Here we are again, standing at the end of the year, taking a last look back before moving on.
Moving on has been the motto for the entire last year, honestly, as I feel like I was standing before a heap of shards and rubble from the year before and decided to completely concentrate on myself and, fitting the Chinese year of the snake, shed my skin, I let go - I removed many many things that are unnecessary and superfluous in my life, and focused on my healing and well-being, but also let older things back in that I feel are important to who I am and that I have been neglecting. So overall I feel good about myself and this past year.
Of course, everything around the world is still going south and the rage that ensues from watching stupid politicians and death and destruction and fear makes it hard to find inner balance. I have no idea where the world is heading and I'm not very optimistic nor very enthusiastic to find out but there's nothing else to do but go with it. There's that.
As usual, I'll first mention the books I have read that I haven't been posting about on Protean Depravity, there were quite a lot this year, since, as I mentioned above, I was shedding the old and was looking for reads to give me comfort and hope. So I returned to my mother tongue in the first place and read quite a lot of Turkish literature. Aşıklara Yer Yok by Tarık Tufan is a strange story about a group of broken people finding each other in a weird coastal town. There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Şafak revolves around three characters living between and along rivers, Arthur in the year 1840 along the Thames, in 2014 Narin and her grandma who travel along the Tigris to reach the holy site of Yazidi for her communion, and finally 2018 the divorced hydrologist Zaleeka moving into a house boat on the Thames. Another book by the same author, On Dakika Otuz Sekiz Saniye/10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was about the life of a group of marginalized people, a sex worker, her revolutionary boyfriend, a trans woman, a refugee, and a casino singer living in Istanbul throughout the last couple of decades. Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar was a buddy read for the Shine and Shadow group and deals with a fictional institute to help the newly founded Turkish Republic move over to the European time system, it was very funny above all.
As to my World Tour reads, I finally tackled László Krasznahorkai's Satantango in the year the Hungarian author won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was a challenge to say the least. A muddy, rainy challenge full of unpleasant people and no paragraph division and sentences so long they would make Marcel Proust enviously turn in his grave. I read this in English, but I want to read it in Turkish again, to better understand it. Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović was a book a Bosnian friend of mine gifted me some years ago, and I finally made it and read the short stories from in and after the devastating war. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali is a book about a group of women going through the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and finally The Spare Room by Helen Garner is a realistic account of a woman who opens her spare room for a friend with terminal cancer.
After seeing the short film "A Fermenting Woman", I developed an interest for fermentation and grabbed Adventures in Fermentation: From Ancient Origins to Culinary Frontiers, an Exploration of the Microbes That Shape the World We Live In by Dr. Johnny Drain to inform myself on the subject. Although I am fascinated, I don't trust myself sufficiently to try this out and not contaminate myself with some bacteria or cause explosions. My guilty pleasure of this year was a book about witchcraft, The Powerful Book of Protection Spells: A Witch’s Guide to Defending Against Negative Energy, Psychic Attacks, Curses, and Harmful Spirits by Layla Moon, and I thought it was quite wholesome. I re-read two political-philosophical works I hadn't read in years, The Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin and God and the State by Mikhail Bakunin.
I've read one autobiography, the autobiography of the year if you want to put it that way, Nobody's Girl by the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre who is said to have committed suicide. It was a rough read that causes despair because we know everybody involved will get away with it in this disgusting world.
I DNF'ed two books, King Sorrow by Joe Hill and Pam Kowolski is a Monster by Sarah Langan.
Before going over to the fun part, I'd like to thank everybody who helped me by contributing to my blog, all the good friends and everyone who sticks around with me, follows PD and comments and keeps this space alive. It means a lot to me, thank you.
Now, can I please get a drum roll for the PROTEAN DEPRAVITY BEST BOOKS OF 2025? As always I'm citing the five runners
up and the one winner. Here we go!
Protean Depravity Runners-Up for Best Novel of the Year 2025
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield
The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones!!!
Congratulations, Stephen Graham Jones! 👏👏👏👏👏
Protean Depravity Runners-Up for Freakiest Book of the Year 2025
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
Strange Stones by Edward Lee and Mary SanGiovanni
Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva
A Feast of Putrid Delights by Valentina Rojas
And the winner is...
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad!
Bunny was crazy enough, but the bunnies in that book kidnapping the main character of the first installment to set the record straight knocks it up a notch. This just had to be the freakiest book of the year 2025, despite strong competition featuring a Lovecraft scholar being sent into the Mythos universe, short stories about scary bananas, a mosquito boy/girl, and a drug that helps you find your superpower...
Congratulations, Mona Awad, you made it!👏👏👏👏👏
Protean Depravity Runners-Up for Best Novella of the Year 2025
Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud
Root Rot by Saskia Nitlow
A Feast of Putrid Delights by Valentina Rojas
The Organization is Here to Support You by Charlene Elsby
The Organization is Here to Support You by Charlene Elsby!
Real life has never been more uncanny than in this little book which holds a mirror to the eldritch horror that corporate work is. Sadly, this reminded me, maybe a little too much, of my past employers and colleagues, but with a hefty touch of weird, so it deserves the title of Best Novella of 2025 - I've been reading Elsby for years, it was just a matter of time that she's featured here.
Congratulations, Charlene Elsby! 👏👏👏👏👏
Protean Depravity Runners-Up for Best Anthology
of the Year 2025
The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand ed. by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene
A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers ed. by Joyce Carol Oates
Night & Day: Dreadful Dark: Tales of Nighttime Horror/Merciless Sun: Tales of Daylight Horror, ed. by Ellen Datlow
And the winner is...
And One Day We Will Die: Strange Stories Inspired by the Music of Neutral Milk Hotel!
aaaaannnnd
The End of the World We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand!
Yeah, I think that there are two anthologies worthy of the title "Best of 2025", because both of these anthologies were so well done, so carefully curated and wonderfully written that they both deserve to be the best.
Congratulations to Patrick Barb, Christopher Golden and Brian Keene, and every author who contributed to these wonderful works! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Protean Depravity Runners-Up for Best Collection by a Single Author of the Year 2025
In the Mad Mountains by Joe R. Lansdale
Hellions by Julia Elliott
Not A Speck of Light by Laird Barron
Oddboy by Rose Keating
Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin
And the winner is...
Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin!
This collection is objectively amazing, but on a subjective level, I think the fact that I saw Samanta Schweblin in person at a reading event might have contributed to my decision, because she explained how these stories came to existence and what the underlying feeling to them were, and that's just an additional level of understanding a piece of writing. A wonderful collection that deserves the title of Protean Depravity Best Short Story Collection of 2025!
Congratulations, Samanta Schweblin!👏👏👏👏👏
Protean Depravity Runners-Up for Best Short Story of the Year 2025
"Not A Speck of Light" by Laird Barron (published in Not A Speck of Light)
"The Unfortunate Convalescence of the SuperLawyer" by Nat Cassidy (published in The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand)
"The Tall Grass" by Joe R. Lansdale (published in In the Mad Mountains)
"Argyria (Progress Review)" by Helen Victoria Murray (published in And One Day We Will Die: Strange Stories Inspired by the Music of Neutral Milk Hotel; short story inspired by Where You'll Find Me Now)
"Welcome to the Club" by Samanta Schweblin (from Good and Evil and Other Stories)
And the winner is...
We'll do something silly this year and declare ALL of the five runners-up to be the BEST Short Story of the year 2025, because they were all of them very very good, and I don't want to pick only one of them. They are all the best short story of the year!
Congratulations Laird Barron, Nat Cassidy, Joe R. Lansdale, Helen Victoria Murray and Samanta Schweblin - all of you wrote the PD Best Short Story of the Year - 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Protean Depravity Runners-Up for Best Cover Art of the Year 2025
Beta Vulgaris by Joanna O'Neill
The Unworthy by Emma Ewbank
A Feast of Putrid Delights by Matthew Revert
We Love You, Bunny by Raku Inoue
Hellions by Beth Steidle
And the winner is...
Because I LOVE BEET!
It is my meat, it gives me blood when I'm tired and energizes in drinks, in salads, straight from the jar, and I'm happy for beet to finally and for once be put in the lime light - as the main character in this book, but also as the highlight of this cover.
I like the colors, they're perfect and the motif is cheeky, and thus it's the best cover of the year 2025!
Congratulations, Joanna O'Neill, for creating this beauty and winning the title! 👏👏👏👏👏
Protean Depravity Runners-Up for Best Film of the Year 2025
And the winner is...
"Weapons" by Zach Cregger.
The unusual concept of the evil witch, the circular and fragmented narration, and the very scary jump scares just glued me to the screen every time I went to see this movie and I saw it several times, which didn't happen with any other movie, so this is it. Weapons is the Protean Depravity Best Movie of 2025, congratulations! 👏👏👏👏👏
On a last note and as a tradition, next comes the space for all the best books I couldn't read this year. Because no matter how many pandemics come and go, no matter what post-apocalyptic lifestyle you prefer to adopt and no matter what gigantic amounts you read, there will always be some books that remain. Here they are... I apologize to these books. The Didn't Read Books can still compete in the following year if I manage to read them.
Protean Depravity Best Books I Haven't Read in 2025
Portalmania: Stories by Debbie Urbanski
So Tender a Killer by Matthew Kinlin
rekt by Alex Gonzalez
The Divine Flesh by Drew Huff
Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou
Huzzah to all winners and non-winners! Please survive the festive days and have a wonderful New Year's Eve and hopefully an awesome new year 2026 for all of us!
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