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".
- 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.
If Little Blue Truck isn’t on your regular list you should add it. We also loved Pond by Jim LaMarche (older audience, but beautifully illustrated and told), the Boynton books are fun to read aloud especially Barnyard Dance, and The Going to Bed Book. There are more, but these are the highlights from that age range
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
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.)
For the Stormlight Archive: You have to world build. The first book definitely felt like a slog for the first half-ish. Not much that feels like major plot events happen yet, but if you look at it with the understanding that it's intended to be 10 books, a lot of exposition is needed.
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)!
“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.
FWIW, I’m mildly dyslexic and likely read slower than most. This year I’ve made it a goal to un-do many of the coping strategies I’d developed over the years to keep pace, and instead really focus on stopping and looking up phonetics for words I couldn’t easily sight (kindle is clutch here). On the plus, it also means I’ve had to become rather deliberate about what I read and when I read it — HN, newspapers, and Reddit all took back seat this year (and I couldn't be happier).
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)
"Time Enough for Love" is the only Heinlein I've felt any inclination to reread in the past few decades that held up at all (and it's still a good read).
I couldn't get past the awful sex scenes of "Altered Carbon". OK, after having watched the TV series I should have known, but reading it is completely different. Also, the main character is so dislikeable.
It has been a while since my last Heinlein, you reminded me I should read more.
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.
Introduction to Telephones and Telephone Systems (3rd Ed.) by A. Michael Noll: A great system-level overview covering instruments, transmission media, switching, and signaling.
Understanding Telephone Electronics by Carr, Winder, & Bigelow: Focuses on the electronic components and workings of telephone systems.
For me, these books are in the rare category of 'wait I didn't know it was allowed to come up with a story _this good_'. I envy all those that have yet to read it for the first time.
Me too. It's phenomenal, especially the first book and the pilgrims' stories. Such a moving mix of religious mystics, science fiction and the dreaded AI. The second one builds up the tension and the last 2... are good.
Spoilers, but the excerpt posted here [0] of Aenea was one of my favorite scenes from Hyperion Cantos. "Choose again" as a gentle reminder to reevaluate our beliefs and structures, and to really choose, not just go along with whatever. You can always choose again.
I read the second two books this year and was unfortunately disappointed.
First two were so fun but I think I got hung up on some of the more clumsy stylistic parts of the Endymion books. I guess my “trust” in the author comes from the style and tropes they use, and if I they lose my trust none of the deeper parts resonate. Glad you enjoyed!
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.
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.
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.
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.
I enjoyed Translation State so much. It thought that Leckie got lost in the depths of Octavia Butler’s extra weird shit (and Xenogensis) and cross bred it with the political novel style of the Ancillary trilogy, and the result was chefs kiss.
I feel comfortable recommending it even if you haven’t read any other Leckie.
Edit: if you haven’t read the Bloodchild anthology by Butler, give it a read. Some of the short stories will seem very familiar after Translation State, especially the alien parts.
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.
# 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).
Someone recommend H.M. To me a few weeks back. Started w/ Kafka by the Shore and then finished Norwegian Wood a few days after that. Couldn’t put them down, both were terrific.
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.
It's a pretty old book, but I think my favorite this year was The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer which was great fun for an avid Simpsons fan (of the first 10 seasons at least).
Of course, I'd also be remiss not to mention that I published a book called Rebooting a Nation about how the nation of Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a hub for startups and e-government in a single generation. Foreign Affairs was kind enough to just do a review: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/rebooting-nation-incr...
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).
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:
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.
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."
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
Michael Moorcock's _The Citadel of Forgotten Myths_ --- probably the last Elric book, it is an interesting closure to a series I've been reading since high school
J.R.R. Tolkien's _The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origins of Bovadium_ --- probably the last "new" Tolkien book --- quite the hoot, and an interesting commentary on industrialism and the Oxford Don's opinions on same
Donald E. Knuth's _TAoCP: Vol. 4, Fascicle 7, Constraint Satisfaction_ --- working through exercises now in the hope of finding a typo for the sake of getting an account at The Bank of the Island of San Seriffe to go w/ my physical reward check.
Variety of other things, but those were the notable/interesting ones.
Nice! I haven't read Axiomatic yet, but this has been my "Greg Egan year". I have read Permutation City and Diaspora: maybe the two most stimulating scifi novels I have ever read.
Read Diaspora last year w/o knowing anything about it. Easily one of my favorite sci-do books to date—I can’t believe it was there waiting for me the entire time. Permutation City is one of my next 3 reads.
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.
I started in August, but the two books I read were Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and East of Eden by Steinbeck.
I tried reading Catch-22, but 50 pages in it just seemed like a bunch of military guys trolling each other by being as autistically literal as possible with absurdist Airplane-style humor. I noped out at the prospect of reading 500 more pages of it. I don’t get why people here recommend it so much.
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.
Hyperion is awesome. Each story could be its own novella but especially the priest's tale. I also loved the consul's tale. I haven't read the rest yet because I am unsure how the story will go without that structure as I wasn't too invested in the space politics, but I hear it is good. Also if you haven't read, The Terror by Dan Simmons is also great and strikes historical/horror like I feel hyperion does scifi/horror
I sometimes wish that other types of fiction were as easy to read (for me) as sci-fi. I devoured all 6 books of Dune. Loved Hyperion with the canterbury tales structure and the politics - I already know I’m going to like the second book.
I must check The Terror, thank you for the pointer. I have also the Neuromancer waiting for me to eat my literary veggies.
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 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.
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
You should check out the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
The audiobook for the most recent one released and immediately became the best selling audiobook in the world. The talent of Jeff Hayes and Soundbooth Theater have ruined other audiobooks for me.
Complications and Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Made me appreciate modern medicine more. One other l book that shifted my thinking completely about AI and how far we are from AGI: A Brief History Of Intelligence by Max Bennett. Evolution is a heck of an algorithm.
Also read Apple In China. Was pretty interesting to realize how much Apple (and China) are what they are because of how much they poured into each other
I read close to 40 books this year which I assume is up from the previous year, and way more than I used to read prior to starting to do the Rochester Library reading challenge (which I've done for the past two years). I won't get into a lot of it, but after reading Middlemarch three years ago, Napoleon: A Life two years ago, and The Power Broker last year I decided to read two "big" books.
In the first half of the year War and Peace, which obviously was excellent, although I liked Middlemarch more.
In the second half of the year David Copperfield which was very excellent. Just beautifully written. I still think I probably like Middlemarch more... but it might now require a re-read to know for sure.
This year is going to be Tom's Crossing to start as I just got that for Christmas.
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.
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
I’ve been working through more Dostoyevsky- currently ending the year reading The Brothers Karamazov (Constance Garnett translation).
It’s topping The Idiot for me- and a fitting way to end the year. I have spent most of 2025 stuck in a 19th Century reading cycle which started when reading Murakamis “After the quake” short story collection, specifically Super-Frog saves Tokyo where he mentions Anna K.
Anna Karenina-> Crime and Punishment-> The Idiot and some various Kafka in the mix too.
If you are looking for some modern stuff that would go nicely with Dostoyevsky/Kafka, I can warmly recommend Krasznahorkai, especially his first book, Satantango.
Really well written and well structured novel, and although he uses long sentences and no paragraph breaks, the writing is surprisingly accessible and incredibly immersive.
It was my first fiction book in a long time and it made me love fiction again.
Thank you adamors, I’ll be sure to give Satantango a go next- I’ve been struggling to find a modern substitute for the Russian classics and haven’t been able to put my finger on why- there is a quality to it that keeps me engrossed.
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 five of the Foundation books (stopping before Prelude) in 2024. I had read them as a kid and loved them, but three (plus) decades later and they just didn’t hold up as well as I hoped.
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.
Same here! I’m on the final 200 pages. It’s going to painful waiting so long for the third in the series. I went straight from book 1 to 2 with no wait thankfully.
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)
Yeah, I've been hearing that sentiment, and riffs on it, here on HN for years. But it took me this long to finally get around to actually picking up Book 1. I enjoyed it a lot though, and definitely plan to continue with the series.
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 read it this year too. I was surprised by the amount of heartfelt soliloquising the monster did, he was much more compelling than I expected. Victor of course was the real monster in the story, self obsessed, not taking responsibility for his actions, I found myself actively rooting against him.
I’ve been working towards my WSET diploma so not much non-wine related fun reading. That being said:
- Phylloxera: How Wine was Saved for the world by Christy Campbell is a surprisingly fun read on how the entire wine industry was almost destroyed in the late 19th century.
- Red/Green/Blue Mars by K. S. Robinson hard sci-fi about mars colonization and terraforming. First rereading in 20 years or so. Holds up extremely well.
- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. A thought provoking take on how broad stroke human history developed since the Bronze Age.
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".
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Careless People. The unexpected peek into the author's personal childhood and family ethos was really interesting. The look at Facebook from within was a cautionary tale.
I also liked I Am Not Your Enemy by Reality Winner.
"Apple in China" was pretty good! I can second that one. If you haven't checked it out, "Chip War" is also pretty good and along the same style. I'm reading it right now.
For fiction I read a lot of Brandon Sanderson: the second Mistborn series, plus a few of the Secret Projects. I quite liked Tress of the Emerald Sea. Also currently reading R. F. Kuang's Katabasis which I'm really enjoying so far.
For nonfiction, I found Amanda Ripley's High Conflict to be excellent and insightful. I also finally got around to reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins; I expected it to be fine, but it far exceeded my expectations! On top of that, the edition I read also had "end notes" interspersed throughout the book with retrospectives from decades later, which only added to the book's richness.
The main thing I read was the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman.
It requires even more suspension of disbelief than a usual sci fi / fantasy combo, but was worth it for the characters and laughs and “where will he take this next?!”.
My notable find this year was an author who will serve for me as a successor to le Carré as a reliable source of thoughtful spy fiction and I have a backlog of his work to look forward to, but the first for me was:
The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour
An elderly MI5 also-ran contemptuously tagged "the eternal flame" by his bumptious young colleagues shows doggedness, courage and unexpected depth as he pursues a dangerous ISIS returnee planning an attack on British soil. Unusual and riveting.
What did you like more about the re-write of the Antimemetics book? I strongly preferred a few things about the original, especially what happens to (I think?) Bart Hughes and the germ.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee stuck with me more than anything else I read this year. It is a work of simple beauty.
It’s a story of several generations of poor Korean women who eventually immigrate to Japan. The front half of the book is wonderfully paced to spend time with the characters. The back half can feel a bit rushed, but it becomes more of a page turner.
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter is another period novel about union organizing in the Pacific Northwest around the turn of the century, and follows two brothers. The depth of research makes this book wonderfully vibrant.
The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter.
Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within by David Goggins.
These two books stuck with me. We are often too comfortable with being comfortable. There is nothing wrong with that, but real growth happens when we step outside our comfort zone. We are far more capable than we think.
After reading Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved", I went on a binge of his earlier works: "If This Is a Man", "The Truce", "If not now, when?". All great, but I keep coming back to "The Drowned and the Saved"; it's hard to put my finger on it, but it's a book that provides more meaning about life than anything I've ever read.
A few years ago I promised myself to read the top of "must reads" from world literature. Many of them were literally unreadable (hello Moby Dick).
But some of them are true gems, must-reads indeed.
I just finished "The Grapes of Wrath" and holy cow, this is an impressive piece of literature. And unfortunately, more relevant than ever.
Why not give science fiction a break and try this classic instead.
I don't read much any more. Mostly magazine articles.
I did re-read "The Long Run" from Daniel Keys Moran (one of the very short list of books I've re-read, and this was #4 or #5).
"Were you taught to hate Peaceforcers?" "Taught? No."
The only new book that I read was "Heat 2" by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner.
It was "ok". It honestly felt like a mashup of "Heat", "Miami Vice", and "Blackhat". So, not as fresh as I would have liked. (Mind, I really like all of those movies.)
I'll see the movie when it comes out, but the book was just "ok".
Dungeon Crawler Carl - I laughed, I cried, perfect match for my sense of humor.
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter - Great read, changed some of my training because of it.
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett (#1 of The Century Trilogy series) - An amazing overview of the 20th century through the eyes of several families accross the globe (fiction).
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.
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.
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)
My favorite book this year was "Differential Privacy" (2025) by Simson Garfinkel. Differential privacy is a mathematical theory of data privacy sandwiched between cryptography, databases, and ML. This is the first book-length non-technical introduction, and it's well executed.
Humble Bundle has spoiled me and my ebook library has grown by around a 100 books this year...
Tech book recommendations: 'Secure by Design', 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications', 'Building Secure and Reliable Systems' and 'Fundamentals of Software Architecture'.
For scifi: 'Murderbot Diaries' and 'The Expanse' - both are just great entertainment
Not enough. Going to try to rein in some sustained attention in the new year.
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
- Playground by Richard Powers
- Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman
I'm curious how much AI-generated stuff I read this year... likely at least a book's worth, but it would be more like one of those books with 365+ random deep dives into stuff that's not really relevant to my life.
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.
Acting class - I found this book surprisingly compelling. It made me reflect on my own search for connection and identity, and how easily it is to be misled and manipulated when you've got no one close.
Earthlings - The book's plot gets really horrific (don't let the cover fool you). However, it did make me think about social norms and taboos a little differently.
1984 - It was my first time reading the book, and man, looking around and seeing bits and pieces of the surveillance mentioned in the book in real life is kind of terrifying...
Grapes of Wrath - It's definitely the most heart-wrenching book I've ever read. Watching the Joad family get absolutely devastated by the monster that is unchecked capitalism is so sad :(
Skunk works - Really good book on the development of Lockheed's stealth planes. However, I did wish I got more technical details.
I would love to see some more book recommendations :)
-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.
I got really into Hemingway’s work, reading all the best ones, but my favourite being ‘A moveable feast’ his diary essentially released at the end of his life set when he was mid-twenties in 1920s Paris. Me being the same age, I was inspired enough to go there and retrace some of his steps.
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.
Oh, I read that some years ago. I am not sure if it's very similar, but I can recommend Debt by David Graeber. It is an economic history of the world that deals with the use of credit and bullion in different societies during history.
Another book I enjoyed this year is The Golden Road by William Dalrymple. It explains the crucial cultural, economical, and religious influence that India had in Eurasia before and during the middle ages. This one is more similar to Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world, I believe.
I reread “The Screwtape Letters” by CS Lewis for the first time since high school and appreciated it even more. Although it’s written from a Christian point of view, the principles are applicable to any moral framework.
I’m a Christian as well and spent a day in Oxford earlier this year. After spending some time at Magdalen College, I bought every book I could by C.S. Lewis and just finished Letters to Malcolm (on prayer) today.
His refreshingly honest take is very relatable, humorous and encouraging.
I can highly recommend it if you’re interested in prayer life (and how to use powerful formulations in letters)
It obviously leans more into the theories around how things can go horribly wrong if "AGI" is actually a thing (which can get existentially exhausting), but is still worth contemplating.
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.
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.
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'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.
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)
How to Think Like Socrates - I normally have a difficult time digesting philosophy in older translations or language, but this one was really nicely written and well communicated.
Water by Rumi (translated by Haleh Liza Gafori) - also unexpectedly good. She uses a modern style and it reads so beautifully. It gave me glimpse of the beauty of the Persian language.
The Count of Monte Cristo was published in serial form. Daily from 1844 to 1846.
That explains a lot the format, which tended to try to retain the audience.
Also, the author wrote in advance of the daily publication, but the book was written "live", answering to public perception and response. This is a reason why the book is so "good": the author had the chance to adjust the story based on data from sales and feedback from readers.
Of course Dumas was a great writer too, but this live writing, data based is probably why the book resonates so well with audiences.
So, as a joke, if you read count of monte cristo in 3 weeks, you did the equivalent of bing reading it.
This happens with soap operas too. 10 years ago, they lasted 1 year. They had an initial structure, the story, the characters, but responded in "real-time" to audience feedback.
For those willing to read the book, give yourself some time. Try to read it over a course of some years. Read a little, come back to it.
There are several famous books written in the same form, like Crime and Punishment or The Three Musketeers.
Oh, and also authors got payed by installment, so that explains the lenght lol
Loved the stranger, I read it for the first time this year too. I read plenty of sub culture (mostly modern; Irvine welsh etc) but the stranger was just so different than anything I’ve ever read. Like the language is so olan yet it works so well, and then you have this great finish, it’s a weird masterpiece.
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.
I also read Meditations this year. Definitely not what I was expecting. It's not cohesive at all. My biggest takeaways were the inevitability of death and generally letting go of our sense of control.
Expecting it to be "cohesive" seems like an odd thing, considering it's literally a bunch of musings & meditations which were taken from a man's private journal.
I've found many of the individual musings to be quite interesting. In particular the ones that relate to perception (my own biggest pitfall).
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/
What are the quotes? I don't understand, some of them are just a single word like "Art", "Autoimmune", "Cartoons"; or innocuous phrases with no context.
The beginning is a list of ## chapters because there's many. A woman was in the psych ward for more than a decade. Luckily a doctor tested for autoimmune, which cured her.
For example you can search the page for ## False Claims Act. It will show the FBI jailing psychiatrists who illegally over billed Medicaid for fake or unnecessary services.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
For those interested in the subject (and who can also read French) I also heartily recommend the most recent edition of Augustin Thierry's Récits des temps mérovingiens [1]. Of course that it has most probably long been surpassed when it comes to historic accuracy, after all it was written almost 200 years ago, but it is very interesting nonetheless for being one of the first books that really put the focus on the Merovingians from a historical perspective that was "scientific", for lack of a better word.
if you do read french, proust’s “in search of lost time” (vol 1) is a lot more accessible and enjoyable than my high school teachers made it sound years and years ago. it even contains a depiction of what a learned engineer should be like.
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.
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.
„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 started the year with "Right thing, right now", and I'm ending it with "wisdom takes work" (R.Holiday), but I'm happy to say that I'm now a bit "tired" of re-reading the same rehashing of other people's book, and I want to read the original ones. Which, actually, is the pont.
I wanted to read classics, and devoured "The portrait of Dorian Gray" (O.Wilde), where maybe 50% of all the "as O.Wilde said..." quotes seem to come from (uttered by a single, incredibly obnoxious character.)
I challenged myself to read "Les Miserables" (V.Hugo), and actually managed to get two tomes out of five down. Eminently quotable, heavily skippable - why on earth spend half a time on describing the ins and out of Waterloo, except to show off ? - and, surprisingly, at times, _funny_.
The bio of Pierre Mendès France (J.Lacouture) was very much topical, given the mess in Franch politics. We had more PMs in one year than in a few chapters of the book. It's very weird to read that, at some point, some politicians were "liked" by the people - but lost power anyway.
A small Edouard Phillipe book called "Men who read" almost made me like the guy - his next book is more serious and expected. It pains me to think that our next election is going to be about "well read people who disappointed everyone" vs "popular jocks with no education who will end up disappointing everyone".
"Abundance" (E.Klein / D.Thompson) is an attempt from "well read people" to at least try and understand why everyone is disappointed and prefer the jocks. I don't think they included any solution in their book, though - maybe they save it for the sequel, or for E.Klein's presidential bid.
I want to read all Stripe press - if only, because the covers rock, and they're optimistic. Started with "Poor Charlie's Almanach" (C.Munger), which a disappointing rehash of the same funny speech seven times. (Tldr : be multidisciplinary, study cognitive biases, don't trade). In the middle of "The Origins of Efficiency " (Potter)
"The Wave" (Souleymane) was not optimistic. And not practical at all - sure, AI enabled drones carrying bioweapons will suck. "The Age of predators" (G. Da Empoli) reminds us that the AI enabled bioweapons carrying drones will come from an illiberal state enabled by billionaires from Silicon Valley, and Russian trolls. I wish someone told me where to go to avoid being targeted too early.
"Everything is tuberculosis" (J. Greene) reminded me of a time when scientists were trying to solve problems as opposed to creating brand new ones - but at least the next generations won't die of boredom.
"We, programmers" is a rehash of Uncle Bob's pre talks "history of programming". I loved the long and detailed parts about G.Hopper. He ends with a (failed) attempt to convince that programmers will still be needed in the age of AI.
Steve Yegge's "Vibe coding" goes full "resistance is futile" about programming with agents, and, interestingly, ends up talking more about TDD than Uncle Bob - but the words "electricity consumption" and "climate impact" are not utured, because, why spoil the fun.
"The Common LISP cookbook" tried to explain me the difference between ASDF, quicklisp and whatnot - 2025 was the closest year I ever go to actually writing something in LISP instead of reading books about it.
And also, "The baby is a mammal" (M.Odent) and "Becoming a dad for dummies", because this year was probably the last one we're I'll get so much time to read :)
I had ChatGPT create a list of the top 100 literary classics of the past century and summarize them for me. While I'm waiting for Claude Code to write code for me I listen to the summaries like an audiobook. I'm planning to read a lot more than 100 books next 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.
• 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
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.)
The payoff is worth it, IMO.
“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.
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)
That's Neal Stephenson, not William Gibson.
I read the whole series as a teenager, and loved it - especially the way he was able to wrap up the entire series at the end.
It has been a while since my last Heinlein, you reminded me I should read more.
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...
Introduction to Telephones and Telephone Systems (3rd Ed.) by A. Michael Noll: A great system-level overview covering instruments, transmission media, switching, and signaling.
Understanding Telephone Electronics by Carr, Winder, & Bigelow: Focuses on the electronic components and workings of telephone systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos
[0] https://raccaldin36.livejournal.com/1849917.html
Not sure about the Endymion ones.
First two were so fun but I think I got hung up on some of the more clumsy stylistic parts of the Endymion books. I guess my “trust” in the author comes from the style and tropes they use, and if I they lose my trust none of the deeper parts resonate. Glad you enjoyed!
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.
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.
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.
I feel comfortable recommending it even if you haven’t read any other Leckie.
Edit: if you haven’t read the Bloodchild anthology by Butler, give it a read. Some of the short stories will seem very familiar after Translation State, especially the alien parts.
Edit: just to add that the audiobook is really well narrated
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.
# 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 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.
- 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
Of course, I'd also be remiss not to mention that I published a book called Rebooting a Nation about how the nation of Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a hub for startups and e-government in a single generation. Foreign Affairs was kind enough to just do a review: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/rebooting-nation-incr...
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
- 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...)
Wrote reviews on both Obviously Awesome[0] and StoryBrand[1] for anyone interested.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5369411790 [1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5686301930
Happy new year!
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
"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."
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
J.R.R. Tolkien's _The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origins of Bovadium_ --- probably the last "new" Tolkien book --- quite the hoot, and an interesting commentary on industrialism and the Oxford Don's opinions on same
Donald E. Knuth's _TAoCP: Vol. 4, Fascicle 7, Constraint Satisfaction_ --- working through exercises now in the hope of finding a typo for the sake of getting an account at The Bank of the Island of San Seriffe to go w/ my physical reward check.
Variety of other things, but those were the notable/interesting ones.
The core concept is so well established in the book.
I tried reading Catch-22, but 50 pages in it just seemed like a bunch of military guys trolling each other by being as autistically literal as possible with absurdist Airplane-style humor. I noped out at the prospect of reading 500 more pages of it. I don’t get why people here recommend it so much.
I recently started reading Moby Dick.
- 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.
Abundance (great)
Anxious generation (great)
Ishmael (great)
Who we are and how we got here (great)
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
- 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
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!
The audiobook for the most recent one released and immediately became the best selling audiobook in the world. The talent of Jeff Hayes and Soundbooth Theater have ruined other audiobooks for me.
Also read Apple In China. Was pretty interesting to realize how much Apple (and China) are what they are because of how much they poured into each other
In the first half of the year War and Peace, which obviously was excellent, although I liked Middlemarch more.
In the second half of the year David Copperfield which was very excellent. Just beautifully written. I still think I probably like Middlemarch more... but it might now require a re-read to know for sure.
This year is going to be Tom's Crossing to start as I just got that for Christmas.
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.
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
"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.
It’s topping The Idiot for me- and a fitting way to end the year. I have spent most of 2025 stuck in a 19th Century reading cycle which started when reading Murakamis “After the quake” short story collection, specifically Super-Frog saves Tokyo where he mentions Anna K.
Anna Karenina-> Crime and Punishment-> The Idiot and some various Kafka in the mix too.
Hoping to visit some modern stuff again next year
Really well written and well structured novel, and although he uses long sentences and no paragraph breaks, the writing is surprisingly accessible and incredibly immersive.
It was my first fiction book in a long time and it made me love fiction again.
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.
The Red Rising series by Pierce Brown -- lots of sci-fi fun, extremely epic
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King -- King's "Lord of the Rings" opus, great writing, ending maybe a little unsatisfying but not abnormal
Artemis - Andy Weir's first book -- Fun read about a heist on the moon. Anticipating Project Hail Mary movie early next year!
Currently in the middle of: The Talisman - Stephen King / Peter Straub
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.
The Mule is still great, though.
Always looking forward to read the next chapter.
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)
Siddharta by Hermann Hesse. Helped me understand that a perfect life is a collection of ups and downs and that one must accept it all.
Amerika by Franz Kafka. Could relate to the protagonist because people take advantage of his naivety.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Made me see the world in a less pessimistic way.
- 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".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_in_China
I also liked I Am Not Your Enemy by Reality Winner.
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
* C++ Crash Course by Josh Lospinoso
* Deng Xiaoping And The Transformation Of China by Ezra Vogel
* Magic: A Very Short Introduction by Owen Davies
* Trigonometry by Hugh Neill
I rated each one 9/10
For nonfiction, I found Amanda Ripley's High Conflict to be excellent and insightful. I also finally got around to reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins; I expected it to be fine, but it far exceeded my expectations! On top of that, the edition I read also had "end notes" interspersed throughout the book with retrospectives from decades later, which only added to the book's richness.
It requires even more suspension of disbelief than a usual sci fi / fantasy combo, but was worth it for the characters and laughs and “where will he take this next?!”.
The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour
An elderly MI5 also-ran contemptuously tagged "the eternal flame" by his bumptious young colleagues shows doggedness, courage and unexpected depth as he pursues a dangerous ISIS returnee planning an attack on British soil. Unusual and riveting.
I read ~80-100 books a year, mostly SF/F.
Haven’t seen the movie adaptation yet but the books are such delightful dark humor SF, loved them
It’s a story of several generations of poor Korean women who eventually immigrate to Japan. The front half of the book is wonderfully paced to spend time with the characters. The back half can feel a bit rushed, but it becomes more of a page turner.
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter is another period novel about union organizing in the Pacific Northwest around the turn of the century, and follows two brothers. The depth of research makes this book wonderfully vibrant.
Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within by David Goggins.
These two books stuck with me. We are often too comfortable with being comfortable. There is nothing wrong with that, but real growth happens when we step outside our comfort zone. We are far more capable than we think.
"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
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler the whole Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman
"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.
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.
The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
I did re-read "The Long Run" from Daniel Keys Moran (one of the very short list of books I've re-read, and this was #4 or #5).
"Were you taught to hate Peaceforcers?" "Taught? No."
The only new book that I read was "Heat 2" by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner.
It was "ok". It honestly felt like a mashup of "Heat", "Miami Vice", and "Blackhat". So, not as fresh as I would have liked. (Mind, I really like all of those movies.)
I'll see the movie when it comes out, but the book was just "ok".
Dungeon Crawler Carl - I laughed, I cried, perfect match for my sense of humor.
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter - Great read, changed some of my training because of it.
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett (#1 of The Century Trilogy series) - An amazing overview of the 20th century through the eyes of several families accross the globe (fiction).
Project Hail Marry by Andy Weir
Dungeon Crawler Carl (Books 1-7) by Matt Dinniman
I'm currently reading:
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
The only Andy Weir book I've read. Loved it.
Highly recommended.
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)
My favorite book this year was "Differential Privacy" (2025) by Simson Garfinkel. Differential privacy is a mathematical theory of data privacy sandwiched between cryptography, databases, and ML. This is the first book-length non-technical introduction, and it's well executed.
Here's my full book list for the year: https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2025/.
2. Atmosphæra Incognita - Neal Stephenson
3. Idoru (10x time) - William Gibson.
“Literary theory for robots” - Dennis Yi Tenen
“Visual Culture” - Alexis L. Boylan
Tech book recommendations: 'Secure by Design', 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications', 'Building Secure and Reliable Systems' and 'Fundamentals of Software Architecture'.
For scifi: 'Murderbot Diaries' and 'The Expanse' - both are just great entertainment
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
- Playground by Richard Powers
- Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman
I'm curious how much AI-generated stuff I read this year... likely at least a book's worth, but it would be more like one of those books with 365+ random deep dives into stuff that's not really relevant to my life.
Acting class - I found this book surprisingly compelling. It made me reflect on my own search for connection and identity, and how easily it is to be misled and manipulated when you've got no one close.
Earthlings - The book's plot gets really horrific (don't let the cover fool you). However, it did make me think about social norms and taboos a little differently.
1984 - It was my first time reading the book, and man, looking around and seeing bits and pieces of the surveillance mentioned in the book in real life is kind of terrifying...
Grapes of Wrath - It's definitely the most heart-wrenching book I've ever read. Watching the Joad family get absolutely devastated by the monster that is unchecked capitalism is so sad :(
Skunk works - Really good book on the development of Lockheed's stealth planes. However, I did wish I got more technical details.
I would love to see some more book recommendations :)
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
-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.
- 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.
Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46345897
Completely rewired how I view language, consciousness, and matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matter_with_Things
Another book I enjoyed this year is The Golden Road by William Dalrymple. It explains the crucial cultural, economical, and religious influence that India had in Eurasia before and during the middle ages. This one is more similar to Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world, I believe.
His refreshingly honest take is very relatable, humorous and encouraging.
I can highly recommend it if you’re interested in prayer life (and how to use powerful formulations in letters)
I'd be interested in a HN discussion on it.
Hank Green had an interesting discussion with one of the authors, Nate Soares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CKuiuc5cJM
side-note: i wager that the engagement bait title of the video was generated by AI, which is humorous to me in this context
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.
* 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)
Water by Rumi (translated by Haleh Liza Gafori) - also unexpectedly good. She uses a modern style and it reads so beautifully. It gave me glimpse of the beauty of the Persian language.
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.
That explains a lot the format, which tended to try to retain the audience.
Also, the author wrote in advance of the daily publication, but the book was written "live", answering to public perception and response. This is a reason why the book is so "good": the author had the chance to adjust the story based on data from sales and feedback from readers.
Of course Dumas was a great writer too, but this live writing, data based is probably why the book resonates so well with audiences.
So, as a joke, if you read count of monte cristo in 3 weeks, you did the equivalent of bing reading it.
This happens with soap operas too. 10 years ago, they lasted 1 year. They had an initial structure, the story, the characters, but responded in "real-time" to audience feedback.
For those willing to read the book, give yourself some time. Try to read it over a course of some years. Read a little, come back to it.
There are several famous books written in the same form, like Crime and Punishment or The Three Musketeers.
Oh, and also authors got payed by installment, so that explains the lenght lol
Bhagvad Gita by Eknath Easwaran
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
How The World Really Works by Vaclav Smil
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
Chaos by James Gleick
Wind and Truth (Stormlight Archive #5) by Brandon Sanderson
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
I read this quite a while ago, and can't remember it at all. What did you think of it?
> The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
Loved this when I was a kid.
I enjoyed Three Body Problem a lot more than I thought I would. That was probably the best book I read in 2025.
I've found many of the individual musings to be quite interesting. In particular the ones that relate to perception (my own biggest pitfall).
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
Re-read “The Art of Not Being Governed” by James C Scott which is really mind-expanding stuff.
- ShapeUp
- Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success
I’ve otherwise been largely re-reading books I haven’t read in a decade or so
[Best fiction] Stoner - John Williams [Best non-fiction] Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
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/
What am I supposed to understand from this?
For example you can search the page for ## False Claims Act. It will show the FBI jailing psychiatrists who illegally over billed Medicaid for fake or unnecessary services.
- Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler
- The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
- Anatomy of the State (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Diaspora (Greg Egan)
- The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Peter Watts)
- Lolita, it's mostly what you've read about it.
- a few short stories by Heinrich von Kleist.
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.
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.
1. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/books/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland
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 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.
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.
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.
- 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
The Peripheral by William Gibson.
Enshittification by Cory Doctorow.
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.
I haven’t been reading much in the last couple of years and I credit this book for getting me back in the game.
It's a must read for 0.001% of the population.
Special mention also goes to Taming Silicon Valley by Gary Marcus.
[1] https://www.fnac.com/a21142694/Thierry-Augustin-Recits-des-t...
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.
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.
I wanted to read classics, and devoured "The portrait of Dorian Gray" (O.Wilde), where maybe 50% of all the "as O.Wilde said..." quotes seem to come from (uttered by a single, incredibly obnoxious character.)
I challenged myself to read "Les Miserables" (V.Hugo), and actually managed to get two tomes out of five down. Eminently quotable, heavily skippable - why on earth spend half a time on describing the ins and out of Waterloo, except to show off ? - and, surprisingly, at times, _funny_.
The bio of Pierre Mendès France (J.Lacouture) was very much topical, given the mess in Franch politics. We had more PMs in one year than in a few chapters of the book. It's very weird to read that, at some point, some politicians were "liked" by the people - but lost power anyway.
A small Edouard Phillipe book called "Men who read" almost made me like the guy - his next book is more serious and expected. It pains me to think that our next election is going to be about "well read people who disappointed everyone" vs "popular jocks with no education who will end up disappointing everyone".
"Abundance" (E.Klein / D.Thompson) is an attempt from "well read people" to at least try and understand why everyone is disappointed and prefer the jocks. I don't think they included any solution in their book, though - maybe they save it for the sequel, or for E.Klein's presidential bid.
I want to read all Stripe press - if only, because the covers rock, and they're optimistic. Started with "Poor Charlie's Almanach" (C.Munger), which a disappointing rehash of the same funny speech seven times. (Tldr : be multidisciplinary, study cognitive biases, don't trade). In the middle of "The Origins of Efficiency " (Potter)
"The Wave" (Souleymane) was not optimistic. And not practical at all - sure, AI enabled drones carrying bioweapons will suck. "The Age of predators" (G. Da Empoli) reminds us that the AI enabled bioweapons carrying drones will come from an illiberal state enabled by billionaires from Silicon Valley, and Russian trolls. I wish someone told me where to go to avoid being targeted too early.
"Everything is tuberculosis" (J. Greene) reminded me of a time when scientists were trying to solve problems as opposed to creating brand new ones - but at least the next generations won't die of boredom.
"We, programmers" is a rehash of Uncle Bob's pre talks "history of programming". I loved the long and detailed parts about G.Hopper. He ends with a (failed) attempt to convince that programmers will still be needed in the age of AI.
Steve Yegge's "Vibe coding" goes full "resistance is futile" about programming with agents, and, interestingly, ends up talking more about TDD than Uncle Bob - but the words "electricity consumption" and "climate impact" are not utured, because, why spoil the fun.
"The Common LISP cookbook" tried to explain me the difference between ASDF, quicklisp and whatnot - 2025 was the closest year I ever go to actually writing something in LISP instead of reading books about it.
And also, "The baby is a mammal" (M.Odent) and "Becoming a dad for dummies", because this year was probably the last one we're I'll get so much time to read :)