Novel Reading in 2025

Following my annual practice, I have listed here my “novel” reading for 2025. This is a way of documenting what I get through in a year’s worth of reading on the commute to work, in the evenings after work, and while travelling outside of my “normal” academic reading. My use of the term “novel” reading is loosely adopted, as you will see from the list to include fiction and then really important non-fiction work I get excited to read in my spare time. As you will see, my novel reading shifted away from novels to much more academic reading in my “free time” and then back again. But that approach has been richly rewarding.

This year my imagination was captured by Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy, a choice inspired by old school friend Mike (“Sarge”) Denson, who is still educating me now as much as he did back when we were teenagers. Aside from reading, Mantel’s core rule for writing is “show up at the desk”, which is pretty much relevant to us all as writers of whatever form.

The end of the year was caught up with a research trip to Texas that yielded much of importance for the writing that is occupying me at the moment. During a weekend away from the research I completed a 880km roundtrip from Central Texas to West Texas starting from San Marcos then to San Angelo, Ozona, Sonora and back to San Marcos. Saw some amazing country and met some fantastic people, albeit barely scratching the surface of the state. This post is dedicated to Felton Cochrane who has run Cactus Books in San Angelo for over 30 years and my visit to his store yielded some absolute gems of source material for my research on economy and space in the southwestern borderland literature of Cormac McCarthy.

The set image is Sutton County Courthouse in Sonora, Texas, standing since 1891 in a Second Empire-style built of limestone and dressed stone, designed by architect Oscar Ruffini. This is where Anton Chigurh does his handywork in the opening scene of No Country for Old Men. My snap could not configure with the page, so photo credit to Aualliso.

1) Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (4^th Estate, 2009).

2) Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (4^th Estate, 2012).

3) Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light (4^th Estate, 2020).

4) Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (Verso, 1998).

5) Nanni Balestrini, We Want Everything: A Novel [Vogliamo tutto, 1971], trans. Matt Holden (Verso, 2022).

6) Cristina Rivera Garza, Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country [Dolerse: Textos desde un país herido, 2011], trans. Sarah Booker (The Feminist Press, 2020).

7) Juan Rulfo, The Burning Plain [El llano en llamas, 1955], trans. Douglas J. Weatherford (University of Texas Press, 2024).

8) Cristina Rivera Garza, The Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation [Los muertos indóciles. Necroescritura y desapropiación, 2013], trans. Robin Myers (Vanderbilt University Press, 2020).

9) David McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism (University of California Press, 1988).

10) David McNally, Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique (Verso, 1995).

11) Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain [re-read] (Picador, 1998).

12) George L. Henderson, California and the Fictions of Capital (Temple University Press, 1998).

13) Annie Proulx, Postcards (4^th Estate, 1992).

14) George L. Henderson, Value in Marx: The Persistence of Value in a More-Than-Capitalist World (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

15) Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State [1884] (Penguin, 2010).

16) Oscar J. Martínez, Ciudad Juárez: Saga of a Legendary Border City (The University of Arizona Press, 2018).

17) Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zer0 Books, 2014).

18) Sam Pendergrast, Avenida Juárez: A Novel (Thorp Springs Press, 1987).

19) Rita Segato, The War Against Women [La Guerra contra las mujeres], trans. Ramsey McGlazer (Polity Press, 2025).

20) Terrence E. Poppa, Drug Lord: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin [1988] (Cinco Punto Press, 2021).

21) Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men (Picador, 2005) [re-read].

22) Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor (Picador, 2013) [re-read].

23) Roger D. Hodge, Texas Blood: Seven Generations Among the Outlaws, Ranchers, Indians, Missionaries, Soldiers and Smugglers of the Borderlands (Vintage Books, 2017).

24) C. L. Sonnichsen, Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West (Devin Adair Company, 1960).

25) Carrie Fountain, Burn Lake (Penguin Books, 2010).

26) Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men (Picador, 2005) [re-read].

27) Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo [1955] trans. Douglas J. Weatherford (Serpent’s Tail, 2024) [re-read].

Let’s see what 2026 brings!

Author: Adam David Morton

Adam David Morton is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He is author of Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (2007); Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (2011), recipient of the 2012 Book Prize of the British International Studies Association (BISA) International Political Economy Group (IPEG); and co-author of Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (2018) with Andreas Bieler. The volume Henri Lefebvre, On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography was published in 2022 with University of Minnesota Press, co-edited with Stuart Elden.