The best-written books of 2025
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Anchorite
12 min read
The February excerpt extensively discusses anchorites and anchoresses as a metaphor for pandemic isolation, referencing the ancient practice of 'anachoreisis' and religious withdrawal - understanding the historical reality of anchoritic life would deepen appreciation of this literary comparison
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Shahnameh
12 min read
The June excerpt ends with a direct reference to the Shahnameh and King Keyumars, using the Persian epic's narrative structure as a literary device - readers unfamiliar with this foundational work of Persian literature would benefit from context
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Pale of Settlement
11 min read
The April excerpt references 'a shanty of sticks in a settlement they called the Pale' alongside violence by gendarmerie and emigration to New York - understanding the historical Pale of Settlement illuminates this compressed immigrant narrative
Every week we identify the best-written works of fiction, speculative fiction, and nonfiction from recent releases and shortlists for major prizes, and from our subscribers’ submissions. We also publish articles by their authors on prose technique and AI writing, and on the last Friday of the month we publish for paid subscribers the best-written book of the month.
This will be the last post of 2025, so I’d like to sign off for the year by thanking all our readers, old and new, for making the last twelve months our most successful yet. That over a thousand Substackers think enough of the project to recommend it to their readers is gratifying, seriously appreciated, and will not be forgotten.
Have a splendid holiday season, and let’s meet up again early next year and continue to stir things up in litland. Let’s celebrate writers who can actually write.
The following are 2025’s best of the best.
Sean
February
...ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a plague. Fearing disease and death, people led a hermit-like existence, distanced from each other in their domestic cells, advancing masked against a contaminated and untrustworthy reality defined by pestilence, pain, and suffering. They were suddenly aware of living in a world of contagion, and possibly being contagious themselves. They followed a practice that the ancients called anachoreisis, a retreat from the world, a withdrawal into solitude.
Some of them, the richer ones, fled their cities for the apparent safety of the countryside. The poorer ones stayed put, hoping for the best while fearing the worst. Cut off from their compulsory commutes and their mind-numbing round of distraction from distraction by distraction, they heard silence, or something close to it, sometimes punctuated by birdsong. Whether they liked it or not, they all became anchorites or anchoresses. They became unwitting mystics.
There was a strange asceticism to the world of isolation and disease experienced by these people, which opened them up to extreme experiences of doubt, dereliction, dreams, hypochondria, and hallucination. Many of them felt a desperate desire for the touch of love, for a connection with something or someone outside or larger than the self, however that might be understood, possibly even as something divine.
Their intense and confused feelings seemed to have echoes with practices and beliefs considered outdated, superstitious, irrational and, frankly, embarrassing. It was as if something archaic – elemental, primeval, and long dead
This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.