We’re counting down to Christmas with Team B’s books of the year. Each member of the Mr B’s team has narrowed down their choices to just their top 12 (or close enough!) Each week we will bring you different members of the team so you can compile a brilliant selection of new favourites to add to your Christmas list.
Lottie’s Fave: Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
Lottie’s list features her standard fare of beautifully written historical fiction, but her top book of the year fits in to another of her niches – medical history…
Lottie says: “Tuberculosis has killed one in every seven people who have ever lived. It’s famed with spawning the genius of the Romantic poets, and sparking the beauty standards of the Western world. But this is no illness of the past: since finding the cure in 1950 a staggering 150 million people have died from the disease. From the genius writer of The Fault in Our Stars comes a remarkable tale of medicine, culture, art, and humanity that I will never forget.”
Katrina’s Fave: Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Katrina has spent 2025 rummaging around in her usual mix of the best nature writing and healing fiction set in evocative landscapes…
Is A River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane took the coveted top spot. She says: “Recognising the ill health of his local river in Cambridgeshire, Macfarlane visits three rivers across the world, journeying to Ecuador, India and Canada. He meets activists, indigenous people, conservationists, educators, musicians and guides, and, of course, the rivers themselves, to ponder the question: Is a River Alive? This book chronicles an awakening to a way of recognising the environment and our interconnectedness that is vital to our continued conservation and hope for Earth.”
Sôffi’s Fave: Endling by Maria Reva
Sôffi’s list features the weird and the wonderful, the personal and the political, fiction and fact… eclectic as always!
Her overall fave was Booker Longlisted Endling by Maria Reva. Here’s what she said about it: “Ukraine, 2022. Maverick scientist Yeva is about to embark on a journey with two angry women, a van load of kidnapped men, and one endangered snail through a country on the brink of war. Hilarious and heartfelt, Endling takes on environmental entropy, the marriage industry and the Russia-Ukraine war, wrapping them up in playful irony and masterful prose. A thrilling and surprising book delivering the gut punch of a Percival Everett novel, told with the wit and pathos of George Saunders.”