2025 Reading List and Recommendations

I read 41 books this year (not including textbooks) and while there were some complete time wasters, pretty happy with quite a few of them, though felt I should have gotten through more (my goal was 40). While definitely not as wildly exuberant with my recommnendations as I was in 2024 , there’s still some solid stuff you might want to add to your own list. I’ve devided the list into Must, Perhaps, and Don’t Reads as well as the full list with rough star ratings.

Must Reads

When the Heavens Went on Sale
How to Win an Information War
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World
The Children
The Handmaid’s Tale
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series (yes, all 7)
Everything is Tuberculosis

When the Heavens Went on Sale

You may not be aware of it, but there is an all out gold-rush, land-grab race happening above your head in plain sight for Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

Unfortunately, SpaceX gets an overshare of media coverage which means a heap of fascinating personalities and companies in the largely invisible space race are often overlooked.

Scrappy, entrepreneurial, and highly technical founders (and some hustlers, as well) this book does an amazing job covering both the driving personalities and shadier characters trying to build and make their fortunes on the new frontier. I really loved this book and it actually gave me enough foresight to invest in some early stage companies I made a killing on. Highly recommended and much, much better than he documentary (Wild, Wild Space) it is based on.

How to Win an Information War

It’s difficult to take a look at our highly polarized world sundered by social media and not despair, much less understand what has happened. The internet changed so many things but it feels like its promise has been hijecked, and sometimes, like the good guys are not winning.

But there is a similar model to what we’ve seen. And Pomerantsev frames much of the book through WWII and the propaganda operations against Germany by the British.

The idea is that modern conflicts (even within democracies fanned by polarization, inequality, and eroding institutional trust) are no longer decided by weapons, but control over narratives, attention, and trust and democracy is currently losing this battle. There were some very salient observations in this book and I honestly think it should be a lot more popular than it is.

Disinformation aims to exhaust, not convince - flooding the space until people not longer engage so there is no common truth or facts on the matter
Stories beat facts - someting I can assure you as a data professional in highly contentious companies
Authoritarians use open systems against themselves flooding channels, using legal defences, and abusing norms opener socieities value and need
Democracies are fighting the wrong battles - fact checking, moderation or techincal fixes are not really the answer

Information integrity is actually a long-term democratic infrastructure problem, involving rebuilding effective government and trust in credible instituions, investing in public-interest (and perhaps supported and independent) media, and understansing that communitues are composed of identities, not just fact-targets. The last is particularly important since quite often propaganda’s real purpose is to give its targets a sense of belonging, a higher purpose, and to align you against outsiders to the group.

It’s a sobering and scary look at one of our most real problems though it’s largely descriptive rather than perscriptive. Outlining the problem and naming the enemy, rather than giving a five point plan to comabt the issue.

Great book though. As I said I wish more people had read it and were acting on its message and warning.

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

The core idea of this book, that our obsessions with cars and the legislation around making sure their needs are met have somehow skewed housing into being vastly more expensive and our cities being dysfunctional since cars require so much more space and affordances than people.

A fascinating exaimination on how cars may be one of the core reasons for the housing shortage and housing cost explosions by driving up the underlying costs of housing and providing mehcnisms for NIMBY locals to prevent new housibng in their areas. Mostly applicable to the US, but I honestly would have loved to have seen this applied to whether the same issue is contributing on my own home turf of Canada since there is a serious housing and affordability crisis there as well.

Strangely fascinating but good book despite what would seem to be a dry subject. If you do like it, and while it was not as well written, I’d also recommended “Our Lives in Their Portfolios” below which covers off how insittuional investing and VC firms are driving up costs on everything from utilities to housing to the detriment of mosst citizens globally, and particularly for those in more precarious financial positions.

The Children

When we learn about the US Civil Rights movement in the US, we often over focus on the people who were the visible spokespersons for it in the media: MLK, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks. The fact is (and I can tell you this from my time as an activist), is that the hard work of societal change is grinding at the ground truth level with a lot of dedicated individual activists runniung local campaigns that end up amplifying to national movements for change.

This book is an incredible account of the hard yards of the Civil Rights movement, pointing to the almost impossibly young and phenomenally brave (and there are many terrifying stories in here) individuals that did the work moving rights forward out of sight of the cmaeras to actually transform the US for the better.

It is a humbling and an amazing piece of journalism which should probably be required reading in the United States (especially now), since it underlines how much the hard work of social progress is that of dedicated and passionate individuals taking action, and even someetimes risking their lives, for a better tomorrow. The book does drag a bit near the end as it traces the later histories of some of the activists who took their experience and work on the Movement and translated that into both social good and, in some cases, personal proft (Marion Barry’s shameful showing as te corrupt mayor of DC). A phenomenal piece of journalism spanning 50 years, it should be reqwuired reading.

Highly recomemnded.

The Handmaid’s Tale

Strangely, I thought I had already read THT further back after my undegrad when I was actually living in Toronto (and a friend’s friend actually lived next to Margaret Atwood). But it’s quite clear I had not, and that’s a sin. This should absolutely be required reading by every senior high school student, and delivered in the same dystopian near-future curricula as 1984 and Brave New World.

The terrifying spectre of Gilead and a world where women revert to being the property of men, and the despondent tale of being a handmaid, effectively breeding stock for those in power whose wives can’t conceive, is a scary exaggeration of the sort of downright disturbing shift to the Christian right we see in the US and fiat legislation without democratic checks.

So, yeah, if you’ve never read it, do so. It’s troubling, terrifying, and important. And I’m a bit embarrassed it took me this long to be absolutely sure I read and heard it.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

Surpisingly great telling of one of the most dramatic 18th century shipwrecks, complete with mutiny, desperation, cannibalism and a desperate bid to sail back to civilization via cobbled together ships that captivated the Briitsh public at the time.

Great writing and absolutely terrifying descrioptions of the the type of conditions and waves one faced when rounding Cape Horn at a time when the map was a lot less filled in. Disturbing descriptions of the toll of scurvy on the crew and the fatalities and horror of dying from it on long voyages. Really enjoyed this book which was a sort of random add to my reading list.

Well worth the time.

Dungeon Crawler Carl (Yes, all seven of them)

I have to admit to needing here to publically apoloigize to my friend who told me repeatedly that I needed to read this despite the absurd premise he said I would need to get past to enjoy it. He was right.

I really enjoyed these books and was surprised to find myself burning through these highly readable and fun books as a speed I can only – in ways that perhaps I slammed through things like the Harry Potter books. Shockingly, I often rail against authors that can’t seem to tell a story in a trilogy, but I burned through seven of these and am really sitting her waiting for the next one.

I’ve already passed them on and recomended them to almost anyone who I thought would enjoy them. So, try the first one. If, like me, you had to know what happened to Carl and Princess Donut on level three, well… you’ll probably enjoy the rest. A bit embarassed to admit that I read these ahead of some much more serious books on my reading list. I regret nothing.

Everything is Tuberculosis

This was a very late addition to my reading list, but especially after a very close friend contracted TB two years ago and after my EMR, I am very glad I read it.

Written by the novelist who wrote “The Fault in Our Stars” and is a fantastic and impassioned plea to do better to eliminate the world’s largest infectious killer (it killed 1.35M people in 2023 worldwide.) which is completely curable. In fact, it may have killed as many as 1 out of every 7 people that has ever lived. The fact is, the world stopped caring about TB once it was no longer a problem for rich nations.

And so we have entered a strange era of human history: preventable curable infectious disease remains our deadliest. That’s the world we are currently choosing.
But we can choose a different world.

Much like smallpox, we could all but eliminate this disease in the 21st century, which would be an amazing goal for the last 3/4 of the century.

Perhaps Read

Lords of Finance
The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins
Our Lives in Their Portfolios
Moral Ambition
Free and Equal

Lords of Finance

While not as entertaining as 1929 below, this is a better book if you’re interested in looking at one of the probable theories as to why the stock market crash of 1929 happened as well as the resulting Depression that largely defined the quarter century after it happened.

While also focusing on personalities of the time, the Central Bankers of the Uk, France, germany, and the US, this book focuses on central bankers, those who handled the money supply, at that time tied to the gold standard and bullion, and the fact that the issue may have been the adherence to the standard may have caused the inflationary crisis and subsequent ecnomics upheavals that probably contributed to the Depression and the Second World War that followed (nb: there are other theories as to why the stock market crash and depression were enduring, so consider this only one possible theory, or contributing factor.).

Interesting, and gives an alternative perspective on a rarely considered macroeconomic influence of geoplitics, the central bankers and capital compensation.

The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins

While it may seem strange, amongst zoologists, there is a huge debate over whether culture, as we understand it, exists outside of humans.

This book makes a pretty convincing argument that cetaceans do indeed possess culture in the sense of being able to pass on knowledge in a non-genetic fashion and in increasingly sophsticated ways. It also posits interesting consideration about cetacean culture that are consquences of the environment they live in copared to ours (for example a 3D environment versus are more linear, 2D one.).

Perhaps not of interest to everyone, but interesting nonetheless.

Our Lives in Their Portfolios

If this had been shorter or a bit better written, this would have made the Must Reads list since it does deal with an important topic, which is the increasing concertration of the basics assets of living amongst institutional investors that are rent-seeking and return paxmiimzing leading to worse outcomes for individuals that are using those large groups of investments, which are now as diverse as housing, public utilities, infrastructures, and basics such as water provision.

For me, this made a compelling case for completely overhauling the way we approach these types of infrastructure and public goods contracts, since many of them have enriched (guaranteed, even) investors returns at the expense of taxpayers and the public, as well as the consumers of those services.

Fundamentally, it underlines a movement in risk from private investors (even if many of them are largely and loosely held by institutional funders) to the public and have led to worse outcomes overall in many cases of risk-based financing of infrastructures. It’s a distrubing and increasingly common story that does not bode well for consumers or governments and needs greater accountability.

Moral Ambition

While I like the message of this book, that we should all be doing better, doing more important work rather than building ad networks, dodgy finance products, or influencer followings, and that there are many important things that still need to build or problems to be solved, this book’s connectin with the Effective Altruism movement is a bit distrbing and has in some cases, led to a “techbro-ification” of some causes and problems at the expense of the harder, slower, more arduous change necessary for deep underlying problems in society.

So, it’s worth the read, but be careful of the message… sometimes just focus ing on what can be fixed now, versus what we need to continue to work on fixing, is a dangrous memetic darwinian argument that does not lead to the best outcomes.

Free and Equal

I really wish this had been a better, more realistic book on how to apply prgamtic, rather than largely (what I consider) unwrkable solutions to the curent scourge of neoliberal thought which has unfortunately affected partisan poolitics in almost every country.

Based on the work of the political philosopher Rawls, which is a important read for its ideas. And, while it is true we need a shining light on the hill to help steer what we should be aspiring to for our democracies and addressing the pre-eminent problems that have led to our current democractic crisis of confidence, many of the larger suggestions from the interpreter here are simply unworkable in any political context we exist in. While there are some good suggestions within the book that would make democracy better, if a dedicated enough activist or legislator to push changes through, much of the

Don’t Read

1929
The Long View
Your Brain on Art
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

1929

I have no idea why so many people rave and give kudos to this book. Perhaps they’ve never read anything about the Crash but I felt it was simply personalizing it through celebrities rather than adding any thing tot he lirterature as to the why and hows of the crisis, or in how we might avert another. Kinda of a sightseers guide to the human miserty caused through the eyes of the rich and powerful. I don’t know perhaps it personalized it for readers but I felt the book was a waste of time myself.

Much of it is near-historical fiction and speculiation and it adds nothing to the actual theories around why the Great Crash and Depression happened other than having the events reflected amongst the financial celebrities of the age. It’s a strange addition to the literature which perhaps personalizes but certainly doesn’t help us understand conculcisively or any better why we had the great financial contraction which paved the way to world war II, but as well as the modern liberal social state.

The Long View

A good idea kinda gone wrong, while I agree with the premise of the book — that short-termism has led to dangerous and counter-productive outcomes, the arguments in this book are weak and unconvincing, even if I agree with them. Yet another over-hyped and over-marketing book that says something basic that could have been supported with much better argeuments and constructive evidence.

Your Brain on Art

Again, an award winner that claims that Art is good for you. And while I truly believe that is true, much of this book uses threadbare studies (which I wager are unreproducible) and a lot of speculation and over-generalization to drive a case for more art in your life. While I do think it’s good for you, and art is good for its own sake, basing a “scientific” case on some of the info in this book feels sketchy.

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

Sadly dated if even relevant any more, the book simply states you have more time than you think and that you should carve out some time for enriching (and Bennett’s choices are highly subjective as to what is worthwhile) activities. While I think you could perhaps take the core message to watch a lot less Netflix and actally get some stuff done in your life, it feels woefully inadequate and of little use in any but a 1950s context. In any case, you can skip it.

The List

Here’s all of 2025 in books (not including textbooks):

When the Heavens Went on Sale *****
Lord of the Flies ****
We Should All Be Feminists ****
Lords of Finance (Pulitzer) ****
Critical Mass ***
Main Street Millionaire ***
How to Win an Information War *****
White Teeth **
The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins ****
How to Live in 24 Hours **
The Financial Activist Playbook **
Mickey7 ****
Your Brain on Art **
The Long View **
Paved Paradise *****
The Color Purple ****
It Can’t Happen Here **
Our Lives in Their Portfolios ****
The Forever War ***
The High Frontier ***
How Plants Work ***
The Interpreter of Maladies **
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare ***
The Children by David Halberstam *****
The Handmaid’s Tale *****
The Devotion of Suspect X ***
Fluent Forever ***
On Tyranny ****
My Bondage and My Freedom ****
Moral Ambition ****
Dungeon Crawler Carl 1 *****
Dungeon Crawler Carl 2 *****
Dungeon Crawler Carl 3 *****
Dungeon Crawker Carl 4 *****
Dungeon Crawler Carl 5 ****
Dungeon Crawler Carl 6 - Bedlam Bride *****
Dungeon Crawler Carl 7 - The Inevitable Ruin *****
1929 **
The Wager *****
Free and Equal ****
Everything is Tuberculosis *****

Fin

And that wraps 2025. My main goal for 2026 reading wise is to alternate novels with non-fiction since I’m rather heavy on the non-fiction. So, I’ll probably also be a lot more selective with non-fiction titles next year.

I do hope you found something interesting in my reads to pick off and add to your own 2026 reading list (please let me know if you do and what you thought of the book/s). You might want to check out past reading lists as well since I’ve been luckier than most in inbibing some great books over the time I’ve been writing these posts.

2024 , 2023 , 2022 , 2021 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2017 , and 2016 .

If this post was useful, please lemme know via mail or elephant below. Feel free to mention or ping me on @awws on mastodon or email me at hola@wakatara.com . Happy Reading!