My Reading Project 2025

It’s that time of the year again. I’ve come to the end of this year’s reading project. I read everything Carson McCullers’ wrote in pretty strict chronological order. It was a sublime experience. I can’t say there was anything I didn’t enjoy or, at very least, take something away from. James Baldwin was more of a struggle. Nothing, I should say, to do with Baldwin’s writing. The man truly knew how to put a sentence together. It was just desperately difficult to make a comprehensive study of his work. A lot of the books are out of print or incredibly expensive. His essays have also been so heavily anthologised I kept coming upon new collections and re-reading the same pieces arranged in different formats. It was, on the whole, a really thought-provoking reading experience but also, at times, a frustrating one.

And so, I’ve decided to go easy on myself in 2025. I’m choosing two old favourites as my reading focus for the year: American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, (and one time snogger of Dylan Thomas), Shirley Jackson and English queen of the cardigan epic, Barbara Pym. I think I’ve managed to hone their respective bibliographies down to 14 books (Pym) and 12 books (Jackson) which I’ve arranged below in chronological order for those who’d like to read along. I’ll most likely also be reading the two most recent autobiographies. (Nb if anyone ever sees the Judy Oppenheimer, Shirley Jackson biography in decent nick for a less than exorbitant price please snap it up for for me). This should work out at around two books per month to read both writers’ entire output in a year. If you’ve been thinking about joining me in a read along year, 2025 is going to be a very manageable one.

I’ll be recording my reading adventures on social media (your guess is as good as mine as to which platforms will still exist by the end of the year), using the hashtags #MyYearWithBP and #MyYearWithSJ

Excited to spend a year reading prim and pointed lady fiction!

Shirley Jackson

• The Road Through the Wall (Farrar, Straus, 1948)

• The Lottery and Other Stories (Farrar, Straus, 1949)

• Hangsaman (Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951)

•  Life Among the Savages: An Uneasy Chronicle (Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953)

• The Bird's Nest (Farrar, Straus and Young, 1954)

• Raising Demons (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957)

• The Sundial (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1958)

• The Haunting of Hill House (Viking, 1959)

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Viking, 1962)

• Come Along with Me: Part of a Novel, Sixteen Stories, and Three Lectures (ed. Stanley Edgar Hyman; Viking, 1968)

• Just an Ordinary Day (ed. Laurence & Sarah Hyman; Bantam, 1996)

• Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings (ed. Laurence & Sarah Hyman; Random House, 2015)

• The Letters of Shirley Jackson ( 2022)

 Barbara Pym

Novels

• Civil to Strangers (written 1936; published posthumously, 1987)

• Some Tame Gazelle (1950) 

• Excellent Women (1952) 

• Jane and Prudence (1953) 

• Less than Angels (1955) 

• A Glass of Blessings (1958) 

• No Fond Return of Love (1961) 

• Quartet in Autumn (1977) 

• The Sweet Dove Died (1978) 

• A Few Green Leaves (completed 1979/1980; published posthumously, 1980) 

• An Unsuitable Attachment (written 1963; published posthumously, 1982) 

• Crampton Hodnet (completed circa 1940, published posthumously, 1985) 

• An Academic Question (written 1970–72; published posthumously, 1986)

Autobiography

• Barbara Pym – A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters, edited: Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym (1984)