My Favorite Books from 2025

After college, I resolved to read one book a month. It can be fiction, non-fiction, technical, business-oriented, or whatever as the goal was to always be absorbing and digesting new ideas and information, even just for fun.

For 2025, I had a more specific goal of 24 fiction and 12 non-fiction books and the year was crazy. Midway into the year, I started traveling more regularly. Then I moved cross country (Texas to Indiana), had a job change, and then just lost steam in December. As of this writing, I think I have four in progress I need to pick up again.

Anyway, overall I finished 33 books overall with 31 fiction and 2 non-fiction.

Here are my top few in order:

  1. There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
    If you’re into Lovecraftian horror with a modern twist, read this book. It is my favorite of the year. Unfortunately, you won’t remember me saying any of this.
  2. Game Theory 101: The Complete Textbook by William Spaniel
    This is an exceptionally dry read but excellent in understanding probabilities and rating of different choices. If you’re getting started in AI, check it out.
  3. Caveat Emptor by Jon R. Osborne & Mark Wandrey (The Phoenix Initiative Book 17)
    In this book, a conman “sells” a planet to multiple merc companies and none discover it until they show up to figure it out. This is the most visceral book in the series as you can feel their frustration.
  4. Cartwright’s Cavaliers: Unto Darkness by Mark Wandrey (Exodus Book 3)
    Cartwright is my least favorite of the Four Horsemen colonels but this redeems him. It starts with him resigning from his Earth duties and heading for the incursion. They’re all in and it gets messy.

And here are all 33 books, sorted by author or series:

Aaron Clarey

I’ve read a few from Clarey over the years and enjoy his hard numbers approach to life, mindset, and planning. Sure enough, this pulls on that thread to give some perspective on how to be independent – both financially and mentally – for your own sanity. Life is about tradeoffs and this lays this out well.

Nick Cole & Jason Anspach

I really wanted to like this one. I almost enjoyed Cole’s Soda Pop Soldier back in 2017 so was hoping this would convince me, it didn’t. The main character (Rechs) was too powerful and the universe was fascinating but lacked explanation. The referenced character (Medusa) was awesome and I’d love to learn more about her and her journey. There are more in the series, so I may check out a second to see how it plays out.

Larry Correia

This is a wrap of of a fun series. Now the demons are ravaging the land. While there are some Protectors who can still stand against them, they’re torn by infighting and unreliable alliances. In the meantime, the villains are stronger and it’s not clear who is aligned with who. There are still some loose threads but the major ones are wrapped up well.

Devon Eriksen

This one popped up in my recommendations from all of my scifi reading and I was intrigued by it throughout. Fast forward about 100 years and there’s a space economy with massive investment but spurred by discovery of a ruins from an ancient race. And it just gets more creative from there. There are quite a few unresolved aspects so I’m looking forward to the next one.

The Four Horseman Universe

In the 4HU, the Omega War upset the balance and revealed plans within plans and this series is dealing with the fallout. Most of these are filling in some interesting (and sometimes critical) bits pulling together threads into the overall story. My favorite part is that if you like some more hard hitting scifi-military stuff, there are a few, some others with espionage, and even some girlbossing. Arg.

Of the bunch, Tangled Webs and Caveat Emptor are the best. In TW, we finally get an explanation for one of the biggest mysteries while CE is just layers of a hot mess that becomes entertaining.

If you’re looking to pick up this series, don’t start here. Check out the 4HU Reading Order.

Disclosure: In 2025, I became a regular advanced reader of 4HU. I am compensated with free, early access to a book and a request to write a review IF I enjoyed it. Of the books I’ve read, most were 4 or 5 star quality. An early book was not and I declined to review without obvious reprecussions.

C.S. Lewis

The Chronicles of Narnia is one of my favorite childhood series. Not only is it adventure and fun but it’s filled with key principles and lessons that are more clear over time. I read this one to my kids and yes, I do voices. Reepicheep is the best.

qntm

This is hands down my favorite fiction of the year. It based on a simple premise: We have memes which are ideas that are packaged to be easily understood and spread but what if there are anti-memes? What if there are ideas that will explicitly not spread? If you’re into Lovecraftian horror with a modern twist, this is the book for you.

J.K. Rowling

I enjoyed reading these post-college and have been re-reading them to my kids. Yes, I do voices. Yes, they’re awesome. Anyway, this is still a great series but I waited a full year between Goblet of Fire and these. I wanted to make sure they could process things as the stories got darker and the stakes got higher.

The Shadowrun Universe

I enjoy the Shadowrun universe, both in terms of aesthetic and adventures. This book was a great dive into a bunch of runners’ missions for a new fixer getting key people into key places. Most of the characters introduced are sympathetic or inspiring but a few should have died. Overall, it’s leading to some sort of joint operation and I’m looking forward to it.

These anthologies were just a bunch of disconnected stories. They’re good, light reading with both good and terrible characters. That’s both the good and bad part.. if a character is good, you want more story. If they’re terrible, you’re glad it’s done sooner.

Brandon Sanderson

I’ve really enjoyed Sanderson’s writing and specifically his world building. Warbreaker keeps up that trend. In this world, power comes from “Breaths” which are effectively souls and the more you collect, the more powerful your senses become. But – as Sanderson does – when you think you understand the world and the rules, you realize they’re not quite interpreted properly. If you wondered where the sword came from in Stormlight, you meet it here.

Scott Sigler

After re-reading and enjoying Earthcore in 2024, I picked up Sigler again to see what else he had to offer. Infected was dark, twisted and really good. Don’t pick it up if you’re squeamish about some blood, puss, and alien goo but if you can get past that, it’s a compelling story of a race against time told from all sides of a pending catastrophe. I read it over the span of 3 days when I was supposed to be writing a presentation.. The second and third were just as compelling and disgusting.

William Spaniel

For most of us, we set textbooks down a long time ago and never picked them up again. As I started writing courses on generative AI and machine learning, I knew I had some gaps to fill around understanding probabilisitic models. This goes into the MATH behind game theory (not the psychology) and gets exceptionally dull at times but it rigorous and detailed. If you’re playing with AI, this is a useful foundation.

Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

After wearing the covers off of this series originally, I bought a new single bound edition in February and it’s lovely. While I still only finished the first of the trilogy, I got halfway through the second before the end of the year. Also, Tasslehoff is still the best.

John C. Wright

I love Wright and he drives me crazy. Every time you pick up his stories, there’s the main storyline, characters, and motivations, but as you go deeper, you realize the characters are different and have different motivations than you thought and it recolors the entire story. He hints and foreshadows things well so it’s not an ambush but if you start with assumptions, plan on them being blown up.

And yes, this was a great story.

Did I miss any great books you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments or via Twitter.

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