My 2025 Reading Highlights

Last year, I didn’t just read books, I sat with them. I listened to voices shaped by war, exile, humour, love, ambition, silence, and power. Some made me uncomfortable. Some held me gently. Others stayed with me long after I turned the last page. Looking back, there’s a clear thread running through all of them: Identity: how it is formed, challenged, lost, reclaimed, and reimagined. 

These are the books I read last year, and below is why each one mattered to me.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah is humour as resistance and survival.

Trevor Noah’s memoir is sharp, funny, and deeply political without ever feeling heavy-handed. Growing up mixed-race under apartheid, literally “born a crime,” he tells his story with wit and warmth, but never at the expense of truth.

What stayed with me most was the relationship with his mother: fierce, loving, uncompromising. The book made me laugh, yes, but it also made me reflect on how humour can be a tool for survival, education, and defiance in the face of injustice.

How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child by Sandra Uwiringiyimana is a story of survival, grief, and radical resilience. 

This book is devastating and necessary. Sandra Uwiringiyimana’s story of surviving war, losing her sister, and navigating life as a refugee is told with a honesty that doesn’t ask for pity. It asks for witness. What struck me most was her strength without romanticisation, the way trauma and hope coexist, uneasily but truthfully. This is not an easy read, but it is an important one. It reminds us that behind headlines and statistics are lives forever altered, and voices that deserve to be heard on their own terms.

The Pole by J.M. Coetzee is silence, longing, and the limits of connection.

This is a quiet book. Sparse. Restrained. And deliberately so. The Pole explores an unconventional relationship between an aging Polish pianist and a Spanish woman in Barcelona. It’s a story about miscommunication: linguistic, emotional, cultural and the fragile attempts we make to truly know another person. Nothing dramatic happens on the surface, yet so much unfolds underneath. This book lingered with me precisely because of what it withholds. It asks you to slow down, to sit with ambiguity, and to accept that not all connections are meant to resolve neatly

Becoming by Michelle Obama is the power of owning your story.

This was, without question, the book that left the deepest mark on me. Becoming is not just a memoir; it’s an invitation. Michelle Obama writes with clarity, humility, and strength about her childhood, her ambitions, her marriage, and the many versions of herself she has had to become along the way. What resonated most wasn’t the public life, but the private discipline, the constant negotiation between who you are, who you’re expected to be, and who you choose to become. Reading this felt grounding. Affirming. Like a reminder that growth is not linear, and that there is power in refusing to shrink yourself for comfort.

Bitter Honey by Lola Akinmade is dreams, migration, and quiet disappointment.

Bitter Honey tells the story of Nancy, a young Gambian woman who migrates to Sweden with dreams that slowly unravel. What I appreciated most was the subtlety, the way disappointment is not loud or dramatic, but slow, cumulative, and deeply human. Set against real historical moments, the novel explores ambition, identity, and the cost of migration in a way that feels intimate rather than grand. It’s a reminder that not all stories of movement are stories of success, and that those narratives matter too.

While each of these books offered something unique, Becoming stood out as the one that resonated most deeply. Not because it was perfect or aspirational in a superficial way, but because it was honest about effort, doubt, and self-definition. It felt like a conversation, one that encouraged reflection rather than comparison. Looking at this list now, I realise my reading last year was less about escapism and more about understanding, of self, of others, of the world we move through. These books challenged me to listen more closely, to hold complexity, and to honour stories that are often simplified or overlooked.

If there’s one thing I’m taking into this new reading year, it’s this: stories don’t just entertain us, they shape how we see, how we empathise, and how we choose to show up.

And that, to me, is reason enough to keep reading.

What about you?