2025: an exciting year in reading, viewing, travelling

Me wearing a Thai traditional dress. 

Literature 

In terms of reading, this has been a fantastic year. The main highlight was my discovery of ancient Greek literature: I read the Iliad and the Odyssey (and became a Homer obsessive), 4 plays by Aeschylus (5 if you count Prometheus Bound), 6 plays by Sophocles (1 left), 10 plays by Euripides, 5 by Aristophanes. Is there a more glorious period for theatre than 5th century BC in Athens? Elizabethan/ Jacobean England had Shakespeare, but here were four great writers working around the same time, and I was glad to discover that they did certain things that Shakespeare didn’t do. My favourite is Sophocles.

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn is also a very good book, not only as a companion for Homer but as a memoir on its own. 

In 2025, I also discovered Molière (funnier than Shakespeare); read David Copperfield; explored more of the 18th century with Tom Jones and Gulliver’s Travels; had my first encounter with Goethe; read Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge plays; reread a few Shakespeare plays and read part of Shakespeare After All, an excellent book by Marjorie Garber; read 4 plays by Seneca (whom I did not like) and the Aeneid (which is nowhere near as great as the Iliad and the Odyssey, come on); read more Ibsen (cold and uncompromising) and Flannery O’Connor (cold and uncompromising); read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, a living writer (shocking, I know). So many great books in a year! 

The highlight in nonfiction is The Drowned and the Saved—my favourite nonfiction writer might actually be Primo Levi. 

The main disappointment of this year—unless I forget anything else more disappointing—is about Oliver Sacks. 

Cinema and theatre 

Let’s start with Shakespeare. I saw 4 great productions: Coriolanus (2024, dir. Lyndsey Turner, with David Oyelowo in the main role), Othello (2013, dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Adrian Lester in the main role), Othello (onstage at Theatre Royal Haymarket, dir. Tom Morris, with David Harewood in the titular role), and Julius Caesar (2018, dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Ben Whishaw as Brutus). Watch them you must, especially the first three. David Harewood’s Othello is still at Theatre Royal Haymarket in London till some time in January. That one and Coriolanus make me glad that there are still great Shakespeare productions (just not at the Globe), that there are still brilliant directors who take Shakespeare seriously and understand the plays, that there are wonderful Shakespearean actors. 

I also saw King Lear (2018, with Ian McKellen), Hamlet (2009, with David Tennant), and Macbeth (the Roman Polanski film from 1971). Not great, but all have something interesting in them. 

Apart from Shakespeare, the main highlight of 2025 was the 1977 series Anna Karenina, the 7th and best adaptation I’ve seen of Tolstoy’s novel. Yes, I’ve seen 7—I’m insane—and would probably watch more though I don’t think anything can be as good as the 1977 series, as Nicola Pagett is the best Anna Karenina and the entire cast is perfect. If you don’t know what to watch for the Christmas and New Year season, go for this—it’s 10 episodes. 

Another highlight is that I watched more films from the 1930s, which I hadn’t known as well as the 40s-70s. 

The 10 best films of 2025 (in chronological order and not counting revisits): 

• Frankenstein (1931) 
• It Happened One Night (1934) 
• My Darling Clementine (1946) 
• Harakiri (1962) 
• Tom Jones (1963) 
• The Servant (1963) 
• Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Perfect Blue (1997) 
• Spirited Away (2001) 
• In Bruges (2008)

The list might be slightly different tomorrow (which I guess is the way things usually go with these lists). 

The best documentary I’ve seen this year is Groomed: A National Scandal (released earlier this year), which everyone should see. 

Travelling 

I’ve only just realised that I did 6 work trips this year: to Washington, DC (February); Geneva (March and July); Prague (November); Jakarta (November); Bangkok (November – December). No wonder I’m now ill and burnt out. 

More excitingly, my Washington, DC trip was my first time in the US; and my trips to Jakarta and Bangkok were my first return to Southeast Asia since I left Vietnam 16 years ago.  

This has been fun. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone!