Books. For the literati among us.
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25 Read in 2025
Murder Road - Simone st. James
Amazon Prime Far Reaches Series - Various
Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot #6) - Martha Wells
The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
The Wailing Wind (Leaphorn & Chee #15) - Tony Hillerman
Strip Tease - Carl Hiaasen
Eleven Numbers - Lee Child
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
System Collapse - (Murderbot #7) - Martha Wells
Dune - Frank Herbert
Dakiti (Ziva Payvan #1) - E.J. Fisch
Carpathians - Paul A. Dixon
Trunk Music (Harry Bosch #5) Michael Connelly
Piranesi - Susanna Clark
The Night Window (Jane Hawk #5) - Dean Koontz
All Systems Red (Murderbot #1) - Martha Wells
One Dark Summer - Saskia Sarginson
Caught Stealing (Hank Thompson #1) - Charlie Huston
Compulsory (Murderbot Diaries #0.5) - Martha Wells
The Ghost Brigades (Old Man's War #2) - John Scalzi
Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor #1) - Mark Lawrence
There Is No Antimemetics Division: A Novel - qntm
Angels Flight (Harry Bosch #6) - Michael Connelly
Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict 16), Adrian J. Walker tr.
Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor #2) - Mark Lawrence
I finished the last 2 yesterday, 12/31. I'm a bit disappointed I didn't do more being retired and all. Last year I read 24. But this is still OK. While this is not overloaded with extremely long books I think this list has fewer novellas and other quick reads than my last few years. On that note, the second entry is 6 books according to Amazon, Goodreads and my Kindle but they are really short stories so I counted the full set as one book. Overall disappointing too. One very good, 1 good, 1 partly good, and 3 meh to are you kidding?
Further notes:
The MANIAC If you asked all the giant names in math, physics and computer science in the first half of the 20th Century whose brilliance was the most impressive, they almost all said John von Neumann. Maniac is not exactly a biography, fictionalized story, or intellectual history, but it has elements of all three. There isn't really a plot. Most of it consists of POV chapters about von Neumann written (but not really) by family, friends, collaborators, etc. There is also a lot of information about the potential end of the world, human and computer minds, game theory, and how Go is a better contest for humans vs machines than chess. Its not long but it is rich and I might reread this year.
Carpathians is so close to being a great first contact story but IMO suffers from a highly predictable message dropped like an anvil at the end. I did very much enjoy the universe building.
Trunk Music and Angel's Flight are my favorite Bosch to date. The former is a murder mystery that closes in on an apparent solution very early, so you realize as a reader that there has to be much more going on than anyone knows and the fun is watching that unfold.
Piranesi is an odd and original sort of fantasy, with a protagonist whose memory goes back just a few years, and who is trapped in a world made entirely of a vast mansion with haunting, cryptic statues, beaches and tides, and just a handful of other human residents. I did not love the eventual explanation but the journey was worth it.
I discovered the Mark Lawrence books via X. Pretty original fantasy. There is a chosen one, but she's not the main POV protagonist. Though with 1 book left I suppose that might change. No dark evil or great lord, just a dying planet suffering eco-catastrophe while everyone fights and scrambles for a fleeting grasp of power and to have their society and clan die last. 80% of the main characters are women, IMO written well by the male author, and none of it is forced.
There Is No Antimemetics Division I can't even do this justice. Memetics steal memories, hide giant monuments in plain sight, render people invisible, and the more we fleetingly become aware of them the closer they get to destroying humanity. Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. This is not your first day. There is no antimemetics division. You have been in charge of the antimemetics division for years and we are at war. I rather got lost 2/3 through with some back and forth time jumps and characters who keep forgetting things. This is another I might reread this year.
Wildly original scifi.
11 Audiobooks
City Under One Roof (Cara Kennedy #1)
Salt: A World History - Mark Kurlansky
The Habsburgs: To Rule the World - Martyn Rady
Burma '44 - James Holland
Siege of Vraks - Steve Lyons
The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra - Toby Wilkinson
The Secret Lives of Color - Kassia St. Claire
Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu - A.L. Sadler
The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England - Dan Jones
The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors - Dan Jones
The Great Northern War: The History of the Conflict that Made Russia the Dominant Empire in the Baltic - Charles River Editors
City Under One Roof Murder mystery based on a real city in Alaska where the entire town lives and works in one building with apartments, city hall, grocery, restaurants, laundry, police, etc. for 8-10 months every year and only comes out in summer. Fascinating concept but I don't think the novel made as good use of it as I hoped.
Salt Brilliant and fascinating. Thanks for the rec CCMore.
Siege of Vraks. I got this for a couple bucks on Audible not knowing it's a Warhammer 40K novelization, or even what that meant. Had I understood I never would have bothered, but nonetheless it was kind of interesting to get a glimpse into that grimdark universe.
Secret Lives of Color is a magazine column turned into a book but I'm fascinated by the history of color. It covers how humans and societies perceived and named and categorized and learned how to make different shades and hues over centuries.
Tokugawa Ieyasu is the real life Japanese leader at the center of the Clavell Shogun novels. This bio was written about 100 years ago and you can tell, but if you allow for that it holds up.
I could not find an solid audiobook history of The Great Northern War. This version is from a publisher who seems to specialize in "good enough" histories of subjects that might not have as much coverage as others. I'm guessing it was an AI first draft with significant human editing to make it acceptable.
I well enjoyed and recommend all the other big sweeping histories in the audio list, subject to your interest in the subject matter.
Murder Road - Simone st. James
Amazon Prime Far Reaches Series - Various
Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot #6) - Martha Wells
The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
The Wailing Wind (Leaphorn & Chee #15) - Tony Hillerman
Strip Tease - Carl Hiaasen
Eleven Numbers - Lee Child
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
System Collapse - (Murderbot #7) - Martha Wells
Dune - Frank Herbert
Dakiti (Ziva Payvan #1) - E.J. Fisch
Carpathians - Paul A. Dixon
Trunk Music (Harry Bosch #5) Michael Connelly
Piranesi - Susanna Clark
The Night Window (Jane Hawk #5) - Dean Koontz
All Systems Red (Murderbot #1) - Martha Wells
One Dark Summer - Saskia Sarginson
Caught Stealing (Hank Thompson #1) - Charlie Huston
Compulsory (Murderbot Diaries #0.5) - Martha Wells
The Ghost Brigades (Old Man's War #2) - John Scalzi
Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor #1) - Mark Lawrence
There Is No Antimemetics Division: A Novel - qntm
Angels Flight (Harry Bosch #6) - Michael Connelly
Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict 16), Adrian J. Walker tr.
Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor #2) - Mark Lawrence
I finished the last 2 yesterday, 12/31. I'm a bit disappointed I didn't do more being retired and all. Last year I read 24. But this is still OK. While this is not overloaded with extremely long books I think this list has fewer novellas and other quick reads than my last few years. On that note, the second entry is 6 books according to Amazon, Goodreads and my Kindle but they are really short stories so I counted the full set as one book. Overall disappointing too. One very good, 1 good, 1 partly good, and 3 meh to are you kidding?
Further notes:
The MANIAC If you asked all the giant names in math, physics and computer science in the first half of the 20th Century whose brilliance was the most impressive, they almost all said John von Neumann. Maniac is not exactly a biography, fictionalized story, or intellectual history, but it has elements of all three. There isn't really a plot. Most of it consists of POV chapters about von Neumann written (but not really) by family, friends, collaborators, etc. There is also a lot of information about the potential end of the world, human and computer minds, game theory, and how Go is a better contest for humans vs machines than chess. Its not long but it is rich and I might reread this year.
Carpathians is so close to being a great first contact story but IMO suffers from a highly predictable message dropped like an anvil at the end. I did very much enjoy the universe building.
Trunk Music and Angel's Flight are my favorite Bosch to date. The former is a murder mystery that closes in on an apparent solution very early, so you realize as a reader that there has to be much more going on than anyone knows and the fun is watching that unfold.
Piranesi is an odd and original sort of fantasy, with a protagonist whose memory goes back just a few years, and who is trapped in a world made entirely of a vast mansion with haunting, cryptic statues, beaches and tides, and just a handful of other human residents. I did not love the eventual explanation but the journey was worth it.
I discovered the Mark Lawrence books via X. Pretty original fantasy. There is a chosen one, but she's not the main POV protagonist. Though with 1 book left I suppose that might change. No dark evil or great lord, just a dying planet suffering eco-catastrophe while everyone fights and scrambles for a fleeting grasp of power and to have their society and clan die last. 80% of the main characters are women, IMO written well by the male author, and none of it is forced.
There Is No Antimemetics Division I can't even do this justice. Memetics steal memories, hide giant monuments in plain sight, render people invisible, and the more we fleetingly become aware of them the closer they get to destroying humanity. Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. This is not your first day. There is no antimemetics division. You have been in charge of the antimemetics division for years and we are at war. I rather got lost 2/3 through with some back and forth time jumps and characters who keep forgetting things. This is another I might reread this year.
Wildly original scifi.
11 Audiobooks
City Under One Roof (Cara Kennedy #1)
Salt: A World History - Mark Kurlansky
The Habsburgs: To Rule the World - Martyn Rady
Burma '44 - James Holland
Siege of Vraks - Steve Lyons
The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra - Toby Wilkinson
The Secret Lives of Color - Kassia St. Claire
Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu - A.L. Sadler
The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England - Dan Jones
The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors - Dan Jones
The Great Northern War: The History of the Conflict that Made Russia the Dominant Empire in the Baltic - Charles River Editors
City Under One Roof Murder mystery based on a real city in Alaska where the entire town lives and works in one building with apartments, city hall, grocery, restaurants, laundry, police, etc. for 8-10 months every year and only comes out in summer. Fascinating concept but I don't think the novel made as good use of it as I hoped.
If I had a nickel for every murder mystery I consumed in a January 2024 and January 2025 in which women in very remote Alaska killed abusive men and the authorities who solve the crime decide to cover it up, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice. I'm not anticipating to make it 3 Januaries in a row.
Siege of Vraks. I got this for a couple bucks on Audible not knowing it's a Warhammer 40K novelization, or even what that meant. Had I understood I never would have bothered, but nonetheless it was kind of interesting to get a glimpse into that grimdark universe.
Secret Lives of Color is a magazine column turned into a book but I'm fascinated by the history of color. It covers how humans and societies perceived and named and categorized and learned how to make different shades and hues over centuries.
Tokugawa Ieyasu is the real life Japanese leader at the center of the Clavell Shogun novels. This bio was written about 100 years ago and you can tell, but if you allow for that it holds up.
I could not find an solid audiobook history of The Great Northern War. This version is from a publisher who seems to specialize in "good enough" histories of subjects that might not have as much coverage as others. I'm guessing it was an AI first draft with significant human editing to make it acceptable.
I well enjoyed and recommend all the other big sweeping histories in the audio list, subject to your interest in the subject matter.
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Still a lot. My average is 305, but that includes the 6 short stories I consider one book, and also all my audiobooks. So I really have little idea of the average length of the books I actually read.