☕ The Cuppies
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Welcome to the Cuppies! This is the annual shortlist of books I read this year, that were new to me, and that resonated for one reason or another. This means that the list is totally subjective and impressively limited in scope. You’re welcome.
This year there were 50 contenders, which is less than usual because my life fell apart a little and I wrote a bunch.
I’ve created a series of very serious and important awards for each of the Cuppy recipients, all of which are Coffee Chats Certified™ to be easily enjoyed by a reader over a damn fine cup of coffee. I hope you find something you like!
The “Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Structure” Award
This award goes to novels that are truly novel in their approach to structure as a component of storytelling. The joint recipients of this year's award are The Employees by Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken; New Directions, 2022) and No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead Books, 2021).
The novella-length Employees, set on a spaceship orbiting a strange planet, unfolds its narrative through short, interlocking, overlapping, interview-style vignettes. No One is Talking About This tells a story about modern life, social media, and family trauma using short, pithy entries that are uncomfortably reminiscent of the platforms it satirizes. Both books are excellent, and have stuck in my brain all year.
The “Is This Science or Are We Getting Existential?” Award
This award goes to books that are, ostensibly, about science. Stolidly nonfiction, with some context and commentary from the author sprinkled in, to break up the heavier subject matter—or so you think. As they explore the heady concepts about which they're written, they soon begin to digress into heavier, more personal, and more universal topics. The recipients of this year's award are When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut (translated by Adrian Nathan West; New York Review of Books, 2021) and The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli (Riverhead Books, 2018).
The former is "about" plateaus and breakthroughs in the history of science. The latter is "about" our understanding of time from the perspective of physics. Yet both are about so, so much more.
The “Wow, That Really Zagged When I Thought It Would Zig” Award
This award is given to books that surprised me for going to a place that seemed possible in the worlds inhabited by the characters—obvious, even—but which is normally considered off limits or undesirable. The recipients of this year's award are The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tor Books, 2023) and The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown (William Morrow, 2024). Yes, it tickles me that both of these are sort of kind of very much about doors and liminal spaces.
To avoid spoilers, all I'll say is that both of these stories took their protagonists to places that felt both natural and totally surprising to me. Both were very well written, and their speculative elements served to enhance the character arcs and themes in the best ways possible.
The “Oh, I Guess I’m Crying Now?” Award
This award is given to a book that made me cry—which, let me first say, isn't all that unusual. I cry pretty easily when reading a good story, when human emotion is laid bare in ink, on paper. But to qualify for this unique award, it has to be a book that I didn't expect to make me cry. This year, that book was Is A River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025).
MacFarlane is a nature writer with a unique gift for capturing places and people and ideas and sensations in a dearth of words. It is dramatic, though not inaccurate, to say that he's able to capture the spirit, the animus, the energy—whatever you wish to call it—of the places he writes about. That's moving—sweeping, and beautiful—but not often emotional in a manner that brings tears. So when I read the last thirty pages or so of this most recent book, I was taken totally by surprise as the current of the rivers he had conjured swept me away.
The “Thanks, I Didn’t Want to Sleep Anyway” Award
This award is, unsurprisingly, given to books that scared me—that kept me up at night, jumping at creaks and shadows. This years recipients earned the award for different reasons, but deserve it equally. The books that gave me the most nightmares in 2025 were A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez (translated by Megan McDowell; Hogarth, 2024) and Bunny by Mona Awad (Penguin Books, 2019).
The stories in Enriquez's latest collections scared me because they are, objectively, up-settling—that uncanny combination found in the best horror stories that upsets your view of the world while unsettling your nerves. They describe an Argentina drenched in atmosphere and memory, filled with mundane and political horrors. The story told in Bunny, however, scared me because it gets at the power of the written word, the influence the act of creation can have on others. It's darkly comedic, most of the time, and reads like a fever dream throughout, so I didn't find myself bothered by it until after I finished, when the book was over, and what it implied came to rest heavily and hauntingly in my mind.
The “Sip My Espresso and Stare into the Distance” Award
This award is given to a book that kindled both existential dread and a yearning for beauty and meaning in me—a book that made me look up every few pages (or sometimes several times in a single page), and take a moment to reflect on what was being shared. That book, this year, was A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit (Penguin Books, 2006).
I guess, given the title, it probably isn't surprising that this book won this award (ignoring the fact that I made up this award for this book). The autobiographical essays in this collection touch on a range of themes and subjects—memory, uncertainty, and loss, amongst others—but all relate back to that central idea of being "lost" as in some way essential to the human experience, especially for someone who makes art. So much of what Solnit wrote resonated deeply and provoked my own reflection; I find myself eager to return to this book at a slower pace, with a coffee in hand, and to get lost again.
🎶 On Repeat
Here’s a list of albums I recommended over the course of the year that I kept listening to on repeat. There are also a couple that I didn’t recommend, because this is my awards show and I can do what I want. I'm not going to write about these because this email is already too long, and because, you know—you should listen to them.
Of course, I listened to lots of other things too. Check out my 2025 playlist for most of the songs I listened to on repeat over the year, and my Writing playlist for what I actually spend most of my time listening to.
💝 Other Favorites from the Year
And here’s some other stuff so nice I’d recommend it twice:
- Apps: This year I continued to find immense value in the Runna app, used for planning and scheduling running-focused training, and the Merlin Bird ID app, used for playing real-life Pokémon Go.
- Films: I didn't watch many films this year (as usual; I'm working on it), but two I did see that really, really stuck with me were Yorgos Lanthimos's Bugonia and Chloé Zhao's Hamnet.
- Games: This was a great year for games, and though I didn't play many, those that I did were incredible. Citizen Sleeper (2022), though not new, enthralled me at the beginning of the year. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025) and Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025) both changed my perspective on what storytelling in games can be, albeit in very different ways.
- Podcasts: Between the Covers, hosted by David Naimon, continues to be my favorite and most listened to podcast. I don't know any other interviewers who invest so much time and energy and attention into authors; each episode teaches me so much.
- Videos: Some of my favorite video essays this year were made by Jacob Geller and Sarah Davis Baker. Struthless offered lots of great reflections on creative life in the modern age. Coulou and My Analog Journal provided of chill vibes and ambiance. The vlogbrothers are the vlogbrothers.
🗄️ From the Archive
Finally, and most self-indulgently, here are a few of my newsletters from the year that I thought were pretty good:
