I read relatively more fiction this year, and I finally tried several audiobooks, both prompted by a couple months of feeding a newborn overnight. I don’t have nearly as much taste for fiction as I do for nonfiction, and I mostly didn’t love the audiobooks either, so this list might not be quite as useful as past years’.
Roughly ranked within each section.
Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare (2025): An outstanding nonfiction book. It’s a really important topic: how the US (and to a lesser extent other countries) use control of financial systems and technology to enact sanctions on perceived bad actors. There’s lots of detail, but it’s actually interesting, and it’s focused on the topic at hand.
The Nvidia Way (2024): A solid “management book” about one of the most successful and uniquely run companies. Keep in mind that it’s very much NVIDIA’s (and really CEO Jensen Huang’s) perspective—controversial issues like crypto mining, international sales, and how to choose customers aren’t mentioned at all. See a full review here.
The Intel Trinity (2014): I was planning to skim this quickly to look for any tidbits to use for the NVIDIA book review, but it was compelling enough that I ended up reading the whole thing in earnest.
Trade Wars Are Class Wars (2020): This had been on my list for a while but became more relevant this year. The argument is mainly a) our trade deficit is mainly driven by other countries wanting to invest in the US and sending us stuff to get dollars, not greedy Americans (this is actually pretty mainstream in economics) and b) those financial demands are driven by inequality in those other countries, especially China and Germany (this is a heterodox take but not a zany one, and they argue it clearly).
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (2006): I was slightly disappointed relative to how much modern tech/finance types talk about this book—it’s great on the invention and adoption of containers, but less than I expected on how they actually changed the economy.
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (2025): Annoyingly ideological but also packed with useful facts about Spotify’s success. The most important theme is its evolution from being like iTunes (a place to find music you already want to hear) to a service for filling your life with background music—explaining algorithmic playlists, the rise of bland coffee-shop music, and white-label artists. (A Daniel Ek quote: “Apple Music and Amazon aren’t our competitors. Our only competitor is silence.”)
The Boys in the Boat (2013): I resisted reading this for a while because it sounded cliche, and it was, but the writing lived up to the hype: amazing detail about every race 80 years ago and some neat insight about rowing. It was interesting to learn the “underdog story” everyone talks about was only sort of true—some of the individual rowers were unlikely heroes, but not the Washington rowing program as a whole (it had won a national title already and was a close finisher in others, plus its West Coast compatriot Cal had won the prior two Olympic golds).
Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original (2022): Rickey Henderson is a worthy subject of a biography—perhaps the most underrated of the top 25ish players of all time?—and I appreciated the vast range of perspectives in here. The most interesting takeaway is that Rickey sat out for injuries when he probably didn’t have to, which was looked down upon at the time, but is more in line with how teams treat players today and may have contributed to his longevity and success when he did play.
Excellence Without a Soul (2005): I found this from college while cleaning my office and it had much more relevant commentary than I expected on grade inflation, distribution requirements, and athletics. It’s very “academic” in the sense that it’s heavy on facts and light on clear positions, though. (Except for how much Lewis hated then-Harvard president Larry Summers: “Lawrence Summers’s principal failing was not that he was too strong or too uncongenial, but that the wisdom, knowledge, and judgment he lent to faculty affairs were too feeble.”)
The Last Great Walk: The True Story of a 1909 Walk from New York to San Francisco… (2014): A cute light read, though I could have done with fewer/shorter digressions into human nature and more focus on the walk itself. The subtitle doesn’t give away the astounding fact that Weston was 70 years old when he attempted his walk (nor the explanation that he was a professional distance walker for most of his life, which makes it a bit less astounding).
How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology (2023): I don’t know much about biology so this was exhausting; I only made it through about six chapters and that was with a heavy amount of ChatGPT help. It seemed important and the first few topics related to things I kind of knew in interesting ways (how genetics are more complicated than “this gene creates this protein / causes this trait”; why protein folding matters) but then it became a blur.
The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI (2025): Recommending because I liked the first section on the theory and history of scaling. Otherwise there are lots of insights throughout but I don’t know who this book is actually for: you have to be smart enough about the basics of AI to follow its lack of structure and have enough interest in the topic to want to dive into the details, but not so into the topic that you’re already listening to Dwarkesh’s podcast or reading other things from the people interviewed here.
Twitter and Tear Gas (2017): A thesis that seems important and still relevant: the Internet made it easy for protest movements to arise spontaneously, but that meant they didn’t have (formal or informal) leadership structures, so they don’t last very long and/or can’t articulate clear demands. It’s very set-in-the-early-2010s so it’s a little hard to read now, and I think it partially but didn’t completely predict how future digitally native protests like MeToo and BLM played out.
Cutting for Stone (2009): I enjoyed all the medical details, which taught me about a field I don’t really know very well, and as a pure story it was also beautiful.
The Night Circus (2011): This was the first (only?) audiobook I read that I actually looked forward to, and that didn’t just feel like a worse version of reading a regular book. The story was really compelling and the voice acting helped it work really well in audio too.
The Secret History (1992): I devoured this, in part because I was sick and had nothing better to do. The first 100 pages were a little cringey, but I still wanted to see what would happen, and then the rest was actually enjoyable.
City of Thieves (2008): Really engaging, chapters flew by, and the ending was disappointingly abrupt.
Circe (2018): I enjoyed it a lot despite (because of?) not knowing much about Greek mythology—the characters were interesting and most of the plot wasn’t too predictable nor forced. The voiceover was nice too. (audiobook)
His Dark Materials trilogy (2000): Not my usual genre but I really liked the pace of the first volume and wanted to keep reading. It dragged a little more through the second and the first half of the third.
A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010): I don’t always like this type of book but I highly enjoyed this one—favorite stories were #4, #7, #12.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003): A quick read with a character whose head it felt worth getting inside. I switched from audiobook to hard copy midway through and the latter was much better.
Bleeding Edge (2013): Only recommended if you’re into tech and/or finance, but I found the setting and the gratuitous dot-com-era references fun. I also wish I’d read the print book for this one because the narrator’s voice took a long time to get used to. (audiobook)
The Song of Achilles (2011): I liked the first two-thirds a lot but then it got too “unrealistic,” which sounds silly to say for a mythological fantasy, but the climax was hard to believe even in the context of the rest of the story. (audiobook)
Siblings Without Rivalry (1972): The same advice from the How to Talk to Kids... series but focused on sibling situations with more examples. The most novel parts are the ones about a) don’t compare your two kids or put them in roles (”you’re the responsible one”) and b) although you of course shouldn’t favor one sibling generally, you also shouldn’t try to make everything “equal” (because circumstances will be different for each child).
Oh Crap! Potty Training… (2015): We didn’t really try to stick with this plan nor did we find what it said happened exactly in practice, but this book did one really important thing, which was lower my expectations for how quickly potty training would work.
Previously: 2024, 2023, more books throughout the year on Goodreads
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