Adrian's Top Five
Five books that I'm pre-ordering for my 2025 reading.
There are certain authors that, when they announce a new book, I do not hesitate to pre-order. The hardest part is waiting for the books to arrive once I click on that Pre-order now button! Like many of my students, I fall prey to wanting the instant gratification of one-click shopping. Whenever possible though, I try to visit my favorite independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover. I can lose myself for hours wandering the stacks of books. I often go in with a couple of titles in mind, but I will walk out of the store with a stack of 5-6 books! Oh well, such is the life of tsundoku.
I’ve heard said that pre-orders are very important to authors because they are counted toward first-week sales, giving the book an extra boost before the book’s actual publication date. So, here are five books that I’m excited to pre-order and read in 2025!
1. Everything is Tuberculosis — John Green
I’ve been a fan of John Green (and his brother, Hank) since the early days of vlogbrothers. Their back-and-forth videos have introduced me to so many things that I’m grateful for as a teacher, including Crash Course, Hank Green’s SciShow, Pizzamas, The Foundation to Decrease the World Suck, and Project for Awesome.
Like John explains in this video, I didn’t realize that Tuberculosis was still an active disease; that over a million people are still dying every year even though it is curable. I devoured his last nonfiction collection The Anthropocene Reviewed, learning a ton of random facts in the process. I wasn’t planning to learn about Tuberculosis in 2025, but I’m ready to try to understand more about this disease, and how I can help.
2. Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism — Eve L. Ewing
Eve L. Ewing is an educational thinker that I greatly admire. Her book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard, pushed me to view public education as interconnected to politics. Whenever I want to learn more about systemic racism and inequities in public schools, I turn to Ewing. Original Sins, is flipping the narrative that public education is a flawed system that doesn’t serve every child, asking What if public education is actually successful in doing what it was originally designed to do: upholding racial hierarchies?
3. More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI —
Regular readers of my Substack know that I’m a bit of a fanboy of John Warner’s work. I’ve previously written about how Warner’s ideas helped me transform how I teach writing and my writing classroom. I’ve read, highlighted, underlined, and used dozen of sticky notes to tab both of his previous books, Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities and The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing. The latter has been an essential guidebook for creating more authentic writing experiences for my students.
His latest, More Than Words, tackles artificial intelligence in the classroom with a passionate plea that writing is an authentically human experience and cannot, should not, must not be offloaded to computers. Warner states, “I’d satisfied myself that in terms of writing, real writing that comes from a fully embodied process of thinking and feeling, powered by an intention to communicate human-to-human, GPT had nothing to offer.” I’m very much looking forward to reading Warner’s thoughts on AI.
4. The Emperor of Gladness — Ocean Vuong
I will forever read anything written by Ocean Vuong. Ever since I read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I’ve been in love with Vuong’s prose. Vuong’s writing is beautiful and every time I read Vuong’s writing, I feel an intimate connection to the author. I also highly recommend Vuong’s collection of poetry, Time is a Mother.
5. The River is Waiting — Wally Lamb
Wally Lamb is another author who I’ve fallen in love with since my first reading of She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True. I remember sitting in the silence of my bedroom after finishing I Know This Much Is True feeling confused and emotional.
I am very excited to read The River is Waiting. It has been nine years since he published I’ll Take You There. The premise of the book doesn’t sound like something I would enjoy reading, but I’m confident that Lamb will write in a way where I lose myself in the story of Corby Ledbetter, a new father whose marriage is upended after he loses his job and finds himself harboring a secret addiction from his wife.
How tall is your 2025 TBR pile? What books are you excited about reading in the new year. Let me know in the comments. If you are reading any of these books, let’s chat! I’d love to hear your takeaways from any book on this list. Happy reading!
Have a great week!
— Adrian
Resources
If this John Green video doesn’t make you want to immediately go out and pre-order Everything is Tuberculosis, I’m not sure anything will. His sentiment is beautiful and aligns with what I know to be true of myself as a writer.
Both John and Hank have too many incredible worthwhile projects to list here. Check out their Who We Are page.
This interview with Eve L. Ewing is great! She spends time discussing her earlier book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard and public education. My favorite part is at the 44:20 mark where she gives a call to action for educators to step it up. Very inspiring!
Since The River is Waiting takes place in a prison, I wanted to listen to Lamb discuss his work facilitating a writing program at the York Correctional Institute for women in Connecticut. I particularly love how he ends the video discussing the outside world and its relationship to life in prison and introspection.
Vuong is an incredible writer. I can only imagine how incredible he is as a teacher! He says, my ideas are stronger when they are in service of other knowledges. This is a beautiful interview because of how Vuong speaks about vulnerability.
Want to learn a bit about teaching and learning writing in the age of artificial intelligence before you read Warner’s book? Check out this interview with one of my favorite educators/interviewer, AJ Juliani.
Want some more of Adrian’s Top 5? Check out a few of my archived posts1.
I have no plans to ever make Adrian’s Newsletter a pay-to-read place. If, however, you want (and are able) to contribute financially to this Substack, consider upgrading to PAID.
Thanks for this list! “What if public education is actually successful in doing what it was originally designed to do: upholding racial hierarchies?” Yup! Excited to dive into that one especially.
Just pre-ordered the John Warner book - thanks for the inspo!