Read Listen Watch

British author Carys Davies’ third novel Clear is slim but packed with language and an unwinding plot that starts slowly but then rockets to an unexpected climax. In the mid 1800s, a Scottish minister, strapped for cash, travels to a remote island to expel its sole inhabitant, a silent, gentle, hulk of a man. When the minister falls and is cared for by the primitive tenant with his strange language, a bond develops between the two, even as the minister’s wife embarks on a fraught journey to rescue him. The author is a stylist of rare beauty, able to conjure up the harsh, storm-lashed rock on which the action takes place. The moral dimensions of this seemingly simple but complex tale are clear but the human reactions of the characters are rich in suspense and weighted with ethical import. Not much longer than a novella, Clear is an easily read jewel that raises as many fundamental questions as it attempts answers.

Frank Kennedy’s superb space opera omnibus of series, set in a fascinating Collectorate of planets, concluded last year. Luckily he has launched a new, markedly different series. Set on a semi-blighted but fantastical planet called Teton, The Rogues of Teton will be a five-book venture, and Blend kicks it off. When a blue-skinned “blend,” an enhanced human created to save the planet, returns to mega-city Vandress (the author’s depiction of this wondrous, scabrous city reminds me of the best of William Gibson) after a lunar prison shift, he struggles to reunite with his son and wife. All three are thrust into the foment of rebellion, a rebellion that somehow is underpinned by forces from beyond Teton. The author is a kinetic stylist and fierce plotter, and the characters (including an evil high official) spring to life from the book’s pages. Blend is a hoot from start to finish.

If you read a decent number of food/diet/health books, as I do, you become jaded with their earnest stories that never seem to surprise. I knew a book by Kevin Hall would be different, because Hall, a highly analytical physicist who was drawn to his field of nutrition science, is at the forefront of high-quality, important diet research. Moreover, he has a reputation for absolute integrity, a quality that in other food/diet/health authors can be smudged by conflicts of interest and careerism. My worry, upon turning over the first page of Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us was whether his writing and narrative storytelling would match his scientific fame, but I need not have fussed, for his co-author, health journalist Julia Belluz, is a splendid, cogent, readable writer, as well as an intelligent, dogged researcher in her own right. In this book, the authors range over the entire gamut of modern diet wars, beginning by tackling calories, metabolism, protein, and fat, before turning to the nervous system’s role in eating and the impact of our food environment (which Hall has proven, beyond doubt, messes with human brains and directly leads to the obesity epidemic blighting modern society through heart disease and diabetes), before tackling some possible solutions and criticizing elements of the “individual responsibility” paradigm pushed by the food industry. The final chapters tackle the overall food system and its horrors. Although the authors strike an optimistic note in the climax to Food Intelligence, the overall message is hugely troubling. Readable, full of food/diet insights I can guarantee you do not know, and inflamed by a passion for proper science, Food Intelligence is THE health book you must read this year.

On the spectrum of commentators/analysts/writers dealing with the climate crisis, I read everyone from extreme doomsters to blithe “abundance” gurus, Oxford data scientist Hannah Ritchie lies firmly on the side of the optimists. She is everywhere on her patch, which is the application of solid numeric data to Anthropocene policy issues and options. Now, just a year after her debut book, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, both enlightened and frustrated me, she is back with a more nuanced book, Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change — in 50 Questions and Answers. This is the book everyone needs to read in order to navigate the sewers of online discourse on the subject. Much of the book is spent quashing bad-faith arguments spread by malicious foes of decarbonisation, such as the supposed evils of renewables and petty arguments against EVs. Throughout, Ritchie writes with clarity of prose and numeracy, and she has an engaging style. If we feel unease at the positivity (after all, emissions continue to skyrocket, temperatures still rise), we can find plenty of voices of more sober mien. In any event, Clearing the Air is a cudgel of reason to seize and wield.

Noir books do not need to be thick and, at 211 pages, Melbourne author Mark Brandi’s Eden, his fifth novel, is perfectly sized. When Tom Blackburn hits the streets of town after a long spell in prison, life seems bleak, sprinkled with morsels of hope. When he lucks upon a dream job at a heart-of-the-city cemetery, it seems he might finally face a better future. But rosy futures are not noir futures, and Tom stumbles into a mire of personal, moral quandaries. The author adopts a pared down, present-tense style that reflects the simple character of his protagonist, a style dotted with evocative descriptions that bring inner Melbourne to life, and Tom quickly wriggles into the reader’s heart. Foreboding quickly appears and swells, and the plot is excellent. If the climax offers few resolutions, Eden is a taut, atmospheric noir tale that this reader, for one, will remember for a long time.

After 2024 seemed to be a year of reading constriction, 2025 saw even less reading. This was good news for my own work but could have proven to depress this obsessive reader. Instead, I ended up with many fine novels and a number of rewarding nonfiction books. Only two of the Top 10 ended up being nonfiction and theyare nothing like each other. Five outstanding genre books were balanced by three literary fiction gems.

I present ten books of outstanding merit (the links are to my reviews, which themselves contain links to information about each book):

• Author Mick Herron had a bumper year on the screen but his fans know he is best appreciated in print. Number nine in the Slow Horses/Slough House/Jackson Lamb series is Clown Town and it is a ripper, constructed in two parts with the second half unexpectedly dark.
• Probably the most low-key offering ever from wonderful scribe Helen Garner is her sublime look at suburban football, The Season.
• No doubt many of you know full well the magic of Irish novelist Niall Williams. He was new to me, however, and I was surprised to swoon at his immersive, love-filled Time of the Child.
• Is stylistic artistry genetic? Nick Harkaway’s Karla’s Choice, penned by the son of the deceased master of spy fiction, John Le Carre, offers up a new tale of superspy George Smiley, and it reads as if written by the father.
• 2025 saw plenty of splendid sci-fi on the screen, less so on the page, but the latest Murderbot book, System Collapse, is magnificent.
• Daniel Kehlmann’s multi-viewpoint novel of Nazi collusion, The Director, seems apt for our age.
• Australian crime fiction master Garry Discher keeps pumping out his outback noir series featuring smalltown policeman Hirsch. Mischance Creek is gradual and low-stakes until … until it’s not. An especially skillful plot and rich characterization.
• I’m new to British crime writer Simon Morgan’s “mismatched duo” procedural series. The latest, A Voice in the Night, is a 2025 standout in this genre.
• Roisin O’Donnell’s novel featuring a struggling mother beset by a misogynist, Nesting, stuns due to its bewitching voice.
• We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, by renowned journalist/author Michael Grunwald, is mandatory 2025 reading, both for its revelatory and horrifying message, and for its superb storytelling.

Another glorious year of cinematic joy. Four fresh seasons of great shows, two indie-style movies, a rough-but-brilliant self-funded doco, nuclear Armageddon, and more … behind these ten are a couple of dozen films or streaming shows I would love to extol, if only Top 10 meant Top 30.

• After Season 3 played with style and form, Season 4 of The Bear reverted to solid, kinetic drama. We watch breathless as Carmie battles the world and himself. Another triumph of cinema.
• Claire Keegan’s novel, Small Things Like These, was slim and highly moving. The movie adaptation stars Cillian Murphy and, by necessity, strikes a different register, but it is just as emotional and true.
• A free YouTube documentary of a birdwatching road trip sounds as unpromising as they come, but Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching is both hilarious and awe inspiring.
• Season 3 of The Newsreader is the streaming show’s final outing. IMHO the best Australian drama in years.
• The second season of the grand sci-fi dystopian Silo is plotted slower than the first firestorm season but, rest assured, it is as skilled and wonderful.
• The niche crime sub-genre of “on the spectrum investigator” is experiencing a boom at present. The first season of Dept. Q, an adaptation of the first book in a Danish series, is whip smart and unusually impactful.
• A four-episode examination of a young male mess-up, told four different ways, Adolescence wrenches and grips.
• The second season of The Last of Us, another dystopian (zombie, even) series, offers startling plot twists but remains true to its high standards and emotional core.
• How to dramatise the risk of nuclear Armageddon? Only Kathryn Bigelow could contemplate doing it with integrity, veracity, tension, and imaginative plotting. A House of Dynamite is essential 2025 viewing.
• The most arthouse cinema on this list, The Ballad of Wallis Island is quirky, superbly acted, and profound. Funny, too.