Last year, I wrote a post sharing the best passages from books I’d read in 2023. I enjoyed writing it so much that I decided to write up a new version for 2025. Again, I read over twenty books, both fiction and nonfiction, last year. As I read, I tried to pay attention to the authors’ techniques: how they implemented storytelling principles, how they handled transitions, how they crafted their opening sentences and concluding paragraphs, how they wrote captivating descriptions, and much more.
When I came across a paragraph that struck me with its eloquence, I wrote it down. That helped me study it on an even deeper level and absorb the author’s techniques for structure and style.
In today’s post, I’m sharing five of the best passages (in no particular order) that I collected this past year and what I learned from them, focusing in particular on their powerful descriptions. Let’s dive in.
(I’ve also made a video version of this post that you can watch below.)
