2025 in books

I love reading, and I’m so pleased I’ve made it more of a habit in recent years. In 2025, I read 50% more books than in 2024, which was itself way up on previous years.

This post follows a similar format to my 2024 books retrospective: I’ll first look at trends related to my reading, and then share some picks.

Continuing trends

I didn’t change direction, but I kept the trajectory I was on in 2024. My ways of reading have become more established.

More time for books by cutting out news

In July, I was lucky enough to spend three fabulous weeks in Norway, with Mediterranean temperatures at times. While on holiday for one of those weeks, hiking, kayaking on fjords, and traversing glaciers left no time or energy for reading the news, listening to podcasts or following social media.

These habits didn’t come back afterwards; I found I don’t need to be constantly following the latest goings-on, so I had more time and focus for reading. When I had a habit of checking a feed reader, it was always tempting to open that instead of a book when reading in the evening.

In 2024, my listening time was split about 50:50 between podcasts and audiobooks. In 2025, this was more like 95% audiobooks. I sometimes listen to podcasts in the gap between books, but I limit these to topics like video games and science rather than politics and Apple.

I want to be informed about the world, but I don’t want to be dragged down by it all the time. The ideal amount of news to follow is probably more than zero, but I feel it’s closer to zero than to reading or listening to the news every day. And of course, books are a great way to become more informed about the world, albeit less directly.

A DRM-free year

I don’t accept the restrictions placed on almost all electronic books by almost all distributors, which limit the software you can use to read or listen.

All year, I only read copyright-expired books downloaded from Standard Ebooks and listened to audiobooks bought from Libro.fm (referral link), which are free of digital rights management. In 2024, I saw this as a temporary solution, but it’s been working well for long enough that I’d now say this is viable in the long term. As a consumer of ebooks, it’s entirely possible to reject DRM for books and still read widely.

I hope that, at some point, there will be a way to buy a significant number of contemporary, DRM-free ebooks. If this doesn’t happen, it looks like the most practical way to get a DRM-free ebook will be to buy the audiobook and then use speech recognition.

Audiobooks are established

About 70% of the books I read during the year were audiobooks, which was a similar proportion to 2024. I choose audiobooks due to a combination of convenience, their availability DRM-free and because, in most cases, the narrators make the text more engaging.

My 2024 preference to read fiction and listen to non-fiction has gone. Two-thirds of the books I read in 2025 were fiction, up from just under half the year before.

In 2024, I was putting my audiobooks from Libro.fm into Overcast, but since I mostly stopped listening to podcasts, this no longer makes sense (and podcast apps aren’t designed for books, so it was never that smooth). I’ve been using the Libro.fm app, which is not great (the position sync is particularly bad), but at least it’s designed for audiobooks.

Dedicated ebook device

Early in the year, I was intrigued by the idea of having a dedicated ebook device with an e-ink screen. As a ‘software trial’ of this, I enabled the greyscale colour filter accessibility setting on my 2019 iPad mini and hid all apps on the home screen except my own reading app. I didn’t hit any problems, and this worked well to cut down on opening my feed reader or Micro.blog.

I ended up using the iPad mini like this for several months and then eventually bought an Onyx Boox Go 7 with a monochrome screen, which is a little e-ink Android tablet.

The reading experience with e-ink and page-turn buttons is more pleasant than on the iPad mini, and I expect e-ink to be even more beneficial over the summer for reading outside. It’s worth stating that reading books bought from Apple on an e-ink screen is impossible (or at least illegal) due to DRM.

I keep the iPad mini around in case I need to do performance testing for work, but I haven’t powered it up for months.

Book picks

I’ve selected three favourite books at the bottom, but otherwise these are ordered roughly by the date I read them rather than being ranked. I’ve linked to each book where I read it: either on Standard Ebooks or Libro.fm.

Honourable mentions

Abroad in Japan by Chris Broad is short, easy-going and very funny. I’m not sure that the humour would come through nearly as well if I hadn’t listened to this narrated by Chris. His main job is making (often funny) videos, so it’s not surprising that he’s a great narrator.

That wasn’t enough Japan for me. Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa is not as ‘deep’ as most of my picks below. It’s an exciting tale of adventures and sword fighting, where the hero always out-tricks the tricksters. Excellent narration by Brian Nishi brings it to life. This is an extremely long book (50 hours of listening), so I’d recommend splitting it up or having it on the go alongside shorter books.

I re-read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald on the centenary of its publication. You probably already know it’s a tremendous book. I was struck by how contemporary the story feels. People haven’t changed much in a hundred years.

Also from 1925 New York, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos is unlike any book I’d read before, and I’m still slightly in shock. It’s utterly ridiculous, and it keeps it up all the way through.

Babel by R.F. Kuang is impressive for its world-building. There are some Harry Potter vibes, with a bit of His Dark Materials (some of my favourite books growing up), mixed with language nerdery and a lot of outrage about the British Empire and colonialism. I was surprised to find that Yellowface was written by the same author, given how different the two books are.

Dinner by Meera Sodha is basically the sequel to my favourite book from the year before (and, in both cases, the only paper book I’ve mentioned). It’s like Super Mario Galaxy 2: simply 120 more good things. Some meals that have come out particularly well so far:

• Tandoori cauliflower with coriander and cashew sauce
• Portobello mushroom pancakes with hoisin sauce
• Soy pickled pumpkin and chestnut maze gohan

Favourites

I want to read to learn about all parts of the world (which is, to some extent, a substitute for not travelling far around the world). Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is exactly what I was looking for. I felt involved with the story and characters, while also getting a history lesson about twentieth-century Korea and Japan. It’s worth noting Flashlight by Susan Choi, which starts in a similar place but goes in a different direction.

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali is another superb fit for learning more about the world, this time in 1950s Iran. It’s a moving story with energy and tragedy. While the characters are fictional, the events going on around them were real.

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams is a spicy Facebook exposé. It was impactful hearing the insider details all in one place, but the big picture is pretty much how it looked from the outside. This is a very personal book that I recommend as an audiobook narrated by the author. Hearing the optimism, indignation, bewilderment and so much more in Sarah’s voice added another layer.