When I first looked at this year's slate of new books, I had a feeling 2025 would be a special year for fiction. Four months later, writers like Stephen Graham Jones, Katie Kitamura, and Kevin Nguyen have proven me correct. Fun fact: Two years after Esquire declared "the year of the slim novel," seven books on this list are less than 300 pages. Whether you're looking for a compelling nonfiction mystery, a charming fantasy escape, or a suspenseful science fiction thriller, our best books of 2025 so far have something for everyone. |
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Nine years before he fingered a few notes on the synthesizer in his bedroom that would become the most recognizable hook in one of the most famous—and downloaded—songs in the history of pop music, Magne Furuholmen was living the life of a little boy in Oslo. He was six years old when his father, a jazz trumpet player, left one day to play a gig, and the small plane on which he was traveling crashed, and he died, and Magne never saw him again. "My mother was now the center of the family, and she always said, I don't care if you sweep the streets or if you have a career academically or in music or whatever you want, as long as you're happy," Furuholmen says. In London, writing music with his mates and trying to get gigs, he was happy. |
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"Fighters, touch tips!" master of ceremonies Mickey Gallus booms over a loudspeaker. The clunky innuendo elicits a roar from the Saturday-night crowd inside Hammond Civic Center. Violence looms, and the prospect seems to thrill the throng of thousands. In the middle of an MMA-octagon-style ring called the cage, two men dressed as knights from the Middle Ages nobly oblige. They bump their longswords together—actual bone-crunching, tendon-crushing, sinew-splicing swords—before retreating to their corners. In one corner is thirty-seven-year-old Matt Gifford, five foot ten inches, weighing in at 185 pounds. Over his armor, he wears a red brigandine, a cloth garment studded with metal. On the other side of the cage is forty-seven-year-old Jason Bryant—five foot seven, 155 pounds—in a black brigandine. They've just swaggered into the cage through thick smoke, hitting video game taunts for the crowd. They're both armored up to the extreme: backplates, pauldrons, vambraces, greaves, sabbatons. Tonight they are Arthurian knights, with scores to settle. |
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Norman Powell, the San Diego-born shooting guard for the Los Angeles Clippers, originally wanted to be a lawyer. The youngest of three children, he was raised by a single mother with his two older sisters. He discovered his interest in criminal law through watching Law and Order with his mom. "She always told me that I had great debate skills—that I was good at arguing until I got my point across and convincing people," he says smiling. "I don't know if it's the Gemini in me being able to be great at communication." Powell is coming off one of his most impactful years in the NBA, stepping up in the face of injuries and averaging a career high in points. He started in every game he played this season. Unfortunately, the Clippers' playoff run ended earlier than they would have hoped. I caught up with Powell just before the final playoff push on a recent trip to New York that saw the Clippers battle and defeat both the Nets and Knicks. We discussed how he first found the game of basketball, his determination to play in the NBA from a young age, and how style in the NBA impacts life both on and off the court. |
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Nature does exquisite work. Behold: the foreskin. Not mine, which was cut off on my eighth day of life outside the womb, and probably not yours, because the circumcision rate in the U. S. is estimated to be 70 percent, ranking way up there among Tanzania and Chad and the Republic of the Congo and Burundi, places where older boys are cut at puberty as a manhood ritual. Here, year after year, more than a million healthy baby boys get cut right after birth for no religious or therapeutic reasons at all. These newborns aren't ill; their reproductive equipment is intact. All of it. That isn't the problem. Circumcision's the problem. |
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In April 2005, I heard Fall Out Boy drummer Andy Hurley's opening hits of "Sugar, We're Goin Down" for the first time. But nothing prepared me for the accompanying music video—a bizarre story of a lonely boy with antlers growing from his head. I watched a pair of impish children toss their dirty undies on top of antler boy's antlers, while my new favorite band spun its guitars in a cabin decked out in taxidermy. By the time I got my first glimpse of singer Patrick Stump's baby-faced, sideburn-adorned visage, the song had already changed my life. Just as it was for so many others, this was my intro to the biggest pop-punk stars of the next decade: Fall Out Boy. |
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