A Tentative 2025 Reading List

The classic novels, philosophical works, and familiar essays I'm reading this year

If you’ve been following A Stream of Words for a while, you may have spent the past couple weeks wondering: what happened to the regular Monday essay? Because I’ve switched my focus to my novel as 2025 begins, my Substack output has slowed a little. I’m currently trying to decide whether to dedicate all of my writing time to my novel, except for an essay once or twice a month when I’m feeling inspired, or to block in a consistent Substack writing day every couple of weeks and keep up a more consistent pace. It all depends on what I can sustain on top of work and everything else! But for now, enjoy a brief overview of the books that are on my reading list for 2025.

Currently reading:

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

My second time reading this one. I have a lot of thoughts, which will hopefully coalesce into a Substack essay at some point. (Mostly on Alyosha and why the narrator is so insistent that he’s the “hero” of the novel. Also on what “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter has to say to the twenty-first century church, but that’s another essay in its own right.)

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

I’m reading this one with my sixteen year old sister, and we’ve both been cracking up at the morose character dynamics and the extreme discomfort poor Lockwood experiences in the first few chapters. I completely missed how funny Emily is when I first read it in high school.

The Bird in the Tree, Eliot Family Trilogy #1, Elizabeth Goudge

My lighter fiction read, at the moment. I always appreciate how Goudge can write about good people and beautiful things without making them seem trite.

I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron wrote a number of famous rom-coms, including my all-time favorite movie, You’ve Got Mail. Her personal essays feel a little bit like reading an email from Kathleen Kelly—and she spends a lot of time talking about life in NYC, which I appreciate as a longtime lover of the 90s romcom.

On the stack for 2025:

Fiction:

Phantastes, George Macdonald

This is going to be my George Macdonald year; I can feel it. I read Lilith over Christmas break and loved it, so I decided to follow the Macdonald thread.

Middlemarch, George Eliot

This is the year I read Middlemarch. It’s been a long time coming.

Eliot Family Trilogy Books #2 and #3, Elizabeth Goudge

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke

Reread. One of my favorite fantasy books.

Devotional/spiritual readings:

Consuming Fire: The Inexorable Power of God’s Love, George Macdonald

I said it was a Macdonald year! I tend to read a supplementary book for my morning devotions along with my Scripture reading, so I’m always on the lookout for mystic literature, practical devotions, or works of contemplative spirituality to add to my ever-growing list.

The Interior Castle, Theresa of Avila

This one’s been on my list for a while, and then two different people mentioned it to me in the same week, which I always take as a sign that I should go ahead and read a book.

The Fire Within, Thomas Dubay

I think

Caelyn Snyder

also recommended this one. I’ve yet to actually read St. John of the Cross; maybe this will inspire me.

Christ the Golden-Blossom, Douglas Dales

I think I found this via Substack, so if you shared it, thanks! I love the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon spiritual tradition, so I’m excited to dive into this one.

Prayer, Hans Urs Von Balthazar

This one’s been on my shelf for a while. I read Love Alone is Credible during college, as well as some of his writings on the Fathers, though I have yet to tackle his trilogy.

Classics:

Paradiso, Dante

In 2024, I started rereading The Divine Comedy and made it through Purgatorio, so I’m picking up where I left off.

Plato’s Dialogues

Continuing my read-through of the works of Plato! We’ll see how many I finish in 2025.

Nonfiction:

The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

A random book that I found while following sources for a college music class, of all places. I’ve not gotten around to reading it yet, but it’s been on my list for a while.

Essays on Woman, Edith Stein

Another one that’s been on my list for a while.

All Things Are Full of Gods, David Bentley Hart

I’ve never read anything by David Bentley Hart and don’t actually know that much about him, other than his name comes up a lot and I always confuse him with David Foster Wallace. But I’m fascinated by all the “mystery of consciousness” discourse in recent years (and by the study of consciousness in general), so on the list it goes.

The Human Touch, Michael Frayn

I’m a longtime fan of Frayn’s play Copenhagen (and the film version with Daniel Craig). I picked up The Human Touch at a bookstore in Oxford a couple summers ago, right before a class on cosmology and consciousness, and keep meaning to come around and read it.

The Need for Roots, Simone Weil

I’ve read bits and pieces of this one, and heard it quoted a lot, but 2025 is the year I read it for myself. I’ve never read a full work of Weil’s, so I’m looking forward to it. (

Jonathan McCallum

, you’ll appreciate this!)

The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy

The Shape of the Liturgy, Gregory Dix

Both of the above works on liturgical history were mentioned in Alan Jacob’s The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography, which was one of my favorite reads of 2024. So I’m working through his bibliography.

Cosmic Liturgy, Hans Urs von Balthazar

The Whole Mystery of Christ, Jordan Woods

I started reading Maximos the Confessor over Thanksgiving. Both von Balthazar and Woods are next on my to-read list, as part of that study.

Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews

I know it gets a bad rep in the Substack space, but I love writing on writing—at least, if it’s other authors talking about their habits or advice for the craft in an interesting, literary way— so I always try to read at least one “writers on writing” book a year.

Creative Nonfiction:

For The Time Being, Annie Dillard

This is Annie Dillard at her most Dillard-esque. I actually started it over Thanksgiving and wasn’t able to give it my full attention (this is the work she mentions in The Writing Life as being “too metaphysical”), so I hope to give it a proper read in 2025.

This Beautiful Truth, Sarah Clarkson

If you read this short piece, you know I recently read Reclaiming Quiet, by

Sarah Clarkson

and loved it (so much so that I’ll probably reread it at some point in 2025). So I’m exploring the rest of her work.

Finally, for the people who may look at this list and ask, “Why isn’t there any poetry??”—I don’t read a lot of poetry anthologies from cover to cover. Instead, I tend to just pull my Oxford Book of English Verse or a poet’s collected works off my shelf and skim through those a poem at a time, revisiting old favorites or stumbling across a new author or poem. But if you have poetry anthologies you’d recommend, let me know!

That’s most everything, though I’m sure I’ll find other books hidden away on my shelves, or in used bookstores, or via word of mouth that make it into my 2025 reading list. What are y’all reading this year?