📚 2025

Another great year of reading, and with a back log the length of human history why would every year not be as great?

Fiction

1. The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, which if I were being pedantic should be books 1–3 but I view this particular trilogy as really just the final book, That Hideous Strength, with two extended prologues.
2. Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer, last in the Terra Ignota trilogy, made me want to read The Illiad.
3. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, even better than I remembered it from 20 years ago.
4. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir will make for a good movie but please do not watch the trailer unless you want to see a major mid-story spoiler.
5. Babel by R. F. Kuang felt rushed and ultimately forgettable.

Science and technology

6. Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows was the best introduction to systems thinking for people in your life who are not into systems thinking.
7. How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg, a slice of Incerto applied to large projects.
8. The Notebook by Roland Allen, better than I expected.
9. In the Beginning… Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson, an essay that aged very well indeed.
10. A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins, a billionaire turned neuroscientist.
11. Thinking With Tinderbox by Mark Bernstein will be useful only to users of the Tinderbox app but if you are reading this you may want to take a look.
12. Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, a much needed antidote to the pro-big tech authors I tend to listen and read.
13. The Occasional Human Sacrifice by Carl Elliott, an antidote to the pro-clinical trial authors I tend to follow, though I still question whether it was needed.
14. The Billion-Dollar Molecule by Barry Werth, yes, biotech is broken by design.

Philosophy and religion

15. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis will be on my yearly re-read list because sadly the anti-human movement has gone from strength to strength propelled by useful idiots who think that this time it’s different.
16. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis was hilarious.
17. A Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher opened my eyes to Shumacher’s work which is as timely as ever.
18. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by Ernst F. Schumacher, the world could have taken a turn for the better in the late 1970s but then something happened.
19. Good Work by Ernst Friedrich Schumacher was not as strong as the first two and has an uncomfortable addendum about superior people tacked on at the end so I still don’t know what to make of it.
20. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, who sounds like a delightful person to be around and the half-lotus is in fact my preferred position for reading books but that is as far as my Earth-locked self will go into Eastern mysticism.
21. Books - A Manifesto by Ian Patterson, delightful.
22. Wittgenstein’s Poker by David Edmonds was a better introduction to Wittengstein and Poppper’s works than any formal biography.
23. Feline Philosophy by John Gray, mediocre.

And here are years past: 2024 — 2023 — 2022 though of course the book reviews go way back.