2025 in Books

I read 23 books in 2025. 'Into the Wild' was my favourite read of the year, whilst 'Sapiens' is still my top book of all time.

If you just want the list of books I read this year, go straight to the bottom of this post.

2025 wan’t my greatest year for reading, both in terms of quantity or quality. I fell way short of my target of one book a week, chiefly because I’ve read very little since summer due to the upheaval and stress of moving. In all, I started 27 books, giving up on 4 very early on. That’s a pretty good hit rate for me - I normally give up on a way higher percentage of starters.

Psychology (and similar) was my biggest category in 2025, with five reads. All were good but ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ was the absolute standout, both in this category and for the year overall. Reading about death and dying is something most of us avoid, but this is one of those few books that will truly, truly touch you - I can’t recommend it enough.

With four reads, the niche you might describe as ‘Epic Journeys’ came in close second for quantity but was easily the highlight of my year in terms of sheer enjoyability. Both of Christian Lewis’ ‘Hildasay’ books detailing his mammoth 5-year-plus journey walking around Britain are awe inspiring must-reads whilst ‘Peat and Whiskey’, which intertwines journeys across grand Scottish landscapes and the story of its peat bogs and whiskey industry, was an extremely pleasant loan book. We had to cancel our own jaunt to the highlands this year unfortunately, but ‘Peat and Whiskey’ has almost singlehandedly given me the desire to get there in 2026.

‘Into the Wild’ deserves its own paragraph. It’s a classic, and now I know why. It still haunts me to even think about it. It’s got a ‘Catcher in the Rye’-esque way of quietly disturbing you without you knowing quite why. This was, without a doubt, my favourite ‘new’ book of 2025 and probably makes my top 10 of all time.

No year is complete for me without a bit of economics, and this year it was Yanis Varoufakis’ excellent Technofeudalism, which is almost an extension of Soshana Zuboff’s seminal ‘Surveillance Capitalism’. I tried to counter the gloom with Nick Clegg’s ‘How to Save The Internet’ but couldn’t get past the Facebook apologism. ‘Empire of AI’ was superb, my runner-up for the year. Both a page turner and highly informative, it really shaped my thinking on AI as the breakneck pace of development shifted gear once again in the last quarter of the year. It will be extremely interesting to come back to this in a few years time and see how everything pans out. To be honest, I’m not optimistic.

I attempted a trio of reads on the history of Israel, the idea being to take in one book from each side of the debate and one ‘neutral’ or ‘academic’ text (I do realise how controversial the idea of a ‘neutral’ text on Israel is). Anyway, I started with ‘Israel’ by Noa Tishby, just because it was on offer on Kobo. That was a big mistake. I should have started with ‘Enemies and Neighbours’ which, however strongly you feel about Israel, is tangibly more neutral. Unfortunately it was summer already and life got in the way of this little project, so I had to abandon it unfinished, but I’ll be back.

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), a pet geek area of interest of mine, was represented by the classic ‘How to Take Smart Notes’ which is certainly of interest if you want to learn Zettelkasten, but otherwise probably not worth it for the casual reader. ‘The Notebook’, a detailed history of, you guessed it, notebooks, was a delightful nerd-fest and another of my highlights of the year.

I didn’t really hit the mark with fiction. Not that I often do. ‘There There’, a blistering account of Native Indian life in Oakland, was lent to me by Ethan who grew up there. It scared the shit out of me. Otherwise, ‘Orbital’ and ‘The Prophet’ went over my head. I don’t think I was in the right mood. I’ve just started ‘The Overstory’, which looks very promising and I hope to finish it before the year is out.

I reread a couple of personal classics this year. ‘Driving Over Lemons’ from my phase of European travel more than 25 years ago, was appreciated in a new light after 17 years living in Spain, a couple of those in Andalusia. I must get to know the Alpujarras.

Towards the end of the year, as we were packing up the house, I decided to read ‘Sapiens’ again. What can I say to do it justice? ‘Sapiens’ very seriously changed my life when I first read it 9 years ago. You cannot - at least I could not - read the history of humanity without deeply reconsidering my place in it. This sounds cliché, but I don’t think you find ‘Sapiens’ - it finds you, and in 2025 it succeeded in finding me again. When I first read it, I was starting a new phase in life. When I re-read it, I was closing that phase. ‘Sapiens’ bookended the last decade for me and helped usher in a new one. It helped me make sense of myself, everyone else, Madrid and the world. Thank you ‘Sapiens’. I will dedicate a separate essay to what will surely be a supremely vain attempt to communicate what Sapiens has done for me, but for now know that it was, and in 2025 reconfirmed itself as, the most impactful book of my life so far.

Everything I Read in 2025

Psychology

• The Courage to Be Disliked - Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

• Good Nature - Kathy Willis

• Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

• The Social Paradox - William von Hippel

• The Wealth Money Can’t Buy - Robin Sharma

Outdoor / Epic Journeys

• Peat and Whisky - Mike Billet

• Finding Hildasay - Christian Lewis

• Hildasay to Home - Christian Lewis

• Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer

Economics and History

• Technofeudalism - Yanis Varoufakis

• Empire of AI - Karen Hao

• Israel - Noa Tishby

• Enemies and Neighbours - Ian Black (DNF)

PKM

• How to Take Smart Notes - Sönke Ahrens

• The Notebook - Roland Allen

Fiction

• The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran

• Orbital - Samantha Harvey

• There There - Tommy Orange

• The Overstory - Richard Powers

Fitness

• Functional Training and Beyond - Adam Sinicki

• 9 out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes - Dave MacLeod

Random

• The CW Way of Life - Chris Rutkowski

• Do Your Best - Bear Grylls

Reread

• Sapiens - Noah Yuval Harari

• Driving Over Lemons - Chris Stewart

Weren’t for Me (Didn’t Finish)

• Rest is Resistance - Tricia Hersey

• Mindful Running - Mackenzie L. Harvey

• How to Save the Internet - Nick Clegg