Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
As another year comes to a close, I’m once again returning to a ritual that has anchored my New Year’s reflections for years: looking back at the books that shaped the last twelve months.
In 2025, I read 24 books – fewer than previous years, but according to Goodreads the books I read were particularly long, averaging 427 pages per book. So I’d like to tell myself that I’ve chosen reads that asked for more patience and offered more depth this year.
As always, I’ve chosen one quote from each book. Not necessarily the “best” line, but the one that stayed with me, or meant something to me in the moment.
Here are the books – fiction and non-fiction – that shaped my 2025.
Non-Fiction
Inspired: How to Build Tech Products Customers Love (Marty Cagan)
“If users knew what they really wanted, software would be a lot easier to create. So, watch what they do more than what they say.”
Useful Not True (Derek Sivers)
“Every statement everyone says could be prefaced with a disclaimer: ‘From my limited point of view, based only on what I’ve experienced…’”
The Rise of Super Intelligence: A Guidebook for Human Emancipation in the Age of AI (Jad Tarifi)
“By expanding our understanding of value to fully encompass human qualities – such as creativity, empathy and consciousness – we can craft economic systems that honor the inherent dignity of every individual.”
A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life (Steven Kotler)
“Placing a dog felt like falling in love and getting dumped and falling in love and getting dumped, over and over again. As I said, dog rescue sucks.”
The Little Book of Aliens (Adam Frank)
“Life is short and good scientific research takes many years to many decades. That means researchers must literally make bets with their lives (their working years) about what is worth their time.”
The Invevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that Will Shape Our Future (Kevin Kelly)
“To demand that artificial intelligence be humanlike is the same flawed logic as demanding that artificial flying be birdlike, with flapping wings.”
Trickster Makes This World: How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture (Lewis Hyde)
“Trickster only comes to life in the complex terrain of polytheism. If the spiritual world is dominated by a single high god opposed by a single embodiment of evil, then the ancient trickster disappears. […] The Devil is an agent of evil, but trickster is amoral, not immoral.”
Never Play It Safe: A Practical Guide to Freedom, Creativity and a Life You Love (Chase Jarvis)
“With the power of our attention, we can dictate the direction and quality of our lives. Paying attention is everything in this life. […] This is one of the side effects of not playing it safe: when you stop trying to do what everyone else is doing and start experimenting in order to discover what you truly care deeply about, your ability to focus becomes greatly amplified.”
Radical Delegation: Hired an Assistant and Still Struggling? How to Go From Grind to Great (Patrick Ewers)
“Radical delegation means elimination everything – yes, everything – from your plate that doesn’t expressly need to be done by you.”
How to Build a Car (Adrian Newey)
“The problem was that I shared traits inherited from both my mother and my father. My mum was vivacious and often flirtatious, a very good artist but mostly a natural-born maverick; my dad was an eccentric, […] blessed or maybe cursed with a compulsion to think outside the box. No doubt it’s an equation that served me well in later life, but it’s not best-suited to school life.”
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future (Ed Conway)
“Back in 1810 Americans spent roughly the same proportion of their national income on iron nails as they do today on computers. Today, steel nails cost next to nothing.”
The Great Nerve: The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness Its Healing Reflexes (Kevin J. Tracey)
“I am convinced that bioelectronic medicine has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and improve the lives of countless people around the world.”
Going Faster! Mastering the Art of Race Driving (Skip Barber Racing School)
“Some would say ‘You can’t find the limit if you don’t go over it from time to time and spin.’ Nonesense. You find the limit by taking small bites, experimenting with a little higher entry speed, a little earlier throttle application. Carrying more speed on the same arc will create a greater angle of slide, which might be faster, or might scrub off speed, making you slower. You don’t need to spin to find this out.”
Deep Future: Creating Technology That Matters (Pablos Holman)
“If you get a new gadget and show it to your mom, she might ask you ‘What does this do?’ If you show it to a hacker, the question is different. The question is, ‘What can I make this do?’”
7½ Lessons About the Brain (Lisa Feldman Barrett)
“Every action you take (or don’t take) is an economic choice – your brain guessing when to spend resources and when to save them. […] The scientific name for body budgeting is allostasis. It means automatically predicting and preparing to meet the body’s needs before they arise.”
Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values (Fred Kofman)
“Leadership behaviors are one of the most critical influences on an organizational culture. What matters most is not what leaders say but what they do; their actions rather than their words.”
An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management (Will Larson)
“The one thing I’ve found at companies with very few interruptions and have observed almost nowhere else: really great, consistently available documentation.”
Fiction
Babel (R. F. Kuang)
“That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
The Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley)
“Forgiveness, which takes you back to the person you were and lets you reset them. Hope, which exists in a future in which you are new. Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time-travel.”
Wind and Truth (Brandon Sanderson)
“The thing is, the deepest truths always sound a little trite. Because we all know them, and feel foolish being reminded.”
Train Dreams (Denis Johnson)
“He saw no sign of their Bible, either. If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Grainier that here had come a fire stronger than God.”
Dance Dance Dance (Haruki Murakami)
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
The Evening and the Morning (Ken Follett)
“In dog philosophy it was always better to go somewhere than to be left behind.”
The Tainted Cup (Robert Jackson Bennett)
“I am reluctant to assume maliciousness when incompetence is a better explanation.”
I hope this collection offered you a glimpse into the stories and ideas that shaped my year, and perhaps even nudged you toward a book or two of your own.
For more inspiration, you can explore my lists from 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Here’s to a 2026 filled with meaningful reads, fresh perspectives, and the kind of moments that stay with you long after the last page is turned.