Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?
No synthesized answer yet. Check the discussion below.
- 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".
I also liked I Am Not Your Enemy by Reality Winner.
Did a very good job of answering the question: why do (did) bright, ethical, motivated people want to work for a company like this?
[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
Not sure about the Endymion ones.
First two were so fun but I think I got hung up on some of the more clumsy stylistic parts of the Endymion books. I guess my “trust” in the author comes from the style and tropes they use, and if I they lose my trust none of the deeper parts resonate. Glad you enjoyed!
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.
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."
and
"Cyberspace has invalidated the real space, moving human interactions to a virtual world as a low-res reality with plenty of compression artifacts. We use it like the Kinetoscope, to live in a purgatory fantasy with less real consequences that we feel we can ultimately just walk away from by logging off."
If you are interested in reading it, just hit me up
I've found many of the individual musings to be quite interesting. In particular the ones that relate to perception (my own biggest pitfall).
- 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...)
Wrote reviews on both Obviously Awesome[0] and StoryBrand[1] for anyone interested.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5369411790 [1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5686301930
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 read this quite a while ago, and can't remember it at all. What did you think of it?
> The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
Loved this when I was a kid.
Introduction to the Theory of Complex Systems is an incredible second book on the subject but it wouldn't be fair to compare it to the Gleick book.
I enjoyed How The World Really Works also.
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.
What was the tattoo if you don't mind sharing?
I got an American traditional rendition of the symbol of the Almighty with a sword through it and the Knights Radiant motto encircled
“life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination”
It’s on my forearm
His refreshingly honest take is very relatable, humorous and encouraging.
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...
The best things and stuff of 2025 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46365726 - Dec 2025 (97 comments)
Introduction to Telephones and Telephone Systems (3rd Ed.) by A. Michael Noll: A great system-level overview covering instruments, transmission media, switching, and signaling.
Understanding Telephone Electronics by Carr, Winder, & Bigelow: Focuses on the electronic components and workings of telephone systems.
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.
- How to Tame a Fox - great popsci history of a genetics experiment
- “The Sixth Extinction” and “Not the end of the world” - compelling but contrasting takes on climate change
- Through Two Doors at Once - posci history of the double slit experiment
- Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist - Luis Alvarez should get just as much attention as Feynman does IMO!
- A Matter of Death and Life - the last book I read this year that was touching and made me remember what’s really important in life
Those physicists worked hard: he writes in the book that 60 hours of work per week — and there were no phones back in the day to blur the lines between work and non-work — were routine in Berkeley. Those were dedicated people.
Here's my log for 2025, most recent at the top. Currently I am slogging my way through Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" which I'm not a fan of. Halfway done with it though!
Gabrielle Zevin, "The Hole We're In" (not my usual genre, enjoyed this though)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land" (pretty good)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love" (PHENOMENAL, highly recommended)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Methuselah's Children" (pretty good, required to understand "Time Enough for Love")
Richard K. Morgan, "Altered Carbon" (very good)
Robert A. Heinlein, "The Rolling Stones" (young adult, but good all the same)
Robert A. Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (very good)
Piers Anthony, "On A Pale Horse" (very good, never got very far into the series though)
Lincoln Child, "Full Wolf Moon" (okay, not great)
Lincoln Child, "The Forgotten Room" (pretty good)
Lincoln Child, "The Third Gate" (very good)
Lincoln Child, "Terminal Freeze" (okay, not great)
William Gibson, "In the Beginning… Was the Command Line" (good, but outdated, look up what he's said about it more recently)
Lincoln Child, "Deep Storm" (very good)
James Patterson, "Along Came a Spider" (not my usual genre, okay though)
Jules Verne, "Around the World in 80 Days" (from childhood, revisited)
That's Neal Stephenson, not William Gibson.
I has been a while since my last Heinlein, you reminded me I should read more.
Besides the gulag is a blueprint to basically all the forms of how totalitarian societies treat their subjects, especially if you can see the pattern working in less cruel and plausible forms.
This is one of my favorite books. The series actually. I really like the backstory to the main character which gets revealed in the later books.
Did you see the tv series made from the series? I was, to put it mildly, disappointed.
I read the whole series as a teenager, and loved it - especially the way he was able to wrap up the entire series at the end.
Siddharta by Hermann Hesse. Helped me understand that a perfect life is a collection of ups and downs and that one must accept it all.
Amerika by Franz Kafka. Could relate to the protagonist because people take advantage of his naivety.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Made me see the world in a less pessimistic way.
It’s topping The Idiot for me- and a fitting way to end the year. I have spent most of 2025 stuck in a 19th Century reading cycle which started when reading Murakamis “After the quake” short story collection, specifically Super-Frog saves Tokyo where he mentions Anna K.
Anna Karenina-> Crime and Punishment-> The Idiot and some various Kafka in the mix too.
Hoping to visit some modern stuff again next year
Really well written and well structured novel, and although he uses long sentences and no paragraph breaks, the writing is surprisingly accessible and incredibly immersive.
It was my first fiction book in a long time and it made me love fiction again.
My introduction to Andy Weir is [The Egg](https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html) which I consider to be a classic.
The audiobook for the most recent one released and immediately became the best selling audiobook in the world. The talent of Jeff Hayes and Soundbooth Theater have ruined other audiobooks for me.
The Red Rising series by Pierce Brown -- lots of sci-fi fun, extremely epic
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King -- King's "Lord of the Rings" opus, great writing, ending maybe a little unsatisfying but not abnormal
Artemis - Andy Weir's first book -- Fun read about a heist on the moon. Anticipating Project Hail Mary movie early next year!
Currently in the middle of: The Talisman - Stephen King / Peter Straub
# The Universe and Dr. Einstein (by Lincoln Barnett) - recommended for anyone who is interested about Einstein's thought process that gave birth to two great theories.
# What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (by Haruki Murakami) - it's my first book from H. M. and I really liked it. It's kind of a memoir and made me like Murakami and now I plan to read his novels too.
# How to Build a Car (by Adrian Newey) - that famous F1 car designer... Great read. Gives readers a chance to glimpse into both (technical) thought process behind designing a race car and human side of it.
# Basic Mathematics (by Serge Lang) - not *reading* exactly, working through it (to brush the rust off of my math fundamentals).
He’s a great writer of prose, but I feel it’s wasted on magical realism. He could have been one of the true greats.
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.
-Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh)
-A Memory called Empire (Arkady Martin) both of these are a fairly interesting take on scifi worldbuilding. Could be called "highbrow", but IMO pretty easy reads still.
-Piranesi (S. Clark) - well written fantasy and plenty of other stuff that I've seen in other comments (Dungeon Crawler Carl does stand out a bit, but it's really a guilty pleasure / escape kind of a read).
Non-Fiction
-Brakneck (Dan Wang) - slightly outdated (by ~2y, which seems really breakneck), but still interesting take on modern China
-Capitalism (Sven Beckert) - still halfway through this one, but it's shaping up to be my #1 for 2025 non fiction
-The Origins of Efficiency - from B. Potter, the author of Construction Physics blog. The blog is fairly information dense, but this basically reads like a textbook. Still a pretty good reference IMO for people working in manufacturing.
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.
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 :)
Dungeon Crawler Carl - I laughed, I cried, perfect match for my sense of humor.
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter - Great read, changed some of my training because of it.
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett (#1 of The Century Trilogy series) - An amazing overview of the 20th century through the eyes of several families accross the globe (fiction).
- Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler
- The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
Some new listens that I liked:
* Blood Over Brighthaven
* Fleabag: A Monster Evolution LitRPG
* Flybot
* The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
* Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Special mention also goes to Taming Silicon Valley by Gary Marcus.
[Best fiction] Stoner - John Williams [Best non-fiction] Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
- 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.
I’ve otherwise been largely re-reading books I haven’t read in a decade or so
* 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)
I did re-read "The Long Run" from Daniel Keys Moran (one of the very short list of books I've re-read, and this was #4 or #5).
"Were you taught to hate Peaceforcers?" "Taught? No."
The only new book that I read was "Heat 2" by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner.
It was "ok". It honestly felt like a mashup of "Heat", "Miami Vice", and "Blackhat". So, not as fresh as I would have liked. (Mind, I really like all of those movies.)
I'll see the movie when it comes out, but the book was just "ok".
Completely rewired how I view language, consciousness, and matter.
- The Tempest (Shakespeare)
- The Book of Dust (Phillip Pullman)
- The Secret Commonwealth (Phillip Pullman)
- Valuable Humans in Transit (qntm)
- Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
- Sunrise on the Reaping (Suzanne Collins)
- Ringworld (Larry Niven)
- The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
- Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
- Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
- Anatomy of the State (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Diaspora (Greg Egan)
- The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Peter Watts)
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.
My favorite book this year was "Differential Privacy" (2025) by Simson Garfinkel. Differential privacy is a mathematical theory of data privacy sandwiched between cryptography, databases, and ML. This is the first book-length non-technical introduction, and it's well executed.
Here's my full book list for the year: https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2025/.
I normally have a difficult time digesting philosophy in older translations or language, but this one was really nicely written and well communicated.
Water by Rumi (translated by Haleh Liza Gafori) was also unexpectedly good. She uses a modern style and it reads so beautifully. It gave me glimpse of the beauty of the Persian language.
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.
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.
Re-read “The Art of Not Being Governed” by James C Scott which is really mind-expanding stuff.
- Futu.re by Dmitry Glukhovsky (author of Metro 2033 series). Interesting take of how life would look like if humans became immortal.
- Blackout by Marc Elsberg. A semi-realistic depiction of a 2-week long blackout in Europe caused by a terrorist attack.
- Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larson. Murder mystery in Sweden. Really enjoyed the setting.
- Lolita, it's mostly what you've read about it.
- a few short stories by Heinrich von Kleist.
It's a must read for 0.001% of the population.
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.
"The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson. Beautiful world-building as always.
And some others that I can't remember but those two were the highlights of the year.
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