Everything I Read in March 2025

Books from 2025 and 1002.

Woman Reading (1880-90) by Jean-Jacques Henner via.

While I will often mention the current books I am devouring, I think the books deserve slightly more space and their own moment to shine. Enter a monthly post dedicated to the books I read the previous month. This is a round-up of every book I read—the good, the bad, the fun, the academic—with more thoughts than I can fit into the other posts and extra bookish bits. These posts are for paid subscribers! To read more of my newsletters and access the archive, consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 a month or $50 a year.

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March Books

This month saw me read books from 2025 and 1002.

At this stage of the year, I’m making a concerted effort to read as many of the women-authored books on the International Booker Prize longlist as I can, as well as the Women’s Prize for Fiction and its nonfiction counterpart. My annual goal is to complete all the shortlisted titles and a solid selection from the longlists. I keep a running list—meticulously checked off as I go—to track my progress.

March saw me making further headway with the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, adding Dream Count and The Dream Hotel to my tally. Neither, however, made it onto the recently announced shortlist—nor did Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell, a novel I read last month and absolutely loved.

So, the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist stands as follows:

• Good Girl by Aria Aber

• The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji

• Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

• The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

• Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis

• All Fours by Miranda July

Of these, I’ve only read All Fours, which I devoured last summer and then bought for numerous friends because it was that good. I also attempted Fundamentally this month but abandoned it after a few chapters—it felt unnecessarily frivolous. Now that it has made the shortlist, I’ll be giving it another go, though I remain skeptical. I do not know much about the other four books, but I shall certainly be reading them in the next couple of months.

Do you keep up with any of these reading prizes?

Keep reading for all the books I read in March and the new releases I’m excited about in April.

(As always, my curated selection of recent reads and anticipated titles is available in my Bookshop store—where a purchase may send a small commission my way.)