2025 Midyear Book Celebration

Bringing an annual Bookstagram tradition to Substack

Jul 02, 2025

The Midyear Book Freakout tag started on BookTube as a way for readers and creators to shout about their favorite books and check in on their reading progress midway through year. It has subsequently migrated to Bookstagram and this year the lovely

Kristin T. Lee

tweaked it a bit, renamed it The Midyear Book Celebration (because who wants to freakout about reading?!), and shared a social media template for readers.

I think this tag is such a fun way to learn about what other people are reading and loving. It’s also a chance to highlight some of what I’ve been enjoying and reflect on what I still want out of my reading year. Below are my responses to Kristin’s prompts. I’d love to hear your superlatives as well, so please head to the comments and share your books!

Best book you’ve read so far in 2025?

Paradise Lost by John Milton. I’m sorry. I also don’t want my best book of the year to be an epic poem from the 1600s, but I can’t lie to you and tell you any other book I’ve read this year is better than Paradise Lost. It’s remarkable! Otherworldly! I can’t stop thinking about it, and I was also so surprised by how much I enjoyed reading it. I’m going to just crown this one now and set it aside into its own category because sometimes it just doesn’t feel fair to compare this kind of classic to anything else.

Book that made you laugh?

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. I haven’t quite finished this…if I had it might have actually edged out Milton so we’ll see how things stand at the end of the year. But this is one of the best books I’ve read in years, maybe my entire life, and it’s so unassumingly funny. I’m obsessed.

Book that made you cry?

Flashlight by Susan Choi. This was a stunner and the level of emotion Choi builds in her readers while keeping the characters somewhat distant from each other made me ache in the most devastating and beautiful way.

Newest favorite character?

Shaka in Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa is one of the characters I’ll never forget and one who became fully realized in a one hundred page debut novel. Shaka made me laugh and cringe and think deeply, but she also just felt so real and so unabashedly herself from the vantage point of her perspective.

Favorite new-to-you author?

Ann Petry. Her prose is close to perfect. I must read everything she’s written ever.

Favorite book by a debut author?

Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin. This introspective yet page-turning characters study had me in its clutches from page one. I can’t wait to see what Franklin writes next.

Biggest disappointment?

Fish Tales by Nettie Jones. When it comes to this one, I don’t know if I’m disappointed with the book, with myself, or with critics and reviewers, but through some convergence of all three factors, this was a deeply unsatisfying reading experience. Did I read this book wrong? Did everyone else? Did my own biases inhibit my ability to get this? Is every other reviewer gaslighting me? These are questions I don’t have answers to and I would love to sit with an expert and try to really get a grasp on what this cult classic is trying to do.

Biggest surprise?

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. The fact that this 90-year-old book was at all surprising to me is, in fact, part of what makes it the biggest surprise of my reading year. I had seen the movie ages ago, but while I remembered the broad strokes of the plot, I had forgotten many details—including how it ends! The even bigger surprise though was just how relevant this novel is to modern times. It continues to shape American ideology in ways that are deeply uncomfortable, but important to recognize. At the recommendation of

Traci Thomas

, I paired my reading of this classic with Sarah Churchwell’s The Wrath to Come, which allowed me to more deeply consider the ways GWTW haunts us today.

Most anticipated release for the second half of 2025?

Intemperance by Sonora Jha. I adored Jha’s debut novel The Laughter and the premise of this new one sounds fantastic.

New release you haven’t read yet, but want to?

So many! Here are five:

The Antidote by Karen Russell
Flesh by David Szalay
The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Book you want to read by the end of this year?

Honestly, I feel like naming books here is a curse. Inevitably I fail to read the books I say I want to read by the end of the year. But because I’m fresh off recording a conversation about this author, and I really truly want to read her immediately, I’m going with Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin.

Most beautiful book you bought this year?

My collection of Virago Editions of Sarah Waters’ books.