Paging 2025: All the books that moved me this year (and some that didn't)

Matariki Bennett, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Flora Feltham, Mark Fisher, Adam Ehrlich Sachs, Dominic Hoey, Natalia Ginzburg and more.

Jun 19, 2025

Crust is a weekly newsletter on taste and culture from Tāmaki Makaurau.

Mōrena and mānawatia a Matariki. We’re halfway through 2025 and marking Te Mātahi o te Tau, and I’ve done a stocktake on my book stack and shared some thoughts in today’s newsletter. There are also a few Matariki recommendations — Karangahape Road looks like the place to be — and musings, and I don’t know about you, but I’ll be spending today filing a submission on the Regulatory Standards Bill (the deadline is Monday).

This time of year, I like to occupy myself with reading, reflection and korero, so it seemed as good a time as any to share some good books. Lest you think it’s a best-of-the-year list — no one needs another one of those — or a ranking of must-reads, what this collection is, really, is a catalogue of titles that made me think and feel. The kind of books where you get out the pencil or (if borrowed) your phone, finish the last page and promptly start looking for discussions on Reddit, podcasts and — for the very stoic — the reviews of GoodReads. While there’s no overarching theme, unintentionally (for I’m at the whims of my wallet and Auckland Central Library’s loan availability), all happen to concern themselves with ideas of memory, time and family. The first two are topics I’ve been quite preoccupied with these past few months, indulging in some rather esoteric musings about collective reality, recorded truths and collective forgetting (how can you not with all that’s going on in the world) that get scribbled on post-its and my notes app. And with so many Big Things to be thinking about, books are a good way to do it.

Here’s what I’ve loved this year:

e kō, nō hea koe by Matariki Bennett
I don’t usually go in for poetry, but this book changed my mind. Celestial and urban in equal measure, Matariki writes of “jaywalking through the cosmos” and “the choke of this city’s lights”, exploring tūpuna and time while carrying generations of stolen language with a “fire burning in my throat”. It’s all there amidst the beautiful chaos of youth and the salvation of self-medicating — cheap wine, nangs, and rolling in the Mercury Plaza loo (RIP) — against a city where dawn swallows “grey lynn’s history whole”. It’s beautiful and arresting and human. And given the general deluge of words out there in the world right now (and much more to come), the space and slowness demanded of (good) poetry feels particularly relevant at this given moment. The medium handles big ideas with brevity, and it’s particularly suited to the medium of readings, which I think we’ll see much more of in the coming months as people seek out in-person events and the chance to commune offline. (Matariki’s publisher, Dead Bird Books, knows this and nails it).

Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories by Truman Capote
The titular story is far more grim than its film adaptation would have you believe. Holly and Paul live in a harsh world dressed up with dreams, and she’s far, far younger than her cinematic counterpart. Stripping the glamour away, it’s a story about survival and manipulating your selfhood.

Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich
A palate-cleansing aperitivo of a book that (obviously) contains a bitter kick, while aesthetically pleasing — you’ll find all the trappings of 1960s Italy — it captures the posturing and class performance that, if the current #EuroSummer content is anything to go by, are as timeless as some well-executed sprezzatura. You’ll question your own hubris.

Bad Archive by Flora Feltham
My well-read neighbour suggested I read this and I’m glad I did. Going in blind (the best way to approach anything) I was knocked sideways by the depth of thought, delivered slowly and simply as Flora tells us about mechanno sets and hand looms and supermarkets and her family — all that pain and hope and joy that shape our lives. An archivist by trade, Flora explains the work required to make memories (officially) tangible, considering who gets to make the decisions around them, all while unpicking her own. Befitting its title, the book is unapologetically subjective and sensitive about recorded history — categorically “bad” attributes when it comes to archiving — but really, we can never know the whole of anything, and no recordkeeping is truly objective. It’s also deeply refreshing to see some sentimentality in an increasingly ironic, jaded world (when did we stop wanting to be moved anyway? I’ll cry at anything) and also left me wanting to weave.

I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz by Eve Babitz
Always, always a pleasure. She makes you want to live.

A Month in The Country by J.L. Carr
Another unexpectedly moving read was this little novella by J.L.Carr, about a veteran of The Great War (back when everyone thought that was the last one) uncovering a mural in a village church in rural Yorkshire. I’ve already recommended it once this month, so rather than get into the whats and whys of it all — which you can read on Ensemble — I’ll suggest some complementary commentary about the book and its author instead.

The Beach by Alex Garland
A book ostensibly about backpacking but really about consumption and social contracts, everyone should read this book at least twice; once when you’re 18, and again in your mid-to-late 30s. (I wonder how it will land in another two decades).

Gretel and the Great War by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
I anticipated a breezy read, judging by the book jacket, and instead, this was wonderfully weird and heavy. Framed as anecdotal folk tales and village gossip, what it really does is unpack the conditions of pre-war Austria — all that decadence and depravity — that preceded WW1.

Hellzapoppin'! The Art of Flying Nun by David Simpson
A birthday present from last year that I finally cracked open (and not a moment too soon), this is a treasure trove of material history, spanning album covers and ephemera and the stories behind how it all happened. It’s also full of valuable lessons in constraints and creativity (at a time, now, when there seemingly are none). Imagine what you could do with no Photoshop and no money?

Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap
A sublime collection of short stories, this rich book is as sensorially detailed as you might hope, painting vivid pictures of Thailand, Rattawut’s characters, and their circumstances with a tender pen.

1985 by Dominic Hoey
Another book I’ve written about at length already, here and elsewhere, and essential reading for anyone who came of age in Tāmaki Makaurau during the 1980s and 1990s, particularly the Grey Lynn that’s long gone now. I loved this novel.

All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg
Have you noticed a theme yet? This benefits from the Italian writer’s first-hand experience of living through World War Two. As such, she renders the familial and social dynamics during conflict, and the normalities of everyday life that continue, with a subtlety that still leaves you winded afterwards.

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher
Is there?????

Books I didn’t vibe with:

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.
Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik
Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors.

Still on my list this year:

I got a copy of Fulvia by Kaarina Parker last week. It’s out on July 1 (you can preorder a copy now) and looks like quite the fabulous Roman romp. I’m going to get stuck in next week.

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhini Vara concerns the influence of the technosphere — including generative AI and digital surveillance — on our language and communication, and where it might take us next. (For anyone wondering, yes I read Ross Douthat's stomach-churning interview with “herald of the apocalypse” Daniel Kokotajlo, even though Jesse Mulligan said not to).

Now’s also a good time to consider the place and power of criticism — god knows everyone’s been wringing their hands about it — and that’s the subject of Authority: Essays by Andrea Long Chu, who wrote that (not inaccurate) critique of Hanya Yanagihara.

Notes to John by Joan Didion, an author I enjoy most of all when she’s considering psychological and social distress; The White Album is her best book, and while not everyone likes the numb highways of Play It as It Lays, I sure do.

Speaking of journalists, the eulogising of a long-gone media era continues (everyone’s cashing in) and Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America by Michael Grynbaum looks juicy.

And zooming out, come November, I’ll be chomping through Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century by W. David Marx.

Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert. Timely, given the current debates about Sabrina Carpenter (more on that below).

Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television by Jeffrey Sconce. Released in 2000, this “historical analysis of the relation between communication technologies, discourses of modernity, and metaphysical preoccupations” (mentioned in Katherine Dee’s newsletter this week) sounds rather relevant right now.

And might as well be followed up with The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher.

A book I started last year after watching Civil War (which I’ll continue to bang on about) and really need to finish, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War by Paul Fussell.

And still sitting on my shelf, staring at me, is A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, all 1349 pages of it. Maybe this summer!

And if you want more books to grapple with big ideas in an accessible way, consider the following:

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy is my favourite of all her novels, and a sprawling, lyrical look at the social fabric of India, against a backdrop of geopolitical tension and very real, very true violence. If you can handle multiple narrators and time jumps, you’ll love this.
Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki explores girlhood against the unstoppable march of time and all its collateral damage.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro got under my skin and stayed there. A long, long Arthurian (!!!) legend, it’s about memory, personal and collective, and the pain of keeping it and letting it go.
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh seeks to understand how people rationalise hideous behaviour.
The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo by Joe Sacco illustrates — quite literally — the Yugoslav Wars in a way that helps you understand their complexity and gravity.
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. Just read it.

Speaking of books, the National Library of New Zealand is poised to destroy 500,000 of them — a sign of the times indeed.

Playing… Geneva AM’s latest single, Urban Planning, on repeat. It’s just so good and so gloriously Tāmaki, with references to motorways and museums and tūpuna. I saw it live last night, alongside more music from her debut record Pikipiki, at Golbin, including Toitū Te Tiriti — released July 4 — with Ngā Whetu Ensemble playing string arrangements composed by Eric Scholes (is that a first for the Richmond Road bar?) and a banger cover of Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi. I love my talented mates. Out on August 15, the album is great and will be sublime come summer. You can pre-order it now from Holiday Records, and hear it tonight at the free listening party at A Space for Karangahape Road’s Whāia Te Waiora 2025 — K’Rd really is the place to be tonight, there’s so much on — or tomorrow at Leigh Sawmill if you fancy a drive, a dance and some hāngī.

Loving… swirly fonts, as anyone why reads and appreciates my masthead should know by now (Curlz MT was declared officially “cunt” by designer Kaan Hiini during Queer PowerPoint at F.O.L.A [AKL] last week). Rachel Mills clearly does too, and has used a good one — hand-drawn by Constance McDonald, another Curlz fan — for the brand’s new mini-capsule of Premium Girl T-shirts.

Thinking… that the public reaction to Sabrina Carpenter’s new album is far more interesting, and telling of where we’re at culturally, than the Man’s Best Friend cover art itself, which to my eye is pretty pedestrian. All this arguing over commoditised imagery, designed to provoke, reveals fears over conservatism, sexualisation, and a disconnection in the wings of feminism. (Who’s right? Who knows!) The pick-a-side-ism of our current online environment, where everything feels like rage bait or a booby trap, leaves us projecting our frustrations onto a cultural vessel because that’s the only recourse it feels like we have.

Considering… Vanessa Friedman’s latest case against camo print clothing. She’s not necessarily wrong, and it does have added weight depending on where it’s being worn and by whom (after all, context and intention are everything), which is why it’s a complex topic. How do you feel about it? And would you want to read a whole newsletter on this? Because I could…