Reading in 2025: A Year of Cyberwar, Consciousness, and Familiar Comforts
With 2025 just behind me, it feels like a good moment to look back at what I read. As usual, the list is a mixture 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. The most interesting pattern was not any single winner. It was the number of books that led directly to other books, reopening old interests or sending me down an entirely new line of inquiry. Counting every separately listed work, including novellas and graphic albums, I read 40 titles in 2025 : Fiction: 21 Non-fiction: 19 The balance was close, although the non-fiction left 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 a...