Ben's 2025 Book Recommendations
Plus: suggestions from the rest of my family!
"A book is a gift you can open again and again.” - Garrison Keillor
Author’s note: Greetings, readers. As we wind down the year, I would like to thank the community of Sunday Morning Post readers for making these articles a part of your week. I hear from many of you that The Sunday Morning Post is a regular part of your actual Sunday morning routines, while others find it in their inboxes on Monday mornings when they get to work and others come back to it later in the week. For still other readers, you might get to it 50% of the time, or if the title, topic, or first few sentences happen to catch your eye. That is okay. I am the same way with the many Substack series I subscribe to. It is the way of the online written word. You get to what you can get to.
As we turn the page on 2025 — a challenging year in many ways economically, politically, and technologically — I wanted to try to ground this newsletter in something tangible to end the year: the printed page. In fact, a recommendation on a book, podcast, series, or movie is one of my favorite gifts to receive. Send me yours, and I’ll organize them into a Sunday Morning Post reader recommendation list to share next week or later in January. Please let me know the best thing you read this year. You can email me at bsprague1@gmail.com or leave it in the comments below. (We’ll do TV shows, movies, and podcasts a different time).
What follows today is a list of the books that brought me satisfaction this year (with bonus recommendations from the rest of my family members). I pass these suggestions on to you in the spirit of giving, sharing, and appreciation. Happy New Year, and best wishes for a healthy, happy, and peaceful 2026.
Ben’s 2025 Book Recommendations
Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver. This 2022 novel won the Pulitzer Prize. It tells the coming-of-age story of a boy in the Appalachian South. I actually don’t read a lot of fiction, but this one was calling to me, and it has stuck with me long after finishing it. It’s a long book, but a brilliantly told story full of ups and downs. It was hard to put down, even at nearly 600 pages, and gave me a new perspective on poverty and the opioid crisis (don’t let these dark topics dissuade you from giving this book a try; the book is incredibly well-written).
The NVIDIA Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant, by Tae Kim. I reviewed this book this past summer for a Sunday Morning Post column so I won’t dwell on it much here. This one is obviously nonfiction, but it’s also a very well-told story in its own regard about a company and a leader that is at the forefront of so many of the cutting-edge issues at play right now in technology and in the world in general.
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation, by Andrew Ross Sorkin. It may sound like dwelling in the gallows, but I love to read accounts of some of the greatest financial tragedies in history. They are Shakespearean as much as they are economic or political. Greed, hubris, arrogance — it’s all there. This book, which comes from Andrew Ross Sorkin, who many people might recognize as a co-host of Squawk Box on CNBC (and also the author of a 2009 book, Too Big to Fail), tells in gripping detail the story of the lead-up to the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression, with eerie and foreboding parallels to the world of today.
Bonus Book Ideas (For Kids…From My Kids!)
My wife and I have managed to maintain our routine of, between the two of us, reading to all three of our kids before bed every night. I know they will probably outgrow it soon, but it is a nice way to wind down the day, even if it does often leave us feeling completely exhausted by the end of a long evening. I asked the kids for their top recommendations from this year, and here is what they offered:
Recommendations from our 12-year-old son:
Ranger’s Apprentice, by John Flanagan. This is a fantasy series with young characters who are richly developed in fascinating adventures. It’s a worthy series for kids to get into either alongside Harry Potter or after finishing it. It helped that the protagonist, expert in stealth and archery, has the same name as my son. We are only on Book #2 of this twelve-book series.
Lines of Courage, by Jennifer Nielsen. Not only did my son love this book, I did too. I consider it one of the best historical fiction books I’ve ever read, one in which the stories of five different young people in various parts of Europe at the outset of WWI are woven together. Our family has liked other Jennifer Nielsen books too, including Iceberg, about a young girl on the Titanic who wants to be a writer.
The Perfect Mile, by Neal Bascomb. My son is a talented youth runner (so is my daughter, I am proud to say), and he and I just started this book about a month ago that tells the story of John Landy, Wes Santee, and Roger Bannister all trying to be the first to break the 4-minute mile at the same time in different parts of the world. Full disclosure, this book is not written specifically for a youth reader. It’s not that the content is at all inappropriate, it’s just fairly dense for a young person. Whereas Ranger’s Apprentice and Lines of Courage could be read by a 9-12 year old, The Perfect Mile has more of a grown-up style and vocabulary. Still, he has really enjoyed it. I have, too.
Recommendations from our 10-year-old daughter:
The Bletchley Riddle, by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin. I liked this one just about as well as I did Lines of Courage. It’s another historical fiction novel, this one set in Bletchley Park, England, in 1940. It tells the story of siblings Jakob and Lizzie Novus as they work to help break the German enigma codes during World War II, while simultaneously trying to solve the mystery of their mother’s disappearance. The chapters are short and rotate between the perspective of Jakob and Lizzie. You can get through quite a few of them in one sitting. It’s a captivating read, highly engaging, and entertaining throughout (also never hurts to hear the story of a brother and sister working together…).
The Nancy Drew Diaries series, by Carolyn Keene. This is a 26-book series (plus a Christmas book) told from Nancy Drew’s first-person point of view. Many Sunday Morning Post readers likely grew up with the original Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. Let me tell you, as special as those originals were, they don’t always hold up over the course of time. The language, themes, and gender roles can feel antiquated to the modern ear. Honestly, I’m not trying to get political here, the originals just don’t flow as well; we have tried to read them as a family, and they just don’t land. But the modern Nancy Drew Diaries series (all written since 2013) are very entertaining and just complex enough for the middle reader (or listener), but won’t completely bore the mom or dad who is reading (for the most part). You don’t need to take them in order, although it’s probably best to start out with #1: Curse of the Arctic Star, to get a feel for the modern take on Nancy, Bess, and George and their shenanigans in River Heights.
Redwall, by Brian Jacques. This is a classic fantasy tale of some intrepid forest creatures that I vaguely remember reading as a kid, but it felt both nostalgic and fresh to get back into it with my daughter this year. Redwall represented some good nature-based escapism after getting pretty wrapped up in Nancy Drew mysteries. We also read Mossflower, which is a Redwall prequel, and quite good in its own regard. There are many other books in this ongoing series; TBD on how many of them we get to. Unlike with Nancy Drew, where my daughter wanted to start the next one in the series immediately after finishing the previous one, the Redwall books seem to require a break in between.
Recommendations from our seven-year-old son:
The Circus Ship, by Chris Van Dusen. This one has been a beloved classic in our family by all three children. It tells the story of a shipwreck off the coast of Maine where the animals swim to shore and befriend the islanders, who then help the animals take cover when their greedy owner comes back for them. The artwork is brilliant (worth the price of admission, for sure), and the book has a great Maine feel to it. We also like many other Chris Van Dusen books.
The Daddy Book and The Mommy Book, by Todd Parr. These short board books highlight the many different types of dads and moms and the things they do that are special. It’s more of a beginner book and could be read to an infant, but The Daddy Book has always been our littlest’s favorite — I read it to him almost every night. For his birthday this year, we added The Mommy Book, which is equally as special and important.
The Magic Treehouse series, by Mary Pope Osborne. This is the quintessential classic series for young readers (and listeners). You can’t go wrong with any of the books, which now total over 60 in the original series. I would give a special nod to Christmas in Camelot, which is a more challenging storyline that is actually pretty entertaining, especially as a Christmastime read.
My Wonderful Christmas Tree, by Dahlov Ipcar (actually, I am adding this one to the list myself because it’s one of my recent favorites). This is another one with a Maine connection — the book is a beautifully illustrated take on 12 days of Christmas in a New England forest. For those who resist the commercialization and materialism of the holidays, this one reads like a breath of fresh pine air.
Bonus BONUS section — recommendations from my wife:
Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry. This is a hybrid romance/historical fiction novel set on an island off of Georgia where two writers are competing over the same opportunity to write a biography of a former socialite turned recluse. It’s a good beach book if you find yourself on one at all this winter (or next summer), otherwise it’s an entertaining read regardless of season that will hold your attention right until the last sentence of the book. I’m not ashamed to admit I read this one too, and enjoyed the storylines and characters even if it was not my usual fare.
The Whisperwicks Trilogy, by Jordan Lees. This is a middle reader fantasy series that my wife has been reading with our daughter. It features an eleven-year-old named Benjamiah Creek and his friends in a magical, sometimes dangerous world. The three books in the series also get the daughter stamp of approval.
There you have it: the Sprague Family Book Recommendation List for 2025. I wish we all had time to read more, actually. I have written a lot this year about the impact of technology, algorithms, and the growing influence of AI in our lives. It all makes me worried for our collective brain health (not just of my family…everyone’s). Sometimes I feel my own attention span declining, which I believe is a result of the constant bombardment of stimuli from all of these devices that surround us virtually 24/7. Slowing down and spending some time with the printed page is the antidote that many of us, me included, need.
There will be more on all of that to come in the digital pages of The Sunday Morning Post in 2026. Happy reading and Happy New Year to all! Don’t forget to email me or comment below with your own favorite reads of the past year.
Ben Sprague lives and works in Bangor, Maine as a Senior V.P./Commercial Lending Officer for Damariscotta-based First National Bank. He previously worked as an investment advisor and graduated from Harvard University in 2006. Ben can be reached at ben.sprague@thefirst.com or bsprague1@gmail.com. Thoughts and opinions here do not represent First National Bank.
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Addendum: if you enjoyed today’s book recommendations, you might enjoy following Read More Books, a Substack series by Jeremy Anderberg. Find it here.