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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Lots of news and articles, but also "The Craft", a history of Freemason's by John Dickie, was one of the more interesting books.
Not a huge book reader, but this year two impressed me:
- Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler
- The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
Finally read Fukuyama's "Liberalism and its discontents" after reading his much larger the origin of political order previously. I enjoyed its dense, survey like nature; I particularly enjoyed his (actual) breakdown of critical theory which, after knowing only the propagandized takes on it, was refreshing.
In 2026, I hope to pivot slightly and finally read Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. I thought recent authors like Fukuyama obviated the need to read such books, but flipping through its pages, they were so poetic and beautiful, I hope it operates like an antidote to too much dry / reductionist reading (of which tools like ChatGPT are accelerating, at least for me).
I read/listened/sampled a lot this year but a few have reached out into my life and changed me at least a little bit.
- In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan. A brilliant "not diet" book about not eating crap and enjoying chocolate cake with your friends. I followed this up with Ultra Processed People to arm myself with the facts to defend not eating the junk people call food.
- The Dispossesed - Ursula Le Guin: recommended in previous year's HN what did you reads. An absolutely triumph for how it manages to portray a believable anarchist society.
- Adult Children of Alcoholics: useful to the multitude of us who grew up with an alcoholic parent(s). I used this to identify the common patterns I share with others who grew up like me. You are not alone!
- The Invention of Clouds (not finished): I really like the context of "dissenting science" which the author conveys brilliantly. Turns out Dark Academia and Bro Science are not new.
- The Art of Frugal Hedonism: Irreverant although it comes off a little pious. This book has helped me accept that I have enough stuff already.
Neither are on-brand for hacker news but:
[Best fiction] Stoner - John Williams [Best non-fiction] Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
1. Encyclopedia Autonomica
2. Atmosphæra Incognita - Neal Stephenson
3. Idoru (10x time) - William Gibson.
Fort Bragg Cartel (good/great)
Abundance (great)
Anxious generation (great)
Ishmael (great)
Who we are and how we got here (great)
Mostly gamedev books:
* Blood, Sweat and Pixels
* Press Reset
* Play Nice
* Masters of Doom
* Color & Light
* Video Game Art
* 2d Graphics Programming for Games (in progress)
- Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard, very entertaining.
- Lolita, it's mostly what you've read about it.
- a few short stories by Heinrich von Kleist.
Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell
SciFi books : old’s man war of John scalzi and Hail Mary of Andy Weird, great books
my most interesting reading this year has been Stafford Beer (Brain Of The Firm, Heart Of The Enterprise). fascinating person and books
I’ve otherwise been largely re-reading books I haven’t read in a decade or so
I reread The Secret History by Donna Tartt for the umpteenth time and it is still wonderful.
I stopped reading newspapers long back (early 2010s). During the Pandemic, I started a newspaper subscription (very common in India, delivered to the home) so I can use it to segregate wet waste properly. I started reading bits and pieces: horrors/misfortunes sell; news is stale, etc. Of late, I decided to look at it from a different angle, bringing back my childhood nostalgia, when I devoured every piece of reading material I could find. Now, I pick the ones I want to read, marking them as a reminder of continuity, a small bridge to a past life. I’m going to continue this slow reading with Newspapers. Wrote an article about my feelings, scheduled to be published on my personal blog in 2026-JAN.
For books, this year has been the year with the fewest books read.[1] I ended up reading the past: John Keats’s Poems, Marcus Aurelius, The Great Gatsby, Odyssey, and Iliad by Homer.
As a habit and a tribute to something I liked in the past, I read Dan Brown’s latest, “The Secret of Secrets.” I also started re-reading some of Sidney Sheldon’s books, but, as of this day, I could no longer summon the enthusiasm to continue beyond Master of the Game and The Sands of Time.
I also re-read the fantastic book, “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions”[2] by Edwin Abbott Abbott.
- Dungeon Crawler Carl series (and audiobooks)
- ShapeUp
- Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success
Gravity's Rainbow - still chewing on it all
I read Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno. Really unsettling but definitely worth reading.
Rome Before Rome by Philip Matyszak
Technically last year, but less than 365 days ago:
* The Mom Test
* The SAAS Playbook
Actually in this year, the ones I remember the most:
* Start Small, Stay Small
* From Yao To Mao (more a series of lectures on chinese history)
The most recent one I haven't finished yet but was surprised I liked:
* Software Engeineering at Google
Many more things described ring true or feel desireable, and I recognize too many of the anti-patterns from companies I worked for. Although, I also recognized the good things people were doing and started to appreciate them more.
I read Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy L Sayers. Quote:
All over London the lights flickered in and out, calling on the public to save its body and purse: SOPO SAVES SCRUBBING—NUTRAX FOR NERVES—CRUNCHLETS ARE CRISPER—EAT PIPER PARRITCH—DRINK POMPAYNE—ONE WHOOSH AND IT'S CLEAN—OH, BOY! IT'S TOMBOY TOFFEE—NOURISH NERVES WITH NUTRAX—FARLEY'S FOOTWEAR TAKES YOU FURTHER—IT ISN'T DEAR, IT'S DARLING—DARLING'S FOR HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES—MAKE ALL SAFE WITH SANFECT—WHIFFLETS FASCINATE. The presses, thundering and growling, ground out the same appeals by the million: ASK YOUR GROCER—ASK YOUR DOCTOR—ASK THE MAN WHO'S TRIED IT—MOTHERS! GIVE IT TO YOUR CHILDREN—HOUSEWIVES! SAVE MONEY—HUSBANDS! INSURE YOUR LIVES—WOMEN! DO YOU REALIZE?—DON'T SAY SOAP, SAY SOPO! Whatever you're doing, stop it and do something else! Whatever you're buying, pause and buy something different! Be hectored into health and prosperity! Never let up! Never go to sleep! Never be satisfied. If once you are satisfied, all our wheels will run down. Keep going—and if you can't, Try Nutrax for Nerves!
Intriguingly familiar cynicism, vintage 1933.
I RSS read all day about solid state batteries, which recently are in power banks. Hope to hear about folding MicroLED phones on www.microled-info.com But they will start out too expensive.
Because abusive parents false arrested/committed me without a trial as manic for buying a Linux (they can barely use apple) computer and RockBox music player. I spent much time gathering these quotes https://antipsychiatry.yay.boo/
> The Gulag Archipelago
I did read it a few years ago, that's very though and it describes in a very technical way how gulags worked. In hindsight I'm not sure it was the best way to do it.
If you liked it tho, id suggest the two kravchenko books on the trials, Rudolph Hess book (very interesting), Simon Sebag Montefiore book on Stalin.
I can provide many more about this kind of subject, I found that fascinating for a few months and did read a lot of books on it.
Although I'd argue that the most fascinating is watching the usa, from outside, turn into a totalitarian state. That is truly incredible to be able to witness how much Trump achieved in a few months.
I mostly read historical books this year, multiple analysis of WW1 and WW2. George Bruce's book on British expedition in Afghanistan in 1939. The peacemaker, on Reagan's presidential tenure. Stalin's 2-part biography. Deng Xiaoping biography. The book Collapse of Soviet Union. Sharlock Holmes collection. And many more.
Early in the year I picked up "Dark Wire" by Joseph Cox. It was a fascinating dive into the world of "secure phones", particularly a company called Anom.
I also read:
"Digital Fortress" - Dan Brown (not strictly technically plausible but the suspense kept me hooked) "Never Enough" - Andrew Wilkinson (meh)
Currently working on: "The Technological Republic" - Andrew Karp "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" - Martin Kleppmann
I had a tendency of a lot of false starts on books this year. I picked up several recent LLM/AI books and would make it like a chapter before realizing it was mostly just AI generated slop and gave up.
Lots of scifi.
Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance, and Absolution of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series. https://www.goodreads.com/series/112239-southern-reach
Reread books 1-4 of Dennis E Taylor's Bobiverse series to read #5 https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse
John Scalzi's Interdependency Series https://www.goodreads.com/series/202297-the-interdependency
Basically all of the Culture Series by Iain M Banks https://www.goodreads.com/series/49118-culture
Of Peter F Hamilton:
- The Salvation Sequence series https://www.goodreads.com/series/242882-salvation-sequence
- The Void Series, a sequel-trilogy to the Commonwealth Universe series https://www.goodreads.com/series/43520-void
Of Alastair Reynolds:
- Pushing Ice https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48991704-pushing-ice
- Eversion https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60097716-eversion
Of Adrian Tchaikovsky:
- Shroud https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/230237860-shroud
- Elder Race https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56815367-elder-race
- Alien Clay https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199851460-alien-clay
- Going through The Final Architecture now https://www.goodreads.com/series/305076-the-final-architectu...
Also Upgrade, by Blake Crouch https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59439117-upgrade
Also First, by Randy Brown https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196399619-first
The Shining, by Steven King
It's one of my favorites of his, and I can see why he's miffed that Kubrick's adaptation gets all the praise when the source material is just as good.
There's nothing like a slow creeping horror descent into madness to make winter time feel cozy.
- Permutation City — Greg Egan
- She Said — Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey
- Conclave — Robert Harris
- First You Write a Sentence — Joe Moran
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine — Gail Honeyman
- The Master and Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov
More books here -> https://pastebin.com/XVeacpHM
Fiction: some more novels in Steven Erikson & Ian C Esslemont's Malazan Empire universe. These two produce some of the best fantasy I've ever read, and I've read a fuckton.
Non-fiction: A System for Writing by Bob Doto was pretty good. Also gave Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal a chance, but found it to be uninspiring, self-aggrandising drivel.
Things I really liked:
- The Murderbot Diaries (all of them)
- Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero (Sprawl Trilogy) – perfection
- Discworld series (almost all of them)
- Bobiverse serise (all of them)
- Old Man's War series
- Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir – Werner Herzog's autobiography
- The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin
- Kissinger: A Biography (approval of Kissinger not required)
- various collected works of Borges
- various works of Carl Jung
- Starship Troopers
- A Man Called Ove – made me cry
- A Stitch in Time – a star trek actor novelizing his headcannon of the character he played
- Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
- Mickey7
- Solaris
- Flowers for Algernon
- Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death
- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Things I disliked:
- The Wheel of Time (I forget how many I got through)
- Eruption – a posthumous Michael Crichton book was really terrible
- The Book of the New Sun
- The Creative Act: A Way of Being – an artist trying and failing to talk about science
Patternmaking for Menswear wad immensly helpful for teaching me how to create my own sewing patterns. But like anyone on HN, I draw my patterns with software I made.
I need to recommend Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway. Truly fascinated story also available on audible. For anyone interested into how "things works" generally is this a must.
Happy new year!
I had few months of free time and I wanted to get back into fantasy which I loved. Sadly after staring all day into the computer I dont usually have the energy to process any other text.
The Stormlight Archive from Brandon Sanderson got me exactly back. I love it. I must recommend it for anyone who want to experience one of the best high fantasy books.
Also I need to recommend a source where I found it. I somehow stumbled upon https://www.book-filter.com/
Lovely app which scrapped all good reads reviews and let you simply filter through that because for some reason, these pages are garbage.
Have fun and happy new year!
My favourite by far was Adam Becker's More Everything Forever.
Special mention also goes to Taming Silicon Valley by Gary Marcus.
Water margin
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
The Peripheral by William Gibson.
Enshittification by Cory Doctorow.
The Dream Factory and a lot of quantum photonics papers.
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles blew me away by the quality of the writing, the endearing characters and the charming setting. I’m glad I picked it up and I strongly recommend it to you.
I haven’t been reading much in the last couple of years and I credit this book for getting me back in the game.
I re-read Plato's The Republic.
It's a must read for 0.001% of the population.
Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History
>What did you read in 2025?
Between the lines, my friends, between the lines.
- Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- My Gita, Devdutt Pattanaik
- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Atul Gawande
- Moonshot: Inside Pfizer's Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible, Albert Bourla
- Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Anne Case
- The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic, Joe Miller
- Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, John Green
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne and Gary Gianni (Illustrator)
- El Deafo, Cece Bell
- Acts of God, Kanan Gill
- Marvels of Modern Science, Paul Severing
- Empire of AI, Karen Hao
Cal Newport, So Good They Can't Ignore You. This book convinced me to stop widening my skillset by beginning again, and start doubling down on my strengths.
Gene Kim et al., The Phoenix Project. This book reinvigorated my love for management, which I lost in 2021–2022. I'm still an IC, but I decided to stop refusing management roles.
Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained, 2nd Edition. This book lit a fire under my ass to figure out better ways of working. I followed it up with the next one in a book club at work.
James Shore et al., The Art of Agile Software Development, 2nd Edition. This book gave me hope that a productive, humanist, productivity-oriented workflow can work in today's software world. I read it with my teammates in a book club at work, including the software engineers, QA tester, product owners, and UX designer. Unfortunately the rest of my team had little interest in putting it into place where I work.
Robert C. Martin, Clean Architecture. This book was a delightful read. Uncle Bob weaved practical advice together with stories from his past that served both to illustrate his points and to entertain. While I don't agree with every word in the book (e.g. Screaming Architecture), I still recommend it to every Senior+ Software Engineer.
Eric Evans, Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software. Aside from its amazing content, this book has some of the best typesetting I've ever seen. I sought out a font that is a match (or near-match) and reverse-engineered the letter spacing, line height, heading font sizes, etc. Its content was great too, but I was glad to have read Vaughn Vernon's DDDD first.
Vaughn Vernon, Domain-Driven Design Distilled. This book followed up Shore's work in our book club at work. Everybody on the team really liked what they read, but nobody felt like they had actionable insights. So the engineers went on to read Vernon's IDDD, and the non-engineers read Adzic's IM and Patton's USM.
Vaughn Vernon, Implementing Domain-Driven Design. I read this book with a book club at work. While Evans's work was well-grounded in theory and left a lot of interpretation in the patterns behind DDD, Vernon is a practical, nuts-and-bolts DIY guide to one approach to DDD. Luckily, these tactics resonated with my team and our codebase has seen marked improvements in the past few months. I'm looking forward to our process catching up so we can do more than "DDD Lite."
Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping. This book was fun, practical, and completely outside any way I'd ever worked. It also helped me understand exactly why I've failed every time I tried to make my own SaaS startup on nights and weekends.
Gojko Adzic, Impact Mapping. This book was basically a pamphlet. The process seems...good? But since I'm no longer in a role with the influence or authority to recommend product direction, I doubt I'll get much use out of this for a while.
Tanya Reilly, The Staff Engineer's Path. This book wants to follow in the footsteps of Camille Fournier's The Manager's Path, but it seemed less specific and useful as a roadmap. Perhaps that's because of how different "Staff Engineer" is from company to company, at least when compared to the roles covered by Fournier. But it did help me earn my promotion to* Staff Engineer, so it was clearly worth reading.
Tamar Rosier, Your Brain's Not Broken. This book was the second I read after I got diagnosed with adult ADHD. I appreciated that it helped me de-stigmatize, because I harbored some bummer feelings when I realized no actually I didn't grow out of it. It also helped me reflect on my habits of action, and see them in a new light. I was surprised to see how much of my anger and frustration in life was a coping mechanism to help me get things done. I've had a much calmer life since recognizing that.
Alexander Tarlinder, Developer Testing. I'm not quite finished with this book, but I'll be done by the end of the year. It's been a great overview of automated testing from the perspective of a programmer. It helped refresh my memory on things I knew but forgot. It filled gaps that I had in my baseline knowledge. It corrected things I "knew" but was slightly incorrect about. I now recommend this to any programmer, whether or not they've got a habit of testing.
Austin Kleon's trilogy: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work, Keep Going. These books were cute, full of incredibly quotable passages, and fun to read. I didn't spend enough time on them, though. A lot of the lessons I thought I'd learned left my brain like water through a sieve.
Kent Beck, Tidy First?. This book helped me understand the economics of software through a new light. That was important to me, because during the time I spent as a Director of Software Engineering I was not given a budget and asked to manage the department's expenses.
Antonio Cangiano, Technical Blogging, 2nd Edition. This book convinced me to start a blog. It was going really well, and then I shrank back from it due to fear of vulnerability. Since I got over those fears and started blogging again, it's been a lot of fun again. I incorporated what would've been tweets into the blog (as "quick posts") in addition to my longer-form, less-ephemeral content (as "articles"). Writing has been a great way to solidify what I've learned and distill my opinions. Heck, I should migrate this comment to my blog.
I also read other books (especially on my journey to becoming a magician), but these were the ones I thought Hacker News might be most interested in.
Among non-fiction what stood out to me was David Bentley Hart's All Things are Full of Gods, great book also very fun to read written as a Platonic dialogue. To me one of the most compelling theologians today.
Bruno Maçães, World Builders. Good book on the impact of technology in geopolitics has been consistently interesting.
Among fiction re-read a lot of Lovecraft, noticed that I like the Dream Quest stories more than the horror these days which surprised me. But they're more compelling to me now because of how much you can see Lovecraft as a person in them.
The last three Dune books. Liked the last two about the Bene Gesserit a lot, was surprised how much I disliked God Emperor given the praise it gets, but it honestly reads like Frank Herbert posting twitter hot takes as a worm with no story
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger. Among the best novellas I've ever read, very different in tone from most of his books.
Shūsaku Endō, Silence. Book about a Jesuit mission in early Edo Japan. My favorite Japanese book in a long time.
Among technical books, re-read The Mythical Man Month, probably more relevant than it ever was in an age of artifical man-hours added to projects. Robert Seacord Effective C, after not having written C in a long time. Really good intermediate level book for modern C. Also making my way through The Little Schemer as a replacement for advent of code in the second half of the month this year.
I replied to the dead "What did you read in 2025" thread, so I'll just paste it here.
Usually I hit a book a week pretty reliably, but this past year has been particularly crazy according to my audible purchase history. There are around 80 titles that I've added in 2025 and I've completed the vast majority of them. Some stand outs for me:
Dungeon Crawler Carl - One of the few novels that I think it actually much better in audio format. The narrator is excellent and it's a fun adventure that never takes itself too seriously. I'm not into litrpg typically, but I really enjoyed the 7 novels in the series so far.
The Laundry Files - I've made it through seven of these books and I really like the mix of mundane government IT with supernatural horrors. Tropes come up like the government tracking paper clip usage, and then you'll get a mystical explanation that makes sense in world so suddenly tracking individual paper clip usage doesn't seem so ridiculous. Generally a fun series, but it seems to be moving towards a revolving cast that I'm less interested in continuing on with.
The Library at Mount Char - One of my favorite books this year. Quite dark and mysterious. I liked the payoff and character arcs. But really it's the well maintained atmosphere that pulls everything together.
There Is No Antimemetics Division - What might the science and research of literally unknowable things look like? Things your mind rejects or presences which can influence your mind to make themselves invisible and leaves no memories behind. Weird novel that doesn't hold your hand too much.
Heavy Weather - A sort of modern cyberpunk meets western novel. Storm chasers following a predicted F6 super tornado across the US south.
The Running Man - I'm not typically a King fan, but I do like some of his works. I have fond memories of the movie from childhood nostalgia so finally gave it a try. I do think it's one of his better works according to my tastes.
Mickey7 - I'm a sucker for time loops and death loops and adjacent novels. This was a short but fun book.
The Society of Unknowable Objects - Small group of people collect mysterious objects from around the world to keep humanity safe.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - Another one dealing with memory. What would it be like to be immortal, but everyone you interact with forgets about you minutes after you leave them.
Edge of Tomorrow - Time loops!
The Troop - Decent read if you like horror novels. One of the better horror novels I read for the year.
„Essentialism“ genuinely changed how I think about work and life. I used to operate under the assumption that every task deserves attention, often equal attention, which inevitably led to overload and constant context switching. Reading this helped me realize that the most successful people do the opposite: they focus relentlessly on a small number of truly important things and deliberately ignore the rest. That shift alone has been transformative for me.
I read 52 books this year:
- Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink
- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
- The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
- The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff
- When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté
- Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer
- Standing Strong by John MacArthur
- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
- We Who Wrestle with God by Jordan B. Peterson
- I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek
- The Holy Bible
- Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef
- I Am Giorgia by Giorgia Meloni
- 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
- The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren
- The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray
- The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray
- The War on the West by Douglas Murray
- Porn Generation by Ben Shapiro
- The Authoritarian Moment by Ben Shapiro
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen
- Darkest Hour by Anthony McCarten
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
- Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming
- Moonraker by Ian Fleming
- Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming
- From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming
- Dr No by Ian Fleming
- Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
- For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming
- Thunderball by Ian Fleming
- The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming
- You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
- The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Next year I will read more books of the Russian writers on this list. I enjoyed those books very much.
After seeing this list, what books do you recommend for me?
Die Traumnovelle - Arthur Schnitzler
Winterplanet - Ursula K. LeGuin