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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?

#311

Post by rochansinha »

flopsamjetsam wrote: post #131
rochansinha wrote: post #28

How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg Bhagvad Gita by Eknath Easwaran Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke How The World Really Works by Vaclav Smil The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune Chaos by James Gleick Wind and Truth (Stormlight Archive #5) by Brandon Sanderson The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle The Day of th…

> Chaos by James Gleick I read this quite a while ago, and can't remember it at all. What did you think of it? > The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth Loved this when I was a kid.

It’s a great introduction to chaos theory and emergent phenomena. Makes you look at the world in a different way!

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

#312

Post by Popeyes »

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,…

We went to America to see some family and we were discussing books and we were shocked that they had never heard of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler who are an absolute staple of UK kids book culture (so much so that they adapt one of her books as animations for each Christmas). So if they aren't on your radar, then they come highly recommended.

https://axelscheffler.com/who-is-he https://www.juliadonaldson.co.uk/books/

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

#313

Post by wojciii »

I read a lot of sci-fi. Much of that is bad.

This is not the case.

Dennis Paul Himes: Raisinbread: The Story of Jennifer Choate and Her Role in the Crisis of 2262

After reading the above book (I didn't get much sleep) I e-mailed the author with the subject "Please take my money!" and asked him to write more books.

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

#314

Post by wojciii »

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…

> Richard K. Morgan

This is one of my favorite books. The series actually. I really like the backstory to the main character which gets revealed in the later books.

Did you see the tv series made from the series? I was, to put it mildly, disappointed.

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

#315

Post by lencastre »

Fiction:

“There is no antimimetic division”,

“Project hail mary”,

“Permutation city”,

“White noise”,

and non-fiction:

“Measurement”,

“The sovereign child”,

“Don’t die”,

“The basic laws of human stupidity”,

…and I think I am forgetting something

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

#316

Post by peterspath »

I read 52 books this year:

- Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger

- Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink

- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

- The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

- The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

- When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté

- Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke

- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer

- Standing Strong by John MacArthur

- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

- We Who Wrestle with God by Jordan B. Peterson

- I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek

- The Holy Bible

- Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef

- I Am Giorgia by Giorgia Meloni

- 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

- The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren

- The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray

- The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray

- The War on the West by Douglas Murray

- Porn Generation by Ben Shapiro

- The Authoritarian Moment by Ben Shapiro

- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

- In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen

- Darkest Hour by Anthony McCarten

- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

- The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

- Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming

- Moonraker by Ian Fleming

- Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming

- From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

- Dr No by Ian Fleming

- Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

- For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming

- Thunderball by Ian Fleming

- The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming

- On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming

- You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

- The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming

- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

- 1984 by George Orwell

- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Next year I will read more books of the Russian writers on this list. I enjoyed those books very much.

After seeing this list, what books do you recommend for me?

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

#317

Post by dabiged »

tstrimple wrote: post #256
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…

Curious about your view on The Count of Monte Cristo. It's one of my more disappointing reads of the year. I'm familiar with the story line from various film adaptations, but I wasn't prepared for the sheer amount of repetition and drawn out bullshit. That's when I learned it was originally published in a journal where Dumas was paid by the word over 18 parts. Then all the meandering bullshit and repetition made so m…

I took read it this year and invested about 8 weeks getting through it. I found the story disjointed, repetitive and very hard to follow. It was only after finishing it I discovered I had read the abridged version that cuts out a number of chapters leaving multiple characters without conclusions. No wonder it was difficult to follow.

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

#320

Post by damethos »

- How big things get done

- The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition

- The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully

- Rework

Added them on my blog as well with a small review on each in case anyone is interested: https://www.alexanderlolis.com/my-2025-reads

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