As anyone visiting this blog must know, I read quite a bit. I’ve been recording most of my reading (with one or two lapses) since 2004, over twenty years now, but just for myself really. Recently, I came across a post from a work acquaintance who shared his reading list for 2025, with a seven-word capsule summary of each book. Why seven words? As he explained:
Originally, I was writing longer synopses, but then I read a biography of William Howard Taft, and when I wrote the synopsis, the first sentence that came to mind was, “Taft succeeds Roosevelt, but not very well,” which I thought captured the whole book better than anything longer could have. So I started limiting myself to 7 words, which is both challenging and, frankly, fun, because it takes more effort and imagination.
I read twice as many books as he did in 2025, so this would be a little more work for me than for him, but I thought it might be fun to try. I’m going to list books in the order read, split into lists for fiction and nonfiction, and I’ve marked those I’ve read before with an asterisk (only two books in 2025). I’m also highlighting a few in boldface to indicate favorites / most memorable for the year. In choosing what to highlight as favorites, I’m trying to limit myself to about 10% of the list. For 51 books read in 2025, I’ve highlighted 6, although I enjoyed almost all of them.
As you can see, my reading is pretty eclectic, roughly balanced between fiction and nonfiction, and hitting a lot of different genres and subject matter — fantasy, science fiction, espionage, classics, tech, politics, history, linguistics, just to name a few represented in last year’s reading. Some interesting patterns emerge from time to time. For example, you’ll notice I read several books about human-animal relationships, something near and dear to my heart — Nunez, Dalton, Harbison, Haupt. And Blake Crouch followed Patricia Highsmith very nicely indeed. Eugenides and Chbosky, ditto. Even Hutchison and Conway, oddly enough, though their books are a century apart, nominally on totally different topics. I love the way one book will often lead you organically into another. And in spite of these terse 7-word descriptions, I could — and might still — write entire posts on a few of these books — Harvey, Butler, Zevin, Garner, and especially Harpman, whose book has really stuck in my craw.
So, here goes. Feel free to let me know what you think of the 7-word synopses. And if you want to talk more about any of these books, let me know; I’m game. And should I continue to do this on an annual basis? What do you think?
Fiction (28)
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins — Before Katniss, Snow always landed on top
Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler — Dystopian America crumbles; new faith takes root
The Staircase in the Woods, Chuck Wendig — Supernatural staircase reopens old wounds among friends
Havoc, Christopher Bollen — Elderly widow meddles disastrously in others’ lives
Real Tigers, Mick Herron — High-tension thriller with inept spies and laughs
Orbital, Samantha Harvey — Astronauts orbit Earth, contemplating humanity and fragility
Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins — Young Haymitch endures Hunger Games, loses everything
Ascension, Nicholas Binge — Mysterious mountain appears; ascent warps reality, memory
Spook Street, Mick Herron — Aging spy unravels, sparking dangerous internal reckoning
Dissolution, Nicholas Binge — Shadowy organization erases past, unraveling couple’s reality
Treacle Walker, Alan Garner — Boy meets mystic wanderer, entering myth‑soaked reality
The Plague, Albert Camus — Quarantined city confronts suffering, solidarity, existential reckoning
I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman — Isolation shapes girl’s identity in post‑human wasteland
London Rules, Mick Herron — Political schemes, terror threats, Slow Horses collide
My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George* — Solitude teaches youngster self‑reliance, resilience, and belonging
Danny The Champion of the World, Roald Dahl* — Father and son plot ingenious pheasant‑poaching adventure
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones — Pastor’s hidden diary unlocks indigenous vampire’s story
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin — Decades‑long collaboration tests friendship, love, and forgiveness
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi — One line enslaved, one complicit; histories intertwine
The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides — Five sisters die; boys chase meaning endlessly
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky — Sensitive Charlie navigates adolescence, friendship, and trauma
The Friend, Sigrid Nunez — Quiet elegy on suicide and human-animal companionship
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer — Husband’s vanished expedition haunts biologist’s dangerous mission
Authority, Jeff VanderMeer — Human systems fail while Area X intensifies
Acceptance, Jeff VanderMeer — Some questions are answered, others remain open
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith — Imposter covets friend’s life — and takes it
Famous, Blake Crouch — Celebrity lookalike’s obsession leads to catastrophic decisions
Absolution, Jeff VanderMeer — Baffling coda to an equally baffling trilogy
Nonfiction (23)
The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien, John Hendrix — Adequate joint biography in comic book format
Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier — Convincing, but overcoming the inertia is hard
Forgotten English, Jeffrey Kacirk — Obsolete words revived with wit and charm
Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman, Patrick Hutchison — Man rebuilds collapsing cabin, accidentally rebuilds himself
The Making of Latin: An Introduction to Latin, Greek, and English Etymology, R.S. Conway — Takes Latin apart, rebuilds it from scratch
Who Owns the Future, Jaron Lanier — Good ideas, but a very long slog
How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil — How energy, food, materials shape modern civilization
Poverty, By America, Matthew Desmond — America’s institutions manufacture poverty, benefiting the rich
An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, Zeinab Badawi — Africa’s decolonized history recounted through African voices
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, Sarah Wynn-Williams — Whistleblower exposes Meta’s power and moral failures
Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton — Woman nurtures leveret, discovering nature’s quiet revelations
Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in A World That Wears You Down, Corey Keyes — Suggests pathways to vitality amid aimlessness epidemic
The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource, Chris Hayes — Attention capitalism thrives; human agency steadily weakens
The Writers: Portraits by Laura Wilson, Laura Wilson — Thirty‑eight authors captured in striking, thoughtful images
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype […], Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna — Authors dismantle AI myths, revealing structural harms
Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words, John McWhorter — Dismantles pronoun myths with humor and history
Is A River Alive?, Robert Macfarlane — Rivers witnessed as alive, vulnerable, and relational
Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty, Adam Kucharski — Why certainty seduces, misleads, and sometimes fails
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, Caroline Fraser — Environmental poisoning shaped decades of American bloodlust
Tina: The Dog Who Changed the World, Niall Harbison — Golden retriever’s survival sparks global rescue movement
Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell, Gabe Henry — Five centuries of spelling reformers fail spectacularly
Mozart’s Starling, Lyanda Lynn Haupt — Composer’s beloved bird inspires creativity and companionship
How to Stand up to A
Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, Maria Ressa — Courage, empathy, honesty guide struggle
against tyranny
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