Reading Lists · Lisanne Swart
The Best Books, Year by Year
Every year I read across fiction, memoir, and nonfiction and choose the books I keep thinking about long after I have finished them. Not the most hyped. Not the longest lists. The ones worth your time — with honest notes on what makes each one earn its place. Start anywhere.
The books that arrived while everything else was still in motion
Han Kang · Asako Yuzuki · Patrick Radden Keefe · Gisèle Pelicot
- Hooked — Asako Yuzuki · follow-up to Butter: female obsession, loneliness, Japan
- Light and Thread — Han Kang · the Nobel laureate’s first nonfiction in English
- A Hymn to Life — Gisèle Pelicot · the memoir from France’s most significant trial in years
- London Falling — Patrick Radden Keefe · investigative nonfiction in the tradition of Say Nothing
The year that asked who gets to tell whose story
David Szalay · Percival Everett · Miranda July · Han Kang · Banu Mushtaq
- Flesh — David Szalay · Booker winner: a man unmade by forces beyond his control
- James — Percival Everett · Pulitzer winner: Huckleberry Finn retold from Jim’s perspective
- All Fours — Miranda July · a woman stops her road trip two hours from home and stays
- Feeding Ghosts — Tessa Hulls · Pulitzer memoir: three generations of a Chinese-American family
Sally Rooney at full range, and a novel set entirely in space
Samantha Harvey · Sally Rooney · Yael van der Wouden · Percival Everett
- Orbital — Samantha Harvey · Booker winner: six astronauts orbit a wounded Earth in 24 hours
- Intermezzo — Sally Rooney · two brothers, grief, falling in love in ways that make no sense
- The Safekeep — Yael van der Wouden · debut shortlisted for Booker: a Dutch house with a dark past
- James — Percival Everett · shortlisted for Booker 2024, Pulitzer winner 2025
The Booker winner you read in one sitting, and the satire that drew blood
Paul Lynch · R.F. Kuang · Paul Murray · David Grann · Rick Rubin
- Prophet Song — Paul Lynch · Booker winner: Ireland tips into totalitarianism, told in one breathless block
- Yellowface — R.F. Kuang · a stolen manuscript, a white author, publishing’s uncomfortable mirror
- The Bee Sting — Paul Murray · Booker shortlist: Irish family in crisis, told from four perspectives
- The Creative Act — Rick Rubin · creativity as a way of paying attention
The novel everyone pressed into other people’s hands
Gabrielle Zevin · Shehan Karunatilaka · Bonnie Garmus · Oliver Burkeman
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin · thirty years of creative partnership, love and ambition
- The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida — Shehan Karunatilaka · Booker winner: a dead war photographer navigates the Sri Lankan afterlife
- Lessons in Chemistry — Bonnie Garmus · a chemist who becomes a TV cook and refuses to be small
- Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman · the anti-productivity book about what finite time actually means
The year that changed how people understood their own patterns
Damon Galgut · Oprah Winfrey & Bruce Perry · Brit Bennett · Sally Rooney
- What Happened to You? — Oprah & Bruce Perry · why we love the way we do
- The Promise — Damon Galgut · Booker winner: four funerals, four decades, one broken promise in South Africa
- The Vanishing Half — Brit Bennett · twin sisters who build completely different identities from the same origin
- The Dawn of Everything — Graeber & Wengrow · the history of humanity we were never taught
The year of aftermath — the books that made the present legible
Douglas Stuart · Maggie O’Farrell · Susanna Clarke · Isabel Wilkerson
- Shuggie Bain — Douglas Stuart · Booker winner: Glasgow, 1980s, a boy and his alcoholic mother
- Hamnet — Maggie O’Farrell · Women’s Prize winner: Shakespeare’s son, and the mother history forgot
- Piranesi — Susanna Clarke · a house of infinite halls, a mind without its past — unlike anything else
- Caste — Isabel Wilkerson · the framework for understanding American inequality that changed the conversation
One of the strongest years for books in recent memory
Tara Westover · Anna Burns · Sally Rooney · John Carreyrou · Michelle Obama
- Educated — Tara Westover · a young woman teaches herself out of the world her family built
- Milkman — Anna Burns · Booker winner: Belfast during the Troubles, told in breathless stream of consciousness
- Normal People — Sally Rooney · the novel that introduced her to the world: Connell, Marianne, four years
- Bad Blood — John Carreyrou · the Theranos fraud, told by the journalist who broke the story
The year Lincoln in the Bardo changed what a novel could be
George Saunders · Hanya Yanagihara · George Packer · Paul Auster
- Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders · Booker winner: grief, voices, and a president at his son’s grave
- Pachinko — Min Jin Lee · four generations of a Korean family in Japan — epic and intimate at once
- The Underground Railroad — Colson Whitehead · Pulitzer winner: a literal underground railroad and the America above it
- Homo Deus — Yuval Noah Harari · what humanity might become after solving hunger, plague, and war
The year Paul Beatty won the Booker and made everyone reckon with satire
Paul Beatty · Colson Whitehead · Celeste Ng · Ottessa Moshfegh
- The Sellout — Paul Beatty · Booker winner: the most daring American satirical novel in decades
- The Underground Railroad — Colson Whitehead · Pulitzer winner: slavery, escape, and an America that keeps reinventing cruelty
- Little Fires Everywhere — Celeste Ng · two families, one suburb, and the secrets that unravel both
- Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari · the history of humankind, retold from the outside looking in
A Little Life and the question of how much a reader can hold
Hanya Yanagihara · Marlon James · Anthony Doerr · Ta-Nehisi Coates
- A Little Life — Hanya Yanagihara · Booker shortlist: the most emotionally demanding novel of the decade
- A Brief History of Seven Killings — Marlon James · Booker winner: Jamaica, the CIA, and the night someone tried to kill Bob Marley
- Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates · a letter to a son about living in a Black body in America
- The Buried Giant — Kazuo Ishiguro · memory, forgetting, and what a marriage survives when the past returns
All the Light We Cannot See and the year that rewarded slow readers
Anthony Doerr · Richard Flanagan · Emily St. John Mandel · Helen Macdonald
- All the Light We Cannot See — Anthony Doerr · Pulitzer winner: WWII France, a blind girl, a German soldier, and a radio signal
- The Narrow Road to the Deep North — Richard Flanagan · Booker winner: Australian POWs building the Burma Death Railway
- Station Eleven — Emily St. John Mandel · a pandemic, a travelling theatre company, and the things worth preserving
- H is for Hawk — Helen Macdonald · Costa Award: grief, a goshawk, and T.H. White — one of the decade’s finest memoirs
The Goldfinch, Americanah, and the year literary fiction reclaimed its audience
Donna Tartt · Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · Eleanor Catton · Dave Eggers
- The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt · Pulitzer winner: a painting, a boy who survives, and the question of what beauty is for
- Americanah — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · a Nigerian woman navigates race, identity, and America — one of the decade’s essential novels
- The Luminaries — Eleanor Catton · Booker winner: the youngest ever winner, a gold rush mystery in 19th-century New Zealand
- The Interestings — Meg Wolitzer · six friends from a summer arts camp, thirty years later — about talent and who gets to keep it
The highest-rated books of the year — fiction that still holds
J.K. Rowling · George R.R. Martin · Stephen King · Michael Chabon
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — J.K. Rowling · the book where the series turned dark and became unmissable
- A Storm of Swords — George R.R. Martin · the Red Wedding, and the most shocking sequence in modern popular fiction
- On Writing — Stephen King · half memoir, half masterclass — the most useful book about writing ever published
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay — Michael Chabon · Pulitzer winner: art, escape, and two cousins in 1940s New York
The God of Small Things and the year literary fiction felt urgent again
Arundhati Roy · Philip Roth · Don DeLillo · Jon Krakauer
- The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy · Booker winner: twins, forbidden love, and the caste system in Kerala — still breathtaking
- American Pastoral — Philip Roth · Pulitzer winner: the American Dream unravelling across three decades
- Underworld — Don DeLillo · fifty years of American history through a single baseball, opening with the shot heard round the world
- Into Thin Air — Jon Krakauer · a first-hand account of the 1996 Everest disaster — the nonfiction book that defined adventure writing
Not looking for a specific year?
Browse by theme instead — fiction about love, books about family secrets, the best memoirs ever written, or the psychology books that actually change how you think.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best books of the last 5 years?
The books that have generated the most sustained critical and reader attention from 2020 to 2025 include Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Booker Prize 2020), Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (Women’s Prize 2020), Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022), James by Percival Everett (Pulitzer Prize 2025), and All Fours by Miranda July (2024). For nonfiction: Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (2020), Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (2022), and Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls (Pulitzer 2025). Each year’s full list is linked above.
Which Booker Prize winners should I read?
Of the Booker Prize winners covered across these lists, the ones most worth starting with are: Shuggie Bain (2020) — one of the most emotionally devastating novels of the decade; The Promise by Damon Galgut (2021) — four funerals across forty years of post-apartheid South Africa; Orbital by Samantha Harvey (2024) — six astronauts orbit a wounded Earth over a single day; and Flesh by David Szalay (2025). Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (2023) is the one you read in a single sitting. Milkman by Anna Burns (2018) is the most formally demanding — and the most rewarding. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2015) and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017) are both essential. Earlier: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (2013) and The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (2014) are among the strongest of the decade. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997) remains one of the most beautiful Booker winners ever.
What are the best books to read in 2025 or 2026?
For 2025: James by Percival Everett (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), Flesh by David Szalay (Booker Prize), All Fours by Miranda July, and Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls. For 2026: Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, Light and Thread by Han Kang (her first nonfiction in English), A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot, and London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe. Both full lists are updated and linked above.
What is the best literary fiction of the last few years?
The strongest literary fiction from 2015 onwards includes A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015), Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017), Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018), Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020), Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020), Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022), James by Percival Everett (2024), All Fours by Miranda July (2024), and Flesh by David Szalay (2025). These are the novels readers are still pressing into other people’s hands years after publication.
Where should I start if I want to read one great book from each recent year?
One book per year: 1997 — The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. 2000 — On Writing by Stephen King. 2013 — Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 2014 — Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. 2015 — A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (if you can take it) or Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. 2016 — The Sellout by Paul Beatty. 2017 — Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. 2018 — Educated by Tara Westover. 2020 — Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. 2021 — The Promise by Damon Galgut. 2022 — Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. 2023 — Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. 2024 — James by Percival Everett. 2025 — All Fours by Miranda July. 2026 — Hooked by Asako Yuzuki.
From the bookshelf
One book a year that genuinely changes how you think is more than enough. These lists are a place to find that book.
My full bookshelf has every book I have reviewed — with honest notes on what each one is for and who it is for.
