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Summer books 2025: the best titles of the year so far Show articles
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Best summer books of 2025: Literary non-
ction
Carl Wilkinson selects his best mid-year reads
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Carl Wilkinson
Published JUN 17 2025 4
When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last
Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter (Grove Press/Penguin Press)
The former Vanity Fair editor’s nostalgic memoir about his adventures “during
the last golden age of magazines” offers a snapshot of a pre-digital publishing
world awash with money and celebrity. While there may be few new nuggets
here, Carter’s recollections neatly capture this glamorous long-gone era.
I Want to Talk to You: And Other Conversations by Diana Evans
(Chatto & Windus)
This compelling collection of essays and interviews from the novelist and
journalist explores her encounters with cultural figures such as Alice Walker,
Lauryn Hill and Viola Davis, and showcases her characteristic empathy and
wit. What emerges is an insightful examination of both the cultural and deeply
personal events that have influenced the making of a great writer.
How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner (Weidenfeld &
Nicolson/Pantheon)
The celebrated Australian pioneer of autofiction — now in her eighties —
shares her diaries, which seek to answer a question she posed 40 years ago:
“Why do I write down this stuff?” Over more than 800 pages she explores her
reading, writing and broader life in unflinching detail that gets to the heart of
the complexity of being human.
I Found Myself . . . The Last Dreams by Naguib Mahfouz, translated and
introduced by Hisham Matar, with photographs by Diana Matar (Viking/New
Directions)
Mahfouz, Egypt’s greatest novelist, spent the final decade of his life noting
down his dreams — translated here by the British-Libyan writer Matar in his
elegant, spare prose. The result is a “fragile coda to a vastly prolific career” that
forms a mosaic of the inner life of the Nobel laureate and author of “The Cairo
Trilogy”.
Summer Books 2025
All this week, FT writers and critics share
their favourites. Some highlights are:
Monday: Business by Andrew Hill
Tuesday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Wednesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Thursday: Fiction by Maria Crawford
Friday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Saturday: Critics’ picks
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global by Laura Spinney
(William Collins)
From the author of Pale Rider, about the 1918 Spanish flu, Proto explores
another viral phenomenon: the birth and spread of Proto-Indo-European, a
language that arose near the Black Sea after the last Ice Age. Bringing together
genetic, archaeological and linguistic research, Spinney tells the fascinating
story of the common ancestor of many languages spoken around the world
today.
Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson
(Bloomsbury)
In this novelist origin story, Wilson — biographer of DH Lawrence and Thomas
De Quincey — explores Spark’s life up to the age of 39, when she published her
debut The Comforters. Wilson tracks Spark from Edinburgh to Africa and then
London, offering an original and engaging exploration of the making of an
exceptional yet enigmatic literary figure.
Tell us what you think
Will you be taking any of these books on your summer holiday this year? Which ones? And what
titles have we missed? Let us know in the comments below
Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café
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