Books of the Year 2025

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Foyles, Waterstones and Blackwells Books of the Year have landed! We all love the ‘Best Books’ lists that this time of year brings and it’s interesting to see the overlap and variance too. Borrow some of the top picks from the Library for holiday reading or use as inspiration for bookish Christmas presents. This is an excellent source of thematic reading lists if you don’t already know it:  The Best Books of 2025 – Five Books Expert Recommendations

Foyles Books of the Year – Foyles

Waterstones Book of the Year 2025 | The Winner

2025 Winners Blackwell’s

The shortlists provide rich pickings for Christmas presents!

The Observer’s books of the year 2025 | The Observer

The best fiction and non-fiction books of 2025 | The Independent

The best books of the year 2025

Best 27 books of 2025 so far: From page-turners to prizewinners | Radio Times

The Saltires 2025 (Scotland’s National Book Awards) – Bookshop.org

The novel – ‘A Woman of Opinion’ by Sean Lusk has won the Saltires 2025

The Saltire Book Awards, one of the oldest literary prizes in the UK, have recognised the achievements of Scotland’s foremost literary talent since 1937.  Twenty-three titles have been shortlisted across the four categories for 2025.

Best books of the year | The Guardian The 5 top recommended books in a range of categories from graphic novels to crime fiction, Science and Nature writing to Sport and Politics.

Happy holiday reading!

What’s hot this Michaelmas Term?

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As the leaves fall and the nights draw in, it’s the perfect time to hunker down with a good book!

As we’ve said before who doesn’t love a Top Ten list. If you’re looking for reading inspiration for the half-term break why not explore these most borrowed book lists from Michaelmas 2025?

Top Ten most Popular Authors, up to 14th October 2025:

  • Neal Shusterman (of the Arc of the Scythe Trilogy fame and ‘Dry’).
  • Holly Jackson (The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and most recently The Reappearance of Rachel Price which has been super popular).
  • Lauren Roberts (The Powerless Trilogy). This has been incredibly popular with our Y9 – Y11 girls. Don’t miss out on the buzz.
  • Leigh Bardugo (The Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone and many more fantasy books and series)
  • Carys Davies (Beautifully crafted atmospheric novellas. Try ‘Clear’ and ‘West’ for an accessible literary treat – IB 6th Formers and A level English read these, along with ‘Small things like these’ by Claire Keegan)
  • Alice Oseman (not just the much loved Heartstopper graphic novels. Try her novels too!)
  • Malorie Blackman (If you haven’t read The Noughts and Crosses trilogy you’re missing out.)
  • John Boyne ( The boy in the striped pyjamas, The Boy at the Top of the mountain and many more novels for adults).
  • Suzanne Collins (The Hungers Games series and most recently Sunrise on the Reaping)
  • George Orwell

Top 15 most borrowed books:

  • Scythe by Neal Shusterman
  • Clear by Carys Davies
  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • We were liars by E. Lockhart
  • Dry by Neal Shusterman
  • Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
  • The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  • The Hate u give by Angie Thomas
  • Holes by Louis Sachar
  • A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
  • Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
  • Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

A number of Third Form tutor groups are starting their mini-book clubs with a shared read. The Benson boys have chosen to read and discuss ‘Scythe’ together and the Talbot girls are reading 3 excellent choices in small groups – Girl (in real life) by Tamsin Winter, ‘Dry’ by Neal Shusterman and ‘The Reappearance of Rachel Price’ by Holly Jackson. I’m looking forward to hearing what they think of these books!

Books of the Year 2024

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It’s that fun time when all the ‘Best Books’ lists start emerging. Here’s a round up of some of the Best Books of 2024 if you’re looking for Christmas present inspiration or holiday reading but first here are our most popular books in 2024 based on issues from the Mallinson Library, Wellington College.

Top Ten Most Popular Books 2024

  1. The Territory (Book 1) by Sarah Govett
  2. Scythe (Book 1) by Neal Shusterman
  3. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
  4. Lockwood and Co: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
  5. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
  6. The Inheritance Games (Book 1) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
  7. Long Island by Colm Toibin
  8. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
  9. A good girl’s guide to murder (Book 1) by Holly Jackson
  10. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Our Top Ten most borrowed books are all Fiction. Here’s the non-fiction list:

Top Ten Most Popular Non-Fiction

  1. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez
  2. Bounce: The myth of talent and the power of practice by Matthew Syed
  3. Shoe Dog: A memoir by the creator of Nike by Philip H. Knight
  4. The Connell Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
  5. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
  6. Unbroken: An Extraordinary true story of courage and Laura Hillenbrand
  7. Sapiens: A graphic History Vol 1. by Yuval Noah Harari
  8. Atomic Habits by James Clear
  9. Humanise: A maker’s guide to building our world by Thomas Heatherwick
  10. Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Top Ten Most Popular Authors

  1. Sarah J. Maas
  2. Neal Shusterman
  3. Leigh Bardugo
  4. Holly Jackson
  5. Sarah Govett
  6. Colm Toibin
  7. Jennifer Lynn Barnes
  8. Stephanie Garber
  9. Jonathan Stroud
  10. Richard Osman

Holly Jackson’s latest YA thriller comes highly recommended by our 4th Form avid readers – ‘The Reappearance of Rachel Price’ and Lyn Painter’s YA rom coms have been going down a storm with the Wellesley 3rd Form.


Waterstones Debut Novel of the Year is available from the library in print and e-book format.

On 3rd December the Nero Book Awards Shortlist 2024 was announced.

View the lists here

Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2024 | Book Pulse | Library Journal

Subject based lists from The Guradian

The best ideas books of 2024 | Best books of 2024 | The Guardian

Best books of 2024 | The Guardian

Five of the best sports books of 2024 | Best books of 2024 | The Guardian

Black History Month October 2024 – Reclaiming Narratives

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This year’s theme for Black History Month is ‘Reclaiming Narratives’.
As the BHM website explains:
In today’s world, stories are powerful tools that shape how we understand our past, present, and future. For too long, the history of Black communities has been told through lenses that often misrepresent, oversimplify, or entirely overlook the rich and diverse experiences of those who lived it.
This Black History Month make time to read the stories of remarkable Black people from history, who have been marginalised and deserve to be better known, but also read the inspirational stories of current Black people in all walks of life from sports to science, poetry to politics.
Reading Suggestions:

  • The History of Mary Prince by Mary Prince
  • My bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass
  • The black Jacobins : Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo revolution by C.L.R James
  • Black Spartacus : the epic life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudir Hazareesingh
  • Black Tudors : the untold story by Miranda Kaufmann
  • Black and British: A Short Essential History by David Olusoga
  • Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
  • Hidden figures : the untold story of the African-American women who helped win the space race by Margot Lee Shetterly
  • Angela Y. Davis; an autobiography
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • The March trilogy (graphic novel memoirs) by Congressman John Lewis, a lifelong civil rights activist.
  • Born a Crime: Stories from a South African childhood by Trevor Noah
  • The seven volume series of autobiographical books by Maya Angelou, starting with I know why the caged bird sings
  • Becoming by Michelle Obama
  • A promised land by Barack Obama
  • Just Sayin’ – My Life in Words by Malorie Blackman
  • Brit(ish) : on race, identity and belonging by Afua Hirsch
  • Natives : race and class in the ruins of empire by Akala
  • Coming to England by Floella Benjamin
  • Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay (a memoir)
Don’t miss the new books in the library:
  • Black History for Every Day of the Year by David Olusoga. A celebration of Black History from around the world and through history including the current day.
  • Black Arsenal: Club, culture, identity edited by  Clive Chijioke Nwonka
Why not explore further reading on the visual reading lists on the library Padlets?

Featured author: Malorie Blackman

This year’s Black History Month theme is ‘Reclaiming Narratives’ and who better to exemplify this than award-winning, and much-loved author, Malorie Blackman. As a child growing up in London, Blackman was an avid and precocious reader, spending all the hours she could reading and borrowing books from her local public libraries. In her funny, candid and moving biography ‘Just Sayin’ she recounts that she didn’t see people like her in any of the novels and stories she read; Black people were not represented at all as protagonists. If she did encounter any Black characters they were not central to the plot or portrayed as stereotypes.
Nought and Crosses
When ‘Noughts and Crosses’ was published in 2001 Malorie Blackman did something bold and unique in the world of young adult dystopian fiction.
As the Black History Month website writes:
Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses is a masterclass in reclaiming narratives. By centring Black voices and inverting power dynamics, she reclaims space for marginalised stories within a genre that has often excluded them. Her work challenges readers to reconsider their perceptions of race, power, and privilege while amplifying the voices of those who have been silenced by mainstream narratives.
But Blackman’s reclamation of narrative goes beyond representation. It is a form of resistance against the dominant structures that have shaped our understanding of race and identity for so long. By reclaiming the right to define who holds power and whose stories matter, Blackman has redefined what dystopian fiction can be. Her work paves the way for future generations of writers and readers to continue the work of reclaiming and reshaping the stories that define our world.

The Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize 2024

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All 6 Shortlisted books for the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize

are now available from the library.

Have a browse of the display! Which will you read first? From AI to ageing, and colonising Mars, there is something for everyone in these informative and engaging popular science titles.

The full shortlist

  • Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon (Hutchinson Heinemann)
  • Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World by Tom Chivers (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
  • Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive AI Startup Dismantling Your Privacy by Kashmir Hill (Simon & Schuster)
  • The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction by Gísli Pálsson (Princeton University Press)
  • Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan (Hodder Press)
  • A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (Particular Books)

Look out for the winner announcement on 24th October 2024!

Every year we buy and promote the shortlist so our collection of accessible science books is continuously evolving. You can view all past winners on the RS website here

Summer Reading for our new students in the 3rd Form

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Every year for last 17 years, we have given a book to our incoming Y9 students. It’s a gift from the library, intended to be a fun read for the long summer holidays and to keep reading for pleasure happening.

This summer we chose ‘Dry’ by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman. As usual we deliberated long and hard over the book choice and responding to feedback from previous years we prioritised plot.

Y9 girl: ‘It was very interesting and exhilarating and I loved the plot’.

Y9 boy: ‘I enjoyed the psychological aspect of it, how it showed how people show who they really are in dire situations. The plot was exciting and it was a great read.’

It seemed fitting for our times to offer a cli-fi novel. (although as I write about ‘Dry’ we we are experiencing torrential rain!).  Set in California after a ‘Tap-Out’ scenario, teen protagonists struggle to survive as water becomes scarce. Shusterman’s YA dystopian trilogy ‘Arc of a Scythe’ has been our most popular book for the last few years.

We are working hard keep the reading habit going in a busy boarding school. This involves all of us and our Y9 tutors are key to this. Students are encouraged to carry a book and we are running informal book discussion sessions about ‘Dry’ during tutorials. The librarians are always happy to recommend books to our staff and students and take recommendations for library stock.

We encourage as many staff as possible to read the summer book and start those conversations with the students over a shared read. I’ve already had some interesting conversations with Y9 tutors who have read the book and our two Heads of College. It’s always so heartening to have feedback from teachers who’ve children have loved the book and parents who have read ‘Dry’ alongside their teens.

From past experience, for some less keen readers, this book is the only one they read over the long summer break. We survey the whole year group about their reading habits and attitudes in order to offer the most appropriate and effective library service to develop or kickstart their reading for pleasure.

Aside from all the accepted benefits of reading for pleasure from relaxation, escapism, increases in vocabulary and knowledge, development of concentration skills, boosting academic outcomes to connecting with others through books; research has shown that reading for pleasure as a teenager is the most important factor influencing success in later life.

Our two key mantras are allowing complete freedom for students to choose what to read and avoiding judgement of those choices. The library stock is diverse, ranging from graphic novels and a growing manga collection, to biographies, YA book prize shortlists and the Women’s Book Prize. We stock a wide range of non-fiction too – from Science Book Prize Shortlists to popular authors such as Malcolm Gladwell, Rutger Bregman, Mary Beard, Tim Marshall and Caroline Criado-Perez.

Browse more library reading recommendations by theme on our library padlets.

Summer reading a family affair?

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Summer reading

One of the most valuable activities young people can do in the summer holidays to keep their brains ticking over and academic levels up is reading. As a school librarian I encourage choice and enjoyment in summer books. To encourage the reading habit – daily doses of reading are more likely to succeed. Parents have a key role to play – modelling reading and chatting about books. Do you talk about what you are reading with your children? Do you read with your children or to your children? What about a family shared read – something you all read and can’t wait to discuss with the others. Holidays without wifi can be a real help!

From our reading surveys our Y9 students prefer to read just before sleeping and during the holidays. Let’s maximise these times. One of my favourite holidays activities when my children were young was a family reading ‘siesta’; a half-dozing, half-reading, relaxing afternoon in companionable silence lounging together with our books.

Carve out some phone-free readaxation this summer!

For some reading suggestions have a browse of our most popular books this academic year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Top Ten Authors

  • Sarah J. Maas (multiple fantasy series)
  • Neal Shusterman (scythe trilogy and Dry)
  • Holly Jackson (Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and many more)
  • Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
  • Alice Oseman (Heartstopper graphic novels plus many novels)
  • Claire Keegan
  • Richard Osman (Thursday Murder Club series)
  • Agatha Christie
  • Robert Muchamore
  • Caroline Criado-Perez (Invisible Women)

 

Reading suggestions for new 6th Formers studying English

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New to the 6th Form in September 2024? Studying English?  Here are some reading suggestions from our English Department. Kickstart your reading over the long summer break!
Suggested English Reading For New L6*
A Level English
Doing English, by Robert Eaglestone
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks
Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
 
IB English Literature (Higher Level)
Doing English, by Robert Eaglestone
Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
The Outsider, by Albert Camus
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
The World’s Wife, by Carol Ann Duffy
Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks
Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
IB English Literature (Standard Level)
The Outsider, by Albert Camus
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
The World’s Wife, by Carol Ann Duffy
Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
*these are not necessarily ‘set texts’: each class will study a bespoke syllabus
Here is some recommended reading for Y9 – Y11
  1. ‘Lord of the Flies’ – William Golding
  2. ‘The Road’ – Cormac McCarthy
  3. ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
  4. ‘Reunion’ – Fred Uhlman
  5. ‘The Inseparables’ – Simone de Beauvoir
  6. ‘The Woman in Black’ – Susan Hill
  7. ‘The Half God of Rain Fall’ – Inua Ellams
  8. ‘The Whale Rider’ – Witi Ihimaera
  9. ‘Fahrenheit 451’ – Ray Bradbury
  10. ‘1984’ – George Orwell
  11. ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ – Douglas Adams
  12. ‘Wicked’ – Gregory Maguire
  13. ‘Persepolis’ – Marjane Satrapi
  14. ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ – Sue Monk Kidd
  15. ‘The Song of Achilles’ – Madeleine Miller
  16. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
  17. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ – Henry James
  18. ‘The Book Thief’  – Marcus Zusak
  19. ‘Mythos’ – Stephen Fry
  20. ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ – Ernest Hemingway
  21. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
  22. The Great Godden – Meg Rosoff
  23. ‘Great Expectations’ – Charles Dickens
  24. ‘Sapiens’ – Yuval Noah Harari
  25. ‘Never Let Me Go’ – Kazuo Ishiguro
  26. ‘Tipping Point’ – Malcolm Gladwell
  27. ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ – Rachel Joyce
  28. I Capture the Castle  – Dodie Smith
  29. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
  30. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
  31. Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Alexie
  32. Brown Girl Dreaming –  Jacqueline Woodson
  33. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian – Sherman
  34. My Brilliant Friend  – Elena Ferrante
  35. The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

International Women’s Day

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We have combined a celebration of World Book Day (Thursday 6th March) with International Women’s Day (Friday 7th March).

Our library book displays include cracking reads to kickstart reading for pleasure and a selection of our choices can be seen on the library Padlet here

There is also a padlet – a visual reading list on Gender, Identity and Feminism (padlet.com) This also includes books by and about women with some recommendations of fascinating biographies and autobiographies.

Two particularly thought-provoking and enlightening non-fiction reads, available in the library and as e-books are:

  • Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
    by Caroline Criado Perez
  • The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart

The Women’s Prize for Fiction organisers have just announced the first Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction as a way of promoting women’s writing in this field. The books are available in the library. Read more here.

The 16 title longlist has been announced.

The full list in alphabetical order by author surname is:

The website explains:

The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction is a major new annual book prize that celebrates exceptional narrative non-fiction by women. The Prize promotes excellence in writing, robust research, original narrative voices and accessibility, showcasing women’s expertise across a range of fields.

The Prize will be awarded annually and is open to all women writers from across the globe who are published in the UK and writing in English. The winner receives a cheque for £30,000 and a limited-edition artwork known as the ‘Charlotte’, both gifted by the Charlotte Aitken Trust.

Women’s prize for fiction winners (padlet.com)

There is also an interesting reading list from Foyles booksellers who asked women authors for their recommendations:

To celebrate International Women’s Day this year, we asked the authors we admire to share their recommendations, and they delivered! From defining novels of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, to international bestsellers of the modern day—expect themes of motherhood, translation, rage, and resistance, amongst this essential reading list.

International Women’s Day Reading List (foyles.co.uk)