Best books of 2025
- In 2025, I read 77 books (for 39700 pages) which I gave an average star rating of 3.6 out of 5.
You can see the full list here: Books Read in 2025.
I usually keep three books going at once: A classic, a modern fiction, and a fantasy / science fiction. I also had a few nonfiction books this year. However, early in the year I had some personal stress and settled into mostly easy fantasy and science fiction books and a good dose of rereads.
Below are my favorite reads in each of these different categories for this year, excluding rereads:
Classics
- The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) - I enjoyed most of this, including the humor. The edition available on Standard Ebooks uses mostly modern spellings and includes great footnotes that made this easier to read.
- Demons (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) - The discussion of nihilism and the outworkings of this philosophy is very relevant in 2025.
Modern Fiction
- The Bean Trees (Barbara Kingsolver) - A young woman moves out west. This was great.
Fantasy
- House of Open Wounds (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - This is book 2 of the Tyrant Philosophers series. It's kind of fantasy MASH with some really serious moments based in a military field hospital.
- The Strength of the Few (James Islington) - Also a book 2. The Will of the Many was a banger and this one is just about as good. Fun and action packed.
- Let's give an honorable mention to The Wizard Knight duology by Gene Wolfe for a book that was dense and intricate. You won't catch everything the first time through.
Science Fiction
- Anathem (Neal Stephenson) - Most people like Snow Crash better (I absolutely did not) but I had a lot of fun with this. While the ending wasn't my favorite, the rest was great.
Bring on 2026, I'm looking forward to seeing what I can find out there.
Check out my 2024 recap: Best books of 2024
Check out my 2023 recap: Best books of 2023