Favorite books of 2025
Another year where my technical content consumption outpaced the non-technical, and as a result, as usually happens, I’ve been feeling a lack of inspiration in my technical work. I strongly believe that if you do anything with code, you should be reading more fiction than non-fiction. Hoping to break that chain next year!
In writing these up, Ialso realized that most of these books are also not happy or easy books to read. I generally struggle through serious books, but all of these were enormously important for me this year.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman - We are placed in a surreal, alien world, where there are no men. An unnamed narrator lives in a prison cell, surrounded only by women and their memories of the outside, the life before they were abducted and taken to the prison. The book chronicles their escape and life on the alien planet, but it’s less about the plot and more about the philosophy of what it means to live in a society. I was deeply moved after I finished the book and had many more questions than answers.
Chess Story by Stefan Zweig - This short story can be read in one sitting. I strongly recommend this edition of the book, it is beautiful and makes you feel like you’re reading real literature. It is about a chess master on a ship who encounters a passenger who plays chess as well as him. The reason why this rando is so good at chess turns out to be extremely sad and important. The writing is clear and the plot moves with enormous speed. Like with “I Who Have Never Known Men”, this book made me think less about the events of the book and more about what our role is in society as free, thinking human beings.
I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko - I read this book when it was released by Meduza, and I’m so happy there’s now a translation. Since then, the book has been featured on a bunch of best-of lists in English. Kostyuchenko is an enormously skilled journalist, now in exile. She is surgically precise with details and connections and words, and moreover, she is extremely empathetic with her subjects. She describes Russia during the rise of Putin as an enormously complicated, cruel place that also happens to be her homeland, the place of her family, culture, and first experiences. There are no easy answers in her articles and essays.
The story that struck with me the most is the longform reporting she did about the Nganasan people who live in the deep Siberian north, in the small, remote town of Ust-Avam, which can only be reached by helicopter. They have gradually and curelly been disenfranchised, stripped of their hunting grounds and traditions by successive Soviet and Russian governments. I had to put the book down several times because of how hard it was to read, and yet I came out of it being very greatful I read it.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - Everything Claire Keegan writes is simply a banger, I read two of her books this year and would recommend both of them. Every word she picks is the correct word at the correct time, about the correct person. From the first paragraph, we are immediately in cold, rainy Ireland in the fall, and we are just as uncomfortable as the book wants us to be.
In October there were yellow trees. Then the clocks went back the hour and the long November winds came in and blew, and stripped the trees bare. In the town of New Ross, chimneys threw out smoke which fell away and drifted off in hairy, drawn-out strings before dispersing along the quays, and soon the River Barrow, dark as stout, swelled up with rain.
- Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro - Elena’s only child, her daughter Rita who lived with and cared for her, is found dead in the bell tower of their local church. Elena, who riddled with the ravages of Parkinson’s, must find Rita’s killer, even though she can’t walk more than a few steps most days. This book is about our obligation to care for others in our society, and a society that doesn’t make space for people who are alone, or older, or simply different. In addition, Elena is a hardened and wry narrator, someone you’d love to spend an afternoon with, which makes what’s happening to her all the more tragic.