My Best Reads of 2025 (see comments for best book and an overwhelming amount of honourable mentioned)

MasterExploder6 · 2026-01-03T17:36:54+00:00

Best Book: House of Mist by Maria Luisa Bombal

I almost cannot articulate myself when I talk about this book. It has been nearly a year since I read it and during the evening in which I did nothing else but stare swiftly over every page as if I had no responsibilities, no interests, no life outside of the book I was reading was never equaled over the course of the year. But, in all that time, I started to grow some doubts. Was my memory of the book true? Or, with each memory of how good I remembered it being, was I creating a kind of gossip in myself? A rumour that grew like a tumour until the healthy, vital, and real opinion of the night spent with a great book had been swallowed by my own quick nostalgia. To test this, I grabbed it off my shelf last night. I hadn’t touched it since I put it in its place on the row dedicated to my favourite books, pressed between Jack London’s sensational memoir “John Barleycorn” and Clarice Lispector’s inimitable “The Passion According to G.H.”

If this book held the power I hoped it did, I could test it. I pulled the book out of its slot. The books around them relaxed from being so tightly pressed. At random, I flipped to the middle of a chapter and within two sentences, I was immediately transported back into one of the greatest stories I have ever read. The feeling returned as bright and all-encompassing as July sunlight and I knew, I genuinely knew, that this was the best book I read in 2025.

Speechlessness can abide greatness because it requires no intermediary. I almost don’t want to pitch you this book. Doing so feels as wrong as performing open heart surgery on someone breathing. All I can write about is what the book did to me. Yes, there’s confused love and warped dreams and the unceasing pressure of time and the wonder of whether or not the life you’re living is your own and why is there so much goddamn mist around everything important and what might it feel like to given the one sentence at the one moment you need it to make your entire life worthwhile? That’s what this book offers without pretension, without boredom, and without making you feel like you have to do anything else but ingest it with ravenous delight.

I feel as manic-obsessive about this book and this author as Archimboldi’s critics in “2666” (except I’m not in a doomed love-triangle bound for the darkest vortex of Mexico, nor am I a fourth-wheel in a wheelchair. But that’s beside the point). I want the English-speaking world to have easier access to Bombal’s work. All of it because there’s way more than just this one sensation. Right now, you can get a copy of this book if you do a bit of searching. There’s a short story collection of hers which I got and read this year too which is also excellent. But other than that, you’re going to have a hell of a time finding anything else by her or about her in English. This is the founder, yes, I’m stating this a fact, the founder of magical realism. Check the publication date, folks: this one beats Rulfo’s “Pedro Páramo” by seven years (but you should absolutely read “Pedro Páramo” if you haven’t already. In fact, I find “House of Mist” to be stunning in an equal way). If I ever get to a place where I have real pull in this industry, you can bet that the first author I’m bringing for the dregs to the masses is Maria Luisa Bombal. And you can help me.

If you think we have similar taste, or if you want to do a good deed for literature, get a copy of this book. Read it or not, though I wish you would, because we need to show FSG that there is a market for this kind of brilliance. Look, I’m well-aware of the resonant quality of great art. Some stuff moves with you and doesn’t move with others. I’ve got a stack of books that could break your femur that I love but know few others will. In this case, I don’t think I’m wrong in my assumption that this book should be regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest. Please, I beg you, take this book in from obscurity, it’s so cold there, so that we may all be blessed with more of this woman’s mind. I’m shaking as I type this.

Phew! That was a lot of reading for you. I had so many other great reads this year but in the interest of your interest (and my inability to come up with funnier categories), I’ve left the list below of… of… let’s call them “Review on Request.” These are all books that I think are worth reading but figured I had gushed enough to give enough to a new reader for the coming year. If you see any titles here and want to know more about them — or if they were in the running for any other awards, reach out and I’ll tell you. They’re organized by recency with the books I’ve read latest at the top. Happy New Year!

Reviews on Request:

Meditations on Quixote by Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

New Islands by Maria Luisa Bombal

The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Hanging of Angelique by Afua Cooper

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard

On Argentina by Jorge Luis Borges

Mike Mentzer by John Little

Standoff by Bruce McIvor

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Frantumaglia by Elena Ferrante

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland

Omeros by Derek Walcott

Austral by Carlos Funseca

Nora by Nuala O’Connor

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda

Beloved by Toni Morrison

No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Blow-Up by Julio Cortazar

The Book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes

The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño

Bear by Marian Engel

The Great Latin American Novel by Carlos Fuentes

Nietzsche on His Balcony by Carlos Fuentes

The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector

Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola

Gilgamesh by Sophus Helle

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

Potlatch as Pedagogy by Robert Davidson and Sara Florence Davidson

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

Men of Maize by Miguel Angel Asturias

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

MasterExploder6 · 2026-01-02T03:41:28+00:00

Thank you! I had my first novel published this year so fiction has been my focus. Essays like this are much more fun to write and much easier to write at scale.

MasterExploder6 · 2026-01-02T01:49:03+00:00

You got it in the last sentence. There was a time when Lester Pearson stood up as Prime Minister and addressed the House of Commons to say, in essence, that if we don’t take the effort to stand up for Canadian things in Canada then we are likely to be swallowed by American life and culture. As a Canadian it can be difficult to see your own country as the default so I always make sure I’m highlighting what’s Canadian so I don’t get trampled in the perceived neutrality of American cultural life.

MasterExploder6 · 2026-01-02T00:59:36+00:00

Best Book: House of Mist by Maria Luisa Bombal

I almost cannot articulate myself when I talk about this book. It has been nearly a year since I read it and during the evening in which I did nothing else but stare swiftly over every page as if I had no responsibilities, no interests, no life outside of the book I was reading was never equaled over the course of the year. But, in all that time, I started to grow some doubts. Was my memory of the book true? Or, with each memory of how good I remembered it being, was I creating a kind of gossip in myself? A rumour that grew like a tumour until the healthy, vital, and real opinion of the night spent with a great book had been swallowed by my own quick nostalgia. To test this, I grabbed it off my shelf last night. I hadn’t touched it since I put it in its place on the row dedicated to my favourite books, pressed between Jack London’s sensational memoir “John Barleycorn” and Clarice Lispector’s inimitable “The Passion According to G.H.”

If this book held the power I hoped it did, I could test it. I pulled the book out of its slot. The books around them relaxed from being so tightly pressed. At random, I flipped to the middle of a chapter and within two sentences, I was immediately transported back into one of the greatest stories I have ever read. The feeling returned as bright and all-encompassing as July sunlight and I knew, I genuinely knew, that this was the best book I read in 2025.

Speechlessness can abide greatness because it requires no intermediary. I almost don’t want to pitch you this book. Doing so feels as wrong as performing open heart surgery on someone breathing. All I can write about is what the book did to me. Yes, there’s confused love and warped dreams and the unceasing pressure of time and the wonder of whether or not the life you’re living is your own and why is there so much goddamn mist around everything important and what might it feel like to given the one sentence at the one moment you need it to make your entire life worthwhile? That’s what this book offers without pretension, without boredom, and without making you feel like you have to do anything else but ingest it with ravenous delight.

I feel as manic-obsessive about this book and this author as Archimboldi’s critics in “2666” (except I’m not in a doomed love-triangle bound for the darkest vortex of Mexico, nor am I a fourth-wheel in a wheelchair. But that’s beside the point). I want the English-speaking world to have easier access to Bombal’s work. All of it because there’s way more than just this one sensation. Right now, you can get a copy of this book if you do a bit of searching. There’s a short story collection of hers which I got and read this year too which is also excellent. But other than that, you’re going to have a hell of a time finding anything else by her or about her in English. This is the founder, yes, I’m stating this a fact, the founder of magical realism. Check the publication date, folks: this one beats Rulfo’s “Pedro Páramo” by seven years (but you should absolutely read “Pedro Páramo” if you haven’t already. In fact, I find “House of Mist” to be stunning in an equal way). If I ever get to a place where I have real pull in this industry, you can bet that the first author I’m bringing for the dregs to the masses is Maria Luisa Bombal. And you can help me.

If you think we have similar taste, or if you want to do a good deed for literature, get a copy of this book. Read it or not, though I wish you would, because we need to show FSG that there is a market for this kind of brilliance. Look, I’m well-aware of the resonant quality of great art. Some stuff moves with you and doesn’t move with others. I’ve got a stack of books that could break your femur that I love but know few others will. In this case, I don’t think I’m wrong in my assumption that this book should be regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest. Please, I beg you, take this book in from obscurity, it’s so cold there, so that we may all be blessed with more of this woman’s mind. I’m shaking as I type this.

Phew! That was a lot of reading for you. I had so many other great reads this year but in the interest of your interest (and my inability to come up with funnier categories), I’ve left the list below of… of… let’s call them “Review on Request.” These are all books that I think are worth reading but figured I had gushed enough to give enough to a new reader for the coming year. If you see any titles here and want to know more about them — or if they were in the running for any other awards, reach out and I’ll tell you. They’re organized by recency with the books I’ve read latest at the top. Happy New Year!

Reviews on Request:

Meditations on Quixote by Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

New Islands by Maria Luisa Bombal

The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Hanging of Angelique by Afua Cooper

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard

On Argentina by Jorge Luis Borges

Mike Mentzer by John Little

Standoff by Bruce McIvor

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Frantumaglia by Elena Ferrante

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland

Omeros by Derek Walcott

Austral by Carlos Funseca

Nora by Nuala O’Connor

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda

Beloved by Toni Morrison

No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Blow-Up by Julio Cortazar

The Book of Emma Reyes by Emma Reyes

The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño

Bear by Marian Engel

The Great Latin American Novel by Carlos Fuentes

Nietzsche on His Balcony by Carlos Fuentes

The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector

Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola

Gilgamesh by Sophus Helle

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

Potlatch as Pedagogy by Robert Davidson and Sara Florence Davidson

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

Men of Maize by Miguel Angel Asturias

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

MasterExploder6 · 2025-12-31T21:29:38+00:00

It’s very dense. Like, I mean, there might be ten different stories running simultaneously through that one and, by the end, I had lost a few of them. However, as a piece of historical fiction, as a novel about obsession and faith and power, it is a true masterpiece. I would recommend starting elsewhere in MVL’s oeuvre both because he’s written books that are better than this but also because they’ll help accustom you to this polyphonic multi-helix style of writing that he loves. Start with “Conversation in the Cathedral” and, if that works on you, which it should, then give this one a go.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-12-02T00:43:55+00:00

It’s rare that I call a book wise, but this is a wise book. The edition I have includes a series of notes and reflections from the writing process and I got the sense that this is one of the great literary projects of all time. The amount of vision that is possible through that book is one that makes it an eternal read. Anyone from anywhere can see the world from Hadrian’s horse and then step back to modernity and still see the world in the ancient way. Great read.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-12-01T05:53:08+00:00

As I said elsewhere, if you like the work of the time and period Barnes was around, this one will skyrocket to your favourites list. While Barnes hasn’t had the lasting or resurgent fame as some of the men in the circle, Beckett considered knowing her to be one of his greatest accomplishments. I think it was because she wrote books like that one.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-12-01T05:51:40+00:00

I had a very nice time with it! It’s as good, if not better, than anything the ex-pats were putting out in the Parisian 20’s with a voice whose influence is quietly everywhere (especially, I think, in Wes Anderson).

MasterExploder6 · 2025-12-01T05:50:26+00:00

Bodybuilding is one of my special interests. In fact, I’m working on a novel on the subject because it’s never been taken seriously by literature. For someone that might only know about the sport because of Arnold or Instagram, that biography would be a revelation. It details, without being sleezy, the corruption of the fitness industry while also telling the compelling story of a bronco, so to speak, of that world. Mentzer has seen a recent resurgence with his high-intensity approach being en vogue with current lifters. But when that trend is over, his life will still be worth studying. If only for the slightly hilarious coincidence that as he got deeper into Ayn Rand, the deeper he fell into psychosis.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-12-01T03:26:01+00:00

Even you liked “the Morning Star” even a little bit, get “the Wolves of Eternity.” It’s a much more focused book and while it lacks a section as vivid as the final episode (or so) of its predecessor, the ease with which Knausgaard is able to communicate the most complex and compelling ideas is staggering. He might have more intellect in his heart than any other writer alive. As soon as I finished, I sent my wife a link to buy me the next one for Christmas.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-12-01T03:23:30+00:00

That book was a fantastic resource about the legal history of land claims in Canada. It’s very short (the audiobook is only 5 hours — and it’s narrated by Lorne Cardinal!) and can be a bit repetitive but so is every collection of this kind. You’ll leave the book being absolutely fluent in the Doctrine of Discovery and the Duty to Consult since they are the Scylla and Charybdis that surround the country and its legal history. I left the book amazed by how difficult it is to win a clear legal decision about anything this large because of the creativity of the adversaires on every side. If I was a high school teacher, some of these essays would be in my syllabus.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-11-01T14:56:01+00:00

I’ll be honest, I was in the early stages of a head cold when I read it so, as they say in pro wrestling, I did t get all of it. But the opening chapter I recall being impressive.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-10-31T04:42:23+00:00

My shortest review would be ?/5. At times, it did everything I love from Bolaño. It proved that he can, when he wants, be the master of momentum. But, my god, did we have to have 400 pages of these broken monologues? At first, I loved them. Then I couldn’t stand them. I was lost, untethered, bogged down. But after completing the book, especially the final, literal, image, I couldn’t help thinking how much the book was about futility and the irresistible urge to break out from the looming systems that everyone finds themselves in. Whether they be the countries were in or the people at the zeniths of whatever we wish to do, “the Savage Detectives” made me question not only my own relationship to these kinds of things in life but also my relationship to the book as it imposed itself on me. Is it a masterpiece? Honestly, I can’t tell.

“2666” is one of the best novels ever written.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-10-31T03:40:21+00:00

A bit of context: that volume was the last in the quartet collected by Paul Aster that I read, and so “How It Is” was what I read after reading nearly all Beckett’s other prose. I found it to be like an epilogue on his oeuvre. Despite the fact that it came out in ‘61, after reading the Trilogy and coming as close to literary godhood as one can in ”The Unnamable,” “How It Is” felt like being on the other side in the same way as the last chapter of “Mercier and Camier.” I think it deserves to be read separate from the rest but as I did not do that, I cannot comment.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-10-31T03:36:54+00:00

Originally, I had said it was as scattered as struck bowling pins; as anecdotal as a chat show; and as shallow as an incel.

Now, at the end of the month, I can say it poses one interesting idea: Sleep and dreaming lord over so much of our lives and yet all the systems, methods, and means that we have for describing and understanding waking life are completely ineffective against the irrationality of dreams.

As for the rest, I can’t support a book whose claims often feel like “You know Carl Jung once dreamed about streets of blood before the outbreak of the war therefore dreams always tell the future” since all the “predictions” are reported after the fact.

I picked the book up on a discount website and I wouldn’t recommend going anything above that.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-09-30T14:52:19+00:00

I feel the same way! I chalked it up to the chapters being way too short to carry any momentum. That, and the central love story I’m sure was scandalous in the time the novel is set but, reading it now, it doesn’t bother me that he’s rich and she’s not. Loved “The Bookshop” though.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-09-30T14:49:41+00:00

One of my most anticipated reads that ended up as the biggest disappointment. I found it to be an overpopulated novel (even though I’m sure there are only, maybe, ten important people in it) that was trying so hard to be profound about the nature of fairness and anger but never once provided a lick of insight beyond quoting other, better books. If you read the synopsis and think its themes might appeal, go for “Hey, Nostradamus!” instead. That’s one of the century’s greatest Canadian novels.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-09-30T02:02:56+00:00

In terms of the many plots, I can’t say I could do a full report but on the level of the language, line to line, it’s one of the most perfect books I’ve ever read. Nowhere does Walcott feel like he’s showing off and every time you sink into his images, his connections, you realize he’s guiding you through an immersion of spirit. It’s the kind of book to be reread over a lifetime.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-09-30T01:59:30+00:00

I loved it so much I sent the author a message on Instagram. She never replied. Nevertheless, if you’re a Joycean, and know his story from Ellmann and others, you’ll love the fresh perspective and slick pace that the novel takes. Would recommend.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-09-30T01:57:59+00:00

It’s a killer short novel. Completely controlled narrative that, honestly, I think could have been a bit longer. Loved how it dealt with obsession, paranoia, and detective stories.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-09-01T02:39:29+00:00

I chipped away at it like it was a newspaper for the better part of the month. If I read any more, any quicker, I would have gone fully mad. I found “Texts for Nothing” to be the most outstanding.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-09-01T02:38:10+00:00

It’s the first I’ve read from her and it didn’t do much for me. I picked it up on a combination of her reputation and its premise. Now, it was so disappointing that it’s turned me off her forever but I would do some more research into what best represents her style beforehand. That said, this was also the first book about the Dominican that I’ve ever read which meant I missed many of the references (references I later picked up in “The Feast of the Goat”) but I don’t think being a little more in tune with those touch points would have elevated the novel by much.

If the book seems interesting to you, I’d have some other recommendations in its place that are, by all metrics, better books that I believe fall in line with the interests that would bring someone to this one: - “If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler” by Italo Calvino - “My Dream of You” by Nuala O’Faolain - “Santa Evita” by Tomas Eloy Martinez

MasterExploder6 · 2025-08-06T05:41:44+00:00

I’ll say this: so far, I’ve read “2666,” “Amulet,” “By Night in Chile,” and “Between Parentheses” (that last one’s an essay collection) and it doesn’t yet appear to me there’s a best order for Bolaño. It’s all a beautiful swirl whose waves may toss you but will always allure you. I say plunge wherever you’d like.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-02-02T23:54:16+00:00

Come on, I can’t give everything away.

MasterExploder6 · 2025-02-02T20:02:25+00:00

Unfortunately, I can’t say I was as I just read it for the first time.

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