What's Worth Reading

My 2025 Reads

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The subject of this newsletter is how to craft lore. One of my strongest-held beliefs is that you can’t do that without reading voraciously — beyond fast-twitch news articles, podcast summaries, and, yes, Substacks. (But keep reading this one kthx.) More bluntly: To tell a good story, you’ve got to read some fiction. To crack the spine on a hardcover or over-highlight a pulpy paperback.

Last year, I read something like 40 books, and I wanted to share a few of my favorites, in no particular order, if you’re looking for recommendations:

1. Workhorse by Caroline Palmer
   
   I will always read a workplace novel about a magazine. Add a dash of Mr. Ripley-esque identity theft and some early aughts nostalgia? I’m doubly there. I do think this book was too long — it clocked in around 560 pages and spanned a decade; the plot would’ve benefitted from compression of both page and year count — but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

   

2. Remainder by Tom McCarthy
   
   I read this for my writing workshop, and it’s one of the most gonzo books I’ve ever read. Like, I genuinely don’t even know how to tell you what it’s about. But if you insist, I’d tell you something like: A man is in an accident and receives a huge payout, which he uses to fund increasingly bizarre reenactments of visions he has. A Memento-esque mindfuck, and proof I occasionally read books written by men.

3. Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
   
   26-year-old Florence becomes the assistant to pseudonymous author Maud Dixon, known for her bestselling novel about a Mississippi murder. But was it fiction at all? I have some qualms with the pacing — we spend 70 pages with Florence at a literary agency from which she gets herself fired before meeting Maud, and I saw the “twist” coming for about 50 pages — but the real story here is about ambition and coming-of-age, and that’s done beautifully. (Fun fact: My client Annapurna is adapting this one for television!)

   

4. Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
   
   One of my favorite reads of the year, and not just because I love a skinny legend (this novel clocks in around 225 pages). Catalina is a senior at Harvard whose undocumented status means she has no sense of what’s next. This isn’t a plot-driven novel but stuff does happen — and more importantly, the voice in this one will charm the pants off ya.

   

5. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
   
   I’m apparently the only person in the universe who had never heard of this book or its 2010 film adaption, which means I went into this assigned reading for my yearlong novel-writing class totally blind — though the book would’ve been a gut punch regardless. Beautiful, tender, touching: a modern classic.

   

6. Harry Potter 1-3 by J.K. Rowling
   
   I used to reread the entire Harry Potter series before each new book or film installment. The last movie came out the summer before I started college and I haven’t revisited the franchise since. And damn if these aren’t some of the greatest books ever. I’m particularly a fan of Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets, which are more lighthearted and funny than the later, darker installments.

   

7. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
   
   I’m a sucker for a book about books — it’s like, a story about story, man — and this is no exception. Hanff Korelitz is also just great at the pulp of thrillers (she also wrote the novel that become The Undoing on HBO).

   

8. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
   
   TBQH, I didn’t totally love this memoir from a former Facebook employee. But I’m always fascinated to see how company’s lore is complicated over time (all empires must fall etc), and this was a zippy-enough listen on Audible. The standout anecdotes all made their way into the news cycle, but suffice it to say my picture of Sheryl Sandberg is more, uh, detailed now.

   

9. The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
   
   I absolutely adored Perrotta’s social satires Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher, but I somehow found this more high-concept story — about the fallout of 2% of the world’s population just disappearing — less gripping. The TV show’s great, though.

   

10. Mean Moms by Emma Rosenblum
    
    From the author of Bad Summer People (about a dead body in the Hamptons) and Very Bad Company (about a dead body at a tech company’s exec retreat in Miami) comes a new satire about Manhattan mamas. As in her prior novels, this one involves a murder and rich people behaving very, very badly. The ultimate summer read. Sharing this one aspirationally, that we may all be soon reading this rum-laced and beachside.