Category: Books

2025 was a year of dark corridors, difficult histories, and a search for steadier ways of thinking.

On the fiction side, I delved into the mind of Hannibal Lecter through “Red Dragon”, “The Silence of the Lambs“, “Hannibal”, and “Hannibal Rising” … equal parts disturbing and fascinating. Alongside them came other kinds of dread: the psychological unease of “The Shining”, the grey, suffocating control of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, the alien invasion and panic of “The War of the Worlds”, and the uneasy, blurry humanity of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. “The Three Musketeers” added its own flavour of tension, loyalty, and intrigue to the mix, while “The Iliad” pulled me much further back in time, into a world of gods, pride, fate, and glory.

To balance all that, there was a strong current of reflection and practical philosophy. “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” was one of the most moving books of the year, pairing horror with resilience. “How to Think Like a Roman Emperor”, “The Richest Man in Babylon”, “Mind Full to Mindful“, and “Feel-Good Productivity” all, in very different ways, wrestled with how to live better: with clearer principles, smarter habits, and a more deliberate sense of meaning.

Below is the full list of what I read in 2025, with a simple rating for how much each book stayed with me.

Hannibal

– Thomas Harris –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Silence Of The Lambs

– Thomas Harris –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

How To Think Like A Roman Emperor

– Donal J. Robertson –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Richest Man In Babylon

– George S. Clason –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Shining

– Stephen King –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Nineteen Eighty-Four

– George Orwell –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Iliad

– Homer –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Hannibal Rising

– Thomas Harris –

⭐⭐⭐

The Three Musketeers

– Alexandre Dumas –

⭐⭐⭐

Red Dragon

– Thomas Harris –

⭐⭐⭐

2024 was a year of heavy themes and strange worlds: war, injustice, absurd bureaucracy, hell, alien physics, and how to stay sane through it all.

“The Pianist“, a quiet, devastating memoir that set the tone for a lot of what followed: questions of survival, dignity, and what remains of a person when everything else is stripped away. From there, “The Trial”, “A Short Stay in Hell“, and “The Gods Themselves” pushed in different directions but circled similar territory of systems we don’t control, rules we don’t understand, and universes that don’t particularly care whether we “get it” or not.

Threaded through all of this was a Stoic undercurrent: “Letters from a Stoic“, “Meditations“, “Stoicism and the Art of Happiness” offered tools, context, and historical colour for thinking about resilience, virtue, and how to live well in a world that often doesn’t make sense. Even “12 Rules for Life“, which I rated lower than the rest, still joined the pile of books trying to answer a basic question: how do you carry yourself through chaos?

“The Day Commodus Killed a Rhino” provided an entertaining look at everyday life, power, and spectacle in ancient Rome, using one outrageous emperor and his arena antics to show how the whole system really worked.

Below is the full list of what I read in 2024, with a simple rating for how much each book stayed with me.

The Pianist

– Wladyslaw Szpilman –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Trial

– Franz Kafka –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Gods Themselves

– Isaac Asimov –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

You Should Have Left

– Daniel Kehlmann –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Letters From A Stoic

– Seneca –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Short Stay in Hell

– Steven L. Peck –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Meditations

– Marcus Aurelius –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Day Commodus Killed a Rhino

– Jerry Toner –

⭐⭐⭐

12 Rules For Life

– Jordan B. Peterson –

⭐⭐

2023 was a heavier, more introspective reading year — one that circled around meaning, power, and how people (and systems) actually behave.

It started deep in the human psyche with Notes from the Underground, The Diary of a Young Girl, Animal Farm, and Man’s Search for Meaning. Different voices, different eras, but all circling the same themes: suffering, dignity, oppression, resistance, and what people hold on to when everything else is stripped away.

Alongside that, I went digging into how we live and decide in the modern world: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Atomic Habits, The Little Book of Psychology, The Black Swan, Good Strategy Bad Strategy, and The Almanack of Naval Ravikant all pushed in the same direction — be deliberate about what you care about, how you spend your attention, and how you respond to uncertainty.

On the more ideological and imaginative side, The Communist Manifesto, The Symposium, Fahrenheit 451, and The Fellowship of the Ring added politics, philosophy, censorship, and epic fantasy to the mix. Some of these I admired more for their place in history than for pure enjoyment, but they were still worth the time.

Below is the full list of what I read in 2023, along with a simple rating for how much each book stayed with me.

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F*ck

– Mark Manson –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Diary Of A Young Girl

– Anne Frank –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Notes From Underground

– Fyodor Dostoevsky –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Little Book Of Psychology

– Emily Ralls –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Man’s Search For Meaning

– Victor E. Franke –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Atomic Habits

– James Clear –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Good Strategy Bad Strategy

– Richard Rumelt –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant

– Eric Jorgenson –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Black Swan

– Nassim Nicholas Taleb –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Symposium

– Plato –

⭐⭐

2022 was a year of reading across two main axes: how to think and worlds to get lost in. On one side, there were books about money, negotiation, leadership, systems, and learning – on the other, space marines, Norse gods, and epic fantasy battles.

It was the year I finally read The Psychology of Money and Seeking Wisdom, both of which changed how I think about decisions, risk, and incentives. I experimented with better ways to learn and write through How to Take Smart Notes, Ultralearning, and Principles, and picked up practical tools for work from Radical Candor, The Making of a Manager, and Never Split the Difference.

To balance the non-fiction, I spent time in other worlds: Old Man’s War, Red Rising, The Shadow of the Gods, and Norse Mythology gave me the kind of imaginative reset that only good sci-fi and fantasy can. Along the way, The Emperor’s Handbook and End of a Berlin Diary added a historical and philosophical layer to it all.

Below is the full list of what I read in 2022, along with a simple rating for how much each one stayed with me.

The Psychology of Money

– Morgan Housel –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Seeking Wisdom

– Peter Bevelin –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Radical Candor

– Kim Scott –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Principles

– Ray Dalio –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Old Man’s War

– John Scalzi –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

End Of A Berlin Diary

– William L. Shirer –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Making Of A Manager

– Julie Zhuo –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Never Split The Difference

– Chris Voss –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Shadow Of The Gods

– John Gwynne –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Ghost Brigades

– John Scalzi –

⭐⭐⭐