As the year draws to a close, it feels like a good moment to look back at what I’ve been reading. As usual, the list is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, comfort rereads and long-overdue titles finally crossed off the list. Nothing this year was truly life-changing, but several books were quietly excellent—and a few were notable for less flattering reasons.
In total, I read 39 books in 2025, split almost evenly between fiction and non-fiction:
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Fiction: 19
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Non-fiction: 20
The balance felt right, even if the non-fiction titles ended up leaving the strongest overall impression.
Highlights and Lowlights
Best Non-Fiction
Andy Greenberg – Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
This was the standout book of the year. Sandworm is both gripping and unsettling, and it genuinely made me rethink how fragile modern society is. Reading it in the aftermath of events like the 2024 CrowdStrike outage—and the Cloudflare outage in November—only reinforced how vulnerable critical infrastructure has become, even without malicious intent.
Closely behind was Bryan Burrough’s Barbarians at the Gate, which remains a masterclass in business journalism and corporate absurdity.
Worst Non-Fiction
Sam Parnia – Lucid Dying
Not a terrible book, but deeply frustrating. The topic is fascinating, yet the scientific rigor just isn’t there. It leans too heavily on speculation and anecdote, which makes it hard to take seriously.
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Best Fiction
Steven Brust – Tsalmoth
Nothing in fiction this year truly blew me away, but Tsalmoth was consistently strong and rewarding. That said, it shared the podium with Steven Brust’s Lyorn and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric novellas, which were equally enjoyable in quieter, more understated ways.
Worst Fiction
Laurell K. Hamilton – Circus of the Damned
This one stood out for the wrong reasons. While some of the earlier Anita Blake novels still have some charm, this entry mostly felt like a slog.
Best Re-read
William Gibson – Neuromancer
Returning to Neuromancer was a reminder of just how sharp and influential it still is. Even decades later, it feels more modern than many books written long after it.
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Oddities, Influences, and Reading Chains
The oddest book of the year was probably Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Not bad—just deeply strange. It didn’t linger with me the way UBIK (which I read last year) did, but it’s unmistakably PKD in all the right and wrong ways.
Several books this year also acted as gateways to further reading. John Strausbaugh’s The Wrong Stuff was excellent and directly responsible for me picking up both Ignition! by John Drury Clark and A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith. It also pushed Eric Berger’s Liftoff higher up my to-read list.
On the non-fiction side, Sandworm made me add Kim Zetter’s Countdown to Zero Day to my reading list—though I haven’t quite gotten there yet.
I’d also strongly recommend Yuval Noah Harari’s books to almost anyone. Reading Sapiens and Homo Deus reminded me of the sense of wide-eyed curiosity I had when first reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything years ago.
Finally, the book that had been on my reading list the longest was Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine. It’s been there since I read Snow Crash roughly a decade ago, and it felt oddly satisfying to finally get to it.
Complete Reading List (Alphabetical by Author)
Dan Abnett
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Xenos
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Malleus
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Hereticus
Susan Blackmore
The Meme Machine
Steven Brust
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Tsalmoth
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Lyorn
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Agyar
Lois McMaster Bujold
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The Physicians of Vilnoc
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Masquerade in Lodi
Jim Butcher
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Death Masks
Bryan Burrough
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Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
Bryan Caplan
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The Case Against Education
Harry Cliff
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Space Oddities
Aubrey Clayton
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Bernoulli’s Fallacy
John Drury Clark
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Ignition!
Daniel C. Dennett
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Consciousness Explained
Philip K. Dick
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The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
William Gibson
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Neuromancer
Andy Greenberg
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Sandworm
Dashiell Hammett
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The Maltese Falcon
Yuval Noah Harari
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Sapiens
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Homo Deus
Laurell K. Hamilton
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The Laughing Corpse
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Circus of the Damned
Sabine Hossenfelder
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Lost in Math
Erik Hoel
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The World Behind the World
Sam Kean
The Icepick Surgeon
Sarah Monette
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A Theory of Haunting
Thomas Nagel
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Sam Parnia
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Lucid Dying
Anthony Price
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The Alamut Ambush
M.R. Sellars
Harm None
Anil Seth
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Being You
Ola Skogäng
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Mumiens blod
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De förlorade sidornas bok
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I dödsskuggans dal
John Strausbaugh
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The Wrong Stuff
Kelly Weinersmith
Soonish
A City on Mars
Martha Wells
Queen Demon
Closing Thoughts
2025 wasn’t a year of dramatic literary revelations, but it was a solid, thoughtful reading year. The non-fiction in particular stood out, often leaving me with more questions than answers—which is usually a good sign. If nothing else, this year reinforced how much I enjoy following threads from one book to the next, letting curiosity rather than novelty guide what I read next.
If next year manages to surprise me a bit more, all the better—but this was time well spent.
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