Andy Young: A sneak peek at the year’s best books

By Andy Young

This December distinguished literary critics will list 2025’s best non-fiction books. But why wait until year’s end to find out about the best available reads?

Rather than pay what current best-sellers cost, I prefer borrowing books from the library or purchasing previously owned ones at a used bookstore, where used books are sold. Used bookstores, in contrast, are just older, often decrepit buildings which formerly housed other businesses.

Distinguished critics and esteemed authors may possess impressive resumes, but in my view they’re no more qualified than anyone else to choose “Books of the Year.” I’ve never written a bestseller or qualified for any elite literary societies, but I scan written words fairly regularly and on occasion even absorb their meaning(s).

One Man’s Leg, by Paul Martin, originally published in 2002, is the moving memoir of a young man whose life changed drastically (and in his opinion, ultimately for the better) after a 1992 car accident cost him the lower half of his left leg. His story is buoyant, sobering, hilarious, tragic, and encouraging, and often all in the same paragraph.

The Wendell Smith Reader, which was edited by Michael Scott Pifer and published in 2023, is equally thought-provoking. An aspiring athlete whose dreams were short-circuited by racism, Smith was a promising black pitcher who had the misfortune to have been born in 1914. However, his journalistic accomplishments had a far greater impact than anything he (or anyone else) could have accomplished on a baseball field. Reading Smith’s best essays, many of which dealt with subjects that went far beyond sports, is like uncovering a time capsule from mid-20th Century America. This collection is a social historian’s treasure trove.

Some books can cause visceral reactions, and reading Poverty, by America does just that. Published in 2023, it was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning Princeton University sociology professor Matthew Desmond, who explores why the world’s wealthiest nation has significantly more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Desmond makes his case meticulously, eloquently, and convincingly, but be forewarned, the inherent (if unintentional) sense of entitlement in some of America’s most privileged citizens is a large part of the equation.

If Poverty, by America made me mad, Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions, made me furious. Co-written by bestselling author John Grisham and Jim McCloskey, the founder the world’s first organization devoted solely to freeing the wrongly-convicted, the book details ten cases involving innocent people who were unfairly found guilty of committing horrendous crimes thanks to corrupt law enforcement and/or elected officials more interested in getting convictions than obtaining justice. Each nightmarish miscarriage of justice chronicled in the book is horrific, and what’s worse is knowing these ten cases are just the tip of the injustice iceberg.

My blood pressure lowered significantly when reading Grandpa Pike’s Outhouse Reader (published 2017). Disregard the title; the writings of the late Laurie Blackwood Pike, a proud native of Newfoundland and lifelong resident of eastern Canada, have nothing to do with bathroom humor, or wash room humour, as the author himself would undoubtedly have written. His short essays are consistently absorbing, frequently humorous, and often moving. His second collection, Grandpa Pike’s Number Two, which came out in 2019, is just as good. Next up on my list: his third anthology, Pea Soup for the Newfoundlander’s Soul, which came out in 2021.

Those are, in my opinion, the best non-fiction reads of 2025 (so far). Pick one up at your library. Or better yet, purchase one at a used bookstore.

But whatever you do, steer clear of used bookstores. Despite modern medicine, decrepitude is still highly contagious. <