I like to pay attention to the literary prize winners. To a certain extent, you can trust that they’ll sift through a whole lot of books (though not even close to all the books) and come up with some good reads. Not all of them will jive with you, sure, but it’s a good place to start. For me, anyways. My interested in award winners has brought me Prophet Song, Trust, and Hamnet in 2024, James, Orbital, The Vegetarian, The Eyes & the Impossible, and To Shape a Dragon’s Breath in 2025. And I’m a little ahead with North Sun for 2026 (which was a finalist for the National Book Award). They weren’t all my favorite, but I wouldn’t unread any of them. And I love-loved some of them.

So, here we go: award-winners for 2025:

• The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), Rabih Alameddine (National Book Award)
• Flesh, David Szalay (Booker Prize)
• Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq (International Booker)
• James, Percival Everett (Pulitzer)
• Laszlo Krasznahorkai (Satantango, etc.) (Nobel Prize)
• The First State of Being, Erin Entrada Kelly (Newbery)
• Chooch Helped, Andrea L. Rogers and Rebecca Lee Kunz (Caldecott)
• My Friends, Hisham Matar (NOT Fredrik Backman) (Book Critics Circle)
• The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden (Women’s Prize)
• Small Rain, Garth Greenwell (PEN/Faulkner)
• The Slip, Lucas Schaefer (Kirkus)
• The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Hugo)
• Between Earth and Sky, Rebecca Roahorse (Hugo series)
• Sheine Lende, Darcie Little Badger (Lodestar)
• Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (Nebula)

I also like to list the Goodreads Choice Awards, which are more of a popularity contest than an official judging of content. Which is kinda nice. Because sometimes those “real” awards can be way off the mark, frankly. So this is what the Goodreads plebes chose based on what they had actually read. Just goes to show how different the readers and the literary establishment always are, too.

• My Friends, Fredrik Backman (Goodreads Choice Fiction)
• Atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Reid (Goodreads Choice Historical Fiction)
• Not Quite Dead Yet, Holly Jackson (Goodreads Choice Mystery/Thriller)
• Great Big Beautiful Life, Emily Henry (Goodreads Choice Romance)
• Onyx Storm, Rebecca Yarros (Goodreads Choice Romantasy)
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, V. E. Schwab (Goodreads Choice Fantasy)
• The Compound, Aisling Rawle (Goodreads Choice Science Fiction)
• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix (Goodreads Choice Horror)
• Alchemised, Sen Lin Yu (Goodreads Choice Debut)
• Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins (Goodreads Choice YA Spec Fic)
• Fake Skating, Lynn Painter (Goodreads Choice YA)
• Everything Is Tuberculosis, John Green (Goodreads Choice Nonfiction)
• The House of My Mother, Shari Franke (Goodreads Choice Memoir)
• How to Kill a Witch, Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell (Goodreads Choice History)