My 25 in 2025 – Part 5

Hello and welcome back to the final part of my 25 in 2025 reading list! Today I’m sharing the final 5 books on my hopefuls TBR for the year. As ever, all backlist titles, including some overdue review copies and books I’ve been meaning to read for a while. If you missed the previous posts, you can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.

As always, let me know in the comments if you’ve read any of these or if they’re also on your TBR!

The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography by Sophia Lambton

I don’t usually review biographies, but when Sophia was kind enough to offer me a review copy of her book I just had to make an exception for this one. As you might know, I love opera, and I find Callas to be incredibly fascinating. I had the opportunity to watch the new Larraín film on her, Maria, at the last Venice Film Festival, so I’m really curious to delve deeper into the life of this fascinating woman and see if that might change my thoughts on the film.

P.S. If you’re interested in films as well, I reviewed Maria for Clapper.

Coating opera’s roles in opulence, Maria Callas (1923-1977) is a lyrical enigma.

Seductress, villainess, and victor, queen and crouching slave, she is a gallery of guises instrumentalists would kill to engineer… made by a single voice.

But while her craftsmanship has stood the test of time, Callas’ image has contested defamation at the hands of saboteurs of beauty.

Twelve years in the making, this voluminous labour of love explores the singer with the reverence she dealt her heroines. The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography reaps never-before-seen correspondence and archival documents worldwide to illustrate the complex of their multi-faceted creator – closing in on her self-contradictions, self-descriptions, attitudes and habits with empathic scrutiny. It swivels readers through the singer’s on- and offstage scenes and flux of fears and dreams… the double life of all performers.

In its unveiling of the everyday it rolls a vivid film reel starring friends and foes and vignettes that make up life.

It’s verity. It’s meritable storytelling.

Not unlike the Callas art.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

By now, I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I said: “I’ll read Rebecca this year”… will I finally manage it in 2025?

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…

Working as a paid companion to a bitter elderly lady, the timid heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life is bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. Whisked from Monte Carlo to Manderley, Maxim’s isolated Cornish estate, the friendless young bride begins to realise she barely knows her husband at all. And in every corner of every room is the phantom of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca.

Rebecca is the haunting story of a woman consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Cozy Japanese novels are a real comfort read for me now. This one combines cats and books, so it’s sure to be a heartwarming read. And if January is anything to go by, we’ll definitely need some of those this year…

Natsuki Books was a tiny second-hand bookshop on the edge of town. Inside, towering shelves reached the ceiling, every one crammed full of wonderful books. Rintaro Natsuki loved this space that his grandfather had created. He spent many happy hours there, reading whatever he liked. It was the perfect refuge for a boy who tended to be something of a recluse.

After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated and alone. It seems he will have to close the shop. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help. The cat needs a book lover to join him on a mission. This odd couple will go on three magical adventures to save books from people have imprisoned, mistreated and betrayed them. Finally, there is one last rescue that Rintaro must attempt alone…

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

This is the second R.F. Kuang book on this list, together with Babel, and another one I’ve been really curious about, especially after hearing from lots of people who read it. It seemed to be huge on bookstagram and booktwitter for a while and it felt as though everyone was reading it. Now the hype has died down a bit, I’m curious to see for myself what it’s all about.

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

Prima che Chiudiate gli Occhi by Morena Pedriali Errani

Last but not least, this book has been on my radar since its announcement and on my physical TBR for a while now. I’m not aware of an English translation for this book, but this story of a Sinti woman who decides to join the partisans in fascist Italy during WWII seems exactly like the kind of story I might enjoy.
Also, I realised just now writing this that this book would work really well with the de Céspedes book on my list, which also talks about women in WWII Italy and the partisan fight.
I haven’t read many books centring the Roma and Sinti people, and I’m looking forward to diversifying my reading in this way, too. If you have any suggestions of similar books, please let me know!

Nelle notti di vedetta, illuminate dalla brace di una cicca, Jezebel sa che le risposte possono arrivare solo dal vento. La forza, l’intensità del soffio, sono messaggi degli antenati, indicazioni per comprendere come muoversi tra ingiustizie, violenza, soprusi ma anche gioie quotidiane, sogni, ambizioni.

Nel pieno del ventennio fasci sta la ragazza scopre fin da giovane quanto sia difficile sopravvivere: anche se in quei luoghi è nata, anche se lì sono cresciuti i suoi antenati, non mancano abusi e vessazioni; su tutti, quello di chiamare alle armi, allo scoppio della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, gli uomini sinti per farne carne da battaglia. In questo contesto Jezebel decide di unirsi alla lotta partigiana, per difendere la sua gente, nella speranza di far parte di un gruppo che possa mettere fine all’orrore della guerra.

La storia di Jezebel è il canto di un popolo inascoltato, tenuto ai margini, su cui mai si volge lo sguardo. Una sola richiesta ci viene fatta dalla ragazza nelle prime pagine, da subito, e per l’ennesima volta, di non voltarci dall’altra parte, di non chiudere nuovamente gli occhi.

That’s it! Here they are, all 25 looking really good together. I’m really excited for what seems to be a great year of reading ahead!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Beatrice (@bookforthought1)