Ming-Yeh Rawnsley's 3 favorite reads in 2025

• 2024
• 2025

This is an academic book, yes — 29 chapters’ worth of research on Chinese media — but it’s one I’m genuinely fond of. And not just because I helped edit it (though full disclosure: I did). What I like most about the volume is how wide-ranging it is: it takes you through the media worlds of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, and Chinese communities beyond the mainland, without pretending there’s a single story to tell.

The second edition builds on what worked in the first, but it also feels very much of the moment. There’s new work here that grapples with fast-moving technologies, shifting politics, and changing media cultures — the stuff that makes studying Chinese media endlessly fascinating and occasionally head-spinning.

It’s the kind of book you can dip into for a specific topic or keep on your desk as a reference, whether you’re a researcher, a PhD student, or teaching a graduate seminar and need reliable readings that actually spark discussion. Taken as a whole, the Handbook has grown into a solid, go-to guide for making sense of media in Greater China — serious scholarship, yes, but not stuck in the past.

This is not a book that scolds you. That’s part of its power. Naomi Alderman doesn’t wag her finger or declare herself morally superior. She does something far worse (and better): she recognizes the impulse. The pleasure. The little rush that comes with being on the “right side” of outrage. And then she calmly explains why that rush has historically ended in bonfires.

The essays move between witch trials, social media pile-ons, feminism, power, religion, and storytelling, but the throughline is simple: humans love certainty, and we love punishing people even more—especially when we can call it justice. Alderman’s great trick is showing how good intentions don’t actually protect us from cruelty. Sometimes they grease the wheels.

What I loved most is her refusal to give easy villains. This isn’t a “cancel culture is bad” rant, nor is it a “people are too sensitive now” manifesto. It’s more like: What if we’re reenacting ancient moral panics with better Wi-Fi? What if accountability has quietly turned into sport?

There’s a particularly sharp edge when she turns her gaze inward, toward progressive and feminist spaces. Not to undermine them, but to say: power doesn’t purify anyone. If your politics only know how to punish, eventually they’ll punish the wrong people—and then everyone else. That line (paraphrased) landed like a mic drop I did not see coming.

To summarise, Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today is the rare cultural critique that doesn’t ask you to pick a side—it asks you to slow down. To notice the fire. To ask whether you’re actually after justice, or just warmth from the flames.

Witty, humane, and quietly devastating. Highly recommended—especially before logging back on.

Butter is the kind of novel that sneaks up on you. You think you’re reading a true-crime story about a woman accused of murdering men with her cooking, and then suddenly you’re knee-deep in questions about appetite, femininity, power, and why women are taught to be ashamed of wanting anything at all.

Asako Yuzuki uses food as both pleasure and weapon. Every recipe feels lush and intimate, but also slightly menacing. The real tension isn’t did she do it? so much as why does society need her to be a monster? The novel is at its sharpest when it skewers misogyny, fatphobia, and the way women’s bodies are treated as public property.

It’s not a fast thriller and it doesn’t offer neat answers. Instead, Butter simmers—rich, unsettling, and satisfying. You’ll finish it hungry, a little angry, and far more aware of how often women are punished simply for having an appetite.