The Year I Fell in Love with Classic Literature

This is ordinarily when I’d compose writeups for the best books I read over the course of the year; however, I consumed so many incredible novels in 2025 that I’d be hard-pressed to decide which eight or ten I enjoyed the most (and I sincerely doubt I’d have the capacity to come up with twenty-odd blurbs). Since reclaiming my love of literature several years ago, my literary tastes have evolved almost as much as I have. At the beginning, I didn’t know what I liked; I hadn’t read regularly in four or five years–the result of a technology addiction as well as a general dissatisfaction with the young adult genre–and felt overwhelmed by the plethora of options.

So, I went with what felt safe and accessible: Stephen King, with his knack for storytelling and extensive bibliography, was a good gateway back into the wonderful world of literature, as well as an author I could fall back on whenever I needed an engrossing, well-written story. Authors like Fredrik Backman (whose works I now find a bit insufferable), Ruth Ozeki, Richard Powers, and John Boyne also featured heavily on my bookshelf in my early twenties.

The more I read, the more I was able to identify what, specifically, I wanted in a novel. Strong writing has always been a must for me, but I suddenly found myself equally drawn to strong characterization. Increasingly, the mediocre prose and one-dimensional characters that constituted so many of the modern books I was consuming–or attempting to anyway–grated on me; no matter how unique or thrilling the plot was, I couldn’t get into a book if the characters did not A.) interest me, and B.) feel and act like real people.

And then, based on a Goodreads recommendation, I read A Prayer for Owen Meany and was deeply moved, in a way a work of art has never before moved me. Irving’s 1989 novel about the exceptional, otherworldly boy with the “ruined” voice embodied so much of what I’d been coveting: a cast of eccentric, larger-than-life characters, gorgeous writing, laugh-out-loud humor, thought-provoking–and surprisingly relevant–commentary on society and politics. It raised the bar, in my eyes, for what a novel could achieve and made me eager to find more works that evoked similar feelings of mirth and reverence.

After devouring The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp (but DNFing The Hotel New Hampshire and A Widow for One Year), and trying out Donna Tartt, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, and Haruki Murakami with mixed results, I read East of Eden and was comparably blown away by John Steinbeck’s provocative prose and extraordinary characters. From there, I delved deeper into the literary classics of the previous century, losing myself in the timeless works of James Baldwin, John Williams, Ken Kesey, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus. At present, I’m working my way through the short yet seminal bibliography of J.D. Salinger.

Ironically, the same genre–classic fiction–that I shunned as a hypercritical high schooler has now become a salvation of sorts for me: a vast and diverse world of novels to escape into where stellar prose meets strong characterization, where the deftly-explored themes are as relevant today as they were then, where realism and subtly trump political correctness and didacticism. And while I’ll continue to read more contemporary works from time to time, it’s a relief to not have to constantly hunt through the surplus of genre fiction and (Jesus Christ) A.I. slop in search of novels in which the plot is not paramount to everything else and characters are more than mere plot devices or hackneyed political stereotypes.

Before this turns into a tangent about the decline of literature (for a comprehensive analysis on the subject, check out David Brooks’ editorial “When Novels Mattered”), here, in the order in which I read (or reread) them, is an extensive though not quite exhaustive list of my favorite books of 2025:

1. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
2. The World According to Garp by John Irving
3. Stoner by John Williams
4. If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
5. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
6. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
8. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
9. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
10. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
11. The Plague by Albert Camus
12. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
13. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
14. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
15. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
16. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
17. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
18. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
19. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
20. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
21. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
22. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

Leave a comment letting me know what your favorite literary classics are, and I’ll be sure to check them out in the coming year!