What I read in 2025 (34): George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss I kept this one for last. Reliably reduces me to tears. About the myriad ways in which Maggie Tulliver gets sabotaged, harassed, bullied, gaslit, humiliated, hated, thwarted, condescended to, annihilated, killed. A very tough read.

Thank you Spinoff for another terrific year of journalism Help Me Hera: A festive miscellany of advice thespinoff.co.nz/society/18-1...

Such an important thread about the value of the Total Mobility scheme! We need to fight to get this properly funded - no cap on costs, easier to book, round trips made possible. This matters! Let's make it an election issue!

What I read in 2025 (33): George Eliot's Romola Eliot sounds different in this novel. Set in the final years of 15th century Florence. The setting of 'big' historical events (Savonarola's impact) reveals Victorian problems: women hero-worshipping sour fathers who don't deserve it, charming bounders

What I read in 2025 (32): Richard Powers' Playground Polymath Powers tackles everything beautifully, yet again. Centred on the pacific ocean and the human inability not to fuck it up, but also generous about creatures' passions and play. And I am always nostalgic for the University of Illinois.

What I read in 2025 (31): William Hazlitt's The Round Table Keats loved it and so did I. 'Lord Shaftesbury somewhere remarks that a great many people pass for very good-natured persons, for no other reason than because they care about nobody but themselves.' Sharp, opinionated, and proud of it.

What I read in 2025 (30): George Eliot's Felix Holt: The Radical Published in 1866 but set in 1832, at the time of the First Reform Bill, with a focus on the fraught elections. Signals for the need of much deeper change in order to make elections work. Also, the empty lives of intelligent women.

What I read in 2025 (29): Laurence Fearnley's At the Grand Glacier Hotel Nobody does atmosphere like Fearnley and I love all her writing for it. Unflinching about physical recovery and emotional vulnerability, this is the 'sound' novel in the series. Great sounds, highlighting even greater silences

What I read in 2025 (28): Benji Waterhouse's You Don't Have to Be Made to Work Here: A Psychiatrist's Life The title says it all. Vignettes of psychiatric cases, including of the writer and his family. Exposes the problems in the system, but really, this is something Benji had to write to live.

What I read in 2025 (27): Amy Bloom's I'll Be Right Here About the long interconnected lives of Gazala, Samir, Anna and Alma. From World War Two in France, across the horror of the colonial wars in Algeria, to more settled lives in NYC and Poughkeepsie. Big sweep but it's the details that matter.

What I read in 2025 (26): George Eliot's Silas Marner I ignored this book too long. About the lonely life of an ostracised weaver who has a form of epilepsy and who seeks refuge in counting his gold. One day his trove is stolen and a golden-haired toddler walks into his life. Quietly stunning.

What I read in 2025 (25): Alan Hollinghurst's Our Evenings A wordsmith of the highest order. Class, race, sexuality are all high stakes in this narrative centred on a son and his mother. Brilliant dark humour about the violence of class in particular.

What I read in 2025 (24): Patrick Grant's Less I'm a big fan of The Great British Sewing Bee and its judges Esme Young and Patrick Grant. 'Less' puts the boot into mindless clothing consumerism, fast fashion, and the dark underbelly of its industries. Love the emphasis on quality and repairing

What I read in 2025 (23): Grant Robertson's Anything Could Happen: A Memoir He would have made a fine prime minister. A rollicking memoir, particularly fascinating about his family and Dunedin student years. The best bit: a man who's truly supportive of female colleagues without making it about him

What I read in 2025 (22): Lucy O'Hagan's Everything but the Medicine On what it is like to be a caring GP in Aotearoa New Zealand. O'Hagan includes her experience of burnout. Required reading for anyone contemplating General Practice as a specialisation. Moving, beautiful, and yes, funny.

What I read in 2025 (21): Ali Mau's No Words For This Actually, there are words for this and fortunately Ali Mau is brave enough to express them. The disturbing truths of family life, couched in the narrative of a career in the 'sexist badlands' of journalism. Compelling and wise.

What I read in 2025 (20): Ivor Popovich's A Dim Prognosis: Our Health System in Crisis-And a Doctor's View on How to Fix It You have to read this too. An account from the coal face about the dire state of our health system. Could we please start with an online national patient database that works?

What I read in 2025 (19): Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate The British version of Fitzgerald's 'careless people' but narrated by an insider who sees through them, up to a point. The casual upper class tolerance of just about anything disguises a deep disconnection and sadness. Ever so jolly.

What I read in 2025 (18): Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers Victorian ecclesiastical shenanigans at their finest. Backstabbing, toadying, gossiping, courting. To rule the world from the pulpit. I always forget how funny and finely tuned Trollope is. La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni is a triumph.

What I read in 2025 (17): Sarah Wynn-Williams' Careless People F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'careless people' are alive and well and scary. Wynn-Williams' account of her former workplace Facebook lifts the lid on the toxic digital bro culture at the highest level. Very dangerous people with too much power

What I read in 2025 (16): Andrew Lownie's Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York Disgusting. I'm waiting for 'a glorious Phantom' to 'illumine our tempestuous day' Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring; (Shelley, 'England in 1819')

What I read in 2025 (15): Elizabeth Strout's Tell Me Everything Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge connect with each other through story telling. The reader's sympathy is drawn to Bob Burgess who sneakily smokes and loves Lucy. Somehow his wife Margaret is unaware of both these things. Really?

What I read in 2025 (14) John Keats's 1820 volume, 'Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems' The other poems include Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, To Autumn, Ode on Melancholy, Hyperion. He's 24. Eight months later he is dead. He is among the English poets

What I read in 2025 (13) Susie Ferguson's Bloody Minded: War, Womanhood, and Finding My Voice What's putting on a flak jacket as a war correspondent compared to the daily horror of endometriosis, lack of diagnosis, lack of care? Fierce and intelligent about the forms of PTSD that women live with

What I read in 2025 (12): George Eliot's Daniel Deronda Her most ambitious work. A major inspiration, I believe, for Henry James' Portrait of a Lady. His evil Gilbert Osmond is derived from her Grandcourt: 'his negative mind was as diffusive as fog, clinging to all objects, and spoiling all contact'

What I read in 2025 (11): Jacinda Ardern's A Different Kind of Power It was different. Her premiership coincided with brutal, unexpected disasters. The Christchurch mosque attacks. They are us. Gun control legislation. The Covid-19 response, team of 5 million, saved at least 20,000 lives. I miss her

What I read in 2025 (10): Liam McIlvanney's The Good Father His best yet. A harrowing, gut-wrenching story about a double loss, disorienting and irredeemable. Loaded with excellent literary references. Extra marks for vibing with James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

What I read in 2025 (9): George Eliot's Adam Bede About family: 'Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heartstrings to the beings that jar us at every moment.'

What I read in 2025 (8) Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These Bill Furlong is an ordinary man in a country that believes in the purity of the soul but not of the body. Fear, hypocrisy, poverty and abuse flourish in this catholic bastion, but just for once, Bill resists. A vibe of Joyce's The Dead.

What I read in 2025 (6): Daniel Kalderimis' Zest: Climbing from Depression to Philosophy Not so much about finding oneself as about finding meaning, about living beyond the right/wrong binary. Best of all, a man willing to learn from three women: George Eliot, Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum.

What I read in 2025 (6): Anna Jackson's Terrier, Worrier: A Poem in Five Parts A splendid prose poem about affirmative doubt, in five seasons, from summer to summer, because you can only be aware of summer when you get back to it. A focused, feeling exploration of thinking. Somewhat fearless.

What I read in 2025 (5): George Eliot's Middlemarch If you're going to read one book. Memorize the opening paragraph of Chapter 27 about a 'pregnant little fact'. 'The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent.' Beyond compare.

What I read in 2025 (4): Maggie Nelson's Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth 'I get up first to be alone, and also because my jaw hurts too much to stay in bed.' What she writes is what I live, since 17 July 2020. πάθηματά μαθήματα, learning through suffering. A chronic pain fellow. I'm not crazy.

What I read in 2025 (3): F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Never more true than now, a hundred years on. The dark depravity of 'careless people' leaving a trail of death and destruction, while looking good and leading their best lives. I had forgotten, or never really saw, how fucked they are.

What I read in 2025 (2): Amy Marguerite's over under fed Best poetry collection of the year. Consistently, compellingly smart, beautiful, unflinching, brave, compassionate, lyrical, literate, words like hammers and strings, words I want to eat.

What I read in 2025 (1): Damien Wilkins' Delirious. Like reading King Lear; domestic routines amidst physical, emotional, mental deterioration; the loss of personhood; the effect on survivors; violent gusto of voice in Pete's mother, one word gurgling in Claire, no voice in Wil. Tough read. Genius.

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Some more epistolary spleen

Dinah Hawken is a terrific poet, congratulations! For me, she encapsulates Wordsworth's 'A slumber did my spirit seal': 'rolled round in earth's diurnal course, / With rocks, and stones, and trees.'

I loved writing this for The Spinoff about Jane Austen’s terrible parents thespinoff.co.nz/books/25-10-...

Some more outrage, The Post of 23 October

Coming up on Saturday 6 September and Saturday 13 September at Kapiti WEA, Waikanae: 'George Eliot: Life and Context' and 'Why you should read Middlemarch' - www.kapitiwea.org.nz/courses

Latest epistolary outrage

This is heartbreaking news. Amelia is a wonderful scholar and it's so cruel to force colleagues into competition with each other. Solidarity with our friends at the ANU

Budget day

I wrote, briefly, about consolatory reading. Would love to know about other writers/books which inspire comfort without mawkishness.

US sales of New Zealand poetry will be decimated by all this. We'll just have to hold firm and seek new markets.