i don’t think there’s a single more important book to read in 2025. if you read any banned book this year, please— make it this one. this book is so raw, brutal in its honesty and hope for humankind. people….. people are not good to each other. but in the end, it’ll be the few good people left that will inherit this earth. if this book leaves you with anything, it is that. 

there are a slew of content warnings for this book, definitely go in prepared. the first half is….. harrowing. one of my favorite aspects of the horror genre is how it allows you to engage safely with fear, all the stuff that can be too hard to face without the safety of ink and paper between you and it. parable of the sower isn’t horror, but much like the genre, it allows you to safely face the realities about our world’s near future that are often too hard to look at directly in real life. but it doesn’t leave you there, reflecting on and lost in all that inescapable ugliness mankind made for itself. there’s hope, too. because where there are people, there is always hope.