Book Club Picks 2025

Our book club has been meeting monthly since 2023, and these are the picks that generated the best discussions in 2025. We aim for variety — literary fiction, speculative, memoir — and each of these books gave us something meaty to debate. If you're looking for titles that spark real conversation, you can't go wrong with any of these.

6 books in this list

1. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir — We started the year with this and it set the bar impossibly high. The book club spent two hours debating whether Ryland Grace's choices were heroic or selfish. Both sides had strong arguments.
2. The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1) by Rothfuss, Patrick — Rothfuss divided our group more than any other author. Half of us were enchanted by the prose; the other half wanted more plot. The discussion about unreliable narrators went deep.
3. 1984 by Orwell, George — Reading Orwell as a group in 2025 hit different. We spent most of the discussion drawing parallels to modern media and AI-generated content. Uncomfortably relevant.
4. Dune (Dune, #1) by Herbert, Frank — Herbert gave us our longest discussion — three hours. The ecological themes, the religious manipulation, the parallels to oil politics. Some members read it for the first time and were stunned.
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel — Our palate cleanser month. After heavy themes, we needed something fun and accessible. This delivered laughs and surprisingly sharp social commentary.
6. The Road by McCarthy, Cormac — We ended the half-year with pure adrenaline. Several members stayed up all night to finish it before the meeting. The "what would you do" conversations were intense.