What I Read in 2025

January 5, 2026
#Reading #Books
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I am not particularly happy with having spent much of 2025 without a consistent reading routine; I could only come back on track in November. Apart from the short stories and essays, I've done all of the reading on my Kindle. Being able to select from a plethora of book options at the convenience of one light, handy device is a luxury of our times. I'm not for a gratuitous romanticization of physical books, as some do; "Oh, to be able to hold the book and touch its pages! Oh, the smell of it!" But I sure do love the idea of building a physical library of all the books I enjoyed reading as digital copies.

When I finish reading a piece, specifically when it's something that I enjoyed, I prefer to have a short period of marination, instead of jumping onto the next read, to sort of let what I have read soak in and place its roots in my mind, and heart. I'd usually do a lookup, read more about the author, see where and when they've lived, the critics, and anything that may seem interesting to me at that point. After I read 1984 and Animal Farm, I went on to watch their motion picture adaptations, and also went through some of George Orwell's essays, which I also listed below. I think it comes naturally to want to know more.

Fiction

I've read Animal Farm & 1984 (in Turkish) maybe 8-10 years ago, at a time when I was not exactly mentally fit to grasp what they were about. I picked them up again, and good thing I did, because only now it rang some bells and meant something to be reading them.

  • Animal Farm - George Orwell
  • 1984 - George Orwell
  • Strange Weather in Tokyo - Hiromi Kawakami
  • Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
  • To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
  • Don't Look Now - Daphne du Maurier
  • The Old Man and The Sea - Ernst Hemingway

Memoirs

I think I kind of compensated for the long period of non-reading by getting introduced to John Steinbeck at last. He drove through America with Rocinante, and I accompanied him as much as Charley did. Such a master in handling the English language that I could not drop the book.

I retained the original title for the book "Trip to Russia" because I read it in German.

  • Travels with Charley - John Steinbeck
  • Reise nach Russland - Stefan Zweig

Short Stories

I love short stories for the fact that I can absorb a piece of literature in one sitting. Perfect for in-between longer reads.

  • A Transgression - Anton Chekhov
  • The Lady with the Little Dog - Anton Chekhov
  • Vanka - Anton Chekhov
  • A Chameleon - Anton Chekhov
  • The Orator - Anton Chekhov
  • Morella - Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones - Stephen Leacock
  • A Clean, Well-Lighted Place - Ernest Hemingway
  • A Natural History of the Dead - Ernest Hemingway
  • The Killers - Ernest Hemingway
  • A Way You’ll Never Be - Ernest Hemingway
  • A Hunger Artist - Franz Kafka
  • The Judgement - Franz Kafka
  • The Terrible Old Man - H. P. Lovecraft
  • 2BR02B - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
  • About Barbers - Mark Twain
  • Work, Death and Sickness - Leo Tolstoy
  • The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Araby - James Joyce
  • Cathedral - Raymond Carver
  • The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
  • The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
  • The Horla - Guy de Maupassant

Essays

I've read (or skimmed through) a lot of articles, essays, and blog posts online, but here I am listing those that I would go back and reread.