December 12th Newsletter
What’s On At Veranda
Welcome, welcome! We’ve been having a great time compiling our ‘best books of 2025’ lists. After plenty of healthy debate, we’ve agreed on 10 works of Fiction, 10 Non-Fiction, and 10 Kid’s books. Leo, Emily and Alison have also picked their Top 3. Some of these decisions were easy to make, some less so. And even though we’ve all read quite a few books this year, there are always plenty more that we’ve missed. Nevertheless, here are our favourites – and we’d love to know what you think, and what you’ve enjoyed this year too. Call in and see us soon!
Our Recommended Reads
Fiction - Top 10
What a wealth of experiences this list represents – and what a huge variety of locations. Fancy a stroll through ‘70’s Stockholm with your on again/off again love interest, a messy night in a Berlin techno club, or a claustrophobic dinner party in a sweltering Parisian apartment? 17th Century Denmark, 1980’s Pakistan, or present-day Venezuela…don’t say we never take you anywhere!
We’ve compiled this list based on Veranda Team favourites (A Splintering, Name, Good Girl), most talked-about (Engagement, The Wax Child), bestsellers (Perfection, Just a Little Dinner) and the ones we just couldn’t stop thinking about.
- The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
- Good Girl by Aria Aber
- A Splintering by Dur e Aziz Amna
- Engagement by Gun-Britt Sundström, tr. Kathy Saranpa
- It Would Be Night In Caracas by Karin Sainz Borgo, tr. Elizabeth Bryer
- The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, tr. Martin Aitken
- Restoration by Ave Barrera, tr. Ellen Jones & Robin Myers
- Just A Little Dinner by Cécile Tlili, tr. Katherine Gregor
- Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, tr. Sophie Hughes
- Name by Constance Debré, tr. Lauren Elkin
Non-fiction Top 10
We believe that this selection of books truly reflects the eclecticism of our Non-Fiction shelves. Those of you familiar with our shop will know about our broad categorisation of non-fiction – Nitty Gritty for those endeavouring to make sense of the world; Life’s Pleasures celebrating the good times. In our list, you’ll find books to inform and inspire; the nostalgic and the bang-up-to-date. Above all else, this list serves as a reminder that there are brilliant minds at work, and their reassuring presence in our shop provides critical thinking, comfort and delight.
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- In For Dinner by Rosie Kellett
- The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s by Jason Burke
- Dead and Alive: Essays by Zadie Smith
- King of Kings: The fall of the Shah, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Unmaking of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
- Blitz: The Club That Created The 80s by Robert Elms
- Silk Mirage: Through The Looking Glass in Uzbekistan by Joanna Lillis
- One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
- Fair by Jen Calleja
- The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
- How To End A Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner
What we’re loving this week…
The books we’ve loved in 2025…Veranda Team Picks
Emily: It’s been a year of branching out with my reading due to working at Veranda. I’ve read so much more translated work from smaller publishers – and it’s been a joy to discover! Two of my favourite books of the year, Colony (Annika Norlin, tr. Alice E. Olsson) and Bloody Awful in Different Ways (Andrev Walden, tr. Ian Giles), have been translated from Swedish. The culture and humour has been very appealing!
My non-fiction book of the year is Hark (Alice Vincent) – an investigation into how sound affects women in particular, looking at silence, art, nature and personal experience
Leo: My year in reading started with two back-to-back bangers: The Sisters by Jonas Hansen Khemiri and David Szalay’s Booker Prize winner, Flesh. Because I work in a bookshop, people often ask me what kinds of books I like, and with echoes of Flesh’s leading man, Istvan, I often glibly answer “really good ones”. Both of these books, however, established the deepest of connections, leaving me feeling incredibly moved while simultaneously obsessing over how such precise, pared-back prose could activate my emotions at such a visceral level.
On the subject of finding one’s feelings, the other book I loved this year was Lauren Elkin’s excellent translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1966 novel, The Image of Her. While outwardly living a ‘successful’ life, this is the story of a woman grappling to understand what a fulfilling life could be and how to achieve this.
Alison: While I’m always happy to see a favourite author publishing a new book, this year I’ve been discovering lots of new (to me) writers.
Killing The Nerve (Anna Pazos, tr. Laura McGloughlin & Charlotte Coombe) was my January read – and set the bar high for 2025. Raw, honest and somewhat(!) relatable, I loved my vicarious trip through Anna’s 20s.
Definitely on the lookout for more Susan Choi in 2026 – Flashlight could well be my book of the year. An extraordinary story encompassing disappearance, family drama, and Sino-Korean tension. Brilliantly written, and gripping to the end.
Finally, Solvej Balle’s On The Calculation of Volume (Part I) got me thinking about time. How we spend it, and waste it, and who we spend it with. It’s mystifying and compelling, and I’m hooked (Part II and III also under my belt at time of writing, but including them here would be cheating!)
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