Blogmas Day 8: Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025

Hello! Welcome to Blogmas Day 8!

Today’s Advent Jigsaw Puzzle

No surprises in today’s jigsaw puzzle, but boy was it hard to put it together. This is one of those jigsaw puzzles where a lot of the pieces fit perfectly in more than one place. And when so much of the image looks pretty much the same, that’s a bit more of a challenge than I’m looking for on a frosty December morning. 😅

Time’s ‘100 Must-Read Books of 2025’ list

There are going to be renovations going on in my house this week, so I want to relax and focus on reading some good books. I have a few new releases out from the library, and I’m still waiting on a couple more to become available, so I thought this would be a good time to look at Time.coms ‘100 Must-Read Books of 2025‘ list. How many have I already read? Which ones am I still waiting for? And which ones should I add to my TBR for 2026? Let’s take a look.

I don’t know if these are in any kind of order, but I’ll list them in the order they appear. I’ll ignore books I’m not interested in, list books I’ve read in bold with the star rating I gave them, and books I’m interested to read in italics.

And we’re counting…

All That We See or Seem – Ken Liu (never heard of it before today, but it sounds good!)

The Antidote – Karen Russell (3 stars)

Audition – Katie Kitamura (4 stars)

The Book of Records – Madeleine Thien (sounds trippy!)

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter – Stephen Graham Jones (5 stars)

The Catch – Yrsa Daley-Ward (another one I hadn’t heard of; definitely intrigued by the description)

Death of the Author – Nnedi Okorafor (I bought this on Kindle months ago but haven’t read it yet)

The Dream Hotel – Laila Lalami (5 stars!)

Flashlight – Susan Choi (4 stars)

A Flower Traveled in My Blood – Haley Cohen Gilliland (one of my most anticipated books of the year, but I haven’t managed to get my hands on it yet)

A Guardian and a Thief – Megha Majumdar (you tell me “climate refugee dystopia,” and I’m in)

The Hounding – Xenobe Purvis (sounds interesting)

Is a River Alive? – Robert Macfarlane (4 stars)

Isola – Allegra Goodman (5 stars)

Katabasis – R.F. Kuang (4 stars)

King of Ashes – S.A. Cosby (I haven’t read any of S.A. Cosby’s books yet, but I’ve heard good things)

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny – Kiran Desai (heard of this from the Booker shortlist, sounds interesting)

My Documents – Kevin Nguyen (first time hearing about this one, and I’m intrigued)

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – Omar El Akkad (4 stars)

O Sinners! – Nicole Cuffy (sounds like an interesting look at the cult mentality)

Pick a Colour – Souvankham Thammavongsa (4 stars; kind of offended that Americans take the U out of the title)

Run for the Hills – Kevin Wilson (sounds fun!)

Shadow Ticket – Thomas Pynchon (maybe this will be my first Pynchon?)

Tilt – Emma Pattee (another top anticipated book of the year for me that I haven’t got my hands on yet)

A Truce That Is Not Peace – Miriam Toews (4 stars)

Vera, or Faith – Gary Shteyngart (sounds interesting)

Victorian Psycho – Virginia Feito (I’m next on the hold list at the library!)

Wild Dark Shore – Charlotte McConaghy (on the hold list for this one, too)

The Zorg – Siddharth Kara (I’m 12% into the NetGalley ARC of this one, but I’m finding it kind of dry, and it came out a month ago 😅 Oops)

1929 – Andrew Ross Sorkin (might be interesting to read about the 1929 stock market crash from a contemporary perspective)

Final tally

So I’ve read 11 of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025, and I pretty much agree that they’re good. I still have 19 on my TBR list and hope to read at least 2 of them before the end of the year. Not too bad, I guess? Considering how diverse the list is, including many genres I’m not interested in.

Overall, nice list! There are a few I’d add, but I’ll save that for my own post on my favourite new releases of the year.

If you’re interested, I’ve reviewed all of the books in bold (and more) here on my blog. They’re also on the World LiteraTour Reads and Reviews shelf on my Bookshop.org affiliate shop, if you’d like to buy any of them. (Any purchase made through my shop earns me a small commission at no extra expense to you.)