Thursday Thirteen #444

 

 My favorite books of 2025. I plowed through 41 books this year. These are the ones I liked best. I recommend them all, and have included links to Amazon, if you'd like to learn more.

1. Trial by Ambush: Injustice and the Truth about the Case of Barbara Graham by Marcia Clark. (2024) Non-fiction. Barbara Graham was one of the first – and still one of the few – women to be executed by the State of California. She may not have received justice. That's the problem with the death penalty: there's no mulligan. This book is continues to haunt me.

2. The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue. (2024) Fiction. Remember that magic time of your life, when you were in your 20s and out on your own for the first time and met the friends who would be with you forever? This book captures that time so well. There's sex and chaos and money trouble and heartache. And love. Lots of love.

3. JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography by RoseMarie Terenzio. (2024) Non fiction. Decades after his death, John's friends look back on his life and his continuing influence on their lives. What's it like to grow up with and hang out with The Sexiest Man Alive? There was an inherent imbalance of power in his  relationships that John learned to navigate with grace. He also died recklessly and caused his friends incalculable pain for no good reason. I took comfort reading how his survivors continue to deal with this. I was especially heartened by something a priest said to Ann Freeman, the mother who lost two of her daughters in that pointless plane crash: "God is big enough to handle our anger." I must remember that when I get mad because my friends – John and Henry – died and left me.

4. Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait by Nick Davis. (2021) Biography. These two brothers made some of the greatest films of all time (Citizen Kane, All About Eve, and more) and won so many Oscars I lost count. But at heart this is a family story. The author is Joe's nephew. Genius, ambition and depression run deep in this clan, and on a less grand scale in many families.  

5. One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware. (2024) Thriller. One Perfect Couple is the name of a prospective new reality show. Five couples are chosen to appear in the pilot and are whisked away to Ever After Island, where they will compete for fame and prizes and the title of One Perfect Couple. Only a storm knocks out power to the island and leaves the contestants cut off from civilization. Part Lord of the Flies, part ... And Then There Were None. Compulsively readable.

6. So, Anyway ... A Memoir by John Cleese. (2014) My favorite Python tells his story and I was completely charmed. Far sweeter than I expected. His career seems to have been a delightful accident, surprising him as he bounced from job to job and eventually became a star. I especially enjoyed his tales of being a teacher at the same boys' school he had attended. (Yes, there are men out there who had Basil Fawlty as their teacher!) 

7. Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz. (2009) Mystery. I am rereading this mystery series before rehoming them, and Book 2 is even better than I remembered. The Spellmans are a family of private investigators in San Francisco and they are a hilarious mess. The characters are drawn with great humor and affection and the plot had a very interesting twist.

8. Dark City Dames by Eddie Muller. (2025) Non fiction. Hollywood has created many great stars. These aren't them. Eddie gives us actresses who worked regularly and appeared in some very good films noir and crime dramas in the 1940s and 1950s. The femme fatale roles dried up and then what? These women were survivors who had fascinating second acts: raising families, doing charity work, battling illness ... Ann Savage memorably took the bus every day to an LA law office where she did clerical work. Her coworkers had no idea they could see this quiet old lady lure men to their deaths on The Late Show. I loved the stories of their lives.

9. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. (2017) Memoir. As candid as it is intense, The Boss puts the story of his life out there for us to learn from. He is talented, hard-working, driven ... and bedeviled by depression that sapped him creatively, spiritually and sexually. A moving story of hard won success – in both his personal and professional lives. I know more about a hero than I dreamed I would, and he remains a hero. 

10. Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell. (2017) Biography. President Bill Clinton said in the eulogy of his predecessor, we must "remember Richard Nixon's life in totality." This book does that. As we all know from Watergate, Vietnam and his trashing of Helen Gahagan Douglas, Nixon was amoral, expedient, and when desperate, prone to reckless decision making. He did not have the temperament to be President. But he was brilliant and resilient and not without empathy. I was touched by how distraught he was by the killings at Kent State and how kind and sensitive he was to Jacqueline Onassis when she brought her children back to the White House for a private unveiling of their father's Presidential portrait. It's impossible to imagine such dimension in the current occupant of the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I am grateful that John Farrell introduced me to new facets of a man I thought I knew.

11. Leo Durocher: Baseball's Prodigal Son by Paul Dickson. (2017) Biography. God, Leo was a big personality! He was the manager of my beloved Cubs when I was a little girl and I thought he was terrifying. I still do. The man bullied Babe Ruth, swung with Sinatra, helped integrate baseball (thereby helping to integrate America) and could be completely charming and thoroughly despicable, sometimes on the same page. I didn't like him, but I missed him when the book was over. The man was a force of nature. 

12. Pete Rose: An American Dilemma by Kostya Kennedy. (2014) Biography. Baseball has given us many heroes, but for some reason this year I gravitated toward the bad boys. Written when Pete Rose was still alive and fighting to get into the Hall of Fame, this book is fair and even handed. It gives us a great ball player and an incredibly flawed human being. At a time when companies like Draft Kings sponsor sporting events, when Donald Trump has normalized vulgarity, Pete Rose and what he represented deserve closer examination. A well-written, quintessentially American story.

13. How I Helped OJ Get Away with Murder by Mike Gilbert. (2008) Non fiction. What if your friend did something terrible? Mike Gilbert tells his story, of how as OJ's sports agent he made the decision to stand by "The Juice" during The Trial of the Century. I found Gilbert unlikable, but the book is thought provoking. Regardless of how you feel about Gilbert individually, he presents his side in such a way that you'll wonder what you would do in his position. 

Happy New Year! 

I wish you a 2026 fill with good reads.

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