Book Chat Issue #125

Favourite reads from 2025

Hello reading friends,

The internet is inundated with people posting their best reads for 2025, so I briefly wondered if you really needed to know mine? But I figured if you’ve been kind enough to open my newsletter every fortnight, you just might want to know what my favourites were.

So here goes:

Favourite fiction from 2025

Here are my picks, in no particular order.

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt

I feel like I’ve talked about this book a lot, but if you missed all the chat and haven’t yet read it, please think about doing so.

Synopsis from New York Review of Books

Ruth is a woman who believes in and despairs of the curative power of love. Her daughter, Eleanor, who is addicted to drugs, has just had a baby, Lily.

Ruth adjusts herself in ways large and small to give to Eleanor what she thinks she may need—nourishment, distance, affection—but all her gifts fall short. After someone dies of an overdose in Eleanor's apartment, Ruth hands her daughter an envelope of cash and takes Lily home with her, and Lily, as she grows, proves a compensation for all of Ruth's past defeats and disappointment.

It’s not always an easy read but I can honestly say that I still think about this book, even though I read it quite a while ago. It features an imperfect mother and is quite funny in a black humour kind of way.

Ruth is a very practical person, with a no-nonsense approach to most things in life. Here she talks about some of the values she tries to instil in the young women she teaches:

Don’t get too bogged down in things that don’t count or things you cannot influence, and specifically don’t worry too much about making sure others know you’re in the right, because it so easily gets in the way of what you want and need. Become an expert at shrugging most of life off and free yourself for what really interests you.

Don’t make your appearance your primary concern. It will zap all your creativity.

Be as self-sufficient as you dare. Sometimes you hold more strength when people don’t know what you think or feel, so be very careful whom you confide in. People can run with your difficulties when you least expect it, distort them, relish them even, and before you know it they’re not yours any more.

Respect your privacy. And earn you own money or you’ll lack power.

Take good care of your friendships, nurture them and they’ll strengthen you. Don’t turn frowning at the defects of other people into a hobby, delicious though it may be; it poisons you.

Read every day—it is a practice that dignifies humans. Become a great reader of books and it will help you with reality, you’ll more easily grasp the truth of things and that will set you up for life. And don’t expose your brain to low-quality art forms because there will be a certain measure of pollution.

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Lonely Mouth by Jacqueline Maley

Jacqueline Maley is an Australian journalist with a column in a national newspaper and this is her second book.

The term lonely mouth is a Japanese expression.

It means, you feel like you want to eat something, but you don’t know what it is. You’re looking for just the right thing. But maybe there is no right thing. Maybe you don’t need anything at all.

Lonely Mouth focuses on the lives of Matilda and Lara, two sisters who live on opposite sides of the world, but are very close. Matilda works in an upscale Sydney restaurant and Lara lives in Paris where she works as a model. Both are suffering from the trauma of being abandoned by their mother, but respond in different ways.

This novel explores self love, hunger and control, but both this novel, and Loved and Missed, have their lighter moments. I really adore this type of writing, which manages to be both heartbreaking and funny in places. The authors display great compassion for their characters, without being sentimental.

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The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

It seems that everyone in the book recommending world has named this novel as their favourite for 2025 and for that reason alone, I considered leaving if off my list. But then I thought about all you people who don’t subscribe to a hundred book recommending sites. How could I not recommend this lovely book which is heartwarming, but not mushy?

The Correspondent is about a seventy-year-old letter writer. She writes to everyone (including a few famous people) and the story is told entirely through her letters.

The most surprising thing about this book is that the author is relatively young. Despite her youth, she manages to capture the realities of Sybil’s life without characterising her as old and decrepit. This is not a book about age. It’s a book about the transformative power of the written word. It will make you want to write a letter to someone and maybe, if you are lucky, they will write back.

What about you? What were your favourite reads from 2025?

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What I’ve been eating

The weather was blessedly cool on Christmas Day after weeks of incredibly hot days, but we had the usual cold spread, which included the ubiquitous baked ham, a roast turkey roll and salads (potato, watermelon and feta, orange and onion, persian salad with pomegranate). This was followed by a delicious pavlova made by my lovely daughter-in-law Emma, which was decorated with mango, mint, and lemon zest. I feel truly blessed to be able to share Christmas dinner with my family and my heart goes out to those who are estranged from their families, or missing loved ones.

We also embarked on a jigsaw puzzle, the perfect thing to do to relax and unwind (or maybe drive yourself crazy). The little dopamine hit you get when you find a bit of the puzzle is very rewarding and keeps you coming back for more.

If you like puzzles, you might enjoy this blog post I wrote back in 2022 about the joys of jigsaws.

A BIT PUZZLED

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New around here?

If you’ve just subscribed to Book Chat you might like to know we have a book club. It’s free for subscribers and we meet online every three months or so.

Here are some books we’ve read and enjoyed.

• The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

• You are Here by David Nicholls

• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

• Night Swimmers by Roisin Maquire

Our next meeting is scheduled for January 15 at 9am (Eastern Australian Daylight Saving). That’s January 14 in the US and Canada and the UK. We are discussing H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald.

Meeting link meet.google.com/kpa-eiyu-aho

If you’d like to come to this meeting or any future book club events, just hit reply and let me know your email address and where you live in the world, and I’ll add you to the mailing list.

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That’s all for this edition. I hope you have a wonderful 2026 filled with great books, good food, and terrific friends.

Thanks for being here and please share this with your reading friends.

Marg xx