Books of the Year 2025

These are some of the books that Benjamin has read and mainly enjoyed this year (a select few were not completed). Not included are books used for researching writing projects.

Mr Fox by Barbara Comyns

We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley Jackson

Stitches By David Small

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now by Eleanor Coppola

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

The Loves Of My Life by Edmund White

The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe

Playland by Anthony Daly

Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art by Bad People? By Claire Dederer

Communes In Britain by Andrew Rigby

Saltwater Mansions by David Whitehouse

Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool by Peter Turner

The Microdot Gang by James Wylie

A Riot Of Our Own: Night And Day With The Clash by Johnny Green

Ripcord by Nate Lippens

A Silent Language by Jon Fosse

Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams

Johnny Go Home by Michael Deakin and John Willis

Joe Gould’s Secret by Joseph Mitchell

Knut Hamsun: Dreamer & Dissenter by Ingar Sletten Kolloen

Final Destination: Riding Britain’s Trains to The End Of The Line by Nige Tassell

The Bodies Beneath: The Flipside Of British Film & Television by William Fowler and Vic Pratt 

Lie With Me by Philippe Bresson

The Pepsi Cola Addict by June Gibbons

Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda

The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood? And Other Essays by William Goldman

Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino

The Python Years: Diaries 1969-1979: by Michael Palin

Magma by Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life by Eric Idle

The Pin Jar by Sam Reid

Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage With Barry Humphries by John Lahr

A Hidden Landscape Once a Week: The Unruly Curiosity of the British Music Press from the 1960s to the 1980s ed. Mark Sinker

Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 by Michael Palin

The Ordeal Of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh

Cameo by Rob Doyle

EM Forster & Kings by Patrick Wilkinson

This Is What You Get by Stanley Donwood & Thom Yorke

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht

Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988-1998 by Michael Palin

Not Far From Brideshead by Daisy Dunn

Hollywood Babylon II by Kenneth Anger

Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life by Dan Nadel

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

A Little Lumpen Novelita by Roberto Bolano

Selected Poems 1923-1958 by ee cummings

Ancient Sorceries And Other Stories by Algernon Blackwood

Brendon Chase by BB

Nigh-No-Place by Jen Hadfield

There And Back: Diaries 1999-2009 by Michael Palin

High On The Walls by Tom Pickard

San Quentin’s Stranger by William Wantling

Discord by Jeremy Cooper

The Hell-Fire Club by Daniel P. Mannix

Year Book by Seth Rogen

Lynchian by John Higgs

The Kinks’ The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller

Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressman Taylor

Party Going by Henry Green

Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner

See you in 2026.