Every year when the dust settles and I take the time to update my bookish Hall of Fame, it’s always interesting to see which books from the previous year made the cut and slipped into my favourite 100 novels of all time. But that means I also have to say goodbye to the books that the new additions displace. Today’s post will look at these two groups of books.
2025 Additions
Regular readers will recognize these books from my best of 2025 list — though maybe not in the same order. That’s always an interesting phenomenon: How a book stacks up against the other reads from that year is a very different question than how it it holds up under the greater scrutiny of thinking of my favourite books of all time.
12. Ordinary Saints, by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin (2025)
This wonderful, fresh, and thoughtful book about faith and family was my top read of 2025 and I immediately knew it would make my top 100. The only question was how high it would go. I was actually surprised it made it as high as it did, all the way into my top category, my Bookish Olympus.
22. Heart the Lover, by Lily King (2025)
This novel made a big emotional impact on me, feeling equally contemporary and nostalgic (in lovely, not problematic ways). It feels correct that it made it this high in this year’s rankings.
28. The Silence of the Girls (2018); 30. The Voyage Home (2024); and 94. The Women of Troy (2021), by Pat Barker
Barker’s Women of Troy series was a huge success for me, and it’s no surprise that all three books found their way into my Hall of Fame. The Women of Troy barely made it in, though, so we’ll see how it fares next year.
62. Seascraper, by Benjamin Wood (2025)
My feeling during 2025 was that it was a bit of a rough reading year overall. There were lots of books I loved, but few that really seemed superlative. So I’m not surprised to see this drop from 30 to 62 in between my fourth and fifth new additions. But this quiet, atmospheric novel is absolutely deserving of this spot. Time will tell, but it’s the kind of book I could see growing in my estimation even more as time goes on.
72. Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan (2025)
This is 2025’s contender for ‘the great American novel’, and I was pleased it fared as well as it did in my overall rankings.
77. The Unseen World, by Liz Moore (2016)
This backlist gem about a girl’s unconventional childhood in 1980s Boston was a wonderful surprise for me.
81. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai (2025)
This is a gorgeous piece of literature that felt like it was explaining our fractured twenty-first century in a really smart way — not bad for a book about Indian expats living in the USA in the ‘90s!
82. The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, by Eddy Boudel Tan (2025 🇨🇦)
This was a surprise short-list title from last year’s Giller Prize, and I was so thrilled that this insightful literary thriller got the attention it did.
90. The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans (2025)
A huge word-of-mouth smash hit from 2025, The Correspondent was everywhere, and deservedly so.
93. Take Two, by Danielle Hawkins (2024)
It’s so hard for romances to make it into my Hall of Fame, and I’m very glad this one did.
96. Life, & Death, & Giants, by Ron Rindo (2025)
I was surprised I loved this as much as I did, and pleasantly surprised to see it squeak into the Hall of Fame this year.
99. The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje (2019, transl. 2025)
This compelling Dutch novel about a soldier experiencing memory loss has stayed with me, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it stay in the list next year, despite it just squeaking in.
Emeritus Titles
When I decided to cap my Hall of Fame at 100 titles, I decided that the books that would inevitably fall out year to year would retain an emeritus status. They’re still great, all time favourite books!
- (101) Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke (2020), in 2023-25, range 50-98
- (103) Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (1932), in 2023-25, range 27-75
- (108) Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir (2021), in 2023-25, range 38-81
- (110) No Great Mischief, by Alistair McLeod (1999), in 2023-25, range 31-100
- (112) All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (2014), in 2023-25, range 37-72
- (114) Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry (2004), in 2025, 83
- (116) The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (1951), in 2025, 116
- (128) Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell (2019), in 2023-25, range 40-85
- (140) Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee (2017), in 2023-25, range 67-91
- (141) The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers (2021), in 2025, 88
- (143) The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon (1988), in 2023-25, range 53-97
- (148) The Nest, by Kenneth Oppel (2015), in 2023-25, range 60-96
- (160) The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty (2023), in 2023-25, range 77-99
- (161) The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune (2020), in 2023, ‘25, range 59-90
Matt's Books and Music 
Leave a comment