I try to read every day, but I find it increasingly difficult to find books which interest me. Most of the time, I leave them incomplete. In 2025, it was almost the end of January when I finally finished a book.
Now, my criteria of a good book is that I finish reading it. This post is about the 30 books that I finished reading in 2025. I mainly read crime-mysteries and thrillers, and a wide range of non-fiction books.
This post is subdivided into three parts - Non-Fiction books, Thrillers and Mysteries and Other books. Under each sub-group, the books are presented in the order that I read them. Read till the end of this post, if you want to know the 5 books I really liked most among these 30. (Click on the pictures for a bigger view)
Part 1: Non-Fiction Books I liked in 2025 - 8 Books
Notes from an Island by Tove Jonsson and Tuulikki Pietila: It is a diary of 2 women who went to live on a tiny uninhabited skerry (island) off the coast of Finland during 1960s and lived there for some decades till they were too old to do so. It was first published in 1996.
Tove had a beautiful way of writing. Her words are sharp and essential. Tooti (Tuulikki) is the artist, she has contributed to the book with ink-washouts and etchings of the sea.
A large part of the diary is about their daily life but occasionally the prose goes on a deep dive into emotions. For example, here is a tiny sample where Tove writes about the visitors - "Sometimes they bring their friends, sometimes, the loss of friends ..."
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Chinese-American author Yiyun Li (2025) is about the suicide of her younger son, James.
Composed of a series of essays, it starts with the difficulty of informing a family about the death of a child, especially through suicide. In it, Yiyun looks from outside-inside perspectives at her own family, her own feelings and her memories of her son.
This book made me cry, and also, deeply uncomfortable. I have also written a separate post about it.
Japanese Psychotherapies: Silence and Body-Mind Interconnectedness in Morita, Naikan and Dohsa-hou by Velizara Chervenkova (2017): We are all familiar with psychotherapy, where people talk to mental health professionals. The idea that one can remain silent and use silence as a therapy does not fit in with that logic.
This book explains Japanese psychotherapy approaches based on Buddhism and Zen, such as silence, mind-body connectedness and mindfulness. They reminded me of Vipassana practices in India.
I especially liked the discussions about 'Do' approaches - from tea making (chado) to flower arrangements (shado) and martial arts (judo, akaido), where focus, inner calm and harmony need to be cultivated.
Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken (2023): Sometimes the so-called "healthy foods" can be very unhealthy, because they contain strange chemicals for making people eat more. These ultra-processed foods can reset our body mechanisms and biospheres, can make us overweight and promote metabolic disorders leading to heart and mental health problems.
This book, written by a doctor, goes in depth of this argument, talking about new understandings from different scientific studies, and not on "research" conducted by big food-companies. It also provides insights about how doctors and nutritionists are taught about food, and how that teaching needs to change to understand the impact of food multi-nationals on our bodies.
If you are interested in nutrition and want to be aware about all the different chemicals that are added to food, which is then advertised as healthy food, read this book. IMO, it is one of the best written books on this theme. It is especially useful for persons with diabetes, obesity and other health conditions.
New Rules of War - Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder (2019) by Sean McFate: If I had read this book when it had come out, I would have stopped reading it after 10-15 pages because it would have sounded unbelievable and more like a deranged conspiracy-theorist. However, it's descriptions of what the crumbling of a rule-based world-order looks like, seem to be terrifying real in 2025 because of what is happening with President Trump.
McFate looks at the way different wars have been fought over the past century to conclude that the rule-based world-order was coming to a close and soon it will affect America. His another conclusion is that excessive reliance on technology to win future wars is a doomed strategy.
McFate's many predictions in this book made me feel a little anxious, so I skipped some parts.
Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott (2021): A tiny book (128 pages on my Kobo reader), it has a series of essays in which Lamott explores the different issues around human frailty based on her life-experiences which include struggles with alcoholism and her uncontrolled sexual linkages while being drunk, difficult relationships with parents, her late-in-life discovery of love with a guy called Neal and her discovery of faith. Lamott is a wonderful writer and she concludes the book with a small essay about the time when everyone called her 'a terrible writer' and where she nearly dies while being drunk.
The book is full of stories about touching rock-bottom, facing challenges, surviving them and finding your feet again, all accompanied by a dispassionate dissection of her own failures and mistakes, many of which touched me deeply. For example, in the first chapter of the book where she talks about her experience of talking to children in the Sunday school about the soul, she writes, "Is the soul damaged by acne, political madness, rigid or unloving parents? I think so, damaged but not mortally so. It becomes callused, barricaded, yet it is always there for the asking, always ready for hope. ... Certain qualities are of soul, and not of mind or culture. Curiosity is one way that we know that our souls are functioning. ..."
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk (2014): The author is a mental health professional who has worked for many decades with persons who have had terrible experiences of violence, such as war veterans, women and children victims of different kinds of violence.
His experience shows that many persons, who had experienced violence in their childhood, often end up sharing some common symptoms. However, usually these conditions are seen as individual psychiatric illnesses and the global picture is ignored. He explains his ideas in a simple and empathetic language, which is interesting both for professionals and individuals. I found the book very interesting except for the last parts about different therapies.
Breaking Through by Isher Judge Ahluwalia: Isher was a renowned economist in India during 1980s-90s. Breaking Through is her memoir written during the final days of her life in 2019-20, as she was undergoing treatment for a brain tumour. My younger sister had worked with her as a research assistant and in 1986, I had briefly met both Isher and her husband Montek Singh Ahluwalia when they had come to our home for her marriage.
Her memoir is a fascinating and personal look at the days and years that had changed the economic policies in India during early 1990s. I could also relate to her life in Washington DC, as one of my sisters lives there. I found her references to being a devout Sikh and the final parts of the book where she spoke about her cancer, very touching.
Part 2: Crime, Mysteries & Thrillers - 13 Books
Treasure and Dirt by Chris Hammer (2021) is a police procedural about a murder in an opal mine located in a desert area in north-eastern Australia. The descriptions about the the desert are very vivid and the personalities of the two detectives, Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan are very well chiselled out.
The book is very slow and nothing seems to happen for a very long time except for the two detectives plodding along, trying this and that. However, the writing is wonderful and the descriptions of the desert-life are riveting.
The final chapter of the book where it explains the what, who, why of everything, was a kind of let down. However, overall it was a good read.
Autopsy by Patricia Cornwell (2021) is another police procedural, this time from the point of view of the chief medical officer (CMO), Kay Scarpetta, responsible for autopsies and forensic aspect of crime investigations.
The book has a slow beginning with the discovery of the body of a murdered woman near a railway track. The interest in the first half of the book is sustained by different stories of the other persons in the "Scarpetta world" - her brother-in-law, her niece with her cat and a missing cat-collar, her secretary, her boss and the mystery of astronauts' death in the space.
The ending of this book felt a bit hurried, when most loose ends were tied, but not very neatly.
Cold Justice by Ant Middleton (2021): An action thriller, it is about Mallory, a war veteran, feeling guilty about his decision in Afghanistan which had led to the death of some of his men. He decides to help the mother of one of his ex-colleagues to search for her missing second son. It is fast paced, some good action scenes and well-written text with a James Bond kind of hero who knows how to get out of tricky situations.
I am not too fond of complicated climax scenes with continuous twists and new villains to overcome and in that sense, the final bits were a little tedious but the last scene with its unexpected final twist left a good after-taste. I found it to be a quick and interesting read.
I Have Something To Tell You by Susan Lewis (2021): It was a kind of two-in-one kind of books with two parallel stories that come together near the last part. One story is about a lawyer Jay and her client Edward, accused of having murdered his wife. The second thread is about the personal lives of Jay and Edward - Jay has problems with her husband Tom, who has been unfaithful, while Edward's wife had gone into self-destructive behaviour after losing her young son in an accident. The first 60% of the book focuses on the murder investigation while the last 40% mixes the personal issues and makes them as the main focus.
It is a very well written book, especially the psychological build-up of different characters. However, it book drags in some parts, it should have been edited and 50 pages less would have been better (now it is almost 400 pages).
Diamond and the Eye by Peter Lovesey (2021): This police procedural has the overweight detective Peter Diamond playing a duet with the street-smart private eye Johnny Getz while they look for a missing antique dealer. The writer uses a third person narrative for the chapters about the police detective and a first person narrative for the chapters about the private eye.
The murder mystery starts with a dead thief's body hidden inside an Egyptian mummy-coffin in the antique shop. The best part of the book is the humour and one-liners, especially in the parts about Johnny Getz.
The writer of this book, Peter Lovesey died in 2025.
Indigo Ridge by Devney Perry (2021): The book mixes a murder mystery and a romance story, a genre that normally I don't like. However, being on holidays at the seaside probably helped me to overcome my resistance. The murder mystery is about young girls jumping to their deaths from a rocky cliff, while the romantic story has a Marlboro man kind of rancher and the new young woman-chief of the local police.
The romance part has some explicit scenes of red-hot sex, while the murder mystery has the final twist with the unexpected killer, which was kind of difficult to believe in. I finished this one in less than 24 hours (being on a holiday helped in that).
One on One by Michael Brandman (2018): is a police procedural located in a fictional town called Freedom in south California. Buddy Steel, the deputy sheriff is single, emotionally fragile and conflicted about his father Sheriff Burton Steel, who is battling a deadly neurological condition.
The whole premise of the book, about a charming psychopath working in a school, who can convince anyone to have sex with him, including minor school girls, is a kind of unbelievable, because none of the parents suspect that it is a problem or the kind of guy he is.
It has a sub-plot about a street-artist, with a convenient resolution. The book has no great characterisations, but some good one-liners. Still it is readable because it is written well.
Silverview by John Le Carré (2021): I have been a long-time admirer of the spy books of John Le Carré. it is the story of an old Polish-British ex-spy who has decided to pass over to the other side, and the people trying to catch him.
Silverview, his last book, has only around 150 pages that he was unable to complete and was completed after his death by his son Nick Cornwell. In the 'afterword' written by Nick, he explains that the book was almost done and needed only some minor corrections, in fact he was surprised why his father had not completed it.
The book is about British spies, but is not much of a mystery. Rather, it reflects the present times, when even spy services must interrogate themselves and no one is sure of being on and fighting for the right side, because all sides are guilty of playing with blood of innocents. It is written beautifully with wonderful characterisations.
Desert Star by Michael Connelly (2022): The murder mystery and a police procedural has two of the iconic and most loved characters of the Connelly fiction universe, Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard. The book has two serial killers under the cold case unit. I don't know if this is the curtain call for Harry Bosch or if he going to have more books. His part in the book ends with an almost final withdrawal from the police work, though he has already retired a few times and made come-backs.
The book has a strong emotional core and a bit of vigilante justice. I found the final part of the book to be an absolute cracker. Don't miss this one if you like crime-fiction.
If only she knew by Alexandria Clarke (2021): This murder mystery, set in a small mid-west town setting has a sheriff helped by a woman with paranormal skills. She is called Calamity (Cal) James, who can talk to the dead people. I am not very fond of fiction about paranormal
While almost everyone thinks that she is weird and suspect her of being a a murderer, the sheriff believes in her and asks for her to find a missing woman. It is an easy read.
Murder at St Anne's by J. R. Ellis (2021): In a snow-covered winter, a female pastor in a Yorkshire Anglican church is found dead, killed by a heavy blow to her head. Detective Oldroyd is asked to investigate. Oldroyd's sister is also a pastor and was a friend of the dead woman, so the detective has an indirect personal connection to the victim. People say that she was killed by the ghost of a medieval monk but of course, the detective does not believe in it. It is an enjoyable police procedural book, with some interesting discussions about conservatives and liberals in the Anglican church.
Another aspect of the book I found interesting and yet a little jarring is the use of the pronoun 'they' for the assassin, to indicate that it could be a man or a woman - I thought it was too deliberate, it distracted the flow of the book because we don't think in a politically correct way. Instead, using 'he' would have been better. Otherwise, it is very well written.
The Night Shift by Robert Enright (2016): The action thriller with its hero Sam Pope, is in the tradition of action-heroes like Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher. It is full of non-stop action. Pope is much more violent compared to other action heroes and the book has some scenes of gory violence depicted in excruciating detail.
It makes for quick reading like a pack of chips, but it is marred by poor editing with many grammar mistakes and some poorly plotted scenes - probably being the first book, the author himself did the editing. Hopefully, his more recent books are better edited.
Dark Heart by Joan Fallon (2022): The book is based in Malaga in Spain and has a very Spanish vibe. When I read it, I had thought that it was an English translation of a Spanish book. The book has the detective Jacaranda Dunn (JD) accompanied by her helpers Linda and Nacho, working in collaboration with the Spanish Guardia Civil, to solve the murder mystery of a famous actor during a film festival.
JD has a kind of situation-affair with the chief of the police. Her assistant Linda has to deal with a family emergency. And the murder mystery has the background of the Basque fight for independence. All these elements create the parallel background stories, which are told in an interesting way. I enjoyed it.
Part 3: Other Genres of Books - 9 Books
The majority of these books were in the category of human relationships, with bits of romance in some in them.
On Fire Island by Jane L. Rosen: This book from 2023 was surprising, because at the end of the first chapter, Julie Morse, the book-editor by profession and the heroine of the story, dies from cancer. The second chapter is about her funeral. So the book written in first person, is a story told by a ghost, telling her experiences of following her grieving recently-widowed husband who comes to spend a few months at their seaside summer home.
The book has some tear-jerker parts but mostly the narrator's voice is playful, occasionally ironic and humorous. There are plenty of stories of other local characters, each of which often goes in some unexpected directions. An easy and interesting read - I read the 300+ pages' book in just over 3 evenings.
Nightingale by Kristin Hannah: The book is about 2 sisters living in a small village in France during the second world war and how their lives change because of the war. Vianne's husband leaves for the war, her close friend is Jewish, and through her, she will help save Jew children, even while she is forced to share her house and bed with a German.
The younger sister, Isabel, fights with the Nazi regime and helps allied pilots, only to end in a concentration camp.
Based partly on a real-life story, I found parts of the book too intense and melodramatic for my taste, however I did finish it. It was recommended to me by some friends from our Reading Group, who had really loved it.
Translation State by Ann Leckie (2023): This science-fiction book is part of the Radch empire series, but it is a stand-alone book. It has three main characters - Enae, a noble family woman who has passed her life in looking after her grandmother; Reet, an abandoned child with strange DNA who has been raised by foster parents; and Qven, a hybrid human-bio machine, who is being trained to be a Presger translator. Enae is asked to look for a fugitive who had come from another space-station some two hundred years ago, and her search brings her in contact with Reet and Qven.
The rules for different kinds of beings populating the Radch world are not explained in the book. Therefore, the terms for different humans, aliens, AI beings and hybrids, were not very clear to me. Yet I found the book interesting and mind-expanding. The clever use of language and genders, was both a bit disorienting and intuitively understandable. It has two understated love-stories that can be loosely understood as queer, but since the genders of the different characters are not very clear, the queerness is also not so clear.
After a very long, finally I had found a science fiction book that I liked, so I am very pleased about it. I had even started feeling that something has changed in me and that I won't like SF books ever again.
Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishoi (2021): This is a tiny book, a novella about Christmas time and the heartbreaking difference between dreams and reality for a little girl called Ronja.
I read the Italian translation (Porta delle Stelle) of this book written originally in Norwegian for my book-reading club. On my own, I don't think that I would have completed reading it, because it is about a family dealing with an alcohol addiction, a theme that I hate since it brings back unpleasant memories of when I was working as a community doctor. In fact, even if it is a tiny book, I read it in small pieces over a week.
Apart from the theme, it is very well-written and it seems that it has been a bestseller in many languages.
Larch Tree Lane by Anna Jacobs (2022): is a pleasant read, partly a cosy mystery, partly a love story about Lucia and Corin. She is running from her stalker-violent ex-husband and he is an architect who has returned to England after a decade of working for non-profits in different developing countries.
Lucia finds refuge in the house of a lonely old woman and Corin buys a group of old cottages nearby. The mystery is about a second world war building and some guys who do not wish him to buy those old houses. The book is first of a series based in a Wiltshire village.
It seems that the ninety years old author Anna Jacobs has written more than a hundred books and probably all that practice contributes towards making this book an easy, though an underwhelming read, I liked her second book (below) much more.
Magnolia Gardens by Anna Jacobs (2024): is also based in the same Wiltshire village. This time, the story has a set of small houses made for hosting people facing difficult situations.
The book is about the lives and challenges of 3 persons who need safe-places to live while they get over a difficult phase of their lives - one is a woman is running from a stalker ex-boyfriend, another is a dyslexic young man coming from a difficult life in foster-care homes and the third is an old widower who has lost his house in a fire.
The stories are connected by a retired woman who works as the warden. Corin from the first book makes a small appearance in this book. It is better plotted and written compared to the first book and makes for a pleasant read - read it if you like books about relationships.
The House Beneath the Cliff by Sharon Gosling (2021): is the story of Anna, searching for her own self-identity, who comes to live in a remote fishing village and about her relationship with villagers.
Anna had been working as a sub-chef while being in a live-in relationship with the head chef, who is an abusive and manipulative ex-boyfriend and a TV personality.
She comes to live in a little house in a tiny fishing village called Crovie hugging a cliff facing the north sea in Scotland. It is a good book if you like reading about human relationships. I was struck by its descriptions of the life in a tiny fishing village, and how it looks picturesque to the tourists but has many challenges for daily living.
Seven Perfect Things by Catherine Ryan Hyde (2021): The book is about a young teenager who saves seven puppies from drowning and decides to look after them. Through the puppies she meets a man grieving for his wife who has recently died. The two of them find support in each other, and as the man starts helping the teenager to take care of the puppies, he is drawn in her family problems which include a mother who is hoping to run away from home and an alcoholic and controlling companion-father.
It is a pleasant read, though I did skipped some pages in a few parts of this book.
The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges (1945): This book of short stories by the famous Argentinian writer was part of my book-reading group books. I read it in Italian and thus could imagine and appreciate the lyrical beauty of original writing in Spanish.
I read large parts of this book aloud and felt hypnotized by the words. Even while appreciating the poetry of his language, it is not an easy book because it is written in a way where it is difficult to remember the storylines about philosophy and fantasy touching on themes such as mythologies, dreams and labyrinths. So though I loved it while reading it, I can't tell you the storyline of any of its stories.
Conclusions
This year I must have opened hundreds of books but finished reading only 30 of them - 8 non-fiction books, 13 books about crime, mysteries and thrillers, and 9 books in other genres including a SF book.
Since I have thousands of books on my ebook reader and I know that in my remaining lifetime, I am going to read only a tiny proportion of them, so if a book bores me, I simply close it and try a new one. It is very different from my childhood, when I used to find interesting all the books I bought or took on loan from libraries.
My top 5 books from the above 30 books are:
(1) Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken - I liked it so much that I bought and gifted copies of it to my son and a friend.
(2) Silverview by John Le Carré - for its gentle story-telling of a spy story.
(3) Desert Star by Michael Connelly - for a great crime-thriller.
(4) Translation State by Ann Leckie - for the great science-fiction story set in a new hybrid world.
(5) Dusk, Night, Dawn by Anne Lamott - for the honesty with which shares the highs and lows of her life as a human being and as an author.
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