham by Patrick McGilligan

 Texas by the Tail by Jim Thompson

*Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking by Eric Lax, Woody Allen

*Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

 Still in the Saddle: The Hollywood Western, 1969–1980 by Andrew Patrick Nelson

 Wild Strawberries (BFI Film Classics) by Philip French, Kersti French

 God and the Devil: The Life and Work of Ingmar Bergman by Peter Cowie

 The Searchers (BFI Film Classics) by Edward Buscombe

*For Esmé — with Love and Squalor and Other Stories by J.D. Salinger

 Hawks on Hawks by Joseph McBride

*20 Drawings of Palestinian Writers by Tom Loffill, with a foreword by Ghadeer Ebrahime

 The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western by Michael Coyne

 Wayne and Ford: The Films, the Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero by Nancy Schoenberger

 The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

*Conversations with Flannery O'Connor by Rosemary M. Magee (Editor)

*The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews by Flannery O'Connor, Carter W. Martin (Editor), Leo J. Zuber (Compiler)

 The Passion of the Christ (Controversies: 4) by Neal King

 Spirited Away (BFI Film Classics) by Andrew Osmond

 The Gutter and the Grave by Ed McBain

*The Movies, Mr. Griffith, And Me by Lillian Gish, Ann Pinchot

*D. W. Griffith: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series) by Anthony Slide (editor)

*Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

*The Morning Watch by James Agee

*On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho by Matsuo Bashō, Lucien Stryk (Translator)

 The Films of Edgar G. Ulmer by Bernd Herzogenrath (Editor)

 Rosemary's Baby (BFI Film Classics) by Michael Newton

 Lovecraft's Guide to Writing: A Collection of Essays by H.P. Lovecraft

 Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (BFI Film Classics) by Kevin Jackson

 Tod Browning's Dracula by Gary D. Rhodes

 What's with Baum? by Woody Allen

 Woody Allen: Interviews, Revised and Updated (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) by Robert E. Kapsis (Editor)

 'Injuns!': Native Americans in the Movies by Edward Buscombe

 Latches by Kate Fleet

 A Grave Undertaking by Lionel White

 Mario Bava: The Artisan as Italian Horror Auteur by Leon Hunt

 Dwell by Simon Armitage, Beth Munro (Illustrator)

*Scene: A Memoir by Abel Ferrara