WXXI News
What was at the top of your reading list this year? As 2025 draws to a close, we bring back an annual tradition: conversations about favorite books!
During part one of this two-part episode, our guests share their favorite books that they read in 2025. Fiction, nonfiction, adult, YA, or kids' books — we discuss it all.
Our guests:
- Emily Clasper, director of the Rochester Public Library and Monroe County Library System
"The Lilac People" by Milo Todd
"I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom" by Jason Pargin
"Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi - Laquanda M. Fields, "the fab librarian" and libraries fellow at NC State University Libraries
"The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett
"Jackal: A Novel" by Erin E. Adams
"One of Us Knows: A Thriller" by Alyssa Cole - Michael Solis, executive director of Writers & Books
"One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" by Omar El Akkad
"The Darkness Outside Us" and "The Brightness Between Us" by Eliot Schrefer
"Cinema Love: A Novel" by Jiaming Tang - Justin Murphy, freelance journalist, author of "Your Children are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York," and research and communications coordinator at Our Local History
"You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel" by Álvaro Enrigue - Mona Seghatoleslami, music director, host, and producer for WXXI Classical 91.5 FM
"At Swim-Two-Birds" by Fiann O'Brien
"The Magician of Tiger Castle" by Louis Sachar
"Bach: The Cello Suites" by Edward Klorman
To listen to part two of this conversation, click here.
