From prizewinners and modern classics to non-fiction accounts, retellings and short-story collections, here is a round up of the books I have adored, abhorred, enjoyed or endured this year.

A few weeks ago, I attended a wonderful evening at the Royal Festival Hall: the announcement of the 2025 Booker Prize Shortlist.

As a university student, I found myself searching my childhood bookshelves for some familiar favourites. To my shock, they appeared to have changed in the intervening years and not necessarily in ways that I liked.

Everyone knows the pleasurable pain of finishing an excellent read. That awful emptiness is only ever because you know you’ve read something special and so these are some of my worst (or best) book hangovers.

If I could only read one book for the rest of my life, it would, without a doubt, be ‘Middlemarch’.

Heart-breaking, yet at times humorous, as well as innovative, but not pretentiously so, Luiselli’s first English novel is a masterpiece.