GEOGRAPHY OF MY READING — 2025

Having spent a large chunk of my adolescence and now my young adult life adjusting to unforeseeable external circumstances, I’ve adopted a particular strategy for planning my future. I’ve grown to distrust written goals, especially the overtly ambitious ones. It’s like one’s asking for the universe to go: “screw you, ain’t doing that!”. That’s why all the “strategic” plans, the steps I want to take upon completing this or that ongoing project, remain within the confines of my brain, hidden away from the universe. They are mouldable (in case yet another crisis of new intensity erupts) and yet deterministic (based on some principled visions that are, too, very. very rarely articulated). 

The only thing that I allow to be written down on the eve of New Years (or some time around that) is a few modest aspirations that concern some little bits of my personal routines. At the start of 2025, I wrote out three such aspirations, among which was: Enjoy the books I read and enjoy myself reading them. 

And, let me tell you, this piece of personal “guidance” did wonders for my reading in 2025. I can confidently say that the majority of the books I’ve read really struck a chord and fit well into the moments during which I was reading them. So as my reading stats are progressively shrinking* and my life is charging full speed towards new turns, I read just the things that feel right, and come here, yet again, to share the treasures I discovered among the words splattered over sheets of dead trees. 

*Although reading solely according to the inner compass – choosing the things, the times, the places that feel most right for this activity – has sped my reading up again. It’s been less than a month in the year of our lord 2026, and I am on my way to finishing the fourth book of this year! 

BOOKS-LIGHTHOUSES

Instead of a "favourites" category (couldn’t pick), I decided to first single out the books that lingered. They fit very neatly into the vision of lighthouses, beacons, sources of light in otherwise murky or outright dark territory. I found guidance there, guidance of different sorts. Perhaps you could, too. 

On agency and birth of stubborn responsibility – “Доця” [“Daughter”] by Tamara Horikha Zernya. It’s a heart-wrenching read about the early stages of russian invasion and occupation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. It tracks the main character’s transformation into an active volunteer and a morally and politically involved person. Brutal, violent, perhaps not to be read immediately, if one feels over-exposed to gore russia keeps inflicting upon us (although a must read for all you, foreign friends. The book was translated into English, so there’s no excuse not to learn more about the early stages of the war). 

I only began reading “Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals” (MGM) by Iris Murdoch in 2025, but I felt a strong urge to include it here already: I can tell that this might well end up being the philosophical work I most align with and come back to for years to come. Murdoch draws on Plato, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, art, and religion, and she presents a very compelling picture of what the moral life is, can, and should be like. Fiiiinallllyyy I felt like the richness of the human experience was properly reflected in a philosophical work! Not to throw shade on other beloved philosophers, but I often can’t help but feel that they have forgotten about certain bits of life that are actually integral to understanding the moral plane of existence – like the messiness of real motives, the thickness of one’s inner life, one’s indulging fantasies, one’s judgements – all of which precede actions that so much of philosophy is centred around!  

Of course, it’s a dense book. I re-read the first two chapters thrice each to make sense of everything that was said. But then I found a great companion to reading MGM: “Reading Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals”, edited by Gillian Dooley and Nora Hämäläinen. It’s an academic work – a compilation of articles deciphering particular themes or chapters from the original book. It helps a bunch with comprehending the text. And it pays the reader’s attention to certain things that might otherwise be harder to detect, for instance, the aspect of religion within Murdoch’s philosophy. I felt its presence in the book, but scholars summarise the feeling into words: “Faced with the spiritual flatness of modern secular moral and existential thought Murdoch insists that we need a theology which can continue without God.” Now isn’t that great? 

In a similar vein of trying to decipher what a good life is all about, I highly recommend reading  “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman. Our philosophy professor introduced this book to us, and it is of great use in easing the burdens of everyday life by accepting finitude. Instead of “mastering” time, the book proposes choosing what to neglect and embracing imperfection, so, despite the promises of the cover and the blurb, it is not a self-help book, and it does not follow the toxic productivity culture propagated elsewhere. Burkeman dismantles the fantasy of “getting on top of everything”, and reading this book (or listening to its audio-version narrated by the author as I did) greatly enhances the ease with which you go about a given day or week. 

Another book that filled some void in my existence in 2025 was “The Summer Book” by none other than Tove Janson (yes, the creator of Moomins). It follows an elderly woman and a small girl spending the summer on a small Finnish island. It’s not so much a novel but rather a series of vignettes about discoveries, small pleasures and small annoyances, grief, weather, animals, growing old and being young, being alone and being with others. It is so quiet. It is so soothing. It grounds you in the moment and makes you fall in love with the tenderness of an otherwise harsh world. Inspired by this read, I found myself writing down such things in my notebook as: “Saw a small dead mouse. Nature is so vulnerable.”

STANDOUT CHARACTERS

If the books in the previous category stayed with me, and ideas from them remain clear as day still, the books I will speak about now were fantastic reads while reading them, but it is the memory of characters rather than of the plot that makes them worth mentioning. I found the character building in each of these novels outstanding. I feel like I got to know these people (or creatures), and I can almost imagine conversing with them on topics outside of their plot-related happenings. 

“To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf introduced me to the Ramsay family and to Lily Briscoe. The latter is an artist, trying to finish a painting while observing the intricacies of familial connections of her hosts at their summer house in Scotland. Time passes through this place and through these people, events happen, but we are mostly focused on the thoughts and consciousnesses of the characters (that’s why, despite the name, this book is here, in this category, not the one above). I would love to accompany this bunch on the trip they ended up making to the Lighthouse. I would sit back and observe. 

Now the characters I would maybe less observe but more speak (read – scream) to are from “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” by Coco Mellors. It follows Cleo and Frank through their unfolding relationship in Neeeew Yoooork (sing it). It’s about the expectations we place on love and how its real manifestation struggles to fix all the brokenness within us. Very “real” – as in, very modern, understandable, imaginable – and rather fast-paced. Perfect read for the time around Valentine’s Day, if you, perhaps, find yourself being a sceptic and not entirely satisfied with how we learn about love from popular culture :)) 

On the other hand, the very “unreal” – a dystopian novel “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Also about love (friendly, romantic, just human love), and also about barriers to it. But set in an alternate version of England. Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy live “normal” lives but are denied a future. And, oh, my heart, my heart!, they grow to accept their fates. There’s a movie version of this book with an incredible cast, but I fear I will not handle the emotional pain of seeing these events masterfully portrayed by Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield.

In “Checkout 19” by Claire-Louise Bennett, interestingly, the main character is unnamed, but she is no less memorable at that. A fragmented meditation following a woman from childhood to adulthood through the books she is reading (intellectual biography, if you will). There is no conventional plot; the book tracks how literature, poverty, desire, illness, sexuality, and interior life accumulate into a consciousness. I read this book as I was “checking out” of my nineteenth and entering my twenties. And I think that was very chic of me. 

Now I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t mention the characters that haunt my being again, more than a decade after I was first introduced to them. Last year, I re-read the first volume of the Moomin Books by Tove Jansson (it consists of three books: “The Moomins and the Great Flood”, “Comet in Moominland”, and “Finn Family Moomintroll”). I recognise that my love for Moomins borders on an obsession, but I swear it is still within the confines of a healthy fascination! I sincerely think that Moomintroll, Moominmamma, Moominpappa, Snufkin, Sniff, and others can teach us, adults, a great deal about building a home, a community on the grounds of hospitality, curiosity, and gentle weirdness. Our internal pull to wander and wonder is reflected in Snufkin and his philosophy, and if you ever consider immersing yourself in the Moomin world more, I recommend trying the computer game “Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley”. Deepest thanks to my fiancé, Yakym, for gifting it to me! 

HONOURABLE MENTIONS 

Lastly, I felt compelled to mention these books, which were solid 3.5-4 star reads, but didn’t quite make the cut for the previous award-winning categories. 

The first two books here are all about physical spaces shaping our existence. It is suuuch a timely topic for me to explore, as I am nearing the time of moving countries and, after four years of long-distance, finally making a home together with my partner. Fictional exploration of this theme can be found in “The Anthropologists” by Aysegül Savas. A young couple goes on many flat viewings and tries to decide how they want to shape their lives in a foreign city. Whereas “Philosophy of the Home: Domestic Space and Happiness” written by Emanuele Coccia is a non-fiction essay-like exploration of what each part of a “home” mean to people and to their identities, intimacies, and general happiness. 

And the other two books are, well, rather depressing :)) Or at least can be, depending on where you are at in life. Stay warned. “The Woman Destroyed” by the phenomenal Simone de Beauvoir is a collection of three long stories about women in emotional crisis. The first (and the title) story is written as a diary, unfolding a journey of a woman facing the truth of what is happening to her – being abandoned by her husband for a mistress… And “Augustus” by John Williams is a historical novel told entirely through letters, diaries, reports, and memoir fragments from many voices. It follows the life of Gaius Octavius from a sickly, underestimated young man into the Emperor of Rome. What makes this a book worth becoming one’s “Roman Empire” is its focus on the personal tragedies that accompany great achievements. Are all of them worth it…? 

I am incredibly happy with my reading habits these days. I hope I will stay as true to my choices in life as I have been to my choices in books in 2025. As always, I will more than happily discuss these or other books at length over texts or coffee :)) Reach out! Happy reading!