What I’m Reading in 2025

This is the literary lineup moving me, challenging me, and expanding my world view page by page, set in places I’ve been, places I’m going, places of the past, and—my favorite—places of pure imagination.

Every year, I like to keep a log of the books I’ve read. It becomes a kind of personal snapshot that often reflects where I’ve traveled and the ideas or themes that have held my attention that year. This year’s list is no different (see last year’s list here).

Some of these books I’ve sought out to prep me for destinations I’m about to visit, others I’ve been drawn to by intuition on library shelves and at hostel book exchanges, and still more out of total curiosity for the topics and themes they touch upon. This is more than just a list of book recommendations (though it is certainly that too). For each book you’ll find below, I’m sharing why I picked it up in the first place, some of the story behind the author who wrote it, and the heart of the plot that makes it worth a read yourself.

Whether you’re a traveler, just culturally curious, or someone looking for meaningful stories with real world roots, I hope this list connects you to places, cultures, and voices that resonate beyond the page, like each of these reads has for me.

We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson

I picked We Will Be Jaguars up ahead of a trip to Ecuador for a plant medicine retreat, hoping to connect more deeply with the land and culture behind the medicine. What I got was something way more powerful—a gripping, real-life story of Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous Waorani leader who grew up in the Amazon as missionaries and oil companies were moving in for the first time. With the help of her husband and co-author Mitch Anderson, Nemonte tells her story with clarity and fire—how she became a voice for her people and the rainforest, and why their survival is tied to all of ours. It’s one of those books that pulls you in fast, but stays with you even longer. It reminded me how personal, political, and sacred storytelling can be.

The editor-in-chief of Sierra Magazine said in his review that this book is “as much a testament to the power of female leadership as it is an uncompromising celebration of the wild.”

Available in print or audio — check it out on Amazon.

The Queen of Water by Laura Resau

The Queen of Water was another intentional read before my Ecuador trip. The novel is based on a harsh reality many Indigenous girls in Ecuador have faced: being taken from their communities and forced to work as unpaid domestic servants in cities, often enduring physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. It’s shocking to realize this practice still happened as recently as the late 20th century—and that this novel, written for young adults and based on a true story, doesn’t shy away from those brutal truths. The story is inspired by the real-life experience of Maria Virginia Farinango, the woman who lived through it—making it a raw but important read. It’s part of a broader history of Indigenous marginalization in Ecuador that’s often overlooked, and it made me reflect on how confronting stories like this are necessary to truly understand a place.

HipLATINA named this book to their list of the best books to understand the indigenous hsitory of Latin America, calling it “a winding journey of struggle, joy, and hope.”

Available in print or audio — check it out on Amazon.

All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan

All the Rivers is a book I traded for at a hostel in Chefchaouen, Morocco last fall. It’s a love story between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman who meet in New York City—two people caught in the impossible complexity of their countries’ conflict. The book doesn’t shy away from the tensions, fears, and heartbreak that come with their relationship, making you question if love can really rise above the deep divisions we live with. As a hopeless romantic for the world as much as in love, I want to believe it can—and this story reminded me why that hope matters.

In writing this post, I discovered that this book was actually banned from schools in Israel back in 2016. And these words from Rabinyan in response made me respect her and this book even more: “All the Rivers is an aperture for dialogue. Far away in New York, Liat and Hilmi, an artist and a student, discover their affinities and their shared fate. Theirs is a complicated love story. But it is suffused with our responsibility to see the other, to be able to recognize ourselves in them. Above all, it rests on the hope that whether we want to or not, whether we shut our eyes or plug our ears, whether we drag our feet or stomp our legs, we will sooner or later admit that we — us and them — sail on the same boat.”

Available in print or audio — check it out on Amazon.

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

I found Look Homeward, Angel the way I sometimes do—wandering the library without a plan, letting intuition guide me to a shelf, then a book. I tried to leave it behind more than once, but something about this plain-covered book wouldn’t let go. Written in 1929, it’s Thomas Wolfe’s sweeping, semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in the American South (specifically Altamont, a fictionalized version of Wolfe’s own hometown of Asheville, NC). It’s a story that’s dense, lyrical, and unapologetically sprawling with description. The writing is stunning, the kind you want to underline and reread just to figure out how he did it. But it’s also tangled in the perspectives of its time, especially around race, which makes it a challenging read through a modern lens. Still, as a writer, I found it endlessly inspiring. Wolfe was chasing something big with language—and often, he caught it.

My favorite line actually comes from Wolfe’s introduction: “But we are the sum of all the moments of our lives—all that is ours is in them: we cannot escape or conceal it. If the writer has used the clay of life to make his book, he has only used what all men must, what none can keep from using. Fiction is not fact, but fiction is fact selected and understood, fiction is fact arranged and charged with purpose.”

Available in print or audio — check it out on Amazon.

The Watchers by Jon Steele

I picked The Watchers up on a whim at the library (also intuitively), and almost quit reading it a few times because the dialogue and even some of its scenes felt too simple and stilted for me and kept taking me out of the story. But the concept of the tale kept pulling me back. It’s a modern re-imagining of the Book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish apocalyptic religious text that explores the fall of angels, their battles with demons, and the origins of evil—a story that’s inspired myths and religious thought for centuries. Knowing that gave the book weight beyond the surface, and ultimately I’m glad I stuck with it all the way to the final page. By the end, I didn’t want to put it down or for it to end. It reminded me that even if a book doesn’t hook you right away, there’s a chance it might if you give it a bit more time. I’ve found that with destinations that didn’t hook me the first day too. I’m also grateful for the rabbit hole this book sent me down to learn more about the Book of Enoch. I love a juicy new thread to explore. I’ve since learned The Watchers is Part 1 of a trilogy, called the Angelus Trilogy—Angel City (Part 2) and The Way of Sorrows (Part 3) are the other two books in the series I just might have to go read next.

This interview with the author by the book blog For Winter Nights shares some fascinating details about how Steele went from an award-winning war correspondent to boldly quitting it all when the Iraq War began and soon after finding the inspiration behind this novel in a bell tower in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Available in print or audio — check it out on Amazon.

They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennaar

They Dream in Gold was one of my favorite books of the year. Mae Sennaar’s writing hooked me from the first lines—her voice feels like music, landing so sweetly and easily to me that I could honestly say I’d follow her anywhere her stories may go in other novels she writes. This novel follows Bonnie and Mansour, who meet in 1960s New York, both from families with African and European roots. Their story stretches back through generations—mothers, grandmothers, aunts—as Sennaar captures the complexities of the African diaspora today. It’s about migration, the search for home, and how culture, identity, and history flow across borders through music, food, and art, but also how the meaning of your own skin color can come with so much nuance depending on which border you’re sitting within. The book paints a vivid picture of how people carry their roots with them, even as they build new lives far from where they started. It’s a rich, emotional tale of connection and resilience and I’ve been recommending it to anyone curious about what it means to be “from” many places at once.

This New York Times book review calls it “a powerful and poignant exploration of the African diaspora and global Black identity…moves like the storm Sennaar begins it with, revealing how we are all interlinked in a global community.”

Available in print or audio — check it out on Amazon.

The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Dream of the Celt was my first by Mario Vargas Llosa, a writer I’d meant to read for years—one of Peru’s greatest voices who sadly passed just after I picked this up. The book tells the true story of Roger Casement, an Irish diplomat who exposed brutal atrocities in the Congo under Belgian rule and in the Peruvian Amazon at the hands of the British rubber company Casa Arana. At the same time, Casement wrestles with his desire to free Ireland from British control. It’s a devastating, raw look at human cruelty and courage. The writing is vivid and grotesque, and it’s not an easy read, but definitely one for those ready to face hard truths about greed and injustice. For me, it was a tough but necessary journey into a dark corner of history I’d never dug into before.

This review in The Guardian writes: “this epic and often poetic novel delivers powerfully, giving a more rounded and authentic sense of one person's inner life and complexities than many biographies.”

Available in print or audio — check it out on Amazon.

What to Read Next