SECRET STUFF Book Club 2025!
All the selections for the Secret Stuff Book Club in 2025
I’m super excited to share the Secret Stuff Book Club selections for 2025!
This year there’s a variety of older books, new books, fiction, non fiction, all chosen to foster the incredible conversations that the Secret Stuff Book Club has become known for.
Since I created it in 2021 with the launch of the first Stephen King Summer, I’ve had two goals for my selections. A book club pick for Secret Stuff should either:
Push you out of your comfort zone with a topic, genre, or author that you would never pick up for yourself
OR
Be a book that you’ve been meaning to read (or reread) but sort of need the nudge to make it happen
With those two goals in mind, these are the books I’ve chosen for 2025:
JANUARY
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
This novel made an enormous splash when it debuted on January 1, 2001 and it went on to win the National Book Award. The NYT Times rated it #5 out of the Top 100 Books of the Century.
“…a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism.”
The Corrections is famous for being not only a true “great American novel” but because of the controversy that ensued when Franzen was less than flattered for it to be chosen for Oprah’s Book Club. I’ve been meaning to revisit this novel for years (thinking I would understand it differently as a 45-year-old mom than I did as a 22-year-old college student), and its place in American literary history.
FEBRUARY
Colored Television by Danzy Senna
This book was released in late 2024, and I’ve seen it on so many Best Of the Year lists. Of course I’m drawn to the screenwriting and Hollywood aspect, but I also think this novel will make for a great conversation in book club and out in the world.
“A brilliant take on love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial-identity-industrial complex.”
MARCH
There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
Another new-ish book on the list (it was published in March 2024) and one that has intrigued me for months as I saw so many other readers I respect rave about how good it is. We’ve never read a memoir in the Secret Stuff Book Club, so this will be a first. I also selected it for March on purpose as a tie-in with March Madness, but you certainly do not have to care about basketball for this one.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 from The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Public Library, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, Electric Lit
APRIL
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Another book I was nudged to revisit when it landed as #27 on the New York Times Best Books of the Century list. Americanah was originally published in 2013.
I remember being drawn to this book because the main character becomes a blogger. It will be really interesting to read this book in light of the ways America and the internet has changed in the last decade.
“Americanah is that rare thing in contemporary literary fiction: a lush, big-hearted love story that also happens to be a piercingly funny social critique.” - Vogue
MAY
The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick
Before we turn towards Stephen King Summer, I thought we should take a little bit of a lighter turn (though I’ll eat my words if this novel doesn’t turn out to be so light, after all).
This is a brand new novel that will come out in April just before we read it in May. It’s about a group of 1960’s housewives who start a book club to read The Feminine Mystique and, well, their lives are changed.
“A powerful tribute to friendship and self-discovery, this captivating novel celebrates the power of women to find their voices and create a better future for themselves, one page at a time.”
JUNE
The Shining by Stephen King
Stephen King Summer begins!
Secret Stuff members requested and so here we go. A true King classic published in 1977 that stands in contrast to the famous movie adaptation. I am very excited to read this one and discuss it, especially since this will be our FIFTH Stephen King Summer together.
Check out the 4.5 average rating with over 47,000 reviews…
JULY/AUGUST
Under the Dome by Stephen King
Stephen King Summer continues and this 2010 novel is over 1,000 pages long so we’ll be reading it throughout June and July (with two book club meeting to cover it).
I try to stagger an older book with a newer one for Stephen King Summer, but I admit that the driving force for choosing this novel is because King himself nominated it on his ballot for Best Books of the 21st Century. So if King thinks this is the best book he’s written in the last 25 years, who are we to judge?
SEPTEMBER
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
We’re going to do something a little different in September, which is work through The Artist’s Way together. I think this will be a fun twist in book club, and maybe unlock some of our creative spirits together this fall.
Cameron gives creative tasks to try like taking yourself out on a date, writing yourself a thank you letter, and, of course, her famous “morning pages” for journaling.
OCTOBER
Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
This book will end up on my Top 10 for 2024 and I’m excited for Secret Stuff to read and discuss as a group in the Fall - just before the holiday season when we might be thinking of how we can create experiences in our lives and with our families.
Will Guidara is writing about restaurants, but it’s about so much more than that.
NOVEMBER
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
In November, we always turn to a classic. This year it will be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, which I’ve been wanting to revisit for decades.
“The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.”
Those are the 10 books!
Since we’re reading Under the Dome over the span of two months and we never have a book in December (but we’ll still meet over zoom to discuss our favorite books of the year), it rounds out to 10 books to read and discuss together in 2025.
I hope you’ll choose to join in. Book Club meetings are held over zoom and replays are turned into podcast episodes for you to listen in on if you can’t make it live. We most often meet on weekday evenings at 6pm PT / 9pm ET and in the summer our meetings are 5pm PT / 8pm ET. Our schedule is posted in advance so you can plan ahead.
Hope you’ll join in by reading and participating in our discussions on Substack and in the meetings on zoom.
Cheers to wonderful reading in 2025!
There's Always This Year is on kindle sale today (12/20) if you want to snag it before we read it together in March! https://amzn.to/49OyVs2
Seeing "The Artist's Way" on the list sealed it for me. I have had that book on my bookshelf since 2001 and always plan to get around to it. This is the push I needed. Just went and ordered all of the other books (most on sale on Amazon!) - and I'm ready to jump in. YAY!