Like last year, I decided to make a list of the books I read in 2025.

Since many of the books were suggestions, I added an emoji in front of the title for giving the due credit: Ele (💕), Mom & Grandma (👨‍👩‍👦‍👦) and Indie Librarian (📚).

Le intermittenze della morte (🇮🇹 of As intermitências da morte) by José Saramago

What does it happen if death stops to afflict people in a country? That is the theme of this story that is told with the classic Saramago style. I appreciated particularly the first chapters in which practical issues are discussed, for instance what happens to people working in funeral homes and at the border of the country. Anyway I preferred Cecità.

L’enigma della camera 622 (🇮🇹 of L’Énigme de la chambre 622) by Joel Dicker

I gave it a try since I appreciated a lot of The case of Henry Quebert and The last days of our Fathers. This time Dicker himself investigates on the murder that took place in the room 622 of a hotel in the Alps. As all Dicker’s book is quick to read, but the explanation at the end makes everything sounds ridiculous.

Uccidere per amore by Giorgio Scerbanenco

Wandering around in the public library I found this book by a less known author of the 50-60s. He was famous for having written thousands of short stories from romance to detective/noir for Italian magazines. In this selection there are a handful of them all centered around murders. I find the style great and really entertaining.

The five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lencioni

Lencioni tells a fable to show the 5 dysfunctions that can hit a team namely: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to result. I liked that his theory is delivered through a story.

Il processo (🇮🇹 of Der Proceß) by Franz Kafka

While I was at the airport I was looking for a classic to read and I chose to read Kafka. No need to explain that everything is Kafkaesque and that you have to flow with the story of this man that gets accused of an unknown crime and therefore it is basically impossible to defend unless following ever more weird advices.

Venere privata by Giorgio Scerbanenco

Having appreciated so much the style in Uccidere per amore I decided to read one of his novel having as main character Duca Lamberti, a convicted doctor right out of jail, son of a policeman that has to assist a young depressed man. From there it starts an investigation to find the root of his condition that will dig in the underwood of Milan criminality of the 60s. For sure I am going to read other books by Scerbaneco.

Il passato è un morto senza cadavere by Antonio Manzini

Another chapter of Rocco Schiavone’s story. I like so much that character that even if he would investigate on a kid stealing candy, I would read it. The crime in this book is a little more complicated, and actually with several murders linked to a covered up event. Needless to say, next year I am going to read the latest book of the series.

📚 Io? (🇮🇹 of Ich?) by Peter Flamm

I was warned that this book was really peculiar and I gave it a go. It’s the story of a German layman that comes back from World War I stealing the life of a wealthier man. Or is the wealthy man that is out of his mind? It’s 140 pages of non-stop prose, like if you were in the mind of this man. Pretty weird!

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 La gang dei sogni by Luca di Fulvio

Christmas Luminita is a kid raised by an Italian immigrant single mother in New York at the beginning of the 20th century. He discovers soon how the street life can be dangerous and how violent gangs act undisturbed. But he figures out that his ability to tell story is a powerful skill to bring him out of poverty and risky life. A nice read with a powerful message.

Tutto brucia (🇮🇹 of Todo Arde) by Juan Gómez-Jurado

In 2024 I read the Red Queen trilogy and I loved the plot and also the author style. Therefore I read this new book that is set in the same “universe” but has as main characters three women that were victims of the system that are out for revenge: Aura once an important director in the financial sector, Mari Paz ex-soldier and Sere an hacker. They cannot replace Antonia Scott and Jon Gutiérrez but is a nice smooth novel.

Four thousand weeks by Oliver Burkeman

If you want to pick a book to read from this list, get this. The key concept is in the title: the average life (in Europe and North America) is around 75 years, or better 4000 weeks. Framing it in weeks rather than in years is a powerful way to recall how limited it is. As Burkeman points out, we don’t need some miraculous time management system for handling our tasks but realize that we do not have infinite time and prioritize our life accordingly.

💕 Circe (🇮🇹 of Circe) by Madeline Miller

After La canzone di Achille I followed Elena’s tip of reading this novel focusing on the life of the witch Circe. You may have encountered her while your literature professor talked about Ulysses going back to Ithaca and how bad she was with him. Madeline Miller writes her story leveraging her knowledge of ancient myths and a lot of creativity to create a modern feminist myth. You will not get bored!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

During our road trip on the US West coast we got to a festival in San Diego’s Balboa park. There we found an itinerant shop of second hand books. I often try to buy a book when on a vacation and when I encountered The Road I knew I had to buy it. I liked the father-son relationship and the structure of short paragraphs without chapters. I didn’t appreciate the overly complex vocabulary (but this is my fault) and that they don’t arrive anywhere and there are too many description of technical stuff and freaking gray and burned landscapes (but it’s a dystopia after all). Anyway I am happy to have read it.

📚 Enciclopedia dei sogni by Mohammad Toloulei

I picked it up just because it was in the reading club of the indie local bookshop. It tells the story of an Iranian boy that gets on a road trip as a combined date with an Iranian girl from Tehran to Isfahan. In this travel they face many situations and explore their truths. It was nice to see how much of Iranian culture is centered around food like in Italy.

📚 Eleven kinds of loneliness by Richard Yates

It’s a collection of eleven short stories revolving around the topic of loneliness. I loved Yates’ style and the way he depicted so vividly even ordinary people. If I have to pick a couple of stories I would go with Jody Rolled the Bones and Fun with a Stranger.

📚 La versione di Barney (🇮🇹 of Barney’s Version) by Mordecai Richler

It’s the autobiography of (fictional) Barney Panofsky, a rich old Canadian, telling his life from his youth spent in Paris to the present days. He does it to show that he is not guilty of murder. He was in the show business producing TV series and ads of low quality. Besides that he got married 3 times. It’s a really stratified novel since the thoughts of Barney jump from one point in time to another depending on what he wants to talk about. And the end of the book you can even discover if he was really a murderer. It took me some hours to realize the truth!

💕 L’anniversario by Andrea Bajani

This book won the Strega award in 2025 and was everywhere. Ele read it and appreciated that it talks about something of a taboo in Italy: a son that cuts completely the ties with his family without a huge event causing it. Therefore I tried it and (of course) I agreed with her. On the other hand I didn’t like so much the style, but this is personal taste.

I bambini del maestrale by Antonella Ossorio

I left this gift on the shelf for months, since I felt it would be pretty boring. How wrong I was! It is inspired by the true story of the training ship Caracciolo, a decommissioned ship in Naples transformed into a floating school for poor street children between 1913 and 1928. This experiment was led with great mastery and sacrifice by Giulia Civita Franceschi. I really liked to learn about this Italian educational experiment, something that you don’t learn at school.

Il conte di Montecristo (🇮🇹 of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) by Alexandre Dumas

After choosing Anna Karenina in 2024, I picked as my after-vacation-classic a French one. I actually liked the book up to his first revenge, with his youth and years in prison being the best part (probably not for Edmond). I would skip all the part about the Carnival in Rome and probably it took too long wrapping everything up, since you know he is going to succeed but it takes forever. But hey! This is a masterpiece.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Un sogno di polvere e acqua by Celestina Bialetti e Alessandro Barbaglia

Close where my grandma’s lives there is a a lake town named Omegna. It is now is pretty famous for turism, but decades ago was a hotspot for creativity and entrepreneurship, with the top examples being Alessi known worldwide for design and Bialetti known for its moka. This is the story behind the invention of the moka by Alfonso and the development of the company by his son Renato, told by Alfonso’s daughter Celestina. It’s an interesting take on a local success story (and then its downfall) told with familiar tone and love for the people behind it.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

When I was a child I waited for each new volume of the Harry Potter series (in the Italian translation) as if it was Christmas. Finally for Christmas 2024, Ele bought me the bookset in English, but just days before we had started a marathon of the movies so I decided to wait some months. It was great to read a book of my childhood and savor many details since I did not have to focus on the well-known plot. I plan to read the rest of the saga, enjoying a couple of volumes per year.

📚 I convitati di pietra by Michele Mari

The Indie Librarian recommended this author to me, saying it was one of the best one style-wise of the last 20 years. The story focuses on a riff 30 classmates start the year high school is over. Rules of the game: each year, everyone has to contribute to the pot and the winners are the last 3 survivors. The idea is great, and for sure the ability of the author is clear, but I did not like that there were so many players (I kept messing up) and that a good chunk of the story is after 2025.

Slaughterhouse five by Kurt Vonnegut In 2024 I heard this classic title everywhere, so I finally bought it. It is an antiwar novel that talks about the experience of Billy Pilgrim, an American optometrist, that (like the author) was in Dresden in 1945 when it was bombed (I did not know about this historical event, shame on me). Little ingredient: Billy Pilgrim can move through time and was also kidnapped by aliens. I really liked the story and the witty style.

Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish

I have been reading Farnam Street newsletter and blog for years and finally I bought this book by its creator. As you can guess it focuses on how to think better, trying to keep under control emotions and stir to your advange ego, social, inertia and emotion defaults to make better choices. It is full of advices and techniques to start right away to rationally choosing instead of following the instinct.

Se i gatti scomparissero dal mondo (🇮🇹 of 世界から猫が消えたなら - Sekai kara Neko ga Kietanara) by Genki Kawamura

The character of this novel is a lonely postman that lives with his cat. Unfortunately he has been diagnosed with a condition that gives him just a week left to live. And then the devil appears and proposes a deal: for every “item” that he makes disappear from the world he will have an extra-day. What will he have to make disappear to survive? Is worth a life removing from the world stuff that people love?

I read a good amount of books in 2025 (just one less than 2024), with a nice variety going from classics of the past to newly published, books of authors that I appreciated in the last years and ones I have never encountered and throwing some non-fiction in there. I hope to keep up this numbers and breadth in 2026 and as usual try to read more non-fiction.