Bookends.
Books and bits of 2025.
Welcome back.
Thought I’d clear my desk a little with a few additional things I consumed and created in 2025 before we crest into the second month of 2026. Mainly, what I’ve been reading in the KIOSK.
As I mentioned in my recent ‘media round-up’, I increasingly feel like there may not be much value to these lists. A lot of interactions these days seem to be people recommending endless things they have watched/read/played/listened to to each other, with neither party having any intention (or time), to act on those suggestions. Everyone retreats to their corners, and just attempts to nibble away at their own mountain of ‘must see’ media. But instead of abandoning it completely, I thought I’d make this book chat a little looser than the formal top 5 lists that I’ve done in previous years. Plus, very little I read actually comes out in the given year anyway, so it’s not the most zeitgeisty of lists.
Before we get into it proper, here’s a book I contributed to; I got to illustrate a wraparound cover for the paperback edition of Bootstrapping Computing by Alexander D. Obenauer. Really enjoyed this one, as I love a bit of negative space, and was nice to work with a reduced palette too. I also read the book, and I know a lot more about computers than I did before. But I must confess, that was zero.
Right, let’s get into it.
Nonfiction - Exploration.
I enjoy travel and exploration nonfiction, but after reading quite a lot, you have to work a little harder to find the ones that dodge the clichés or just fill up more space on the shelves. Adam Weymouth’s Kings of the Yukon was a great example of a book with a clear intention (follow the route of salmon along the Yukon river), but delights in the side tracks and stories of the people/nature that inhabit its banks. He’s just written a new one about wolves, which I’m very keen to check out, and it actually put me in the mind another great canoe trip book, Voyageur (Robert Twigger), which is no bad thing.
Staying in the slow adventure world, I also read The Wild Places which was my second Robert Macfarlane after enjoying Mountains of the Mind the year before. Again, it’s easy to see why he is revered in this field, with engaging, human writing, that’s poetic, but never becoming whimsical. Another good nudge to go and spend time in the outdoors too, and how to find a better connection with it.
Voyage For Madmen by Peter Nichols was an absolute thrill ride. It charts the story of the first round-the-world, single-handed sailing race, and is one of the most extreme stories of human endurance I have ever read. The race is often overshadowed by the Donald Crowhurst part, but the fact that’s just one of the things that happened, is testament to how insane the whole saga is. Perfect armchair adventuring.
Nonfiction - Interesting Contemporary Thoughts.
Outside of the outside, I got a lot out of In The Kitchen, a collection of essays about food and cooking which doesn’t stray into the areas of annoyance that the genre can easily do, which I talked about a while back. Instead, they are just relatable or insightful vignettes on different peoples’ relationships with cooking.
Electric Dreams by Hannah Parry was great. I became aware of her work for her occasional essays on film and writing, so was curious to give it a go. Starts off quietly amusing and curious, and becomes all-consuming and furious. Great stuff.
When Joe Dunthorne realised his grandfather may well have developed chemical weapons for the Nazis in World War II, he took is upon himself to uncover a fascinating and horrifying family history. I can’t really explain how that subject can be such a pleasure to read, but that’s Dunthorne’s skill, and why you should read Children of Radium too.
As a bonus, I also read Understanding a Photograph by John Berger. It’s great, obviously, as everything John Berger writes seems to be. And of course it’s about so much more than understanding a photograph. If you’ve not read any before, treat yourself.
I was thinking about John Berger the other day, because he also wrote the cover quote of one of the most important nonfiction books I have ever read, Sven Lindqvist’s 'Exterminate All The Brutes’. And it reads as follows;
A book which has come out of years of risk and thought.
I have thought about this quote so often. It one of the most powerful endorsements of any creative work I can imagine. I realise that it’s all I ever want to achieve in anything I make. Obviously, I fall short, but that is what I want to strive for. To create something that has come from years of risk and thought. Man alive…and that’s why John Berger is one of the greats, because even his cover quotes have seismic weight. Certainly better than, ‘I loved it! Couldn’t put it down!’
Graphic Novels.
As ever, I barely read any graphic novels last year, but Jon Mc Naught’s Hors Scene (Deep Magic) is superb. Learn French and read it, or campaign/wait for it to come out in English. Manuele Fior’s artwork is still stunning, which Hypericum confirms, and Aristotle’s Cuttlefish by Matthew Dooley continues his wonderful exploration of the gentle comedy found in England’s quieter corners.
Fiction.
Another difficult year for fiction, and as is becoming a trend, it was the punchy novella that triumphed for me. Not A River (Selva Almada) was an early success, a woozy, dark story of three friends on a fishing trip that doesn’t go great, and feels like getting a heatstroke on top of a hangover. In a similar vein, Victor Jestin’s Heatwave is an adolescent fever dream on a French family campsite. Brimming with hormones, it sits somewhere between Emmanuel Carrère’s, Class Trip and Camus’s, The Outsider.
In a very different area, I also enjoyed Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy, which I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the jumping off point for Russel Hoban’s Turtle Diary. Set in a similar era of London, populated by bedsits and odd characters, whilst also exploring human rights and indeed, what it means to be human. Also, any book that creates its own ape typology is alright by me.
Modern Classic That Everyone Seems To Like But I Thought Was Hard Work.
The Magus - John Fowles. I don’t like to be negative, but I found this a real slog. Maybe people have more capacity for the ‘everything is not as it seems’ kind of narrative, but there are so many rug-pulls that I very quickly lost any interest in getting up off the floor. The main character seems like he can’t get enough though, a self-entitled, self-serious youth, who annoyingly blunders forward with zero logic or growth for seven hundred pages. And then the book has the audacity to pull the old, ‘Well, what did YOU think it was all about?’ Come on, mate, we’ve all got places to be.
Additional Things I Liked.
Emergency Exits - Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum about three British colonies and their struggles for independence post World War II. Very much in my depressing wheelhouse, but a really contemporary and well put together exhibition on a much overlooked tyranny enacted by the UK, long past the point where we should’ve known better.
The New Yorker at 100 - Great documentary on Netflix about 100 years of The New Yorker magazine. An interesting wander through journalistic history and why it’s now more important than ever. Still can’t quite believe I’ve had my work in it.
Lee Miller - I’ve been a Lee Miller fan for quite a while now, but it was so nice to see this new collection of her work exhibited at Tate Britain. Got to see some the classics again, but also some of which I was less aware, like the whole series she took in Egypt. A fascinating and unique individual who put herself in the right place at the right time.
Bookends.
It’s almost like a know what I’m doing, isn’t it? As I’m sure you’re aware, I have two books out with Avery Hill Publishing, and those guys have a January deal on currently. Basically, spend £60 and you get 20% off, so if you pick up my two, you’re halfway there! Grab yourself a copy of Lizzy Stewart’s Walking Distance, and something else you fancy, and you’ll probably be over the line. A bundle that will see you though winter nicely!
Okay, that’s it for now. Go forth, do what you can, where you can. And I’ll see you all again soon.
Owen D. Pomery.
Voyage for Madmen is SUCH a wild ride. So good.
That cover is fantastic! Love your style.