Top 15 Books of 2025
Pool Party Editor Picks
We read a ton of great books this year and wanted to share some of our favorites, so we decided to be like everybody else and put together a 2025 “best of” list. Why re-invent the wheel? Our editors each picked five of their top reads, and it was a real fight narrowing down to such a small number because there were so many great ones, and we hope this will help you plan your 2026 reading list. If you have any reco’s for us, send them along to [email protected] or tag us on Instagram (@poolpartymag) and we’ll be sure to share.
After our 2025 list, we’ve also dropped a few forthcoming titles that you might want to pre-order. There are some really great books coming out!
[ And just a quick reminder that, when buying directly from an indie bookshop isn’t possible, the next best option is to buy directly from publishers or through a site like bookshop.org where you can elect to designate a percentage of your purchase, at no extra cost to you, to any bookshop of your choice. We are trying to disentangle ourselves from Amazon as much as possible (have you seen what their data centers are doing to communities??) and encourage people who can wait a couple extra days on shipping and pay a couple extra bucks (i.e. the cover price and not some superficial sale price meant to undercut indie shops) to avoid buying books there. ]
Ryan-Ashley’s Top 5 Books of 2025*
Y2K: How the 2000’s Became Everything by Colette Shade, available at Bookshop.org
If you were like me in the late nineties, the approach of the year 2000 brought me excitement rather than trepidation. I prayed the banks would fail, the government would shut down, and that my report card grades and missing library book history would be erased. A fresh start, I thought. A fast and delicious read, Y2K is where pop culture analysis meets auto-ethnography. Great for anybody who came of age in the time of dialup.
Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert, available at Bookshop.org
As somebody whose research often intersects at nineties pop culture and internalized misogyny, I was thrilled to find this book which, like Y2K, is at once entertaining, educational, readable, and relatable. An indictment of the regressive politics germinating in the late nineties which we now see in full bloom, I will be reading this one again in 2026.
Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant, available at Duke University Press
Do you feel your attachments to “unachievable fantasies of the good life” unraveling under the weight of fascism, climate catastrophes, and an impossible economy? Cruel Optimism won’t make you feel any better about any of that–and you may even feel worse–but you’ll certainly have more language for articulating your individual grievances after reading it.
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami, available at Bookshop.org
Critical of the increase and uses of AI surveillance technology? Concerned about a future where personal data is used to surveil and discipline every day people? Angry about a carceral system built on biased and uneven applications of the law? The Dream Hotel is the perfect teacher if you’re interested in writing about controversial topics in a time of censorship. It’s also just a really beautifully-crafted, speedy read.
Gifted by Suzumi Suzuki [translated by Allison Markin Powell] available at Transit Books
Elder care, sex work, and poetry. Need I say more? OK: a cruel mother, a smoking habit, and death bed confessions. A bit of a fever dream, a bit of a ride, while reading Gifted, it felt almost like I was right there with the narrator, going to and fro from work to home to the hospital. This book is a poignant reminder that, in a chaotic world, mundanity can be sublime.
*My original list included The Great Black Swamp, Monsters, and The Third Beat–all of which I highly recommend–but Kevin got to them first. Our bookshelf situation is incestuous.
Brian Stephen Ellis’ Top 5 Books of 2025
Time Travel in East Portland by Rob Grey, avail. online and as a pdf here
Silly Rob Grey put out this chapbook this year that grapples with the coexistence of beauty alongside these horrifying times. A single wonderful poem alongside beautiful watercolors.
The Present by Emily Kendal Frey, available at The Economy Press
Emily is simply one of the most wonderful writers alive. If you don’t love Emily’s poems, I assume you just haven’t read their poems.
two versions of a stone castle by manuel arturo abreu, available at home school
This technically came out in 2024 but more people need to get turned on to this. Smart, challenging, brilliant and tender, manuel arturo abreu is an incredible poet, visual artist, essayist and teacher.
Box Girls by Aria Braswell, available at University of Hell
Epistolary existentialist horror about women trapped in a living art installation slowly going mad. Fun!
Who Killed One the Gun? by Gigi Little, available at Forest Avenue Press
Who Killed One the Gun? Is a time-loop sci-fi hard boiled noir that is really about the horrifying possibility that our suffering might not make us better people.
Kevin’s Top 5 Books of 2025
Early Sobrieties by Michael Deagler, available at Astra House
My buddy Santi recommended this one. It came out in 2024 and has already garnered a lot of praise (Winner of the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, Longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction). Billed as “a sober, millennial Jesus’ Son,” my initial thought was “sounds boring,” but it turns out sobriety can be just as fucked up and wild and full of longing as life before getting clean… at least in the hands of a masterful writer like Deagler.
Day Care by Nora Lange, available for pre-order at Two Dollar Radio
This one doesn’t come out until April of next year, but Ryan-Ashley and I got an advanced copy from Two Dollar Radio, and holy shit! Lange’s story collection follow up to her Two Dollar Radio hit Us Fools is full of lyric, beautiful prose that exist in that exciting place halfway between Raymond Carver realism and Kelly Link fabulism, while telling beautiful stories about loneliness in the modern world. Pre-order this one!!!
The Third Beat by Lauren Lavín, available for pre-order at Autofocus
This was another advance copy for an Autofocus title coming out February 3, 2026 from our dear friend here at Pool Party, Lauren Lavín. The first time we encountered Lauren’s work was when she submitted her essay “Conte Jondo” to Pool Party (which is in this collection) and it jumped out of the slush pile and slapped us in the faces and demanded to be HEARD as only the very best work does. I stopped halfway through each of these essays and just kept saying to myself, “FUCK. Lauren can write!” Pre-order this one yesterday!!!
The Great Black Swamp by Patrick Wensink, available at Arcadia Publishing
It’s such a huge relief when one of your best friends in the world also happens to write one of the best books of the year. Wensink’s The Great Black Swamp pulls off the impossible: it’s a page-turning memoir that also happens to be a scientific detective story that also happens to shine a light on one of the most important issues facing human beings in 2025: human-caused toxic algae, which gives me a whole new reason to stay up late at night, worrying about something I didn’t even know I should be worried about. It can be a bleak read, but there’s also a lot of hope here. Highly recommend! [read the interview we did with Patrick here]
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, available at Bookshop.org
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this book since my wife recommended it. Dederer asks profound questions about what we, as consumers of art, should do when the artists we love do horrible things, and in an unexpected and refreshing twist, doesn’t provide any definitive answers. The answer seems to be: “I don’t know. It’s complicated. Maybe there isn’t a right answer.” In a world that demands that everything should be black-or-white, Dederer writes confidently in the gray area, exploring moral ambiguity and human complexity.
***
Looking ahead to 2026 releases? Here are some that we’re looking forward to!
- Kill Dick by Luke Goebel, available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble | We just got this ARC in the mail and are planning to start it soon; thinking it’s going to be a banger!
- The Third Beat by Lauren Lavín, available for pre-order at Autofocus | As you saw in Kevin’s list, we read the ARC for a blurb and absolutely loved it.
- Day Care by Nora Lange, available for pre-order at Two Dollar Radio | Kevin’s read this one and I’ve gotten started on it. Another great one to pre-order.
- Daytime Moon by Kerri Schlottman, available for pre-order at Unnamed Press | I got this ARC in the mail the other day and am already almost at 100 page. I’m obsessed with the story and the writing and can’t wait to see it out in the world.
- Tacoma by Aaron Burch, available for pre-order at Autofocus Books | Very looking forward to reading this meta/magic/absurdist work of autofiction
- Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, new edition available for pre-order (with an intro. by Kevin!) at Maudlin House
These lists are in no way exhaustive, but we have to cut ourselves off somewhere. We also still have a big “to read” stack from this year, and will be sharing about those soon. Hopefully some of these titles will make it into your last-minute festivus shopping lists (we’re literally going holiday shopping today–so behind!) if you haven’t grabbed them up already.
Ryan-Ashley is our managing editor and a board member for the NYC non-profit, Refuge America.
- Top 15 Books of 2025 - December 18, 2025
- 12.15.2025 - December 15, 2025
- 12.10.2025 - December 10, 2025
* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are producs of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
