A few years ago, I wrote a top three non-fiction list. This year, I wanted to revisit that idea and add in some other top threes that I’ve come across this year – particularly as a celebration of some of the arts. So I’m including fiction, art, TV, film, music.
Some have reviews, some don’t. All have links to the creator. Some Amazon links are affiliate links.
Many of these didn’t necessarily get released or created this year, but I came across them this year or they made the most difference to me this year, 2025.
Non-fiction
- Building Utopia: Barbican Centre
- We need your Art
- Change the Culture, Change the Game
1. Building Utopia, The Barbican Centre
I was working for a bank in the city and the Barbican Centre was really nearby. I used to go there at lunch and enjoy the architecture. And the building grew and grew on me. I always had a sense that the Barbican was something impressive and had been an admirer of its brand for many years. In a past life, I wanted to be an architect too, so I knew it was a wonderful example of Brutalism. This book took my general interest and turned it into something of a passion. I doubt there will ever be a project as wholeheartedly wonderful as the idea of the Barbican. A complete, uncompromising vision for a creative lifestyle, housed together is something to be celebrated, whether you admire or detest Brutalism. Its vision is to be applauded. And this book is a celebration of that vision.
2. We Need Your Art, Amie McNee
On a first read, I thought this book was ok, but I know it’s better than that because it keeps coming back to me time and time again since I read it. It’s also got me starting to sketch again and share my shitty art on Instagram in the hope it makes someone smile or pause and enjoy it or reflect or whatever reaction they have. Artistry has become my word of the year because it’s so much more than just creativity. Artistry, to me, enthuses about the creation and appreciation of art in all its forms. Taste, beauty, creativity. All bound up in that word. And I don’t think I’d have landed on that word, were it not for Amie Mcnee’s book.
3. Change the Culture, Change the Game, Connors & Smith
A simple idea, but really well articulated and structured. One of the best and most coherent examples I’ve seen of practical steps to move from existing culture, called C1, to a desired culture, called C2. I wish people would read this stuff rather than just put culture buzzwords on slides like ‘empowered’ and expect everyone to feel empowered. It doesn’t work like that. This book will tell you how it could work instead.
Fiction
- Picture of Dorian Gray & Dracula
- At Night All Blood is Black
- I Let You Go
1a & 1b & 1c. Picture of Dorian Gray & Dracula & Frankenstein
I went on a little (quite long) Gothic Horror fantasy over the summer (after having rewatched a bit of Penny Dreadful), reading A Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, and Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus (to give it its full title). And they’re all brilliant in their own way. Something no film/tv version gets for me is the creepiness or underlying sadness and desperation of these characters. Dorian Gray and Dracula are often painted as characters to lust after, but from my reading at least, they seem spiteful, nasty pieces of work that are super creepy. I loved voyaging back in time to indulge in these classic gothic horrors. They’re great and I’d recommend taking a bit of time for all of them.
3. At Night All Blood is Black, David Diop
This mesmerising tale follows Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in the First World War, who is traumatised by the brutal death of his closest friend. As grief and guilt overwhelm him, his acts of violence escalate, blurring the boundary between sanity and madness while exposing the psychological and moral cost of colonial warfare.
4. I Let You Go, Clare Mackintosh
No spoilers, but I was properly suckered in by the twist. A child dies in a car accident. A woman starts again in a remote town.
Art
- Nina Tans, Mull & Iona map
- Ashleigh Proud, Sacred trees
- Noah Davis, Barbican Centre, Painting for my Dad
1. Nina Tans, Mull & Iona map
Commissioned by us after our transformational visit to Mull this summer, Nina Tans art maps are utterly stunning, as are her bladderwrack watercolours.
2. Ashleigh Proud, Sacred Trees leaves
We love Ashleigh Proud’s work and have it dotted all round our home. Her love of all things natural and the transformation of those ideals into stunning enamel art speaks very deeply to us. We acquired a number of pieces for our bedroom, and the leaves of the sacred trees (an alternative calendar to the zodiac or months) has to be one of my favourites.
3. Noah Davis Retrospective at the Barbican Centre
I hadn’t come across Noah Davies before, but I had a spare couple of hours in London this year and spent it immersed in the wonderful and prolific work of Noah Davies, who tragically died very young but produced some wonderful work. This piece called ‘Painting for my Dad’ really spoke to me.
From ChatGPT: Noah Davis was an American painter and installation artist, born in Seattle in 1983 and active until his untimely death from a rare form of cancer in 2015 at the age of 32. He became known for his deeply evocative figurative paintings that explore everyday Black life through a painterly language that blends realism and abstraction, challenging traditional narratives in Western art.
TV
- Shrinking S2 & Severance S2
- Alien Earth
- Pluribus
Shrinking S2 and Severance S2, Apple TV
I’ve plonked these two together because they need their first series. Both Apple TV series, they’re a bit more niche, but super high quality. Severance is proper genius level different and intriguing. I kept looking for the same high I got watching the first series, which wasn’t there, but still an extraordinary outing. Shrinking S2 I think built on great foundations, laid by Ted Lasso (same writers and producers I think), developed through S1 and into S2. It’s a smart, funny, human comedy-drama about therapists working through their own stuff as well as helping others that is well worth a watch.
Alien Earth, Disney+
Whereas Alien Romulus was a travesty, using CGI Ian Holm, and the most pathetic stealing and delivery of ‘get away from her, you bitch’, Alien Earth is quite an interesting take on the Alien story.
I rather enjoyed the premise of competing corporations researching multiple alien lifeforms and playing with human consciousness and synthetics. Sure, it’s probably unnecessarily gory at times, and some of it is a bit ridiculous, but overall, as a series with something a bit different going on, I thought Alien Earth was good.
3. Pluribus, Apple TV
None of the reviews I’ve seen so far seem to talk about what seems glaringly obvious to me (the joy of artistic interpretation, I suppose?!) – that Pluribus is about the rejection of AI/LLMs.
This is the story of how through some virus, all surviving humans become connected as ‘we’ – sharing the same knowledge, background, information, collective approach – and obsessed with making the remaining non-connected humans ‘happy’. It seems to me that this is exactly the approach of LLMs – gather all the content together and provide it back as an all-knowing voice concerned with making the user happy. It’s also about the unaffected human, a writer, rejecting the desire to give up all her life and data and memories and creativity in order to join. I’m with her. Lots of reviews seems to be disappointed with the pacing, but I’m loving this series.
Honourable mentions for:
- Smoke
- The Last Frontier
Film
- Nosferatu
- Poor Things
- Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Music
- Live God, Nick Cave / Wild God 2024
- Gumshoe, Samantha Crain
- Euro Country, CMAT
- Good to You, Silvertwin
- South of the Circle, Ed Critchley
Too hard to just pick three.
South of the Circle is proper niche, but I really enjoyed the iPad game when it came out a couple of years ago – primarily for this soundtrack. It’s only just been released and I’m delighted to hear it again.
That’s it!
You can probably tell I’ve had something of a gothic horror year in books and film…
What makes your top threes this year?
Sam Grayston 
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