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".
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Fiction:
A Little Life - challenging to read but exceptional
Sci-fi
Three Body Problem trilogy - forget the Netflix series the books are excellent, in my opinion #2 was the peak.
The Glass Hotel, Station Eleven, Sea of Tranquility - anything by Emily St. John Mandel - hard to place but her distinct writing style transports me.
Non-fiction:
American Moonshot - fine The Path to Power - anything Caro writes is worth reading
More books than I can easily recall or put down here.
Currently in the middle of a re-read of one of my favorites, Ken Kesey's Sometimes A Great Notion. Also the first Otherside Picnic light novel, after watching and loving the anime adaptation.
The Road to Serfdom - Friedrich August von Hayek
Apology of Socrates - Plato
The Betrayal of the Intellectuals - Julien Benda
Jacked: The Unautorised Behind-the-Scenes Story of Grand Theft Auto - David Kushner
The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
The History of Medieval Europe by Maurice Keen
Reality is Not What it Seems by Carlo Rovelli
The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman
I had a crack at reading the first Game of Thrones novel (I think it's just called A Game of Thrones) but my brain seems to be in non-fiction mode at the moment. I think I'm drawn to a kind of sweet spot halfway between "related to my everyday experience" and "removed from my everyday experience" - not sure I could read about programming or business at the moment, though I also haven't tried.
According to Kindle I read 24 books.
The best were:
- The Eagle and the Hart, on Richard II and Henry IV
- In the Heart of the Sea, on a whale ship disaster that inspired moby dick
- The Siege, on a hostage taking at the Iranian embassy in London
Love narrative nonfiction.
The Wheel of Time series, start to finish. So pleased that Brandon Sanderson stepped in to finish it.
The best non-fiction book I read in 2025 was "The Fabric of Civilization" by Virginia Postrel. It was completely fascinating, and made a good argument that the production of cloth/textiles might by one on the most import core developments that allowed modern, organised society to arise.
Highly recommended.
My favorite reads of the year:
- Futu.re by Dmitry Glukhovsky (author of Metro 2033 series). Interesting take of how life would look like if humans became immortal.
- Blackout by Marc Elsberg. A semi-realistic depiction of a 2-week long blackout in Europe caused by a terrorist attack.
- Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larson. Murder mystery in Sweden. Really enjoyed the setting.
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
Highly recommended no matter what your age.
Just a few chapters into The Art of Spending Money by the same author. So far very good as well.
Both cover how personal finance is, first and foremost, personal and specific to an individual and highly dependent on your life experience.
Fiction (shortlist):
-Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh)
-A Memory called Empire (Arkady Martin) both of these are a fairly interesting take on scifi worldbuilding. Could be called "highbrow", but IMO pretty easy reads still.
-Piranesi (S. Clark) - well written fantasy and plenty of other stuff that I've seen in other comments (Dungeon Crawler Carl does stand out a bit, but it's really a guilty pleasure / escape kind of a read).
Non-Fiction
-Brakneck (Dan Wang) - slightly outdated (by ~2y, which seems really breakneck), but still interesting take on modern China
-Capitalism (Sven Beckert) - still halfway through this one, but it's shaping up to be my #1 for 2025 non fiction
-The Origins of Efficiency - from B. Potter, the author of Construction Physics blog. The blog is fairly information dense, but this basically reads like a textbook. Still a pretty good reference IMO for people working in manufacturing.
The Burnout Society - Byung-Chul Han
The Disappearance of Rituals - Byung-Chul Han
Outlive - Peter Attia (This felt like a complete waste of attention)
An Emotional Education - School of Life/Alain de Botton
The Story of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Hayao Miyazaki
Plants from Test Tubes - Lydiane Kyte; John Kleyn; Holly Scoggins; Mark Bridgen
Some biography I've forgotten
I really enjoyed The Technological Republic by Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska. It’s sharp, opinionated, and unusually concrete about how state capacity, technology, and institutional competence intersect in practice. Even if you don’t agree with all of it, it’s a book that forces clearer thinking about power, technology, and governance.
I'm on my fourth George Eliot novel this year, Adam Bede, which was her first published novel. I started with Middlemarch and proceeded to read Silas Mariner, Romola, and Daniel Deronda. The 1985 film adaptation of Silas Marner is very good and faithful to the novel. The 1970 Daniel Deronda film is similarly faithful and well-acted but the 2002 version is neither.
On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. Hilarious, enlightening, affirming of everyone's need and ability to write well.
James by Percival Everett
Five Decembers by James Kestrel
The Names by Florence Knapp
The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers
A Short Stay in Hell by Steven Peck
I finally got around to reading Wheel of Time. It didn't quite take the whole year but a few solid months. If I had tried spreading it out over a longer period I wouldn't have been able to remember the overall plot or characters, I think.
the ones that stood out were - Nostalgia for the Absolute by George Steiner - Digital Reversal by Andrew Mir - Vita Contemplativa by Byung-chul Han
My favorites this year, be genre:
Sci-fi: Exiles by Mason Coile.
Fiction (Fantasy): The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman.
Fiction (post-apocalyptic / zombie): One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford.
Non fiction: The Wager by David Grann.
Favourite books of the year:
"When the Moon Hits Your Eye" - John Scalzi
"Making History" - K.J. Parker
"Let Dogs be Dogs" - Monks of New Skete
"The First Gentleman" - Bill Clinton (it's actually fun!)
"The Thinking Machine" - Stephen Witt
I loved this recent "Show HN", I found some gems for the reading list in 2026!
Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46345897
The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist
Completely rewired how I view language, consciousness, and matter.
I stumbled upon some great reddit posts this year with reading suggestions, and compiled my own "humanity is fucked" themed reading list, which included:
* Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
* The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
* Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
* Dawn by Octavia Butler
I then diverged from this list (I have more) to re-read (though it's not such a great divergence):
* If This Is a Man / The Truce by Primo Levi
Other books I enjoyed reading this year in no particular order:
* Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
* Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds
* Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds
* Aurora Rising by Alastair Reynolds
* Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron (loved this)
* The Lord of the Rings (the god knows how many times re-read)
* The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison
* Future's Edge by Gareth Powell
* Blueshift by Joshua Dalzelle
* The Heart of a Continent by Francis Younghusband (I didn't quite manage to finish it, but it was a fascinating read nonetheless)
Oppenheimer's biography and some Cormac McCarthy books.
Blindsight.
Not an easy read but very rewarding in terms of sci-fi world building.
The three body problem series. Also sci-fi, recommended if you enjoy deeper reading.
Getting into reading again this year after a long break.
The most memorable read of this year was "The Count of Monte Cristo" (1846) by Alexander Dumas .
It's one of the greatest stories ever told. It's ~1250 pages but I sped through it in 3 weeks even if I'm a slow reader.
Highly recommended!
I also read The Stranger by Camus and the two top Orwells which lived up to the hype.
I read a decent amount of books but the ones that stood out are:
- Anatomy of the State (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Diaspora (Greg Egan)
- The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Peter Watts)
- 5 hours with Mario by Miguel Delibes.
- The three body problem saga.
- Cloud Atlas.
My favorite fiction book I read this year is Berlin, a graphic novel by Jason Lutes.
I have started Kitchen Confidentials by Anthony Bourdain and almost finished it! I am hoping to start reading more next year as I have struggled finishing books most of the time.
A lot, but my favorites of the year:
- Children of Time
- Hyperion & The Fall of Hyperion
- Red Dragon & Silence of the Lambs
- Cat's Cradle
- The Book of the New Sun
Almost done with Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world by Jack Weatherford, I really enjoyed it. If someone can recommend other updated, history reads about empires, world history etc.
Here you go! https://3e.org/books/
I read ~80-100 books a year, mostly SF/F.
Fiction:
“There is no antimimetic division”,
“Project hail mary”,
“Permutation city”,
“White noise”,
and non-fiction:
“Measurement”,
“The sovereign child”,
“Don’t die”,
“The basic laws of human stupidity”,
…and I think I am forgetting something
Nexus by Yuval Harari is one of the most influential books I’ve read.
One of my favourite reads from this past year was Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe by Steven Strogatz. It's a wonderful review of the history of calculus, including intuitive explanations of the basics.
Work related: The Culture Map - can strongly recommend! Non-work: the Alex Rider series. Both entertaining and serious when it needs to be without being super grim.
I gave Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations a go and gave up around half way. Maybe if I knew the historical context it would seem more profound?
I enjoyed Three Body Problem a lot more than I thought I would. That was probably the best book I read in 2025.
I started my reading late in the year but two books that I managed to finish are:
“Literary theory for robots” - Dennis Yi Tenen
“Visual Culture” - Alexis L. Boylan
I got deep into the stormlight archive by brandon sanderson. great escapism!
Loved “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” by Herman Wouk - middlebrow from the 70s but no less good for that.
Re-read “The Art of Not Being Governed” by James C Scott which is really mind-expanding stuff.
The Burnout Society
Strangers in Paradise: How Families Adapt to Wealth Across Generations
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI
The Year in Tech 2024
This Is Strategy
Optimal Illusions
Matrix Energetics
Models
The Value of Others
The Essence of Bhagavad Gita
From Barista to Billionaire
Go On Alone
78 Days Practical Transurfing
The New Game of Life and How to Play It
Getting Real
There Is No Such Thing as Business Ethics
How to Be Happy All The Time
Shape Up
Catching the Big Fish
Babaji The Lightning Standing Still
The Courage to be Happy
Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
The Art of Spending Money
Laws of Life
The Oracle
Kriya Yoga: Spiritual Awakening for the New Age
Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life
I haven't, but has anyone read "If anyone builds it everyone dies"?
I'd be interested in a HN discussion on it.
I got into audiobooks this year and so have “read” a lot more than usual. Here are some of the most memorable:
Outlive by Attia - wouldn’t take everything he says as gospel but he helped me focus on what is really important in health and fitness and why
I am a Strange Loop by Hofstadter - trying to get a grasp on Gödels incompleteness theorem, but this book is a lot more. I particularly enjoyed the bits about Albert Schweitzer, and the chapter on his late wife, how we host the souls of others crudely on our own hardware. Helpful book in the age of AI.
The Man from the Future by Bhattacharya, a Von Neumann biography. Really helped understand the context of this great man’s achievements.
On the Edge by Silver. The signal and the noise was a lot better (which I read last year)
Benjamin Franklin by Isaacson. Fascinating renaissance man, interesting tour through US history
Can’t Hurt Me by Goggins. This book helped me through some emotionally difficult times and has some really great life advice (mixed with some really self-destructive behavior)
The Misbehavior of Markets by Mandelbrot, Hudson. Currently reading this, so far pretty fascinating
Die Traumnovelle - Arthur Schnitzler
Winterplanet - Ursula K. LeGuin
Turns out, a lot of Plato this year. See https://vtomole.com/ for the list.
I read "Pyramid Principle, The: Logic in Writing and Thinking" by Barbara Minto. Highly recommend it.
Lots of news and articles, but also "The Craft", a history of Freemason's by John Dickie, was one of the more interesting books.
I already forgot what I read for my work (MS in CS), so I'll stick with fiction.
This year was slow for me reading-wise. Not a whole lot:
- The Blind Owl / Sadegh Hedayat - Prince of Annwn (Mabinogion Tetralogy #1) - Norse Mythology / Gaiman: read it before accusations came out - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men / David F Wallace - A Connecticut Yankee ... / Mark Twain (not yet finished)