Everything I Read in 2025
Books 2025
After reading a book I normally get rid of it straight away, something to do with minimalism. But this year I have kept every book. My plan this year and every year hence is as follows … I will keep every book I read in a year (as already mentioned), I will then review every book. the best fiction and non-fiction book will be kept on my bookshelf and the rest cast to the winds.
I will also similarly review every audiobook. The best audiobook (fiction or non-fiction) I will buy in print. It then has the chance to be added to the bookshelf in a subsequent year.
I hope through this process to have a chance to reflect on what it is I have ingested sometime after doing so. I hope also to curate over the years a collection of only what I consider the finest books (at least out of what one can read in a year).
I forgot to make any notes on my thoughts soon after reading the books so everything is from memory. But it was interesting seeing which ones left a larger impression on me and how this perhaps differed to the impression I felt whilst reading it. Perhaps I will make more notes this year.
In the running this year I have 19 non-fiction and 11 non-fiction books, so 30 books in total. My audiobooks round up is still in the works but should be out shortly.
So without further ado … dear reader … the non-fiction book I will be keeping this year is:
Fiction winner
“Death in the Andes” ~ Mario Vargas Llosa
What a book. What a book. A haunting psychedelic mystery set at +3000m in the imposing Andes. A beautifully written and gripping plot about a certain location in time and space, what has been is eroding and who can say what is next. I read this whilst sipping coca tea, before bed and in cold patios with scorching sun rays beaming on my face and my skin caressed by alpaca. Mysteries, monsters and revolutionaries. Haunting beauty. Many things. I can’t help but feel that this book has changed me, but how exactly is elusive. An enchanting read for sure.
The Fiction Shortlist
That was the best book, it really was and it did stand out to me. But these four books were all close:
“Blue of Noon” ~ Georges Bataille
I picked this book up on a whim whilst in Paris. A filthy psychedelic trip around Europe. Having sex with lifeless bodies. A nihilistic surreal fantasy. Superb? I thought so. In fact I think it’s one of the best I’ve read all year.
“Amulet” ~ Roberto Bolaño
Loved reading this book. A very enchanting dream of a story, presented non-linearly. I thought to myself that this was magical realism and looked it up only to find that Roberto Bolaño apparently was famously against the genre. Amulet is strange, but the strangeness is a result of something quite real, the narrators trauma or madness you could say. What’s more it’s located in a very real time and place, dealing with the very real politics of the time. So I stand corrected and I guess this is hard core psychedelic realism. I’m a fan.
“Alice in Wonderland” ~ Lewis Carroll
This book really lives in my psyche and is why I had to re-read it this year. I think this book is primarily seen as a children’s novel, which it is, but the questions this puts to convention and reality is world shattering. It flips everything on its head and then puts it into a blender. It’s utterly compelling both as a story, as a line of questioning and as a book to entertain children. This book lurks in the back of my mind and I’m sure it forms a cornerstone of my prevailing thinking. The jabberwocky poem especially is marvellous. To me, this is certainly one of the best books ever written. However, perhaps not the best this year - as it means I will have to re-read it in the future so that it may find its place on my bookshelf.
“Songs of the Doomed” ~ Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter oh Hunter. A mad crazy anti-hero, touring around the states (+ Nam) and writing politics through a haze of chivas regal, cigarettes and narcotics. I enjoyed this much more than the famed “Hells Angels”. It’s unrestrained Hunter and that’s when he’s at his best. There was a time and place when I tried out Hunters famed “morning routine” (a whole buffet of drugs, tabaco, alcohol and what is basically a buffet in the traditional sense of the word). I couldn’t hack it! And I did drugs pretty seriously at the time. Hunter was a legend to me and was a level of debauchery I aspired to. I’ve been clean a while now and this book really hits in a different way to how it would have back then (I didn’t actually read back then). It wells up a whole bunch of conflicting sentiments. On one hand it makes me long for those days of ‘tearing it up’, it makes me glad of their riddance, it makes me chirpy about my current fit and healthy state and it makes me despise it. It makes me really jealous that he can be a complete degenerate and still write well and with substance (under substance). The writing is brilliant, it makes you excited, it makes you feel something. It’s words burn through you like a wick and you’re just waiting to explode. I’m off the gear and this book still hits.
“The Ice Palace” ~ Tarjei Vesaas
This really is an astounding piece of work. It is almost incomprehensible how simple a book can be so complex. A serenely beautiful yet dark novel dealing with such intricate complex themes such as death, childhood and coming of age.
Non-Fiction winner
“The White Paper” ~ Satoshi Nakamoto (with a guide by Jaya Klara Brekke)
The bitcoin white paper is incredibly elegant. Shockingly so. To be so spot on at first attempt and to see the scale at which bitcoin works today is quite miraculous to say the very least. A hugely consequential technology that begs one to ask fundamental questions about what money, value and ownership means. From there a rabbit hole of further inquiry unfurls.
The Non-Fiction Shortlist
The bitcoin white paper did stand out to me and is something I want to keep on my bookshelf for years (maybe decades is more apt) to come. It really is an amazingly simple fusion of technologies (or at least explained simply!) that is revolutionary in really every sense of the word. But it did have to compete against the following books for a place on the shelf and these were really excellent:
“1491: The Americas Before Columbus” ~ Charles C. Mann
I read this in preparation for a trip to Peru. It contains history on the Americans pre Colombus (in the title). Not a great deal is known about the Americas pre Colombus but what can be discerned is endlessly fascinating and this book is a great place to start (at least it was for me!).
“Touching the Void” ~ Joe Simpson
Also read this in preparation for a trip to Peru. Luckily I didn’t have attempting to climb Siula Grande in my itinerary. A simply written but utterly gripping real story. A story of life and death without the drama and just the ice cold truth.
Rest of Fiction
In no particular order the rest of the fiction books I’ve read this year:
“Nightwood” ~ Djuna Barnes
Eloquently written. But I did not manage to perceive its impenetrable depths. We will get ‘em next time.
“Rave” ~ Irvine Welsh
Glaswegian poetry + drugs, sex and acid house.
“The Viceroy of Ouidah” ~ Bruce Chatwin
Chatwins ‘In Patagonia’ is a marvellous read. But this one’s not.
“The Alchemist” ~ Paulo Coelho
A very simply written book but strangely powerful. About following your dreams. I didn’t think it was excellent but I’m glad I read it.
“Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” ~ Pablo Neruda
Some romantic poetry in Spanish, also with English translation, by the master love poet Pablo Neruda. Was a great way to try and improve my Spanish and read beautiful words.
“A Passage to India” ~ E.M. Forster
This book had some burn in time for me. It quite surprised me how balanced and nuanced a story it told. Mapping difficulties of colonizer-colonized relations in India. A real tragedy in slow motion that makes you want to shout out at the characters as if you were in a pantomime.
“The Epic of Gilgamesh” ~ Translated by Andrew George
The oldest story ever written (that we know about). It’s quite startling how alike this is to any story I might read today, spare the lack of technology and the missing fragments. Was fascinating to read but I probably should have stopped after reading the first version - ‘The Deluge’. It then goes back through time giving gradually older more incomplete more original versions of the text. The ‘latest copy’ is just a refined regurgitation of the previous - the reboot always has been. Stories never change. We will always milk a winner until it’s dry, dead … and maybe perfected.
“Filth” ~ Irvine Welsh
What a disgusting book. I think my moral fibre passed through my bowls and exited my anus like the protagonists tapeworm. Thoroughly racist, misogynistic and down right boggin (Glaswegian for gross?). I have no clue what to make of it past that.
“The Trial” ~ Kafka
A man being sentenced without knowing for what he has been sentenced. Living his life in a an endless purgatory in which any day could be his last day as a free man. There’s lots you could take from this book. I think the trial is quite an apt way of making one experience the weight of knowing one is going to die. There comes a day where you fully realise that you are going to die and that is when the trial begins, will you scurry about worrying about your impending end? Do you ignore it and pretend the trial is not occurring? Is it important to consult the religious authorities? That’s at least part of what I got from this. It is a weird premise and it does feel endlessly repetitive, but I think this lends to the book and makes you as the reader feel the weight of this never ending nebulous trial.
“Blue” ~ Derek Jarman
Blue da boo de da boo da. This book was wank. But I like the colour.
“The Use of Photography” ~ Annie Ernaux, Marc Marie
I mean this is a weird and wanky book. But it’s also beautiful, simple and moving. It’s an exploration of photography using literature so vivid that each chapter quite surpasses the 1000 words of the still it describes.
“The Plague” ~ Albert Camus
A very on the nose tale from Camus. It was … ok. The characters are stuck in an existential situation and you get to see how a number of different characters react to such a situation. To me this book pales in comparison to a happy death which I had a phenomenal time reading - although reading it aboard a sail boat bobbing through the Cyclades probably adds to the fondness.
“Lolita” ~ Vladimir Nabokov
Shocking! Obviously shocking! A book from the minds eye of a pedophile it was always going to be shocking. But it was also brilliant and just incredibly written. I felt so much reading this. Shock (as I’ve already mentioned), jaw dropping shock (it really was), humor, shock (at finding it funny), disgust, humor again, awe at the beauty of description (shock again because you remember he is describing a child), confusion, sadness, anger and shock. It’s quite tricky to know exactly how to talk about this book. I would simply call it hideously engrossing.
Rest of Non-Fiction
In no particular order the rest of the non-fiction books I’ve read this year:
“Tao Te Ching” ~ Lao Tzu
Ancient wisdom written on golden edged pages. Zen poetry is so stupid yet profound, this was mostly less stupid than other bits I’ve read. I don’t claim to understand any of it and I think that’s the point because there isn’t anything to understand. But I’ve perhaps missed the point by claiming there is a point - ad infinitum.
“Mathematics and Reality” ~ Mary Leng
This book makes an argument for mathematical fictionalism - that mathematical objects do not exist. It talks about a whole bunch of related perspectives in the pursuit of laying down their argument. I had a fun time learning, although it did seem overly terse. Although, quite early on in multiple strands of the argument there were some assumptions made which I didn’t agree with. What those were I can’t recall and so this makes for a rather lacklustre book review! Next year I will endeavour to improve.
“Writings From the Zen Masters” ~ Wumen Huikai, Kaku-an Shi-en, Mujū Dōkyō
Zen Buddhism. This book was mostly a load of funny nonsense, you read pages and pages of short writing about silly nonsense … and then a passage will come by, when your brain is running with just the right context, and slap you right in the face. For me it was the page titled ‘A Parable’ about a man hanging off a cliff and eating a strawberry. And those few short face slapping passages make up a hundred fold for the oodles of drivel.
“I Paint what I want to see” ~ Philip Guston
Oh how I wish to see a Guston. I accidentally missed the major Tate exhibition of his work and now it seems I may need to travel to the states in order to see a painting. But in the mean time this book scratched my itch. A description of artistic process straight from his mouth. It really seems like he’s trying to work it out as he is telling it. He doesn’t really have a clear aim in sight, he’s far from scientific about it, more mathematical. Playing around with things and seeing what sticks, what end up being right and what interacts with and pushes on what else.
“Nuclear Power” ~ Maxwell Irvine
A very short introduction to nuclear power. Exactly what it says on the tin.
“Ghost Train Through the Andes” ~ Michael Jacobs
A lovely piece of reportage. A relaxing journey (well at least for the reader) to and through the Andes tracing his grandfathers life as a railway engineer.
“The Psychology of Money” ~ Morgan Housel
My parents bought me this book and I have to admit I was extremely sceptical that it would be of any quality whatsoever. However, I was thoroughly corrected whilst reading. Has some lovely easily digestible musings on investing which are brazenly realist.
“The Guitarists Way: Book 1” ~ Peter Nuttall, John Whitworth
Started learning guitar this year. After flailing around trying to learn unguided I decided to buy this book to teach me. Have had a great time learning from it. Feel like I’m actually making progress and getting through the pages is very satisfying.
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