- Lolita, it's mostly what you've read about it.
- a few short stories by Heinrich von Kleist.
- 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".
[1] https://www.fnac.com/a21142694/Thierry-Augustin-Recits-des-t...
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
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.
Special mention also goes to Taming Silicon Valley by Gary Marcus.
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.
- 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 :)
- Anatomy of the State (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Diaspora (Greg Egan)
- The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Peter Watts)
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 trying to make any money, just feel compelled to do this.
A fiction story about how personal computers have dismantled society over 40 years... it takes place in 1983 and involves a vulnerable opportunistic time traveler who's getting more than he bargained for.
Here's some quotes to give you a feel:
"The smartphone is the electrical stunner in the slaughterhouse of society"
"You’ll be able to access any TV or radio station in real time, around the world, talk to people overseas in high resolution video with live translations for free and be bored by it"
"In the future the hermetic spaces of solitude will be breached as we build a global village. The private will become public and, ironically, the public will become private as the streets empty of experiences taken indoors, inside of bedrooms, beneath our screens of glowing grace."
It's intentionally meant to be ambitious, brutal and challenging. And hopefully insight will materialize from the dust of forgotten dreams.
If you are interested in reading it, just hit me up
I enjoyed Three Body Problem a lot more than I thought I would. That was probably the best book I read in 2025.
- 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...)
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 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.
Re-read “The Art of Not Being Governed” by James C Scott which is really mind-expanding stuff.
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.
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.
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)
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...
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.
- Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler
- The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
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.
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.
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 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.
* 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)
[Best fiction] Stoner - John Williams [Best non-fiction] Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
cjmcqueen•2h ago