The Guardian just released a list of the 100 best novels of all time. I like how they arrived at the list. It’s interesting to click through and see who voted for which book. As it turns out, I’ve read just 35 of these. I sense a shuffling of my TBR list! 📚
Reading
Check out my separate reading blog for an index of book reviews and ratings.
Finished reading: The Good Life by Jay McInerney 📚
The second book in McInerney’s Calloway saga. Not as ambitious as Brightness Falls, but moving all the same. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: The First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway 📚
Rereading Hemingway one story a night — pure, punchy prose with deep emotions tucked just below the surface. Favorites: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hills Like White Elephants, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Departure(s) by Julian Barnes 📚
This latest novel from Julian Barnes resists easy classification — memoir, literary analysis, meditation on friendship, memory, and the finality of death. Dark wit throughout, melancholy just beneath, but somehow still hopeful? Like I said, hard to pin down.
It seems to me that humans are often so busy living that they forget they are human – or at least forget what it is to be human, and what its consequences are – and therefore what it means to be dead.
Barnes says this will be his last book. I hope he’s wrong. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Roads of Destiny by O. Henry 📚
Twenty-two stories, all good, and nearly every one ending with a trademark twist. The language is wonderfully vivid:
I never saw him looking so much like a tiger-lily. He was as beautiful and new as a trellis of sweet peas, and as rollicking as a clarinet solo.
After the first ten stories the formulaic style becomes a little tiresome, but there’s real genius here. Best dipped into when the mood strikes. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚
This classic Nebula and Hugo award winner drops you in the deep end of an alien world — strange vocabulary, gender-fluid inhabitants, a perpetual chill you can almost feel. The world-building is astonishing; the writing borders on poetry.
Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.
The ideas on gender and society still feel fresh and important. A good read. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan 📚
One new story (and two reprints) from Claire Keegan, the master of compressing so much into so few words. Men behaving very badly ought to be the sub-title here. As with all of her stories, these will haunt you long after you finish. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed 📚
A wonderful collection of essays written by Cheryl Strayed as part of an advice column under the pseudonym “Dear Sugar.” Terrific, heartfelt advice on just about every aspect of life. I loved it. ★★★★★
Finished reading: The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis 💙📚
A bleak science fiction tale from one of the 20th Century’s most under-appreciated novelists. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: The Hustler by Walter Tevis 📚
A fun read for anyone with a passing interest in pool or gambling or gritty city life. Or if you’ve seen the movie with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: The Best American Essays 1986 by Elizabeth Hardwick (editor) 📚
The inaugural volume of the Best American Essays showcases the essayistic talent of some literary icons in their heyday: Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Jay Gould, Julian Barnes, and Cynthia Ozick. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: John Adams by David McCullough 📚
A riveting history of the people and events of the American Revolution from the perspective of arguably our most important forefather. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: The Best American Essays 2025 by Jia Tolentino (editor) 📚 Continuing my essay kick with the latest “Best American” collection. A few missed the mark for me, but most were pretty good, and a few were extraordinary. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: The Running Man by Richard Bachman 📚
Published in 1982, Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) envisioned a 2025 America that feels eerily familiar. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s a scary example of King’s uncanny ability to predict future events. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe 📚
A meticulously researched history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, the book is a tale of tragedy and woe for both sides of a pointless war. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Foster by Claire Keegan 📚
Another masterpiece from Claire Keegan, the master of the emotionally-charged short novel. The language is economical, yet lyrical. And moving. I did not want this one to end. ★★★★★
Finished reading: Vera, Or Faith by Gary Shteyngart 📚
Set in a near-future NYC, we follow Vera, an exceptionally gifted yet anxious child, through a dystopian landscape of far-right extremism, absentee parenting, cultural diversity, and hilarious yet ominous technology. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 📚
A warning that the corruption of power, the awful propensity for human barbarity, and the refusal to address legitimate grievances can lead to catastrophic consequences. This old classic offers modern day lessons. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday 📚
Important lessons here on leading a better life, but not a lot of depth. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell 📚
How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child? How is it possible to find two pennies and rest them there, in the eye sockets, to hold down the lids? How can anyone do this? It is not right. It cannot be.
★★★★★
Finished reading: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester 📚
This second volume of William Manchester’s epic Winston Churchill biography covers the years preceding the Second World War. ★★★★☆
My Year of Reading in 2025: robertbreen.com 📚
Wednesday, December 31, 2025 →
Finished reading: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi 📚
Timeless literature masquerading as a children’s story. ★★★★★
Finished reading: My Friends by Fredrik Backman 📚
I loved A Man Called Ove, but this one missed the mark for me. ★★☆☆☆
Finished reading: Chess Story by Stefan Zweig 📚
A good chess story, but an even better story of the psychological dangers of extreme isolation and single-minded focus. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin 📚
What a fun, creepy book! I loved the slow build of suspense and the unexpected twists. And the ending … Whew. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald 📚
A professor with a background in amateur falconry retreats from public life after the death of her father to train a goshawk. ★★★☆☆
Finished reading: Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li 📚
A heart-breaking memoir about losing two sons to suicide. There’s often little you can say to parent who’s lost a child. But sometimes the words from a fellow sufferer can get through. This book was one of those. ★★★★★
Finished reading: The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll 📚
Yes, it’s about bullet journaling, but also how daily reflection can help you make time for those important but not necessarily urgent things in your life. ★★★☆☆
Wednesday, November 19, 2025 →
Finished reading: A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker by New Yorker Magazine Inc 📚
I’m wanting to read more short stories and what better source than this mammoth treasure of short fiction from the New Yorker Magazine’s first hundred years? Some terrific stories here. ★★★★☆