Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

Fiction (shortlist):

-Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh)

-A Memory called Empire (Arkady Martin) both of these are a fairly interesting take on scifi worldbuilding. Could be called "highbrow", but IMO pretty easy reads still.

-Piranesi (S. Clark) - well written fantasy and plenty of other stuff that I've seen in other comments (Dungeon Crawler Carl does stand out a bit, but it's really a guilty pleasure / escape kind of a read).

Non-Fiction

-Brakneck (Dan Wang) - slightly outdated (by ~2y, which seems really breakneck), but still interesting take on modern China

-Capitalism (Sven Beckert) - still halfway through this one, but it's shaping up to be my #1 for 2025 non fiction

-The Origins of Efficiency - from B. Potter, the author of Construction Physics blog. The blog is fairly information dense, but this basically reads like a textbook. Still a pretty good reference IMO for people working in manufacturing.

I loved this recent "Show HN", I found some gems for the reading list in 2026!

Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46345897

If you are looking for some modern stuff that would go nicely with Dostoyevsky/Kafka, I can warmly recommend Krasznahorkai, especially his first book, Satantango.

Really well written and well structured novel, and although he uses long sentences and no paragraph breaks, the writing is surprisingly accessible and incredibly immersive.

It was my first fiction book in a long time and it made me love fiction again.

My top book of the year:

Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, Alan Walker

A riveting read by a legendary musicologist and biographer. Walker spent about ten years researching this. It is 700 pages, which seems daunting but he makes this authoritative bio absolutely enjoyable. It's also a "corrective biography", it dispels a lot of myths. This book is one of the best examples of accessible writing with flair. What a writer!

Throughout the book, Walker tastefully quotes musical phrases (in notation) from Chopin's works to situate them in context. I often paused reading and put on the track on a given page (nocturnes, mazurkas, preludes, etc). It made the reading experience incredibly rich and fun. Other things I enjoyed: Chopin's letters to his friends and family, life in aristocratic salons of Paris, London, Warsaw, and more—Chopin had unparalleled access. Of course, there's also a lot of gut-wrenching stuff. As the book's blurb says, it really is for both the casual music lover and the professional pianist.

If you haven't discovered them yet, give a listen to Chopin's nocturnes. But please, give them an attentive listen and play them on a high-quality audio system. Here[1] is one of his finest nocturnes (it is less famous than the "happier" nocturne that follows it, Op. 9 No. 2).

[1] Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op. 9 No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThMGf07UBHQ

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles blew me away by the quality of the writing, the endearing characters and the charming setting. I’m glad I picked it up and I strongly recommend it to you.

I haven’t been reading much in the last couple of years and I credit this book for getting me back in the game.