If your resolution was to “read more” in 2025, well… we’ve reached the halfway mark of 2025. And just so you know, Anthony Jeselnik has already torn through 26 books in 26 weeks, swinging between Nobel-approved trauma epics, cannibal cult thrillers, and at least one memoir so horny it should come with a parental-advisory sticker.
We get it. Time is fake, your “to-read” stack is taller than you, and you weren’t trying to keep up with Jeselnik in the first place. But maybe you should? The comedian hasn’t missed a single Tuesday in 2025, coughing up one book (and one scorching mini-review) every week. Consider this your catch-up cram session: 26 straight picks, in order, with Anthony’s own words—the praise, the profanity, the spectacular hate-reads. We hope it inspires you to do whatever it takes to keep pace before July drops another avalanche.
Playworld – Adam Ross
“Adults, I think now, were the ocean in which I swam.”
A fantastic novel about a child realising he’s being taken advantage of as he enters adulthood. Catcher in the Rye for the ’80s. Essential read if you wrestled in high school.
Good Girl – Aria Aber
“Dawn was like a pill broken and scattered across the horizon.”
Highly recommend this debut novel from a fantastic poet. Good Girl is about identity and acceptance, following a 19-year-old girl partying her ass off in Berlin. Perfect for anyone who prefers a quiet night at home, but also used to do a lot of drugs in warehouses.
We Do Not Part – Han Kang
“I had not reconciled with life, but I had to resume living.”
A masterfully written novel about generational trauma from a Nobel Prize winning author. What it means to be destroyed by your own people. What it means to survive. And what it means to make art from that destruction.”
The Loves of My Life – Edmund White
“Was Rochefoucauld right, that no one ever fell in love without first reading about it?”
A fearless and funny memoir from a man who is so obsessed with sex it’s a miracle he ever had time to put pen to paper. Sex memoirs aren’t my thing but Edmund White is such a brilliant writer and his story is all the more remarkable because it began in the fifties and carries through today. I bet the audiobook is hilarious.
Saint of the Narrows Street – William Boyle
“He guesses he believes her. He guesses he’s feeling relaxed. It won’t last.”
Just because you keep getting lucky, doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it. I love a novel where the characters suffer an incredible amount of shit just because they didn’t call the cops when the first body hit the ground. Highly recommend to anyone who loved the underrated film, The Place Beyond the Pines.
Stone Yard Devotional – Charlotte Wood
“Anything that had lived could make itself useful, become nourishment in death, my mother said.”
Brilliant novel about what people choose to do with their lives and the options we actually have at our disposal. Highly recommend to anyone who needs to turn off the news and get off the internet.
The Garden – Nick Newman
“She knew now that it was this kind of death she had wished on the boy and her sister, though she worried she had sentenced them to something far worse.”
It takes a little more than murder and cannibalism for me to consider something “horror” but this is definitely a step up from Fairy Tale. Read it if you loved everything but the last five minutes of M Night Shyamalan’s The Village.
True Failure – Alex Higley
“Mariska Hargitay, attacked.”
Fantastic debut novel that I flew through in a couple of sittings. All of the characters are memorable but I would read an entire series about Tara. This is basically Catch-22 for people who want to be on Shark Tank. I loved it.
The Passenger – Vijay Khurana
“His dad is weirdly jolly about everything, in that way that makes a person seem like they’re just about to snap.”
Best book I’ve read all year. A sparse, powerful novel about friendship and toxic masculinity, deftly handled. Should be required reading for all 14-year-old boys.
Stag Dance – Torrey Peters
“How do you beg when you don’t know the words to beg with?”
I loved this book. Three short stories and a novel. All uncomfortable as f*ck, all different genres. Peters is a propulsive writer and her characters feel singular.
Funny Because It’s True – Christine Wenc
“Weird Al Honours Parents’ Memory With Tears in Heaven Parody.”
Starts slow, but really picks up as The Onion becomes undeniably great. Especially enjoyed the stories behind the famous 9/11 issue, endless complaints about management, and one writer’s hilariously misguided attempt to get revenge on Weird Al Yankovich. The final chapters serve as a eulogy for the best years of the internet before it became an advertising hellscape. Enjoy!
The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne – Ron Currie
“The Man was elemental, amoral, impervious to reasoning or bargaining. Pleas for mercy quivered on a frequency he could not hear. He was the fifth late notice on a long-overdue bill.”
Killers doing killer shit. I f*cking loved this book so much. Funny, badass, and very, very cool. 11 out of 10. Inject this into my eyeballs.
Flesh – David Szalay
“She just dies in her sleep. That happens sometimes apparently.”
Incredible book. Loved the sparse, emotionless writing style. A rags to riches story that kicks off with a sexual assault/murder and ends with the first real choice the hero gets to make in his entire life. Highly recommend.
Audition – Katie Kitamura
“…what was family if not a shared delusion, a mutual construction?”
A beautiful and thrilling novel that masterfully keeps the reader off balance. Every page is soaked with tension. No small feat in a novel about the masks we wear for those closest to us. Highly recommended.
Vanishing World – Sayaka Murata
“Normality is the creepiest madness there is. This was all insane, yet it was so right.”
An exploration of parasocial relationships, sex, friendship, and the decision to bring a child into the world. And the final 100 pages are batshit awesome.
Atavists – Lydia Millet
“She knew that no matter how you self-identify ultimately, chances are that you succumb to becoming what the world treats you as.”
Loved this book so much, I read it in a day. 14 interconnected short stories about, frankly, how we try to deal with the hopelessness of life, the bleak future that humanity is facing, and how we live with that before it’s right on top of us. Incredible work.
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng – Kylie Lee Baker
“The living are good at forgetting… But in Hell, it is always just yesterday that everything was lost. The dead do not forget.”
This book starts with the strongest opening possible, and then lets the dread slowly build to an unexpected, yet inevitable finale. It’s a serial killer during the pandemic in NYC. It’s awesome.
The Director – Daniel Kehlmann
“I’ve hurt you so much,” he said. “I loved another woman, and I brought you and Jacob back into hell.”
Fantastic novel about the sacrifices we make to produce art. Not just our own but the sacrifices we demand from everyone around us. Beautiful and terrifying.
The Emperor of Gladness – Ocean Vuong
One of the most highly anticipated novels of the year, it’s about a hopeless young man talked out of suicide by an old woman with dementia. It’s 400 pages. Let’s f**ing go.
That’s All I Know – Elisa Levi
“For my sister, the world killed itself the moment she was born.”
I f**ing hated this. Hated everything about this. 150 pages long and it felt like reading the Bible. Just goes to show you, anything can happen on #NewBookTuesday!
The Stalker – Paula Bomer
“Every woman loves a fascist.”
My favourite: the toxic-masculinity novel. The most unlikeable protagonist in recent memory. I read this book as a f*ck you to every guy who looks up to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. It is haunting, extremely unpleasant, one of my favourites of the year.
The Slip – Lucas Schaefer
“Never trust a cop!”
This novel did not work for me at all, but at least it went big. A baffling, but audacious work.
King of Ashes – S. A. Cosby
“Everything burns.”
Rules from beginning to end. The tension is incredible. The villains are terrifying. A beautiful and complex family dynamic IN A F*CKING CREMATORIUM.
UnWorld – Jayson Greene
“Whatever it is he wanted, I don’t think he got it,” she said. Then she disappeared.”
I loved this book. The characters feel hopelessly real in this meditation on mental illness, suicide, grief, guilt, the afterlife and AI. All these big thoughtful ideas and it still reads like a murder mystery.
Among Friends – Hal Ebbott
“Of course people shake babies to death. Because they won’t listen, because there’s no way to make them see.”
Truly loved this novel. The characters’ inner monologues are brilliantly written. Their choices are both easy and impossible. I highly recommend this brutal story about friendship, money, and family.
I Want to Burn This Place Down – Maris Kreizman
“Working hard and playing by the rules can be futile and demeaning if the game itself has always been rigged.”
I’ll be 100% honest and say l would not have chosen this book of essays had I known the title was a quote from Mad Men. While this book isn’t the call to violence I was hoping for, I really enjoyed walking a mile in the shoes of someone living with diabetes.
Your move, dear reader: grab the ones that sound like your preferred flavour of depravity, mute all other notifications, and maybe set an alarm for every Tuesday morning. The man’s on a streak—and now, thanks to this list, so are you.