From the Desk of....Mutt Ploughman

MUTT PLOUGHMAN'S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2025

10. TRAINSPOTTING, Irvine Welsh. (1993) As a huge admirer of Danny Boyle’s seminal 1996 film adaptation, I was always curious about Scottish writer Welsh’s landmark debut novel - while those familiar with the film will know it is a darkly humorous story that follows around a group of drug-abusing misfits in Edinburgh and London, it is easy to see how this novel broke new ground with its audacious use of a street-flavored pidgin (great fun to read aloud) and its jarring vacillation from bleak tragedy to madcap hilarity, coalescing into a rather pointed indictment of the last century’s moral degeneracy.

9. THE WATERWORKS, E.L. Doctorow. (1994) The late Doctorow is a sometimes overlooked master of contemporary fiction whose main canvas was the United States of antiquity, especially the last few centuries - in this, one of his numerous, expertly-written historical novels (also check out Ragtime, Welcome to Hard Times, and The March), he crafts a bewitching tale told in retrospect by an aging newspaper editor from New York City, recalling one of his more memorable freelancers’ search for his elderly father who went missing under highly enigmatic circumstances.

8. CUYAHOGA, Pete Beatty. (2020) First-time novelist Beatty, who teaches English at the University of Alabama, has to date produced this one book, but it is a wildly unique, funny, and completely original romp set in everyone’s favorite city, Cleveland, where it follows the exploits of a Paul Bunyan-like figure named Big Son, but is most winningly and memorably narrated by his eccentric little brother, Medium Son, in the first half of the 19th century.

7. MR. BEETHOVEN, Paul Griffiths. (2020) To me it was most impressive how the Welsh novelist Griffiths used a small footnote found in the great composer’s correspondence, a side note suggesting that he may have once received a commission from an arts society in Boston, and creatively expanded that into a relatively spare, thoughtful, and audacious alternate history novel in which Beethoven’s life extends beyond its tenure in reality, and he travels to Boston to complete the work - a bravura, and simply brave, performance indeed.

6. MIDDLEMARCH, George Eliot. (1874) For years important people in my world strongly recommended that I read Middlemarch, as an admirer of 19th century literature and classic literature in general; having finally done so, this sprawling and insightful story that weaves together the lives of two individuals in a provincial English village - an ambitious young doctor and an idealistic young woman - did not let me down: it is rich in psychological depth and poignancy, offering a vivid portrayal of marriage, love, faith, and sacrifice.

5. CIVILIZATIONS, Laurent Binet. (2019) Curious, fascinating, strangely ambitious novel by French writer Binet takes three seemingly random moments in European history and imagines scenarios where they turn out very differently from the reality we know: a Viking invasion of the British Isles; Columbus’ journey to the New World; and the novelist Miguel de Cervantes’ travels in war-torn Spain---in each of these, Binet painstakingly examines how the course of history is altered, and then creatively illuminates, in rich and clear prose, what the resulting world looks like.

4. HOPE, Pope Francis. (2021) No stranger to controversy, or heavy criticism, the late Pope Francis, who died this year, achieved many historic firsts (he was the first Jesuit Pope and the first-ever Pope from the Americas) to include being the first pontiff ever to publish an autobiography, which turns out to be one of the richest and wisest nonfiction books I’ve read in a long time - in telling his own life story, Pope Francis offers vivid portrayals of his parents and grandparents (from Argentina and Italy); delivers timely insights on controversial topics from abortion to AI; and also reflects passionately and compassionately on visual art, literature, and cinema.

3. BULIBASHA: King of the Gypsies, Witi Ihimera. (1994) I’ll never get as far away as New Zealand, but a close friend who did go there generously gifted me this rich saga from the widely-respected Ihimera (best known for his YA novel called The Whale Rider), a sprawling tale of two clashing families within the Maori community of that country - it begins in the 1950s and unfolds over several decades through many twists and turns, tracing illicit love affairs and failed business endeavors, before it culminates in one of the most unique and vividly-rendered final battles I’ve ever read about: an epic sheep-shearing competition.

2. THE COUNTRY UNDER HEAVEN, Frederic S. Durbin. (2022) Easily the most wildly entertaining book I’ve read all year, by an obscure writer I’d never heard of, this novel is a fabulously nightmarish mash-up of H.P. Lovecraft and Louis L’Amour in which a traumatized Civil War vet named Ovid (naturally) flees west to escape the demons being visited upon him after the Battle of Antietam - where he engages in a series of episodic adventures, all the while being haunted by a terrifying, mythical creature known only as the Craither.

1. FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE?: A Behind the Scenes Look at a Work in Progress, Jessica Hooten Wilson. (2023) This book is author/educator Wilson’s audacious, gutsy, and ultimately riveting attempt to pull together the notes and partially completed manuscript of what could have been the great and influential O’Connor’s third novel, tentatively titled Why Do The Heathen Rage? - resulting in a work that is one part biography, one part literary analysis, one part cultural history lesson, and finally, brazenly, one part fictional ventriloquism.

DOG OF THE YEAR!

THE ANTIDOTE, Karen Russell. (2024) I was very excited to take on my first book of fiction from the highly lauded and skilled Russell, only to be greatly disappointed; The Antidote is a strange brew set in Nebraska during the Depression that intertwines stories of a “prairie witch” who can store people’s memories, a Polish wheat farmer, an orphaned basketball phenom haunted by family tragedy, a scarecrow with an attitude, and a black female photographer into what might have been a fascinating tapestry, but irritatingly succumbs to preachiness and virtue-signaling. WOOF.