I've been working on my Best Books I Read in 2025 list. I read close to 200 books last year, many of which were memorable, so it was very hard to narrow it down to ten. I felt bad about some of my Runners-Up (books have feelings, as do their authors) which were very deserving, but here goes:
Miss Pettigrew Lives for the Day by Winifred Watson (1938). Why did I wait so long to read this delightful book? It starts out with the stark reality that an unemployed governess needs employment urgently or she will have to go to the poorhouse. However, when Miss Pettigrew arrives at the home of Miss Delysia LaFosse, a glamorous nightclub singer, it is the beginning of an incredible day of adventure and unexpected friendship. I later watched the movie which was cute but not nearly as good as the book; a miniseries would have done it better. My review.
My favorite books this month were The Lost Passenger, which is much more than a Titanic story, a reread of The Heart Speaks Many Ways, and Just for the Summer, a contemporary romance set in Minnesota. I appreciated Prophet Song, the 2023 Booker winner, and its depiction of an authoritarian state but it was hard to enjoy something so much like our daily life and worries.
Cinderella meets All-of-a-Kind Family in a new book I really liked and recommend. Elinor Hayward, the lovely and intelligent daughter of a prosperous factory owner, is thrilled when she and her father are invited to a New Year’s Ball in early 1910. Even better, she meets an attractive young man, Frederick Coombes, son of an earl, who is not just friendly but clearly interested in her:
It was stupidly easy to fall in love with Frederick; I got halfway there that very evening. But I’d like to point out, before you decide I must have been soft in the head, that I was nineteen, he was the first man ever to pay attention to me, and he was very, very charming.
