In 2025, I read 45 books. Here are some of my favorites, often with a little synopsis written shortly after closing their covers.
Late Winter
Orbital by Samantha Harvey: I described it on January 8th as “a (very short) Moby Dick for the ISS”. I had just finished a year-long read of Melville’s version – some would call it the Moby Dick of whaling – and instantly gained a new yardstick for measuring prose, rhythm, and rich symbolism.
Cory Doctorow’s Red Team Blues, which I read at my cousins’ house during New Year’s 25: “Tech thriller, a narrative expose on financial crimes, and perfect beach/weekend reading.” I immediately followed it up with its sequel, The Bezzle.
In February, on my friend G.’s Brooklyn couch, I stumbled upon a lovely novella by Nghi Vo, Empress of Salt and Fortune. I devoured it in a single sitting, like a cup of fragrant chai at the perfect temperature. I’ve returned to later novellas in the series when I’m looking for a four-hour audiobook or a cozy mood.
Spring
Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth. Book Five of his Stormlight series is a 1,300-page tome that I described in April as “the most MCU of all his books so far”. Despite some moments of genuine pathos, it loses the trees for the multiversal forest.
During this time, I was still thinking about Moby Dick on a near-daily basis. My favorite chapter currently is “The Lee Shore”:
Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington.
It was a superb year for nonfiction, and a frontrunner among that group is Sunil Amrith’s The Burning Earth, which I finished in April. I wrote: “Strong early candidate for book of the year. A global history of humanity’s struggle against scarcity, and how the technologies we have invented to gain those freedoms are all-too-often distributed unjustly. And a nice surprise: despite the quality of research and historical detail, Amrith’s prose is vivid, easy-flowing, and deeply empathetic… This book is profoundly explanatory and hopeful.”
Later, somewhere during Seth Dickinson’s Exordia (scary, ambitious, worth a read if you don’t mind extra body parts in the wrong places), I asked my friends “does it make me illiterate if I near-categorically skip all flashbacks?” I am unrepentant.
One of my final books in our old apartment was A.’s copy of Harold McGee’s Nose Dive. This is a book about the human sense of smell. That’s it. And yet, McGee’s infectious, voracious, cross-disciplinary curiosity instantly hooked me. This is how all science textbooks ought to be. How all scientists ought to be.
Summer
Local libraries are America’s best-kept secret. No other building in this entire country would offer free access to A/C, water and bathrooms, Wifi, DVD and game rentals, the entirety of humanity’s written knowledge, and even the occasional cooking class. They are civic treasures. And, bonus: they are the perfect kindling to reignite a love of reading.
I spent much of one month this summer at a Florida library, where I began by reading Ian McDonald’s Hopeland. My favorite aspect was the “humane and mature emotional core to each character, one that refused to over-simplify the heart’s yearning for belonging and meaning, [which] kept me motivated even when the larger plot felt meandering or overlong (and it did feel that way near the end). I’m simultaneously excited to read more McDonald, and yet I wouldn’t be surprised if Hopeland becomes my least favorite McDonald after I’ve read more.”
My favorite fiction of the year was likely a Tana French mystery duology, The Searcher and The Hunter. “A moody, aching, tense duology of small-town paranoia and the fragility of found family. They’re nominally crime/mystery novels, but French is as adroit at describing subtext and emotion as any Romantic. It’s a plain unflinching prose that, all at once, startles you with a crash of metaphor and consummated foreshadow that you never saw coming.”
In 48 hours I’d followed up with Doctorow’s The Lost Cause. “Near-future political sci-fi written by one of the savviest, most moral tech thinkers in the business. It’s essentially a thought experiment — ‘what are the steps needed to avert the worst climate disasters and rebuild society more responsibly?’ — but what could have been a dry premise is elevated by vivid dialog, a relatable narrator who never slips into being an Everyman, and, most importantly, a stubborn vital hope that our neighbors are stronger than our despair.”
Three days later, Nick Harkaway’s Titanium Noir: “Harkaway has been a sleeper favorite of mine ever since his Angelmaker made me snort-laugh at inappropriate moments during a jury duty in 2019. (I was not selected for service.) His latest novel is less gonzo than The Gone-Away World or Tigerman, but still vibrates with the kind of prose that makes you laugh in a library. That restraint allows a joyful embrace of whodunit tropes: Titanium Noir is about posthuman murder and all-too-human monsters, complete with misanthropic gumshoe protagonist. Harkaway plays in that space expertly, coloring with a tenebrous moral palette without ever dipping into voyeurism or schlock, adding just the right mix of cyberpunk and thriller to keep the pages flying. It’s a delight, and he knows it, and he’s having as much fun writing it as I had reading it.”
Next, The Reeve’s Tale by Margaret Frazer: “A medieval murder mystery starring a nosy nun. A pitiful farmer meets a sticky end in Ye Olde England — and there’s a case of the measles about! Quirky, with enough unmannerly conduct and well-crafted prose to keep the pages turning. A nerd’s affinity for historicity adds extra interest. Some characters are a tad pious, as you might imagine, but it’s still a fun whodunit, with a 10ish-book series for those who dig the vibes.”
Shortly afterward, I wrote: “I am finding that I have a Type when it comes to contemporary fiction. I really enjoy fiction that pushes at an understanding of systems (empire, technology, local politics) with a sense of optimism and empathy for the characters.” Hm. This guy was on to something.
At Cape May Courthouse library, I began two writing projects while K was using the library’s sewing machine, while we both browsed the shelves and sipped our chai from CoHo Coffee.
Catcher in the Rye by Salinger: “Somehow missed this one in grade school. My first impression was that it was laugh-out-loud funny, but maybe that wasn’t what America’s English teachers intended as the message. What can I say; George Saunders and I Think You Should Leave have ruined me for taking sad-sack subjective narrators at face value. It’s just abundantly clear that the world Holden describes for us in Catcher is entirely colored by his grief, his fears, his desperation for authentic human connection. And so, when Holden’s encounter with his sister spurs some quiet moments of honesty and tenderness, and the novel’s enigmatic title pays off, it feels hopeful and genuine and lovely.”
I finished Kōhei Saitō’s Slow Down somewhere on a beach. It might have been under a Florida umbrella with V. and K. and many friends, or perhaps it was under the seagull skies of Ocean City with M. and N.. Either way: “A discussion of the climate crisis… It can be dense in the first third, blazing through work by Kate Raworth, Grace Blakeley, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben… you get the point. Saitō uses this research to show how typically strategies like ‘green growth’ or ‘carbon negative tech’ are naive distractions (at best)… But the conclusions of this work, presented in the third major section, are daring and achievable. I won’t present any of that section unsubstantiated, except for this: degrowth is far from a call to ‘live in the dark ages.’ It is a call to reorient local economies around the production essential to life, and thereby to generate ‘abundance in order to render growth unnecessary’.”
Later that month, from a futon under a Depression-era bay window in southwest Oklahoma City: “Look, I’ve read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, but it’s an economics monograph, 800 pages of academic research findings. So, I jumped at this graphic adaptation of Piketty’s latest work, Capital and Ideology. This analysis of historical inequality is well-anchored with examples, clearly explained, and tied to many urgent issues from social-nativist political movements to climate change to anticolonialism. Essential reading for those seeking to understand the mechanisms of capitalism. (If nothing else, it’s a great précis for the full book!)”
On my friend kaupernaumov’s recommendation, I read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a book by Nick Harkaway’s father, John Le Carré. Unfortunately, though I loved the prose and characterization (for example, when a sad sack narrates that “a puddle emptied itself into his shoe”), I really needed the movie version to explain the book’s plot, and I needed the novel to explain the movie. Didn’t bother to finish it when my library card lapsed, but I’d be willing to re-read it one day.
In Beacon, NY, from a quaint bed-and-breakfast, I began Thomas Pynchon’s V. and was immediately offended at how Pynchon can cram more literary meaning into a conjunction or preposition or article than I can in an entire paragraph. Dense stuff, though; another unfinished victim to our nomad summer.
Fall | Japan
The first book I finished in Japan was, fittingly, AMETORA: how Japan saved American fashion by W. David Marx. I summarized it as “a survey of Japanese fashion trends in the Showa era (1945-present), starting with the development of the now-classic Ivy style, and ending with the global dominance of streetwear brands and denim. Throughout, these developments are anchored in vivid anecdotes, brushstrokes of social analysis, and clear prose. When I didn’t care much for the particular styles (especially once the narrative moved into the ultra-consumerist 80s) it was sometimes tough to wade through the blow-by-blow exploits of big branding. But at its best, Ametora is a fascinating window into cultural exchange and economic power, and deeply illustrative — from how US souring on globalism to why a 2020s anime like Mob Psycho 100 dresses its rebellious teenage gangs like 1950s greasers. (If you’ve ever liked a Menswear Guy thread, you’ll like this book.)”
Very quickly afterwards, I was converted to an audiobook listener by necessity. I had a lot of free time, and no ability to read Japanese-language books. First on the list, Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger. “Naomi Klein is an activist and a critic of capitalism. Naomi Wolf is a feminist theorist turned conspiracy theorist. People get the two confused. A lot. Especially during the pandemic, when Wolf escalated from disgraced academic to frequent guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast, bastardizing Klein’s Shock Doctrine in support of antivax and MAHA and stolen elections. Klein takes us through the looking-glass as the cases of mistaken identity began to pile up… the scope of this book is awe-inspiring, and so too is the way Klein effortlessly balances literary allusion, scholarly reference, steadfast empathy, epistemic humility, and eminently approachable language. Very likely to be my book of the year.” (And, indeed, that’s probably true, although the frontrunners are crowded indeed!)
Next, Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal, the perfect listening for my tiny kitchenette and sunset walks to the Pacific cliffside. “My second Pratchett novel. Between this and Moving Pictures, my assessment is that Pratchett has mastered the fantasy quick read. The absurd gags and jokes are plenty chuckle-inducing, but there’s nothing exceptional about them save their density. Nevertheless, I think Pratchett’s Discworld might become my go-to light beach reading, because Pratchett consistently aims his humor at the rich and powerful and corrupt, lending the novels a sort of cozy comfort that other authors of this genre tend to miss.”
During my last days in Mito, I listened to Ken Liu’s All That We See Or Seem. “If you’ve heard me recommend The Dandelion Dynasty a million times, then you might know I’m biased when it comes to Ken Liu. The reason I love his writing is not any particular feature of his prose or plotting… It is because Liu is an autodidact – an engineer turned lawyer turned author – and a humanist, whose precisely chosen words reveal a staggering depth of care. So, All That We See or Seem is a techno-thriller, yes, and indeed it hooked me for the globe-trotting mystery. But the experience of reading it often felt more like a multithreaded assemblage of important ideas: AI’s impact on society; the mythologies encoded in language; the artist as commodity; the communal alienation of social media; digital rights; immigration and racism; political polarization. Many of those ideas I brought with me to the book, but Liu’s powerful writing clarifies them, distills them, connects them to each other. It is a book that can help the reader become braver and kinder, and for that, I will recommend Liu a million times more.”
And the last book I finished in Japan was another Doctorow, Picks and Shovels. A really good one. (May I be as prolific one day!)
Winter | Philadelphia
I began closing the year with Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, which I began reading on my way to visit J. and A. and Sprout in Ithaca, and finished while visiting A. and A. and P. in Baltimore. Another phantasmagoria of language – Pynchon slips into a Prohibition argot as easily as an old coat, and relishes every excess of the noir trope space. My ears loved every sentence. (Unfortunately, my poor brain still isn’t sure of the plot, which may reveal my personal limitations with the audiobook.)
And my final book was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I began reading on the Tokaido shinkansen and finished in the bed of our new Philly apartment. It’s a classic for a reason, moody and relatable, even as it helplessly reveals the Victorian anxieties about women and foreigners.