alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: What did you read in 2025?
I mostly read newspapers and technical journals, but two books that I read that made an impression: "The Changing World Order" and "The Gulag Archipelago".
Comments
Technical followed by non-technical. I read more than these, but these are the highlights.
Mouse, a Language for Microcomputers by Peter Grogono - Mouse is basically an esolang with barely any abstraction facilities, but the book was well-written and the language compelling enough to explore further.
Notes on Distance Dialing (pdf) by AT&T - Described the telephone systems of the USA and Canada in the mid-1950s. The reading is a dry as it gets, but it was a fascinating dive into a vastly complex system solving extremely hard problems. This is a must-read for folks interested in systems-thinking. That said, I am actively looking for recommendations for books about the process of designing and building the unbelievably complex telephony system over the rudiments of the earlier systems. Recommendations welcomed!
The Eye of Osiris by R. Austin Freeman - This is the first book that I’ve read from Freeman and I suspect that I will read many more in the future. The story follows the disappearance of John Bellingham, Egyptologist and the subsequent investigation. As the investigation stalls, the eminent Dr. Thorndyke digs into the case. The story sets up the mystery nicely and indeed provides enough information to the reader to infer how the disappearance occurred and who or what facilitated it. The book is one of the best whodunits that I’ve ever read.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens - His final work remains unfinished as he passed away before he could complete it. Further complicating the meta-story is that he also didn’t outline the ending nor even put to paper the “villain” of the story. The meta-mystery of the ending has motivated a mountain of speculation around the ending including dozens of continuations of the story from other authors, all deriving their pet endings from textual hints, accounts from Dickens’ friends, illustration notes, and even in some cases seances supposedly accompanied by the spirit of Dickens himself. What was written by Dickens is spectacular and a compelling mystery and although it would be great to know the resolution, in some ways the “Droodiana” that has cropped up over the past 150+ years is reason enough for it to remain a mystery. The whole lore around Edwin Drood is a worthwhile hobby in itself and well-worth exploring. The Chiltern Library edition of the book contains the story and a good bit of the lore around the writing and the meta-works available at the time of its publication.
The Shadow People by Margaret St. Clair - Sadly out of print and difficult to find, but I’ve had it on my shelves for decades and finally got around to reading it. The book came onto my radar in the 1980s when I learned about it in the appendix-n of the 1st edition Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide. I enjoyed many of the books at the time and have slowly swung around to re-reading them over the past few years. Sadly, most on the list do not stand the test of time for me, but St. Clair’s mixture of 60s counter-cultural leanings in a fantasy/sf world still works. The cultural touch-points in the book feel quite dated, but despite the occasional awkwardness, the story is unique even today.
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner - The book started as a passable novel of manners focused on a turn of the century British middle-class family. The titular character was mostly background decoration for the first third of the novel and AFAIR was talked about only in the third-person. It’s only when she made the choice to move out on her own to the country in her middle age does she gain a central role in the narrative and her inner thoughts revealed. This is where things really pick up because I was shocked to learn that this unassuming woman’s inner thoughts had a delicious darkness to them. I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll just say that you will not expect how the story ends.
Patience by Daniel Clowes - A profound graphic novel using time-travel to explore the idea of enduring love with a story that proceed through time, following Jack as he tries to alter the past and save the woman he loves. This well-known science fiction motif is elevated by Clowes’ signature psychological complexity.
Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse - I’ve read most of the books by Hermann Hesse but this one escaped my attention until this year. The story follows the parallel lives of a monk Narcissus and his passionate friend Goldmund as they respectively search for meaning in life through spiritual means and through pleasures of the flesh.
We Who Are About To… by Joanna Russ - A small group of astronauts crash land on a hostile alien world and quickly realize that rescue is unlikely to come. Many SF stories have started this way and so the expectation is that this is a colonization story… but Russ thrives on subverting reader expectations.
Fifty Forgotten Records by R.B. Russell - Another lovely entry in Russell’s series (one can hope) of autobiographical explorations of art, so far covering literature and now music. This book describes 50 records of varying popularity and Russell’s personal connections to each. While I certainly enjoyed finding a dozen or so new albums to explore, the true triumph of the book lies in the vulnerable, reflective memoir threaded throughout.
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler A novel that follows 4-generations of the Ponitifex family, with a particular bildungsroman-esque thread around Ernest, a young man who’s naivete leads to his downfall and how his life unfolds thereafter.
I wrote about these (and more) at https://blog.fogus.me/2025/12/23/the-best-things-and-stuff-o...
Sci-fi nerd recommendations follow.
I binged the entirety of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The cover, & the fact that it was on Kindle Unlimited, made me think it was probably cheap crap, but I was impressed with how well-written it was, and how much I empathized with the characters. (I probably should have read it slower; by the last two books, I was just flowing with the text, not paying as much attention to the overarching plot.)
Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky" was pretty bad. So much early scifi is considered great because it's groundbreaking, writing about things nobody else has before. The concept of a generation ship was pretty new at the time Heinlein was writing it, and it has some very interesting concepts, but the book has some really bad problems. If you've read it, you know; if you haven't, and decide to, you'll see it for yourself.
I binged a few Brandon Sanderson books. The standalones are great; the Stormlight Archive is a huge slog through some beautiful writing, but I'm not sure I'm willing to spend so much time in beautiful books that move the plot forward so slowly.
Exordia, by Seth Dickinson, started off incredible, kept going, but the ending felt like both a fizzle as well as a cliff-hanger for the next book. I'm glad I read it, but I wish it had a clear conclusion it wanted to reach.
Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Memory" delivers more of the great philosophical questions & answers about the nature of consciousness and personhood that the previous books did, A+. No idea where he could possibly go from there, but if he does, I'm going along for the journey. (Honorable mention: Alien Clay. Dishonorable mention: Service Model.)
Eric Flint's "Fenrir" was a fun BDO near-future space adventure. (As was John Sanford's Saturn Run, but that wasn't a 2025 book I read.)
I'm not influential enough but I'll share the recommendations I think will help people like me: struggling parents.
This year I've reread The Discontented Little Baby Book. If you're getting/have a newborn, this is the book I'd read. It's humane. No sleep training, no nonsense about babies. We went full ‘possum’ with our baby and I like how happy he became.
I've also read Ten Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child's Mental Health. To me this could be an instant classic. No fluff, lots of advice for parents. Prima.
There's plenty of literature on parenting, but so much of it is poorly written or poorly researched. Be careful out there. (And don't read PLS, yikes.)
---
I finally discovered Andy Weir, the Thursday Next series, and The 13.5 Lives of Captain Bluebear. I'm amazed it took me so long to get there. All excellent.
For some reason I decided to read all 7 Harry Potters in French. If you're learning French, it's a great idea, the French gets progressively harder so you can keep up!
Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life has been my companion for some weeks, but it's quite long.
I'm happy with all my reading this year, some 32 books, many in a foreign language. Given I've no time to read during the day, and can only get some pages in after the kid's in bed, it's not too shabby.
Oh, and we've read Stompysaurus, like, 90 times? Grawwwwr!
Happy reading!
I really enjoyed Leaders Eat Last and Careless People.
2025 brought me to:
The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick
Leaders Eat Last - Simon Sinek
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School - Mark McCormack
The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change - Adam Braun
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Blood of Elves - Andrzej Sapkowski
We Were Eight Years In Power - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Mort - Terry Pratchett
I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - Stephen King
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
The Boy’s in the Boat - Daniel James Brown
Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins
Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business - Gino Wickman
Source Code - Bill Gates
Mythos - Stephen Fry
Educated - Tara Westover
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World - John Wood
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism is a memoir - Sarah Wynn-Williams
Hail Mary - Andy Weir
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Phipip K. Dick
The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie
Been a year of re-reads and some classics I never started b/c of thickness. Standouts for me were “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Norwegian Wood.”
“Kafka on The Shore”, “Norwegian Wood” - Haruki Murakami
“A Tale of Two Cities” - Dickens
“Count of Monte Cristo” - Alexandre Dumas
LotR, “Hobbit” - Tolkien
“World Atlas of Coffee” - James Hoffmann
“Anathem”, “Diamond Age”, “Termination Shock” - Neal Stephenson
“A Timeless Way of Building” - Christopher Alexander
“Where The Wizards Stay Up Late” - Lyon
“Fahrenheit 451” - Ray Bradbury
“Slaughterhouse V” - Kurt Vonnegut
“Neuromancer”/Sprawl trilogy - William Gibson
Plus an assortment of business, systems thinking, and tech related books that were “fine”, but none that really left me with much to chew on afterwards.
Very much enjoyed the Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons.
My top book this year was Joe Abercrombie "The Devils".
Also highlights were:
- Brandon Sanderson "Wind and Truth" & "Yumi and the Nightmare Painter"
- Indrek Hargla most of "Apothecary Melchior" series (didn't read all yet :)
- Jim Butcher "Brief Cases"
- James Islington "The Strength of the Few"
Rest of the stuff:
- I. Hargla "Süvahavva" series
- John Gwynne "Ruin" & "Wrath"
- nobody103 "Mother of Learning" I, II, III
- Daniel T. Jackson "Gatebound"
- Brandon Sanderson "Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England"
Re-reads (mostly on audio for dozing off, but then got hooked .. again):
- James S.A. Corey "Caliban's War" & "Cibola Burn"
- George RR Martin "Game of Thrones"
- Robin Hobb "Assassin's Apprentice"
The Gulag Archipelago is on my shelf, when I rotate back to Russian authors (big fan of Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov) I will hopefully get to it.
Here's my log for 2025, most recent at the top. Currently I am slogging my way through Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" which I'm not a fan of. Halfway done with it though!
Gabrielle Zevin, "The Hole We're In" (not my usual genre, enjoyed this though)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land" (pretty good)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love" (PHENOMENAL, highly recommended)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Methuselah's Children" (pretty good, required to understand "Time Enough for Love")
Richard K. Morgan, "Altered Carbon" (very good)
Robert A. Heinlein, "The Rolling Stones" (young adult, but good all the same)
Robert A. Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (very good)
Piers Anthony, "On A Pale Horse" (very good, never got very far into the series though)
Lincoln Child, "Full Wolf Moon" (okay, not great)
Lincoln Child, "The Forgotten Room" (pretty good)
Lincoln Child, "The Third Gate" (very good)
Lincoln Child, "Terminal Freeze" (okay, not great)
William Gibson, "In the Beginning… Was the Command Line" (good, but outdated, look up what he's said about it more recently)
Lincoln Child, "Deep Storm" (very good)
James Patterson, "Along Came a Spider" (not my usual genre, okay though)
Jules Verne, "Around the World in 80 Days" (from childhood, revisited)
I was actually writing, been doing it full time for months. I've spent probably over 1,000 hours ...
Not trying to make any money, just feel compelled to do this.
A fiction story about how personal computers have dismantled society over 40 years... it takes place in 1983 and involves a vulnerable opportunistic time traveler who's getting more than he bargained for.
Here's some quotes to give you a feel:
"The smartphone is the electrical stunner in the slaughterhouse of society"
"You’ll be able to access any TV or radio station in real time, around the world, talk to people overseas in high resolution video with live translations for free and be bored by it"
"In the future the hermetic spaces of solitude will be breached as we build a global village. The private will become public and, ironically, the public will become private as the streets empty of experiences taken indoors, inside of bedrooms, beneath our screens of glowing grace."
It's intentionally meant to be ambitious, brutal and challenging. And hopefully insight will materialize from the dust of forgotten dreams.
If you are interested in reading it, just hit me up
I read a handful of short stories from Exhalation by Ted Chiang. I liked one of them in particular, the others were okay. It is nice to read short stories since you invest very little time in each—in case it turns out the author is not really what you're in to.
Begin the Begin: R.E.M.'s Early Years, Robert Dean Lurie. A band I read everything about. 1984 and the music that entered my life that year truly changed me. But I don't expect anyone that is not a fan of the early band would find it interesting.
Siddhartha, Herman Hesse. It has been recommended to me many times over the years—finally read it. As I mentioned in another comment, it's a good book that younger me might have found more profound. Older me was more or less just nodding my head, "Yep, you'll have to learn for yourself…", etc.
I've been working an analog computer so have read a bunch of old textbooks and such that I have found on archive.org and other places online.
I see quite a few books I purchased this year but have not read. (The Japanese have a word for me.) I should really try to read more next year.
I've read 51 books this year (just finished Hyperion) which is 50 more than 2024.
I attribute this increase to a few things,
1. Borrowing from Libby puts a 21 day time limit to finish a book, encouraging me to read it before it's due.
2. Not discriminating from reading on my phone. Kindle app syncs between devices, and makes it easier to read a few pages here and there instead of waiting for uninterrupted sessions with my Kindle.
3. Continually updating a To Read list, mostly by going to Barnes and Noble, taking pictures of featured book tables, then adding the interesting ones to my Libby hold list.
4. Borrowing with Libby makes it easier to bail out of a book that doesn't intrigue me. Instead of forcing myself to finish something I spent $ on, I can just return it and move onto something else, feeling 0 guilt.
My favorite book this year has to be The Divine Farce, I haven't been gripped by a story like that in years. A short stay in hell falls in the same category. I'm still reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead. It's really good and I like the story, but I have not finished it yet since I can't seem to find the time for it. Some other short stories like an inhabitant of Carcossa...
My favourite SF book this year was "Translation State" by Ann Leckie. It is set in the Imperial Radch world so having read the Ancillary trilogy is useful but not essential.
I like it because it contains the strangest aliens (the Presger) that I have come across. They are as far from humans in costumes as you could get. What the Presger do (and their proxies in the Human world the Translators) is totally unguessable.
A fabulous hard SF read and a must if you read the Ancillary trilogy.
# Catch-22 (by Joseph Heller) - had been seeing it mentioned on HN (and other sites) for years, I finally read it and it was one the best novels I've ever read.
# The Universe and Dr. Einstein (by Lincoln Barnett) - recommended for anyone who is interested about Einstein's thought process that gave birth to two great theories.
# What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (by Haruki Murakami) - it's my first book from H. M. and I really liked it. It's kind of a memoir and made me like Murakami and now I plan to read his novels too.
# How to Build a Car (by Adrian Newey) - that famous F1 car designer... Great read. Gives readers a chance to glimpse into both (technical) thought process behind designing a race car and human side of it.
# Basic Mathematics (by Serge Lang) - not *reading* exactly, working through it (to brush the rust off of my math fundamentals).
I read 14 books this year and my favourite was Eversion by Alastair Reynolds, followed closely by Pushing Ice by the same author. I "discovered" Cory Doctorow this year, reading 4 books (and I have another in my queue), being "Attack Surface" the one I liked most.
The only technical book I read was Programming in Lua (4th edition), and still didn't work for me. I guess I don't like Lua, and that's OK.
My top book of the year:
Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, Alan Walker
A riveting read by a legendary musicologist and biographer. Walker spent about ten years researching this. It is 700 pages, which seems daunting but he makes this authoritative bio absolutely enjoyable. It's also a "corrective biography", it dispels a lot of myths. This book is one of the best examples of accessible writing with flair. What a writer!
Throughout the book, Walker tastefully quotes musical phrases (in notation) from Chopin's works to situate them in context. I often paused reading and put on the track on a given page (nocturnes, mazurkas, preludes, etc). It made the reading experience incredibly rich and fun. Other things I enjoyed: Chopin's letters to his friends and family, life in aristocratic salons of Paris, London, Warsaw, and more—Chopin had unparalleled access. Of course, there's also a lot of gut-wrenching stuff. As the book's blurb says, it really is for both the casual music lover and the professional pianist.
If you haven't discovered them yet, give a listen to Chopin's nocturnes. But please, give them an attentive listen and play them on a high-quality audio system. Here[1] is one of his finest nocturnes (it is less famous than the "happier" nocturne that follows it, Op. 9 No. 2).
[1] Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op. 9 No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThMGf07UBHQ
. Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. Urban fantasy with a great audiobook narrator (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith). Harry Potter meets Sherlock Holmes. Loved the computer history and London Library parts in False Value.
. Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones. Found the first book in a local phonebox library. Especially liked the probability computer in Conrad’s Fate.
. Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. Recommended by a barber after I mentioned the cartoon "Scavengers Reign". Annihilation is well worth reading.
. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Novel about memory, forgetting.
. Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. Short novel imagining Einstein's dreams whilst he worked on his relativity theory.
Just finished Ken Kocienda's "Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs".
It was interesting to read about the various decisions made along the way to the first iPhone launch and remember the real-time launch back then. Even though the first phone had limitations, they were able to do enough things "right" that you could feel the paradigm shift within a few minutes of using it. Coming from a mobile software company at the time (and having access to all the top phones of the time, various Blackerry devices, Moto Razr, etc) it was easy to see that Apple had really made something extraordinary with its software.
Started making side projects as a developer this year and hope to start working on my own products full-time from next year. Two books I found useful for positioning the product:
- Obviously Awesome by April Dunford (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45166937-obviously-aweso...)
- Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210137279-building-a-sto...)
My top reads this year:
- How to Tame a Fox - great popsci history of a genetics experiment
- "The Sixth Extinction" and "Not the end of the world" - compelling but contrasting takes on climate change
- Through Two Doors at Once - posci history of the double slit experiment
- Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist - Luis Alvarez should get just as much attention as Feynman does IMO!
- A Matter of Death and Life - the last book I read this year that was touching and made me remember what’s really important in life
Frankenstein. Superb science fiction, very readable even though written 200 years ago. And Wuthering Heights, which strangely like Frankenstein, has a complex narrative structure and an unhinged, obsessive central character
I was suffering from a burnout for much of the year and read mostly to relax. Reread a bunch of Discworld and read most of the Expanse series for the first time. Some Murakami. The Conway biography ("Genius At Play"), also a reread because it's fun.
But "The Dream Machine: JCR Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal", often recommended om HN, was amazing. It has so much of the history of how personal computers came to be, and so much that was new to me.
Converted to webpage: https://hn-books-2025.pagey.site/
Thanks LLM's.
I read the entirety of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. I've been meaning to since I heard about it in college over a decade ago. With a new baby here and some extended parental leave, I ploughed through all 8000 pages or so and it was so, so worth it.
This year I've been diving into Game dev books and Harry Potter fan fiction. There's a lot of great reads out there. I assume having an entire world built for you removes a lot of the heavy lifting (as a writer).
GameDev:
- The Masters of Doom
- The Doom Guy
- Play Nice
- Press Reset
- Blood, Sweat, and Pixels
- Console Wars
- Ask Iwata
- Embed with Games
HP Fanfic:
- All The Young Dudes (by MsKingBean89) [student life of the Marauders]
- Grey Space (by noaacat) [Pre Hogwarts. Focuses on parental abuse. One scene I'll never forget (paraphrasing) is when another student at school notices Harry's bruises, slides up her sleeve, and implies she slipped too]
- Just started the Glasslight series (noaacat).
I also reread the entire Harry Potter series, and revisited a handful of Redwall books. I find it interesting how I loved RW as a kid/teen, was bored out of my mind with it in my 20s, and now I love it again.
Crime and Punishment from Dostoevsky is the book I enjoyed the most this year. I don't read much fiction but this is the novel I enjoyed the most in my life. I love how it deals with human thoughts and psyche. I would encourage anyone to read it.
All fiction.
- The Great Gatsby. Really enjoyed it and seemed fitting with the current times.
- Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann. Generational wealth come and gone. Good for putting things into perspective.
- Things Fall Apart, Achebe.
- The Pearl, John Steinbeck
- Hyperion (first book), Dan Simmons. Great sci-fi. Bought the second book and look forward to reading it.
- Stoner, John Williams. Incredibly well written book
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez. Still finishing but I hope to finish in time for next year
I'm on my about 10th re-read of Dungeon Crawler Carl. I also reread the Murderbot Diaries.
Some new listens that I liked:
* Blood Over Brighthaven
* Fleabag: A Monster Evolution LitRPG
* Flybot
* The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
* Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
I've listened to Project Hail Mary, even though the story is not that much complex and is predictable at times, the audiobook experience is the best I've had, I have been looking at similar audiobooks but couldn't find any
"The Gentle Grafter" by Henry, O.
"Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic" by Monosson, Emily "Options" by Henry, O.
"Population Fluctuations in Rodents" by Krebs, Charles J.
"In Search of the Old Ones: An Odyssey among Ancient Trees" by Fredericks, Anthony D.
"The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024, edited" by McKibben, Bill
"The English Abbey: Its Life and Work in the Middle Ages" by Crossley, Fred H.
"The Stereoscope in Ophthalmology" by Wells, David Washburn
"Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps – Why Nature's Maligned Predators and Pollinators are Essential to Planetary Health" by Sumner, Seirian
"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jacobs, Jane <--- best book I read this year
"The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World" by Kimmerer, Robin Wall
"Making Useful Things Of Wood" by Gottshall, Franklin H.
"States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance: Complexity Theory Applied to UN Statebuilding in the DRC and South Sudan" by Day, Adam
"Migration Mysteries: Adventures, Disasters, and Epiphanies in a Life with Birds" by Rappole, John H.
Here are the 29 books that I read but I probably read another 100 children books.
• How AI Works: From Sorcery to Science — Ronald T. Kneusel
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values — Robert M. Pirsig
• Martín & Meditations on the South Valley — Jimmy Santiago Baca
• Akira, Vol. 6 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 5 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 4 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 3 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• Akira, Vol. 2 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Poems & Prayers — Matthew McConaughey
• Akira, Vol. 1 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Time’s Arrow — Martin Amis
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter — Stephen Graham Jones
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly — Anthony Bourdain
• Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism — Sarah Wynn-Williams
• Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever — Joseph Cox
• Source Code: My Beginnings — Bill Gates
• The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon’s Enduring Impact on America — Mark Whitaker
• Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction — Becky Kennedy // I would not recommend this book to anyone.
• Interior Chinatown — Charles Yu
• Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection — John Green
• Dark Matter — Blake Crouch
• Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things — Adam Grant
• Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D — Fabien Sanglard
• Jurassic Park — Michael Crichton
• Killing Commendatore — Haruki Murakami
• James — Percival Everett
• Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre — Max Brooks
• Last Argument of Kings — Joe Abercrombie
Not quite finished yet (and I don't think I will by the end of the year), but I've been reading Star Trek: A Woman's Trek, by Nana Visitor. I've really been loving it and it's been fascinating learning about the risks & challenges that the various women in Trek! The stories span the different shows too, from Dorothy Fontana (writer) to Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura), Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (Nurse/Doctor Chapel / Lwaxana Troi / so many computer voices), Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax), Penny Johnson Jerald (Kassidy Yates), and, of course, Nana Visitor (Kira Nerys)!
Dune: re-read the first time since I was a teenager. Mostly to compare my memory of it against the films.
Foundation and Second Foundation: for much the same reason.
Both very enjoyable reads, but quite different from the modern interpretations.
"How Life Works: a users guide to the new biology" by Phillip Ball. Really extended my understanding of where biology is now.
My favorite of the year would be Maxim Gorky's three-part autobiography: I read "Childhood" and "In the World" (a.k.a. "Amid Attendants") and just started the last part "My Universities". Gorky drifted as an orphan from house and job to another and describes an interesting array of characters he came across, mostly poor and misfortunate, but many of them good as well.
"He took me under the arms, lifted me up, kissed me, and placed me firmly on the jetty. I was sorry for him and for myself. I could hardly keep from crying when I saw him returning to the steamer, pushing aside the porters, looking so large, heavy, solitary. So many times since then I have met people like him, kind, lonely, cut off from the lives of other people."
- How big things get done
- The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?
- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition
- The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
- Rework
Added them on my blog as well with a small review on each in case anyone is interested: https://www.alexanderlolis.com/my-2025-reads
Ted Chang, Bunch Books on Roman Architecture, "You, me, and Ulysses S. Grant", Raving Fans (for work), 3 body Problem, Not the end of the world, Anti-fragile (3rd time), Transformed (for work, it was trash), Harry Potter (in Spanish), and some other things I can't think of off the top of my head.
I read The Buddha: Biography of a Myth, by Donald S. Lopez after hearing him on Conversations With Tyler. That's probably my top non-fiction book this year. Key takeaway was that the history of Buddhism is incredibly deep. Two highlights: First, the Buddha said that minor rules could be disregarded after his passing, but the person that was informed of this forgot to ask for clarification of what rules were minor, so there's debate over which rules must be followed. Second, the Buddha left us because nobody asked him to stay. This second point makes me reflect on the importance of reminding people that they are valued.
I also read The Red Book, Reader's Edition, by Carl Jung. I'm still processing that one. The artwork in the book is breathtaking and I strongly suggest looking it up even if you only look at the art. Narratively, it feels a bit like rambling at times. I'd previously read Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, and Aion, and felt like those had a bit more intelligible substance. The first few chapters of Aion are excellent, but then Jung just goes on for like a dozen chapters about fish symbolism which completely lost me.
I also read a few other books on occult and esoteric topics, but my thoughts on those books are more complex than what I'm willing to type out on mobile. Key takeaway from a book on Wiccan Witchcraft was that they also believe in a system of reincarnation. I'm interested in reading through some of the core texts of Chinese Mythology at some point, but there aren't any good audiobook recordings for some of them.
I'm sad to say that I made very little progress in getting through proper college level textbooks, but I'm working through Molecular Biology of the Cell.
I read escapist “junk.” Proud of it.
I re-read Dave Duncan’s A Man of His Word[0], and A Handful of Men series[1].
I followed up by re-reading The Great Game[2], by the same author.
I re-read the original 10 (+1) books of Chronicles of the Black Company[3], by Glen Cook, again, as he just released a couple of new books, after many years (and has 4 more, on the way). I also recently read Lies Weeping[4] (the latest one).
I just finished Tsalmoth[5], and I’m currently reading Lyorn[6], the latest book in Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/series/53081-a-man-of-his-word
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/series/40824-a-handful-of-men
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/series/42347-the-great-game
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Company
[4] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222376544-lies-weeping
My goal for the year was 15 books. I've finished 14 so far and should finish #15 in the next couple of days if all goes well. Here's what I've read (it's a mix of fiction and non-fiction) in reverse order by completion date:
Nash Falls - David Baldacci
Exit Strategy - Lee Child & Andrew Child
Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry - Marvin Minsky & Seymour Papert
We are Legion (We are Bob) - Dennis Taylor
Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition: Volume 1: Foundations - David Rumelhart & Jay McClelland
Semantic Information Processing - Marvin Minsky
Associative Engines: Connectionism, Concepts, and Representational Change - Andy Clark
Associative Networks: The Representation and Use of Knowledge of Computers - Nicholas Findler
The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science - Dedre Gentner, Keith J. Holyoak, Boicho N. Kokinov (eds)
Similarity and Analogical Reasoning - Stella Vosniadou (ed)
Never Flinch - Stephen King
The Bad Weather Friend - Dean Koontz
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind - Gary Marcus
After Death - Dean Koontz
The 15th book that I hope to finish will be:
Principles of Semantic Networks - John F. Sowa (ed)
Finished scarlet pimpernel on a rainy Christmas Day. Couldn’t put the book down. To think that it spawned a whole genre of super-hero movies where the protagonist hides behind a mask of “ foppiness” and it was written back in 1901 and set against the ever green theme of the French Revolution is mind boggling. Once I finished reading it yesterday, followed it up with the movie of the same title. Well made and acted. Wholly recommend the book first and then the movie.
The City and It's Uncertain Walls - Yet another Murakami novel that I haven't finished, despite really enjoying it. I was reading it during the summer, though, and it's clearly a winter novel. And in that vein, the vibe is immaculate. I should pick it back up.
While We're Young - KL Walther's gender-flipped Ferris Bueller-like, picked up on a whim during a minor existential crisis (it's completely different from my usual fare). What it says on the tin. The sex scene at the end is only slightly less uncomfortable than the one at the end of Contact Harvest. However, combined with a read-through of Edward Bloor's Tangerine, there's a fascinating comparative lit angle to approach them from. They feature starkly different illustrations of the American suburb, perhaps a useful analogue of the real-life and fraught disconnect between the stable and comfortable and uprooted and desperate Americas. Both stories feature intertwined families; one story is focused on matters of love and the other is focused on matters of violence. Perhaps I was just touched by my personal experience with both dynamics.
Death of the Demon (a Hanne Wilhelmsen novel by Anne Holt) - Really enjoyed this Scandinavian Ghost in the Shell fanfic.
I read a lot of books, the one I'd recommend the most is Greg Egan's "Axiomatic" short story collection.
I got back into using e-readers so I read a lot more this year than usual.
- More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
- Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
- Hogg by Samuel R. Delany
- The first dozen Discworld books (in publication order) by Terry Pratchet
- The Wall by Mary Roberts Reinhart
- Columbine by Dave Cullen
- Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome
- Stray Bullets: Killers by David Lapham
- Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses by David Lapham
I might be missing a few.
"Lonesome Dove"
And it's hard to convey how much I enjoyed it. I'm afraid to pick up any other novel of a similar kind as I'll be furiously comparing.
So after it I sterted reading hardcore Sci-fi: Vacuum Diagrams, to not let my mind draw any comparative thoughts:)
"Endure" which I highly recommend to anyone ever slightly interested in human performance.
"The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson. Beautiful world-building as always.
And some others that I can't remember but those two were the highlights of the year.
I mostly read fiction but I made time for a couple of nonfiction books this year. On the fiction side I really enjoyed "Luminous" and "When We Where Real".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_(novel)
- https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/When-We-Were-Real/Dar...
On the nonfiction side, I can recommend "Careless People" and "Apple in China".
Cutting a long list short, the _best_ thing I read this year was W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.
It’s not a book where the world changes greatly or great things are done, but honestly that’s kind of nice: It’s a compelling story of a life, the characters were engrossing (one in particular stands out for how strongly _dislikeable_ they are) and the I loved the prose.
Also shoutout to Standard EBook’s excellent, public domain edition (and all their volunteers other work!): https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/w-somerset-maugham/of-huma...
The Will of the Many. An epic high fantasy adventure. I’m just about to finish the second book in the series - The Strength of the Few. I haven’t gasped this many times reading a book in while.
I stick to HN for finding interesting technical articles (whenever you all aren't bikeshedding about LLMs lol)
2025 Online: Noahpinion, Zeihan on Geopolitics, Ezra's column NYTimes, Where's Your Ed At
2025 Books: Abundance, Human Nature - Thomas Bell, (Plus a handful of books on maintaining faith despite not being politically conservative)
Looking forward to in 2026: Everything is Tuberculosis - John Green
This year:
- I read the entire “Frog & Toad” collection. Probably about 30 times, some stories more.
- “Little Shrew’s Day”… probably 25 times.
- Many of the “Construction Site” series books, especially the OG “Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site”. The “Garbage Crew” and “Airport” books featured heavily.
- Started to mix in some “Pete the Cat” titles.
- “Detective Dog Nell” got a lot of air play.
Lots of others, but those are definitely the frequent fliers.