2025 Books
Reflections on my 2025 reading: Looking back at the books I finished in 2025, the two standouts were The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both by Kazuo Ishiguro. Both of them deal with tragic, broken people who refuse to see themselves that way. The first is about an elderly butler who has dedicated his life to supporting a grand old English estate, led by an aristocrat who has signed up to the appeasement of the Nazis. Only at the end of his lonely life does he question what it cost him to support such a project with all of his abilities. The second is about a group of students whose sole purpose in life is donating their vital organs to serve humanity. They do not resist their fate - they understand and accept it. In both works, Ishiguro treats all of his characters, no matter what they are going through, with dignity. Neither book tells you how to think about the characters or plot - they are simply facts, and we, the reader, can freely judge or interpret. On their own, ea...