Books I Read in 2025

a year in review

2025-12-26

Previously: 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019

Contents🔗

Intro🔗

According to my notes, I read 68 books this year.

We’ll just have to assume that I am a reliable note-taker, and that this is true!

Here comes the best of 2025.

The Dark Tower🔗

My main reading project this year was a complete re-read of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I first read it in print about 10 years ago. And this time I read the audio. I read all of the core books, and detoured through several connected books along the way, most new to me.

This was an epic journey that spiraled out into other related media, including the films Salem’s Lot (1979), Salem’s Lot (2024), Seven Samurai (1954), and The Magnificent Seven (1960). (Seven Samurai is amazing. It’s a film probably everybody should see.)

The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1), Stephen King
The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, #2), Stephen King
The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3), Stephen King
Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4), Stephen King
Salem’s Lot, Stephen King (NEW)
Everythings Eventual. Five Dark Tales, Stephen King (NEW)
The Wind Through the Keyhole, Stephen King (NEW)
Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5), Stephen King
Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6), Stephen King
The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, #7), Stephen King
Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen King (NEW)

It was 11 books long. I can’t really say much that would adequately cover that much material. The good parts are still really good. The bad parts are still really bad. It was worth it. I enjoyed it.

Comic books🔗

The Holy Roller, Andy Samberg. What if Andy Samberg was a comic book hero who smashes nazis in the face with trick bowling balls?
Eight Billion Genies Deluxe Edition Vol. 1, Charles Soule. What if everybody suddenly had a genie that would grant them 1 wish?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, Kevin Eastman. What if only one of the turtles was still alive, and he was obsessed with avenging his brothers and father?
God Hates Astronauts: The Omni-Mega-Bus, Ryan Browne. Okay this one is a total fever dream. I read this when it was originally being published as a web serial. The main visual that stuck with me over the years is how superhero Star Fighter is basically kind of immortal but gets punched in the face so hard that his head swells up to enormous size, and then eventually pops and then he has this hideous deflated sack as a head. That’s the kind of thing that stays with you. But also “Superhero big head gross” is a hard thing to search for if you forget both the title and the author. So I felt lucky to stumble across this again.
Batman/Elmer Fudd, Tom King. What if … Elmer Fudd got into a shotgun fight with Batman? It’s as silly as it sounds. But also surprisingly good?

Fantasy🔗

The Abolethic Sovereignty Series:

Plague of spells, Bruce R. Cordell
City of Torment, Bruce R. Cordell
Key of Stars, Bruce R. Cordell

I’ve never had much success with D&D novels. They’re just never that good. This series though was … also not very good, but was entertaining enough to more than make up for it! It has everything! A monk protagonist (monks never get the spotlight) and a brooding warlock deuteragonist. Aboleths everywhere. It’s a hoot.

Fiction🔗

Vacation, Deb Olin Unferth. Haunting, rambling fiction about loneliness written in the author’s very unique quasi-stream-of-consciousness voice.
The God of the Woods, Liz Moore. A summer camp mystery ostensibly about a missing camper, but also about rich men exploiting poor people and abusing women.
We Loved to Run, Stephanie Reents. A team of collegiate cross-country runners who have a love hate relationship with running, and each other.
James, Percival Everett. A re-telling of Tom Sawyer from the point of view of Jim in a world where the slaves are actually secretly very well educated and put on an act of being Negroes for the whites.
The City and the City, China Miéville. At this point I’ll read anything by Miéville. This story is a classic procedural police mystery drama. The trick is, it takes place in a city that is actually 2 different cities superimposed over each other, and citizens of both cities are conditioned from birth to never acknowledge or interact with the other city or its people. Not in a sci-fi way. It’s totally mundane. So when a homicide crosses city borders, things predictably get wild.
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver. Tragically sad. At times funny. A relentlessly brutal tale of poverty and desperation in Southern Appalachia.

Graphic Novels🔗

This was the year that I fell in love with the team of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. Night Eaters is a 3 volume book about family and trauma and trust and secrets and wanting a better life for your kids. And there are ghosts and monsters and stuff.

Monstress, I think is still ongoing? It is one of the most densely fantastical world building exercises I’ve seen. At it’s core, it’s a story about a girl with a monster inside her who’s too tough and messed up to trust anybody. But the art is so good, and the story telling and character development and just everything about it is also so good.

Monstress, Vol. 1 - 3, Marjorie M. Liu
The Night Eaters, Vol. 1: She Eats the Night, Marjorie M. Liu
The Night Eaters, Vol. 2: Her Little Reapers, Marjorie M. Liu
The Night Eaters, Vol. 3: Their Kingdom Come, Marjorie M. Liu

Also:

Cat Rackham, Steve Wolfhard. Okay this one I also read as it was originally being published as a web serial. It’s cute, and also includes a very real portrayal of depression. And also, for a cute web serial, one of the most gruesome instances of body horror I’ve ever seen in any medium.

Manga🔗

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Vol. 1 - 5, Kanehito Yamada. Masterfully captures the pain of loneliness and isolation, and the beauty of friendship.
Dandadan, Vol. 1 - 4, Yukinobu Tatsu. Just so very silly.

Memoirs🔗

Stay True, Hua Hsu. This is a beautiful book about a magical point in time, which takes a tragic turn when the author’s friend is murdered.
The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, Neko Case. I continue to think about the extreme neglect Neko suffered as a kid, and how lucky she is to have come through it as well as she did, much less to be able to go on to have such great success.

Non-Fiction🔗

Why We Swim, Bonnie Tsui. The social, physical, and evolutionary reasons humans are drawn to the water.
Validation: The New Psychology of Influence, Caroline Fleck. A handy framework to apply to others and yourself.
Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park, Conor Knighton. 58 National Parks in 52 weeks! Kind of a weak attempt at building a cohesive narrative out of the experience, but luckily the park biographies stand on their own!

New bookshelves I added this year:🔗

Nature: for Leave Only Footprints
Surreal: for Vacation
Manga: for all the manga I read
Anti-Fascist: for The Holy Roller. 2026 goal: read more anti-fascist / nazi-punching books.
Fiction: Some books I don’t really know what to shelve under, and I needed a catch-all. Surprised I didn’t have this one already to be honest. Added initially for Demon Copperhead.
Romance: for Funny Story, which I logged, but didn’t enjoy, and that’s why this is the first you’re hearing of it.