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Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

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

#291

Post by dandano »

mattkrick wrote: post #185
shmoe wrote: post #98

The Silo series by Hugh Howey -- some excellent sci-fi to go along with the show 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 ye…

I just finished the red rising series this year. Do you have any other recommendations in the same genre?

The Will of the Many. I’m about to start Red Rising series as it’s similar to it.

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

#292

Post by colechristensen »

Things I really liked:

- The Murderbot Diaries (all of them)

- Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero (Sprawl Trilogy) – perfection

- Discworld series (almost all of them)

- Bobiverse serise (all of them)

- Old Man's War series

- Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir – Werner Herzog's autobiography

- The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin

- Kissinger: A Biography (approval of Kissinger not required)

- various collected works of Borges

- various works of Carl Jung

- Starship Troopers

- A Man Called Ove – made me cry

- A Stitch in Time – a star trek actor novelizing his headcannon of the character he played

- Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town

- Mickey7

- Solaris

- Flowers for Algernon

- Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Things I disliked:

- The Wheel of Time (I forget how many I got through)

- Eruption – a posthumous Michael Crichton book was really terrible

- The Book of the New Sun

- The Creative Act: A Way of Being – an artist trying and failing to talk about science

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

#293

Post by EvanAnderson »

etrautmann wrote: post #275
numbsafari wrote: post #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,…

Are you me? Glad others have this exact experience

Similar experience w/ my daughter (now 12 y/o) here. We read the heck out of children's books when she was little. There were nights when I really didn't want to slog thru the same Suzy Spafford[6] book again, but I did it anyway. I think it paid off. My daughter is an avid reader now.

She says she still wants me to read to her, so I do. This year was a bit sci-fi heavy, and we've decided to target more fantasy and literature in 2026.

This year's books included:

"Below the Root", "And All Between", and "Until the Celebration" - The "Green Sky Trilogy"[0] by Zilpha Keatly Snyder. We held off on playing the "Below the Root" video game[1] but I'm hoping that as we get into winter weather and outside time becomes more scarce we can get to it. It's arguably the final book in the "trilogy".

"Redshirts"[2] by John Scalzi. We've been slowly making our way through Star Trek TOS in the last couple years so. That gave her enough cultural fluency with the tropes in the book to make it effective.

"To Say Nothing of the Dog"[3] by Connie Willis. My daughter adores Victorian England and comedy. This book also turned her on to Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)"[4] (which I'm still working thru on my own-- I do not particularly love Victorian England but it is a good book).

Besides the books I read to my daughter, I also read Martha Wells' "The Murderbot Diaries"[5] series myself. I'm vaguely interested in the television adaptation. I'd love to hear what somebody who has read the series thinks of the TV version.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Sky_Trilogy

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Sky_Trilogy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirts_(novel)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_in_a_Boat

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murderbot_Diaries

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzy_Spafford

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

#295

Post by EvanAnderson »

colechristensen wrote: post #292

Things I really liked: - The Murderbot Diaries (all of them) - Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero (Sprawl Trilogy) – perfection - Discworld series (almost all of them) - Bobiverse serise (all of them) - Old Man's War series - Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir – Werner Herzog's autobiography - The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin - Kissinger: A Biography (approval of Kissinger not required) - vari…

I'll throw out a recommendation for Neal Stephenson, if you're not already familiar. I like all of his stuff, personally, but the books "Zodiac"[0], "Interface"[1], and "The Cobweb"[2] (the latter two co-authored with his uncle) I think would be a slam-dunk for you, based on your list.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_(novel)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cobweb_(novel)

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

#296

Post by ffuxlpff »

czhu12 wrote: post #184
mrexroad wrote: post #179

Been a year of re-reads and some classics I never started b/c of thickness. Standouts for me were “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Norwegian Wood.” “Kafka on The Shore”, “Norwegian Wood” - Haruki Murakami “A Tale of Two Cities” - Dickens “Count of Monte Cristo” - Alexandre Dumas LotR, “Hobbit” - Tolkien “World Atlas of Coffee” - James Hoffmann “Anathem”, “Diamond Age”, “Termination Shock” - Neal Stephenson “A Timeless Way…

I envy your reading abilities

A couple of says ago there was an excellent comment here on Hacker News about that you shouldn't read only in bed but allocate proper not tired time for reading. Otherwise you learn to associate reading with sleeping and drowse off after a few pages.

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

#297

Post by ffuxlpff »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #270

I read escapist “junk.” Proud of it. I re-read Dave Duncan’s A Man of His Word [0], and A Handful of Men series[1]. I followed up by re-reading The Great Game [2], by the same author. I re-read the original 10 (+1) books of Chronicles of the Black Company [3], by Glen Cook, again, as he just released a couple of new books, after many years (and has 4 more, on the way). I also recently read Lies Weeping [4] (the lates…

You should always read only books you enjoy.

Even if you think they're shallow you will realize the deeper stuff in that made you be interested in them you later. Your subconscious knows better.

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

#298

Post by iddan »

- My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir - Meir Shalev

- Four Meals - Meir Shalev

- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Currently reading: Anna Karenina - Tolstoy, The Creative Act - Rick Rubin

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

#299

Post by ffuxlpff »

branon wrote: post #83

The Gulag Archipelago is on my shelf, when I rotate back to Russian authors (big fan of Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov) I will hopefully get to it. 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. Heinlei…

Dostoevsky's Memoirs from the House of Dead is a good companion to Gulag Archipelago to show how things got worse into the full medieval sadism in less than a hundred years.

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.

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

#300

Post by elric »

RexySaxMan wrote: post #245

I read the entirety of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. I've been meaning to since I heard about it in college over a decade ago. With a new baby here and some extended parental leave, I ploughed through all 8000 pages or so and it was so, so worth it.

You'll be pleased to know that there's another 20 or so books in the same universe, both by Steven Erikson and Ian Esslemont. Not all of them are as good as the Book of the Fallen, but most of them are pretty close, and some are even better.
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