The Best-Selling Backlist Books of 2025

red rising “Song of Achilles” may come as a surprise to some, as it is a newcomer.

Millions reading year

It’s just the internet, but it’s a great read that feels like a proper read. You can find new books that you say you want to read but end up in memory purgatory. What else is in store this week?

The following is an excerpt from Erin Summers (The Ten Year Affair) at Howard’s End. Her description of reading the classics is very much in line with my re-commitment to “reading well from scratch” this year.

I’ve been in this job long enough to know that whatever I think about the classics, I’m probably wrong. But no, I’ll never learn. I always wonder, what is this giant artifact? What dusty tomb was it excavated from?

Howards End It’s very dusty. It looks like they tried to make it look as dusty as possible. The design needs to be updated. It must be so. But when you actually read it, it’s funny and lively, a class novel inspired by the lives of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell about the fate of a country house.

What are all nonfiction books called now?

No literary work is interesting enough, but Daniel Lavery keeps the light burning in The Chutner. As someone who reads a lot of books like this, the shock of realization here was especially shocking.