The Greatest Books of 2025

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

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  1. 1. The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny by Kiran Desai

    Sonia and Sunny are two lonely young people from India living on opposite sides of the Atlantic—Sonia a homesick college student in Vermont, Sunny a journalist trying to find his place in Brooklyn. Each wrestles with identity, desire, and dislocation while their extended families, back in India, try to shape their futures. The novel follows their separate journeys and the family ties, cultural expectations, and personal choices that bring them into uneasy contact.

    The 7154th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  2. 2. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

    Set in the early days of Montana statehood, the novel follows Good Stab, a Blackfeet man whose unnaturally long life is revealed through a series of confessional interviews. The discovery of a century-old diary unearths a suppressed massacre and the long, haunted search for justice that follows. A spare, historical revenge tale told in vivid period voices.

    The 7701st Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  3. 3. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

    Stag Dance is a collection of one novella and three stories that probe gender, desire, and community. The title novella follows a crew of winter loggers who plan a dance where some will present as women, setting off a rivalry and emotional upheaval that reframes identity and relationships. The three linked stories—imagining a gender-triggered upheaval, a tense boarding-school romance, and a Las Vegas weekend between a young crossdresser and two contrasting guides—explore transition, power, and longing with sharp humor and emotional intensity.

    The 7733rd Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  4. 4. Flesh by David Szalay

    István, a shy teenager in Hungary, becomes increasingly isolated after a formative incident and drifts away from his family and classmates. The novel follows intimate episodes across decades as he is shaped by encounters with strangers, unresolved trauma, and the pressures of modern life, tracing his uneasy passage into adulthood and the lasting effects of loss.

    The 7741st Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  5. 5. Abundance by Ezra Klein

    Abundance argues that many modern shortages—from housing and workers to clean energy and chips—stem not from conspiracies but from a failure to build and adapt: past rules and fixes have become obstacles to new solutions. Klein and Thompson examine political, regulatory, and cultural barriers across sectors and call for a mindset and institutions that prioritize construction, scaling, and practical problem-solving over preservation and restraint.

    The 7928th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Amazon
  6. 6. Audition by Katie Kitamura

    At a Manhattan lunch, an accomplished actress rehearsing for a new production meets a younger, mysterious man. Told through two competing perspectives, the novel quietly investigates identity, the roles we play—partner, parent, creator, muse—and how performances can conceal private truths.

    The 8393rd Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  7. 7. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

    Omar El Akkad offers a personal reckoning with the gap between Western ideals and the realities faced by Black, Brown, and Indigenous Americans and younger generations. Drawing on his experience as an emigrant and journalist, he frames a heartfelt "breakup letter" with the West, exploring how trust in Western institutions has eroded and how that rupture shows up on college campuses and city streets.

    The 8415th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  8. 8. Heart The Lover by Lily King

    In her senior year, Jordan is drawn into the intoxicating world of two charismatic classmates, Sam and Yash, and becomes entangled in a charged triangle of friendship, desire, and ambition. Decades later, a surprise visit forces her to confront the choices and deceptions of her youth and reckon with how those decisions shaped her life. A spare, character-driven novel about love, loyalty, and the long reach of the past.

    The 8427th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  9. 9. The True True Story Of Raja The Gullible by Rabih Alameddine

    Sixty-three-year-old Raja, a beloved high-school philosophy teacher known in his Beirut neighborhood as a gay man, shares a tiny apartment with his insistent octogenarian mother, Zalfa. Craving solitude after a string of personal and national upheavals, he accepts a writing residency in America, only to find himself revisiting the very events he hoped to escape. Told in Raja’s witty voice and spanning six decades, the novel follows his mistakes, losses, and gradual self-discovery while exploring family, identity, and the possibility of forgiveness.

    The 8518th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  10. 10. Things In Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

    Yiyun Li reflects on the deaths of her two sons and her attempts to live alongside that loss. Through writing, gardening, reading philosophy, learning piano, and close attention to language and thought, she examines what it means to continue "being" after a loved one is gone, offering intimate, meditative observations without revealing private details.

    The 8622nd Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  11. 11. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

    During lockdown, speechwriter Chloe Dalton rescues an orphaned leveret and forms an unexpected companionship with a wild hare. The memoir follows their evolving relationship and reflects on freedom, trust, loss, and our connection to the natural world, while also exploring hare behavior and their place in culture and folklore.

    The 8646th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Amazon
  12. 12. Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

    Winifred Notty takes a position as a Victorian governess at the gloomy Ensor House, where the household’s eccentricities and her own troubled past begin to unsettle her. As she cares for the children and navigates the family’s secrets, her dark imagination and compulsions start to blur the line between fantasy and reality, leading to a tense and unsettling climax around Christmas.

    The 8647th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Amazon
  13. 13. What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

    Set between 2014 and a flooded near-future, the novel centers on a mysterious poem read at a dinner and a lone scholar, Thomas Metcalfe, who becomes obsessed with finding it. His search through archives and lives unearths love, loss and a violent secret, as the book probes how we piece together the past and what can truly be known across time.

    The 8703rd Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  14. 14. King Of Ashes by S. A. Cosby

    Roman Carruthers returns to his Virginia hometown after his father is badly injured and discovers his family is in deeper trouble than he expected: a brother owing dangerous money to criminals and a sister determined to uncover the mystery of their mother’s disappearance years earlier. Using his financial skills and ruthless determination, Roman must confront old secrets and new threats to protect his family before everything unravels.

    The 8720th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  15. 15. Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy

    Arundhati Roy reflects on her relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, exploring how childhood in Kerala and her mother’s fierce presence shaped her life and work. Written after Mary’s death, the memoir navigates complex feelings—love, anger, grief and admiration—without revealing plot details. Intimate, candid, and often quietly humorous, it examines how personal history forms identity and writing.

    The 8779th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  16. 16. Death Of The Author by Nnedi Okorafor

    After losing her job and facing family pressure, Zelu writes an experimental science-fiction novel about androids and AI in a post‑human world. As her book takes on a life of its own, the boundaries between her fiction and her reality begin to blur, forcing her to reckon with love, loss, and the power of stories.

    The 8864th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Amazon
  17. 17. Tongues by Anders Nilsen

    Tongues is a graphic-novel retelling of the Prometheus myth set in a version of modern Central Asia. It follows the captive god, his fraught relationship with the eagle that torments him, and his pursuit of revenge, while interweaving the stories of an East African orphan on an errand of violence and a drifting young man carrying a teddy bear. The book reimagines ancient myth through contemporary characters and themes of suffering, connection, and consequence.

    The 8874th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  18. 18. Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab

    Three linked stories across 1532, 1827, and 2019 follow María, Charlotte, and Alice as hunger, longing, and rage push them into desperate choices. Weaving historical and contemporary threads, the novel examines desire, freedom, and the cost of survival without revealing key twists.

    The 8981st Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  19. 19. Sunrise On The Reaping by Suzanne Collins

    On the day of the fiftieth Hunger Games — a special Quarter Quell — Haymitch Abernathy is taken from District 12 alongside three other tributes. Torn from his family and the girl he loves, he must survive an arena designed to break him, and his choices in the Games threaten to reach far beyond his own fate.

    The 8984th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Amazon
  20. 20. The Book Of Records by Madeleine Thien

    Lina and her father arrive at The Sea, a liminal enclave between migrations, where time and eras seem to meet. There she befriends neighbors from different periods—a Jewish scholar in 17th‑century Amsterdam, a philosopher fleeing 1930s Germany, and a Tang dynasty poet—whose conversations and teachings help Lina face revelations about her family’s past. The novel moves across centuries to explore migration, memory, guilt, responsibility, and the search for home.

    The 9057th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  21. 21. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

    In a near-future world where dreams are monitored, Sara is detained by a government agency after an algorithm predicts she will harm the person she loves. Held in a retention center with other women whose dreams are used as evidence, she faces shifting rules and prolonged confinement. A new arrival unsettles the facility’s order and sets Sara on a path that forces her to confront the surveillance systems controlling her life.

    The 9081st Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  22. 22. Tilt by Emma Pattee

    Annie, nine months pregnant, is at IKEA when a major earthquake devastates Portland. Cut off from her husband and without phone or money, she must cross the chaotic city on foot. Along the way she encounters danger, compassion, and an unlikely ally, while confronting fears about her marriage, career, and impending motherhood as she tries to reach safety.

    The 9098th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  23. 23. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

    Dominic Salt and his three children care for Shearwater, a remote island that shelters the world’s largest seed bank. When a stranger washes ashore during a violent storm, her arrival forces the family to confront isolation, hidden secrets, and urgent choices about protecting the seeds and one another as the climate closes in. An atmospheric story about survival, trust, and family.

    The 9102nd Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon
  24. 24. On The Calculation Of Volume by Solvej Balle

    On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle is a literary/speculative series about Tara Selter, a woman who becomes unstuck from normal time and finds herself reliving November 18 over and over. Rather than treating that premise like a puzzle or thriller, the books use it to explore time, routine, loneliness, perception, and what it means to keep living when the world no longer moves forward in the usual way. It’s quiet, philosophical, strange, and more meditative than action-heavy.

    The 9957th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  25. 25. A Guardian And A Thief by Megha Majumdar

    In near-future Kolkata, Ma, her toddler, and her elderly father are days from leaving for the U.S. when their visas are stolen. Told over one week, the novel alternates between Ma’s frantic search amid a worsening food shortage and the thief Boomba’s perspective, showing how his attempts to provide for his family spiral into escalating crimes. It’s a tense, character-driven portrait of two families confronting scarcity and the difficult choices they make to protect their children.

    The 9977th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon

Reading Statistics

Click the button below to see how many of these books you've read!

Download

If you're interested in downloading this list as a CSV file for use in a spreadsheet application, you can easily do so by clicking the button below. Please note that to ensure a manageable file size and faster download, the CSV will include details for only the first 500 books.

Download

To download this list as a CSV file, please log in to your account. Once logged in, you'll be able to download the data for use in spreadsheet applications.

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