As you know by this point, normal service is suspended while I talk about my favourite books of 2025. I’ve already done the new fiction and the new to me fiction and so I’m finishing off with the non fiction. And I read a lot less non-fiction than I do fiction, so this one is a mix of new and new to me and I don’t care.
I’m going to start with the most recent book on the list which is Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge by Helen Ellis which was a book of the week less than two months ago. As I said in that post, I love Helen Ellis’s perspective on the world and her sense of humour. This collection of essays made me laugh out loud while reading it as well as reading bits out loud to Him Indoors when I thought that he would appreciate them. It’s not very long and because it’s essays you can pace yourself and read them one at a time as and when you need a pick me up.
Next up is Entitled by Andrew Lownie and this is definitely a best book rather than a favourite book because of the subject matter but it is also the book that has had the most impact on the wider world because it can be seen as the start of the endgame of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s public life. As I said in my review, although the big revelations were already out there before it came out, the impact is in the way that it puts patterns together and creates an impression of the scale and volume of what Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were doing. It’s a very depressing read in many ways, but it sets out what a challenge for the British monarchy they present and given all the events that have happened since it was published in August I expect that the paperback will come with at least a new epilogue if not some extra chapter whenever that arrives.
My final pick is one that hasn’t made as many headlines as Entitled, but deserves to be read by as many people as possible. Dan Wang’s Breakneck looks at China and the US and the fundamental differneces between the way that the Chinese government looks at the world and the way that America operates. I found his framework of China as an engineering state, that’s always pushing on to the next mega project whether physical or societal, as a really interesting and helpful way of viewing China and contextualising the way that state functions. Given that so much of the world economy is linked to China it’s a really interesting and valuable book that’s also really easy to read.
So there you are, my favourite books of the year, even though the year isn’t quite over yet. Here’s hoping I don’t read something amazing in the next three days to make me regret my choices!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 