Whether you’re heading downrange to the border or deployment, a long TDY, or just trying to pack light for leave, picking the right book matters. You want something that earns its space. 2025’s publishing lineup delivers plenty to be excited about and a few titles that prove not every author should answer the call. Here’s our take on which books are worth packing and which are best left stateside.
Worth Packing:
Pride and Pleasure: The Schuler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vail
This isn’t a novel, but it reads like one in the best possible way. Historian and biographer Amanda Vaill brings Angelica and Eliza Schuyler (yes Hamilton fans, those Schuyler sisters) vividly to life in this dual biography that puts them center stage during the American Revolution. Drawing on never-before-published letters and records, Pride and Pleasure dives deep into how these two powerhouse women navigated love, loss, politics, and power at a time when women were expected to sit quietly on the sidelines. This is a book that any American Revolution history buff is going to love.
King Sorrow by Joe Hill
Joe Hill’s biggest novel yet is what happens when dark academia meets supernatural horror. King Sorrow follows a group of college friends who try to summon an otherworldly creature to solve one of their own problems. Naturally, it backfires. Terribly. And the result is a blood pact that demands annual human sacrifices or else.
With rich characters, jet-black humor, and an unnerving sense of inevitability, King Sorrow hits like a mortar blast of dread. And at 800+ pages, it’s the kind of immersive doorstopper that makes time fly whether you’re on a long-haul flight or riding out a rain delay in the field. If you love a good spooky story, this book is for you.
Joyride: A Memoir by Susan Orlean
If you’ve ever stared at a blank page (or screen) while trying to make sense of your own story, Susan Orlean is the kind of writer you want in your corner. In Joyride, the Orchid Thief and Library Book author turns the spotlight on herself, offering a memoir that’s equal parts writing guide, life manual, and love letter to curiosity.
Orlean recounts her decades-long career in journalism, profiling tiger collectors, climbing Mt. Fuji, and uses those adventures to reflect on how creativity works when real life gets complicated. There’s humor, heartbreak, deadline chaos, and yes, a few sharp jabs at writer’s block. But what makes Joyride packable is its motivational power without ever getting preachy.
The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II by David Nasaw
Not all battle scars are visible. In The Wounded Generation, historian David Nasaw delivers a sobering and essential reexamination of the so-called “Greatest Generation,” focusing not on what they did in uniform, but what happened after they hung it up. If you’re looking for a book that meets the moment, something that honors service without romanticizing it, this is the title to pack.
This one’s not light reading, but it is vital. If you’ve ever worn the uniform, loved someone who has, or wondered why certain stories never made it into your history books, The Wounded Generation is the kind of truth-telling that earns its space in your bags and bookshelf.
The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America by David Baron
Before Roswell, before radio telescopes, before War of the Worlds sent listeners into a panic, Americans were already convinced that Martians were real and they had canals to prove it. In The Martians, science writer David Baron unpacks the strange but true story of early 20th-century Mars mania, when some of the brightest minds of the era genuinely believed there was intelligent life on the red planet.
At the center of the frenzy was astronomer Percival Lowell, whose well-funded campaign to convince the world of Martian civilization involved observatories, best-selling books, and a polarizing PR tour. It worked. Baron’s telling is brisk, weirdly hilarious, and quietly profound. Beneath the UFOs and dry canal beds is a story about what happens when hope, ego, and the desire to believe collide.
Leave Stateside:
The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays by Harper Lee
There’s no denying Harper Lee’s place in American letters. To Kill a Mockingbird is etched into our collective memory, and even Go Set a Watchman (controversies aside) sparked national conversation. But this posthumous collection is less canon and more about the curiosity.
The Land of Sweet Forever gathers early short stories and later magazine essays, many of which feel like literary time capsules, interesting in theory, but thin in execution. The voice is there, sure, but the substance isn’t. As The Guardian put it, this is “juvenilia,” better suited for biographers and completists than general readers.
Twice by Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom’s latest novel poses a big question: what if you could redo the moments in your life, over and over? Unfortunately, Twice proves that just because you can do something again doesn’t mean you should.
The premise has potential. The story follows Alfie Logan, who can rewind time and get a second shot at everything from schoolyard embarrassments to high-stakes romance. But instead of exploring the existential weight of that gift, the book leans hard into sentimentality, offering platitudes in place of real emotional depth. Critics like The Washington Post didn’t hold back, calling it a story where even taking a bullet in a Mexican bank robbery felt dull. That’s not ideal when you’re trying to hold a reader’s attention during lights-out or layovers.
What’s with Baum? by Woody Allen
If your idea of downtime reading involves meandering neuroses, unresolved plot threads, and a parade of literary in-jokes that were outdated when Seinfeld was still on the air, then What’s With Baum? is technically a book. But for anyone else? This is one to leave at home.
Woody Allen’s debut novel follows a Manhattan writer melting down amid publishing failures, romantic paranoia, and his own swirling self-loathing. All subjects are not new to the aging filmmaker, and would be fine if the writing wasn’t so flat and the pacing so punishing. It wants to be a sharp satire of the literary world but ends up sounding like a writer yelling into a mirror for 200 pages. Critics have called it “sloppy,” “anachronistic,” and “filled with narcissistic kvetching.”
Final Packing List
If you’re stuffing your rucksack for a deployment, a training rotation, or a long stretch of leave, skip the fluff and pack stories that earn their weight. Pride and Pleasure brings real drama to the women behind the founding mythology of early America. King Sorrow is a beast of a read (both in size and stakes) that’ll keep your mind off the clock. Joyride is a jolt of curiosity and creative fire. And The Wounded Generation reminds you that coming home has never been simple, even in so-called “good wars.”Meanwhile, The Martians offers a strange, sharp reminder that hysteria isn’t new, only the hashtags have changed.
As for The Land of Sweet Forever, Twice, and What’s With Baum?, they’re better suited for the USO’s free library.
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