Wolfed down a lot of words in-between trying to be a human surviving late-stage capitalism for another year. Now it’s December and my brain is melted, but here’s what I remember about the books I read this year…

NOVELS

Looking back over my scribbled diary notes, the three clear stand-out highlights of this year’s fiction reading were:

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (2019), a novel written almost entirely in dialogue exchanged between two ageing Irish gangsters in a Spanish ferry terminal. Dark, funny, violent, bittersweet and mind-blowingly beautiful in its descriptions of love, loss, family, memory, crime, addiction, and friendships enduring in the face of the cruel shit humans do to each other. Obsessed.

Nutcase by Tony Williams (2017), a contemporary update of the Icelandic saga of Grettir the Strong set on a notoriously violent Sheffield council estate. Its antihero, young offender Aiden, hurtles between misadventures at breakneck speed, with a totally addictive and frequently hilarious voice and energy. Although its brutal in places, so much of it felt comfortingly and horrifyingly familiar, recognising what it’s like to live in a place where poverty, violence and trauma are so normalised. Epic, ambitious and immersive.

Keshed by Stu Hennigan (2026), a forthcoming debut I was lucky enough to get my mitts on pre-publication. Ferocious, fearless, tender and immaculately observed, it’s a propulsive, take-no-prisoners masterclass in voice, style and atmosphere. Exploring class, masculinity, belonging, isolation and addiction, it’s brutal, beautiful and brilliant.

And three bonus honourable mentions for:

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix (2018), a tense and gory horror novel that was the metal version of Josie and the Pussycats, but with an extra sprinkling of mental illness, indoctrination and demons. So as you can imagine, very much my cup of tea.

American Hippo by Sarah Gailey (2018), a queer cowboy alternative-history novella featuring a misfit crew of hippo-riding adventurers in the swampy American bayous. It’s chaotic, violent, wildly original and a ton of fun.

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins (1984), a wildly psychedelic so-called classic of the chaos magick era, spanning centuries and geography, featuring a Dark Ages king and his beloved alongside an epic cast of other wacky characters. A bizarre, uncontrolled, beet-juiced acid-trip of a book with some delicious sentences and poignant reflections of mortality weaved in amongst all the excess.

SHORT STORIES

I’m still thinking about What to Do When You’re Goth in the Country by Chavisa Woods (2017), Folk by Zoe Gilbert (2018) and The Hotel by Daisy Johnson (2024), three collections I read and wrote about earlier this year. Since then, other collections that’ve stuck in my memory include:

Pixel Juice by Jeff Noon (1998), containing fifty stories from the Mancunian legend and creator of the iconic Vurt series. I’m a long-time lover of Noon’s unmistakeable imagination and voice, and this collection showcases the seeds of some of the recurring obsessions, images and ideas in his work in a dizzy kaleidoscope that put his novels right back on my re-read list.

Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black by Cookie Mueller (1990), a posthumously published collection of true-life stories chronicling Mueller’s wild life and adventures, including her involvement in so many John Waters’ films, Christmas dinner with the legendary Divine, and tales of sex, love, loss, hurt, art, motherhood and much more. Written in an intimate, confessional style that makes for compulsive reading.

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte (2024), an inventive, experimental novel-in-stories that follows a cast of interconnected and undeniably flawed characters as their lives are irrevocably damaged and distorted by their individual experiences and perceptions of rejection. Strange, uncomfortable and unflinchingly human.

MEMOIR

Hermit by Jade Angeles Fitton (2023), a soothing and beautifully-written meditation on solitude, nature, escape and recovery that had me pining to disappear into some distant woods. After the sudden end of a turbulent, violent relationship, the author finds transformation, healing and ultimately euphoria by living in a series of increasingly secluded and wild places.

Uncanny Valley Girls by Zefyr Lisowski (2025), a collection of essays on horror, survival and love, using horror movies as a entryways into confessional writing journeying from a childhood in the American South to a locked psych ward via Brooklyn dancefloors. Lisowski’s poetic skills are in full force as she excavates and confronts memories of lovers, family and grief, along with exploring queerness, transness and the enduring influence and pull of cinematic blood, guts and gore.

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde (1982), a re-read of an all-time fave, transporting the reader from Lorde’s vivid memories of her early childhood in Harlem through her adolescent loves, losses and experiments in independence to discovering the lesbian bar scene in 1950s NYC. Deliciously written in frank but beautiful language, it grapples with race, womanhood, class and queerness while documenting a disappearing world alongside the formative years of such an incredible, enduring author.

Want even more recommendations? You can time-travel through the archives to find my end-of-year loved lists from: 2024 / 2023 / 2022 / 2021 / 2020