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Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

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161–170 of 459 posts

Re: Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

#161
All fiction.

- The Great Gatsby. Really enjoyed it and seemed fitting with the current times.

- Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann. Generational wealth come and gone. Good for putting things into perspective.

- Things Fall Apart, Achebe.

- The Pearl, John Steinbeck

- Hyperion (first book), Dan Simmons. Great sci-fi. Bought the second book and look forward to reading it.

- Stoner, John Williams. Incredibly well written book

- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez. Still finishing but I hope to finish in time for next year

Re: Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

#163
I had ChatGPT create a list of the top 100 literary classics of the past century and summarize them for me. While I'm waiting for Claude Code to write code for me I listen to the summaries like an audiobook. I'm planning to read a lot more than 100 books next year!

Re: Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

#164
This year:

- I read the entire “Frog & Toad” collection. Probably about 30 times, some stories more.

- “Little Shrew’s Day”… probably 25 times.

- Many of the “Construction Site” series books, especially the OG “Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site”. The “Garbage Crew” and “Airport” books featured heavily.

- Started to mix in some “Pete the Cat” titles.

- “Detective Dog Nell” got a lot of air play.

Lots of others, but those are definitely the frequent fliers.

Re: Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

#165
Among non-fiction what stood out to me was David Bentley Hart's All Things are Full of Gods, great book also very fun to read written as a Platonic dialogue. To me one of the most compelling theologians today.

Bruno Maçães, World Builders. Good book on the impact of technology in geopolitics has been consistently interesting.

Among fiction re-read a lot of Lovecraft, noticed that I like the Dream Quest stories more than the horror these days which surprised me. But they're more compelling to me now because of how much you can see Lovecraft as a person in them.

The last three Dune books. Liked the last two about the Bene Gesserit a lot, was surprised how much I disliked God Emperor given the praise it gets, but it honestly reads like Frank Herbert posting twitter hot takes as a worm with no story

Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger. Among the best novellas I've ever read, very different in tone from most of his books.

Shūsaku Endō, Silence. Book about a Jesuit mission in early Edo Japan. My favorite Japanese book in a long time.

Among technical books, re-read The Mythical Man Month, probably more relevant than it ever was in an age of artifical man-hours added to projects. Robert Seacord Effective C, after not having written C in a long time. Really good intermediate level book for modern C. Also making my way through The Little Schemer as a replacement for advent of code in the second half of the month this year.

Re: Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

#166
post #71

My goal for the year was 15 books. I've finished 14 so far and should finish #15 in the next couple of days if all goes well. Here's what I've read (it's a mix of fiction and non-fiction) in reverse order by completion date: 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 Ta…

The bobiverse books are fantastic, would suggest continuing the series as it gets even better

Yeah, I've been hearing that sentiment, and riffs on it, here on HN for years. But it took me this long to finally get around to actually picking up Book 1. I enjoyed it a lot though, and definitely plan to continue with the series.

Re: Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

#167

All fiction. - The Great Gatsby. Really enjoyed it and seemed fitting with the current times. - Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann. Generational wealth come and gone. Good for putting things into perspective. - Things Fall Apart, Achebe. - The Pearl, John Steinbeck - Hyperion (first book), Dan Simmons. Great sci-fi. Bought the second book and look forward to reading it. - Stoner, John Williams. Incredibly well written book -…

Hyperion is awesome. Each story could be its own novella but especially the priest's tale. I also loved the consul's tale. I haven't read the rest yet because I am unsure how the story will go without that structure as I wasn't too invested in the space politics, but I hear it is good. Also if you haven't read, The Terror by Dan Simmons is also great and strikes historical/horror like I feel hyperion does scifi/horror

Re: Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

#168
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

Highly recommended no matter what your age.

Just a few chapters into The Art of Spending Money by the same author. So far very good as well.

Both cover how personal finance is, first and foremost, personal and specific to an individual and highly dependent on your life experience.

Re: Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

#170
I read close to 40 books this year which I assume is up from the previous year, and way more than I used to read prior to starting to do the Rochester Library reading challenge (which I've done for the past two years). I won't get into a lot of it, but after reading Middlemarch three years ago, Napoleon: A Life two years ago, and The Power Broker last year I decided to read two "big" books.

In the first half of the year War and Peace, which obviously was excellent, although I liked Middlemarch more.

In the second half of the year David Copperfield which was very excellent. Just beautifully written. I still think I probably like Middlemarch more... but it might now require a re-read to know for sure.

This year is going to be Tom's Crossing to start as I just got that for Christmas.

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