The 2025 Lists Post

I'm sure you can guess what this is.

Well, here it is: a rundown of some of the best stuff I watched, read, and listened to last year. I know this is something you’re “supposed” to do in December, but that’s always struck me as obviously stupid, and also I was busy, and a steamroller rolled over me and squished me flat like a pancake and the workers had to come and peel me off the road, so I’m doing it in January instead. This is going to be a pretty barebones thing, just a list of names and titles with some brief notes/impressions attached, or links to more in-depth pieces I wrote earlier. I considered trying to do something more in-depth but 1) attempts to diagnose what a year “was” in its immediate wake are always instantly dated, and I would like to not produce totally disposable writing if I can help it, 2) I’m actually still busy, like way more than usual, and I can’t afford to be devoting that much time to something that, let’s be honest, 3) you’re just reading to see the picks anyway. So, this is what you get.

A few more caveats before we get into this:

– I got the urge over the fall/winter to catch up on major album releases (in the areas I care about; nothing against them but I have not listened to Geese), so there is actually a reasonably extensive and (I think) well-informed list of new music I liked here. In regards to movies, however, I found no such motivation, and with books I never entertain the pretense of trying, unless you’re an exceptionally disciplined professional it seems ridiculous and Sisyphean to me given the amount of books published and the time it takes to read just one, so there’s barely a “new” list for the former and none at all for the latter. I want to be really clear: I think the compulsion to stay abreast of the culture of the moment, at the expense of deepening our knowledge of the past, is one we would be better off without, and I am not ashamed to have suffered less from it this year than in previous. To be honest, I’m a little bit proud.

– Related to this, I’ve chosen to arbitrary exclude everything from the 2020s but not from 2025 from these lists (except the books one). My reasons for doing this are to avoid any questions about what “counts” as a 2025 release, and to avoid cluttering the lists with stuff that’s still “relevant” that I just didn’t get to right away.

– These lists are ranked alphabetically (by title for movies, by artist/author for albums/books. Don’t ask me why I did it like this, I don’t know). There are some things I like more than others, obviously, and I’ll generally be indicating stuff I think is especially exceptional, but let me, once again, be really clear: everything here is at least a normal amount of exceptional (except some of the new movies, which dip down into the “quite good” range; I really did not watch very much at all in that department this year).

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Albums

New:

Joshua Bonnetta - The Pines

A four-hour album derived from an entire year’s worth of field recordings from a mic strapped to a tree out in the woods somewhere in upstate New York, one hour per season. If you’re at all interested in art which is about deepening our relationship with the world, rather than trying to escape from it, this is something you should listen to.

Kevin Drumm - Sheer Hellish Miasma II

Wrote about this here. Noise album of the year.

Ghost Mountain - October Country

Here’s your proof that I don’t just listen to stuff like SHM II or The Pines. That said I’m pretty sure this is the only new album with prominent vocals that I listened to more than once or twice this year.

Green Tea - Bending Your Sauna

A really, really phenomenal psychedelic harsh noise album. Relentlessly intense but also incredibly inventive and just a pleasure to listen to. Some truly wild and wooly sounds to be heard here.

Liu Huirun - Firecracker

This is a recording of some fireworks going off that was made by the grandmother of Chinese musician Zhang Kankan sometime in the early ’90s, before they were banned by the municipal government of Taiyuan, where she lived. This was the first really great thing I heard in 2025, and in some ways probably set the tone for my year. In any case, it’s very beautiful, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to hear it.

Yan Jun - The Return of the Stupidity

Wrote about this here.

Yan Jun & Taku Unami - Old Tales Retold

Also wrote about this here.

Klaus Lang performed by Wiener Symphoniker with Peter Rundel & Wolfgang Kogert - tönendes licht.

I got a copy of this for my dad (who enjoys classical but tends to stick to the Old Masters) for Christmas and he’s told me he’s listened to it two or three times since, which for him means he really likes it. And who wouldn’t? This is one of the warmest, fullest compositions I’ve ever heard, colossal, spectacular, heavy as the sun and yet light as the beams it radiates.

Sean McCann - The Leopard

I think this is almost certainly AOTY, but it’s so rich, deep, and demanding I still really don’t feel I’ve begun to get a handle on it. Planning to write about this, preferably for a “real” publication. Will be sending some pitches soon, but if you’d like to commission me, do reach out.

Jakob Ullmann performed by Jon Heilbron & Rebecca Lane - Solo I; Solo IV

Ullmann’s been one of my favorite composers since I was a kid, so it’s always a delight to get a new recording of his work. This one is a pretty unconventional: two of his solo pieces, one performed here on flute, the other on double bass, layered over one another after the fact. There’s a lot of space and subtle resonance in most of Ullmann’s pieces, certainly in these, so this works pretty well, and affords a new perspective on his work. Not a landmark for modern composition the way the Fremde Zeit Addendum releases are, but a worthy addition to a major catalogue.

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New to me (excluding 2020s):

Autechre - Confield (2001)

2025 was the year I finally did a deep dive on Autechre, which I’m sure some of you will be very happy to hear. This one was my favorite, which, if you know both me and the band(?), you probably find both funny and unsurprising.

Barn Sour - Conté for Dick (2019)

Barn Sour is the only reason I wavered on excluding 2020s releases from this list, but since this one’s just early enough to slip in under the wire, I decided it was fine. Just image Belgian Gelding, One Trick Pony, and Soap & Glue are on here as well. Definitely planning to write something about this project, which is totally fascinating and lowkey kinda everything I want out of music. This particular release you can easily find on Youtube.

Black Unity Trio - Al - Fatihah (1969)

A phenomenal private press jazz album, spiritual and political in a manner common to its era, but uncommonly expressed with this level of skill, beauty, and conviction. If you’re into this type of music at all you probably already know this one, but, you know, I’m sure a lot of you aren’t, so: you’re welcome.

Pierre Boulez performed by Claude Helffer - Trois sonates pour piano (1986)

Some of the craziest things you will ever hear a piano do. Seeing through the Matrix type music.

Darksmith - Domestic Servant (2009)

Not sure how the name Tom Darksmith didn’t come across my radar sooner, but I’m glad it finally did. If it wasn’t for Barn Sour I would say this is definitely the most exciting project I discovered in 2025, a sprawling catalogue of totally bizarre and fucked-up tape artifacts. Domestic Servant is probably my favorite of what I’ve heard, maybe because it’s unusually noisy, but it’s also very much a stand-in for the whole body of work, whose cumulative effect is greater than any single release can communicate.

Edlingham - Edlingham (2011)

This is basically some weird rumbling factory sounds and moody drones for twenty-five minutes, buried deep in layers of fuzzy gray murk. It’s fantastic and remains in regular rotation.

Leif Elggren & Claude Mellan - The Sudarium of St. Veronica (2007)

This is a recording made by taking a 17th century engraving of Christ, which consists of a single line spiraling outwards from his nose, making it into an etched copper plate, and attempting to play said plate like a record. The sounds produced are dry, scratchy, not really musical, certainly not holy. They are, however, imbued with a great sense of Time.

The Haters - Future Cheers (1986)

Briefly owned this physically when a distro sent me it by mistake. Would have loved to keep it but unfortunately I’m just too damn honest. Anyway, The Haters rock and this sounds like a catastrophic car accident that’s somehow happening continuously for an entire hour. Awesome, glorious, perfect.

Human Skin Lanterns - Skin Stripperess (1995)

A one-off collaboration between Macronympha and Taint, two of the biggest players in American harsh noise in the ‘90s. Overwhelmingly fucked, evil vibes here, contains a sample that’s straight up the most horrific thing I’ve ever heard on a tape like this. Necessary listening if this sounds appealing at all to you, otherwise don’t even look it up, you don’t want to see the cover.

Mauricio Kagel performed by Ensemble MusikFabrik NRW with Mauricio Kagel - Playback Play (2000)

lol (complimentary).

Roland Kayn - Simultan (1977)

Roland Kayn’s another name that’s been on the radar for a long time that I didn’t get around to until 2025, and boy do I feel stupid for not having done it sooner. Unbelievable stuff. This man was an actual genius.

George E. Lewis - Voyager (1993)

An incredibly engaging, inventive, forward-thinking record. RIP.

Gabi Losoncy - Security Besides Love (2017)

This is the release that made Losoncy “click” for me. Couldn’t say quite why, or why it took this long, but this is the one. A great master of the bland and quotidian.

Sean McCann - Music for Public Ensemble (2016)

A beautiful and strange album. I mostly listened to this to try and get a better handle on what McCann is doing on The Leopard, and more generally how he got there from the blogspot ambient stuff I remember him churning out in my youth, but it’s an immensely rich and beguiling work in its own right, as I’m sure anyone who had been paying more attention at the time could have told you.

Louis Moholo Octet - Spirits Rejoice! (1978)

This was probably the best jazz record I heard for the first time in 2025. Even though I’ve been actively listening to the genre for most of my life at this point, I still don’t really feel knowledgeable enough to be able to comment on it meaningfully, so I’ll just say this is a really wonderful, vital work and leave it at that. RIP.

Dudu Pukwana & Spear - In the Townships (1974)

Like Moholo, with whom he played many times, Pukwana came up in the “Cape Jazz” scene in South Africa, and also like Moholo his music is beautiful and joyful in a way that is cut through with defiance of those forces that (probably correctly) saw such expressions as a threat to their beloved system of racial oppression and subjugation.

Cecil Taylor - Garden (1982)
Cecil Taylor - Silent Tongues (1975)
Cecil Taylor - The Willisau Concert (2002)

Had a big Cecil Taylor phase in 2025, as you can see. I’ve been listening to him off and on for a long time, but this was the year I really buckled down and tried to get a handle on the general contours of his project. I gravitated especially towards the solo work, for obvious reasons. I couldn’t tell you which of these performances is the “best,” only that they are all fucking astounding.

Toshiya Tsunoda - ο κόκκος της άνοιξης (o kokos tis anixis - Grains of Spring) (2013)

Two and a half hours of field recordings, mostly of birdsong, interrupted at times with hard digital clicks and silences, like on a scratched CD. Probably the best thing I listened to in 2025, full stop, and Tsunoda’s masterpiece.

Ami Yoshida & Toshimaru Nakamura - Soba to Bara (2009)

A remarkably tense, nerve-wracking EAI session from two of the greats. Yoshida is a vocalist, which is something I used to have an aversion towards in this context, but have began to develop much more of an appreciation for in recent years. Nakamura, of course, I’ve been a fan of for as long as I’ve been listening to this sort of thing. Anyway, they’re both at the top of their game here.

Mitsuhiro Yoshimura & Taku Sugimoto - Not BGM and So On (2007)

Essentially a variation on Yoshimura’s great solo album And So On, released the same year but recorded earlier, and a very longtime favorite of mine. No idea why it took me so long to check this one out, but it did. In both cases, Yoshimura seems to be using the same setup, involving a microphone and a pair of headphones which somehow produce an extremely high-pitched feedback whine that fluctuates subtly in response to minute shifts in the performance space. The result is an album of basically room tone overlaid with extremely sharp tones occupying the deoxygenated upper reaches of the audible spectrum. This album is a bit more lively than And So On, no doubt because Sugimoto is there doing… something (he’s credited with “electronics, cd, acoustic guitar, objects,” your guess is as good as mine how all these things come into play), but still represents something very close to a limit case for what “live music” can be. This is, again, more of a companion to a masterpiece than a great work in itself, but that’s more than enough to make it one of the most compelling things I heard all year.

n/a - Drag Boats: World Championships (Long Beach Marine Stadium, Long Beach, California) (1963)

Two sides of roaring boat noises punctuated by long stretches of crowd noises, barely-intelligible announcer commentary, and general outdoor event ambiance. A great record.

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Movies

New:

About a Place in the Kinki Region (Koji Shiraishi)

Really glad this showed up online just in time for me to slip it in under the wire. Shiraishi is probably my favorite working horror director (aside from my buddy Kyle – watchlist Compliance now, it’s not something you’re going to want to miss), and while I’ve more or less accepted he’s never going to make something as totally engrossing and unnerving as Noroi ever again, this is as close as he’s come in like 15 years, with a typically labyrinthine narrative structure and way more of a budget than he’s usually been working with recently. As much as I love all his weird little experiments like the Senritsu Kaiki movies, I’m hoping he has more to come in this vein.

Harvest Brood (Joe Meredith)

Joe Meredith makes semi-abstract SOV worship movies with remarkably elaborate DIY practical effects, meaning a lot of crazy Lovecraftian monsters and ultra-gooey splatter kills separated by pillow shots of desolate American landscapes – this is something I used to find very cool and now only find pretty cool, but pretty cool is still pretty cool. He also mixes up the formula a bit here – instead of a post-apocalyptic mutant flesh-eater type scenario it’s a quiet autumnal small town mutant flesh-eater type scenario, complete with faux-documentary gimmicks like police bodycam footage and talking heads saying stuff like “I don’t know what it was…” It’s a good time and I’m glad to see Meredith branching out somewhat – I just wish he would branch out even further.

In the Lost Lands (Paul W.S. Anderson)

My favorite movie of 2025, I guess. Sure not to hold that title forever but, with that said, don’t really understand the basically total lack of buzz I saw for this. I get being into PWSA isn’t trendy anymore the way it was a decade ago (believe me: I was there), but this is so much fun! It looks like a bunch of RPG cutscenes! Milla Jovovich is a badass superwitch but also she Refuses No One! I had a big goofy grin on my face basically the whole time I was watching this. Granted, I was pretty drunk, but still: that’s way stronger of a (positive) reaction than any other 2025 movie inspired in me.

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Yeah it’s fine. I had a good time watching it at the local indie theater. I’m glad a bunch of people were introduced to The Battle of Algiers.

Stillness Spreads (Marci de la Mort)

Definitely the most interesting new movie I watched this year, a very post-ARG sort of no-budget found-footage horror thing, esoteric-occult in character and written by people who have clearly done some actual reading on the subject. Understands that people don’t watch these things for the “story” but for the dread, the enigma, and thus dispenses almost entirely with the typical trappings of horror narrative to make room for more flat monologues about summoning rituals and long takes walking through creepy old buildings at night. It’s not entirely successful, resorts to cliché at times, all feels a bit Discord-coded if that makes sense – but when it’s working it’s working at a level I’ve rarely experienced, and I’m very interested to see what these people do in the future.

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New to me (excluding 2020s):

The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972)

One of the most, maybe even only, truly life-affirming films ever made. A work of constant discovery, dialogue, the slow dawning of a new age of thought which, for better and for worse, was to transform the world forever.

Almost Invisible (David Allingham, 2010)

Wrote about this here.

The Animal (Walter Ungerer, 1976)

One of the great Vermont films. Wrote about it here.

Breaking with Old Ideas (Li Wenhua, 1975)

A story from a better world.

Bruine Squamma (Claudine Eizykman, 1977)

Eizykman is so slept on it’s crazy. One of the most vital, forward-thinking filmmakers of her generation. This is probably her masterpiece.

City Girl (F.W. Murnau, 1930)

Wrote about this (among other things) here. For most directors this would definitely be their masterpiece, but Murnau was, of course, not most directors.

Clifford (Paul Flaherty, 1994)

One of the very few great (American) screwball comedies of the past fifty years. Embarrassed it took me this long to see this one, but glad it’s now a part of my life.

Contactos (Paulino Viota, 1970)

A masterpiece of political cinema, and a case study of increasing relevance for anyone who would like to make political cinema in the future. Wrote about it here.

Death of Yazdgerd (Bahram Beyzai, 1982)

Maybe the best “courtroom drama” ever made, not least because, like Rashomon, it understands a trial is nothing more than a contest of competing fictions, the winner of which gets to become Truth – but it’s better than Rashomon, even, because it also understands that a new Judge could arrive at any time, and rewrite everything. Beyzai was, I believe, the last major filmmaker to die in 2025, just before this new year came in. He will, no doubt, be greatly missed.

The Devil Ant (David “The Rock” Nelson, 1999)

As much a documentary about the horror convention circuit of the late ‘90s as a sci-fi horror flick. Two and a half hours of a giant rubber ant getting thrown at slightly uncomfortable-looking people and I wouldn’t cut a second of it.

Friends of Friends (Dominik Graf, 2002)

Graf is for sure one of the best directors working today and this is for sure one of his very best movies, a sublimly disquieting James story transposed into the grainy DV milleu of Y2K youth culture. A film about the bottomlessness of human relations.

Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)

The best movie I saw in 2025, I think. Overwhelmingly gorgeous and completely devastating. Wrote about it here.

Geethanjali (Mani Ratnam, 1989)

Astonishing.

God’s Comedy (João César Monteiro, 1995)

True pervert cinema.

Hands Tied (Richard Serra, 1968)

Definitely the best action movie I saw all year. Pure suspense and problem-solving expressed as movement. His hands are fucking tied!!!

Der Herr Karl (Erich Neuberg, 1961)

One of the year’s major discoveries. Wrote about it here.

Highway Hypnosis (Ken Camp, 1984)

Wrote about this here. A really singular work, commits to the death-trance potentialities of videotape in a way nothing else I’ve ever seen really has.

Ice Palace (Per Blom, 1987)

A really sad, beautiful, richly observed coming-of-age film. Nothing but small, quiet moments which, in their totality, amount to something rather devastating. The titular cavern is a vision not to be missed.

The Illiac Passion (Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1967)

2025 was the year a trove of Markopoulos “grails” were finally leaked to the downloading public, an event which, for me, confirmed my suspicion that I find his work kind of a mixed bag. This is a great one though.

The Last of the Fast Guns (George Sherman, 1958)

A western so bleak it’s astonishing it’s not Italian. A movie about the end of things, made by a man nearing the end of his career, in a production system that was on its way out. Even for a genre prone to vernacular profundity, there are moments here which are like being suddenly submerged in a pool of clear, freezing water

Lupe (Andy Warhol, 1966)

I have a fairly long essay half-finished about this which hopefully I’ll find time to complete soon. For now, suffice to say that, like all of Warhol’s work with Edie Sedgwick, I found this completely mesmerizing.

Manipulating a Fluorescent Tube (Bruce Nauman, 1965/69)

Basically a single self-defeating joke, which only gets funnier the more tediously it’s extended. That Nauman was doing stuff like this in fucking 1965 is a useful reminder of why he’s quite possibly America’s greatest living artist.

Maryland (Henry King, 1940)

A wonderfully idiosyncratic film about a pastime of the American aristocracy (steeplechase) which someone manages to make you care about a) the pastime, and b) the fates of these blueblooded freaks. A lot of this is down to the gorgeous early Technicolor cinematography and the ample amount of screen time King devotes to the lives of the Black underclass supporting this lifestyle, a depiction which is definitely racist but, as with most of Ford’s depictions of “ethnic” subjects, seems to be trying its best in stodgy liberal sort of way.

The Naked Jungle (Byron Haskin, 1954)

A far better film about colonial ideology breaking on the wheel of the Amazon than Fitzcarraldo. Also a great film about ants, which I only note because I find it funny I watched two of those this year.

The Netsilik Series (Quentin Brown, 1967)

The best film series I watched in 2025, for sure. A set of ethnographic films about an indigenous living above the Arctic circle, in such a remote, inhospitable region that first contact with Europeans didn’t occur until the 1920s, these are among the greatest of all work films, patient, detailed documents of what is actually involved in establishing and maintaining the conditions of life absent the conveniences of a labor-abstracting superstructure – but, also, just as much, these are great works of play, and of leisure, of good times spent with friends, playing games, singing songs. All the ingredients of a good life are in these films, which, notably, document by reenactment a way of being which was very much a part of living memory, but which the Netsilik themselves had, by that point, already had to more or less abandon.

Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964)

Very rare to see people this real on a cinema screen, much less people of color. Was not surprised to learn that Malcolm X went out of his way to express his appreciation for the film to Roemer.

Okoto and Sasuke (Yasujirō Shimazu, 1935)

A great romance of the pathetic. Wrote about it here.

Pharaoh (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1966)

A film about ancient Egypt that is like no other film about ancient Egypt. Wrote about it here.

Pinocchio Pipenose Household Dilemma (Paul McCarthy, 1994)

Speaking of greatest living American artists… another great, fearless work of domestic ritual and bodily abjection as interpolated through the sadistic lens of American masscult. The thing about McCarthy is anyone exposed to the same poisons as him could do something like this – but no one else ever has, because it requires committing yourself to an ugliness that’s not just a “provocation” that bourgeois libertines can chuckle at around the dinner table later, but something genuinely uncomfortable, shameful, humiliating.

Russian Pioneers ( Aleksandr Ivanov & Yevgeni Shiffers, 1967)

Frankly unfathomable that this doesn’t have the cult following of, like, The Eve of Ivan Kupalo. I guess maybe because it’s stridently communist, and thus inconvenient to dominant narratives about the allegiances of the Soviet avant-garde post-Stalin?

Secret of Naruto (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1957)

Wrote about this here. 2025 was the year where it became clear to me that Kinugasa really was a capital-M Major director. Desperately need more of his work subtitled.

Something to Remind Me (Christian Petzold, 2001)

I’m not nearly as enamored with Petzold as a lot of people seem to be, but his cool, spare, Germanic vision is perfectly suited to something like this, a thriller which would be deliriously lurid were every character not so strangled with bitterness and regret that they seem scarcely able to breathe.

Spooks-A-Poppin’ (Jim Ridenouer, 1992)

A priceless treasure of a videotape. So many stories, so much history preserved here that would otherwise almost certainly have been lost to time. Likely the only place you will ever hear Ray Dennis Steckler described as a director of “fairly good pictures” with “good production values.”

The Thief’s Wife (Allan Dwan, 1912)

So ahead of its time it’s like if Méliès’s rocket really went to the moon. But, of course, in a historical trajectory where the silent cinema is allowed to develop to its full maturity, it’s very possible work like this wouldn’t seem anomalous at all.

Trás-os-Montes (Margarida Cordeiro & António Reis, 1976)

Cordeiro & Reis had a real Moment in 2025, thanks to a slate of new restorations going on a tour of the major rep cinema towns, and one that was certainly richly deserved. I saw (and was blown away by) Ana years ago, but held off on the rest of their work due to the truly dire quality of the rips in circulation – these are beautiful films that deserve to be seen in their full splendor. I’m glad I was finally able to.

Weather Diary 6 (George Kuchar, 1990)

Life.

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Books

Selected Stories by Kjell Askildsen (tr. Seán Kinsella, 1982-99/2014)

Perfectly hard little kernels of story, perfectly smooth but for this one unsightly scar, running right down the middle.

Documentary Poetry by Heimrad Bäcker (tr. Patrick Greaney, 1973-2000/2024)

The best book I read in 2025. The only one that gave me any real hope for the future of art. The only one that points the way forward. I’ve been trying to write something about it for months and months, but I just can’t find the words. Please read it.

Correction by Thomas Bernhard (tr. Sophie Wilkins, 1975/1990)

Well, no hope to be found here. Can’t say I blame him.

Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan (1971)

While I was rereading this (for the first time since I was a kid) I wanted to write a piece tongue-in-cheek “ranking” the wealth of incredibly short, simple, brilliant stories in here, which are so totally, beautifully, hilariously unconcerned with how literature is “supposed” to work. Maybe I still will. In any case, this and Kafka is about as good as it gets when it comes to short fiction as far as I’m concerned. This is the master who slaps you and laughs in your face when you ask him the path to enlightenment – this is the master you must follow.

Breathturn by Paul Celan (tr. Pierre Joris, 1967/2006)

Read Hamburger’s translations of Celan a couple years ago and, while interesting, it mostly slid off me – probably some critical insight to be gleaned from this, given my admiration for his Brecht translations. In any case, this Joris (RIP) translation very much did not slide off me. For me, 2025 was a year for writers trying to find the language capable of addressing the horrors of modernity, and Celan’s late work clearly constitutes one of the most serious attempts of them all.

The Ways of Paradise by Peter Cornell (tr. Saskia Vogel, 1987/2024)

Completely engrossing and lowkey maybe the scariest book I’ve ever read. A collection of footnotes for a missing manuscript – an empty center which is itself about empty centers, which are themselves just symbols (per Wikipedia: “Ancient Greek: σύμβολον symbolon, from a verb meaning ‘put together’, ‘compare’, alluding to the Classical practice of breaking a piece of ceramic in two and giving one half to the person who would receive a future message, and one half to the person who would send it”) for something even more central, even more empty. If it weren’t for discovering Bäcker this would easily be the most important thing I read all year.

The Motern Method by Matt Farley (2021)

The only “craft” book you will ever need. I’m gonna be recommending this bad boy to people that can’t figure out how to do what they want to do, creatively speaking, for the rest of my life. It will show you the way.

It’s the Characters! by Isabel Pabán Freed (2025)

Isabel is a friend of mine, so I won’t attempt any serious critical judgement here – I am obviously unreliable! With that said, she’s one of the only writers I’m aware of who’s capable of being actually, consistently funny as a novelist, and I had a great time reading this. You should buy it.

Territories of the Soul / On Intonation by Wolfgang Hilbig (tr. Matthew Spencer, 1986/1990/2024)

A slim little volume of strange little prose poems set in strange, blighted landscapes, by an East German who didn’t much like East Germany, or West Germany, or the new, “unified” country that emerged from the erasure of the one by the other. Basically a classic weird freak misanthrope, i.e. my favorite type of guy to read. A rule of thumb that has not yet steered me wrong: if Matthew thinks something is worth translating, it’s worth reading.

Selected Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant (tr. Roger Colet, late 19th c./1971)

Hilariously cynical, strange, slippery stories. Just when you think you’ve got one pinned down it wriggles somewise you never could have predicted. Come for the stately barnburners (“Boule de Suif”, “The Horla”, etc.), stay for the barbed, glittering miniatures (“The Jewels”, “The Mask”, “The Piece of String”).

Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667)

My big “I need to read this so I can say I’ve read it” undertaking of 2025, as Ulysses was in 2024. Well, I’ve read it now, and so I can say it’s really cool.

The Northern Caves by nostalgebraist (2015)

Huge props to my editor Daphne over at Organ Bank for hipping me to this, thereby allowing me to confirm my suspicions that 1) there must be worthwhile literature on AO3 somewhere and 2) someone must have written a great novel in the form of old-school forum threads by now.

Timaeus by Plato (tr. Robin Waterfield, ~360 BC/2009)

This was awesome lol. They don’t want you to know Plato is actually super fun to read.

NTTN by David C. Porter (2025)

Did you know I wrote a book this year? Probably. I mean, I certainly hope so. In any case, it’s sold out now (thank you!!! that’s crazy), but I’ve still got a bunch of author copies lying around because I’m very bad at self-promotion – if you’d like one, just shoot me an email or something. It’s a good book, I promise.

The Mundus by N. H. Pritchard (1965-71/2024)

A mystical, dazzling masterpiece of concrete poetry. Reading this forced me to do things with my brain that no other text, or anything else for that matter, ever has.

The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald (1995)

Look. You don’t need me to tell you The Rings of Saturn is a great book. But, for the record: The Rings of Saturn is a great book.

Citizens of Beauty by Jean Sénac (tr. Jack Hirschman, 1967/2016)

A collection of rich, vibrant poems of Algerian life, shot through with memories of the years of struggle now past, and anticipation of the many years more sure to lie ahead. A work of steely, militant clarity and boundless love for the beauty and richness of life, from a man who would perhaps be much better known today had he not been taken far too early, far too soon.

Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA by Will Sloan (2025)

Will is also a friend of mine, but since this is a work of scholarship as much as creative effort, and therefore more “objectively” assessable, I’ll go ahead and offer a critical judgement anyway: this is a fantastically well-researched, lucidly written, and analytically solid treatment of a fascinating figure sorely in need of such attentions. If you have, really, any interest at all in midcentury American cinema, you owe it to yourself to read this engrossing, entertaining, throughly enlightening book.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein (tr. Frank P. Ramsey & Charles Kay Ogden, 1921/22)

Not gonna pretend to have anything intelligent to say about this one, but I had a great time reading it, especially since I took it as a chaser to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (not on this list because I meant to read Garfield’s commentary as well but got distracted by, well, this). Will get to Philosophical Investigations in 2026, I promise.

The Selected Poems of T’ao Ch’ien by Tao Yuanming (tr. David Hinton, late 4th-early 5th c./2000)

2025 was a big Classical Chinese poetry year for me, and this was definitely the highlight. As Hinton renders them, reading these poems feels like looking through a clear, thin glass, into the world as it existed more than 1500 years ago, both impossibly distant and impossibly near.

The Song of Igor’s Campaign by [unknown] (tr. Vladimir Nabokov, late 12th c./1960)

This was fun. I love reading weird old stuff like this. My copy of this is a mass market paperback from the initial run (or thereabouts) that I picked up for a dollar at a used book store. Can you believe it used to be entirely plausible that you could walk into the local druggist’s shop and find a translation of a 12th century Russian epic poem by fucking Vladimir Nabokov sitting in one of those spinning racks next to the dime romances and detective stories? The mind boggles.