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book calendar 2025
12
items Match the vibe of your book to the vibe of each month and read 12 books in 2025! Here are my recommendations. (Mostly realistic fiction.) Each recommendation has a sensory pairing as well, and it's not usually alcohol-based!
A story that is as much about the cyclical nature of life as it is about the specter of evangelism and apocalyptic fervor, this is the ideal book with which to mark the New Year.
Pair with: your morning coffee on a couple of lazy weekends. The news can wait.
Pair with: your morning coffee on a couple of lazy weekends. The news can wait.
JANUARY: Coming of Age at the End of Days by Alice LaPlante
Constance provides the perfect short book for a short month, a bittersweet love story for Valentine's Day.
Pair with: an evening wine and a bubble bath
Pair with: an evening wine and a bubble bath
FEBRUARY: Constance by Catherine Cantrell
This collection of short stories feels wintery at first, but also thaws as it goes on, much like March. Very fluid and seems to exist outside of time.
Pair with: the most crisp bottled water you can find.
Pair with: the most crisp bottled water you can find.
MARCH: Machines in the Head by Anna Kavan
Though it also exists outside of time, this book will bring you back down to earth, especially in the era of “tradwives” and cottagecore fantasy. Gideon's 1900s farm is as much rudimentary and helpless as it is elysian and pastoral.
Pair with: brunch, when it isn't quite warm enough to eat outdoors yet.
Pair with: brunch, when it isn't quite warm enough to eat outdoors yet.
APRIL: Valley of the Moon by Melanie Gideon
This classic spans a variety of seasons, but its pastoral setting harmonizes perfectly with a physical world once again emerging into flower.
Pair with: a late-May picnic outdoors – think chilled rosé and a cheese board.
Pair with: a late-May picnic outdoors – think chilled rosé and a cheese board.
MAY: Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Zancan's novel is pitch-perfect for the feverish hum of June.
Pair with: minted lemonade.
Pair with: minted lemonade.
JUNE: We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan
Coupland's coming-of-age novel is so thickly lathered with early-'90s imagery that you'll yearn to be pushed in a pool with your smartphone in your pocket and “reluctantly” go back to a flip phone.
Pair with: An outdoor pool and a refreshing drink with a Technicolor hue.
Pair with: An outdoor pool and a refreshing drink with a Technicolor hue.
JULY: Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland
This novel, which depicts a Dionysian summer at an English country estate, offers a feast of sumptuous imagery.
Pair with: a Campari spritz and fritto misto, ideally on a portico somewhere.
Pair with: a Campari spritz and fritto misto, ideally on a portico somewhere.
AUGUST: Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller
As September brings in the cold, enter the iron gates of this palatial mystery. Red herrings dot the landscape like crows–nothing is as it appears.
Pair with: mulled cider, incense burning, and a night where the rain pounds your window.
Pair with: mulled cider, incense burning, and a night where the rain pounds your window.
SEPTEMBER: The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Hare
Thompson's rainy titular city is less a backdrop than it is a ghostlike, omnipresent main character in these ten intense, atmospheric short stories.
Pair with: a Guinness at a corner table of a dimly-lit pub.
Pair with: a Guinness at a corner table of a dimly-lit pub.
OCTOBER: Communion Town by Sam Thompson
November has a way of feeling vanishingly quick and also strangely in-between, ideal for a book that will force the reader into self-imposed stillness. Good thing this sweeping fictionalized arc through the labor protests of late-1800s Spokane is a t...
Pair with: an evening stroll on the treadmill, and/or an evening bath.
Pair with: an evening stroll on the treadmill, and/or an evening bath.
NOVEMBER: The Cold Millions by Jess Walter
Meet the darkening days head-on with a futuristic story that wanders between the startingly realistic metaverse and an America of the not-too-distant future.
Pair with: apres-ski.
Pair with: apres-ski.
DECEMBER: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson