My 2025 Year in Books (21 books total!)
I had so much fun reading this year. By the way, I love using goodreads to keep up with what I have and want to read. I’ve been tracking my reading there for years. Follow me if you are into that. Also, see more about my year in books here.
Rant: I once had an amazingly curated goodreads account that I can no longer access. Customer support refuses to help, which is genuinely tragic. So this is the new one. I’m kind of sad about losing that, but onward. Here it is if you are interested in past years’ books or my great reading lists that I need to recreate.
This year, my reading clustered around a few quiet but persistent questions:
How should a life be shaped when time is finite? And what am I doing with my life besides everything all at once all the time and always wanting to do more always feeling I’m not doing enough??? anyways.
What does good taste actually look like across work, culture, food, and ideas? and how to create a thoughtful, intentional, curated life.
Where do systems help us grow, and where do they flatten us? and how do these different ideas, systems, and disciplines interact. Everything connects.
I followed my curiosity this year across memoir, philosophy, management, fiction, and fashion-tech. Some books stayed with me. Others I respected more than I loved.
Here are the books I read this year.
All the Books I Read (by Category)
Books That Genuinely Shifted How I Think
Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman
Electric Runway — Amanda Cosco
On Managing Yourself — Harvard Business Review
The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick
Don’t Believe Everything You Think — Joseph Nguyen
Eichmann in Jerusalem — Hannah Arendt
Strong Reads
I Regret Almost Everything — Keith McNally
Kitchen Confidential — Anthony Bourdain
Small Things Like These — Claire Keegan
The Leopard — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Intermezzo — Sally Rooney
Crying in H Mart — Michelle Zauner
The Personal Librarian — Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
Cleopatra and Frankenstein — Coco Mellors
Good, Enjoyable, but Not Defining
The Fellowship of the Ring — J.R.R. Tolkien
Normal People — Sally Rooney
Fourth Wing — Rebecca Yarros
Honorable Mentions
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Communication
The Art Thief — Michael Finkel
When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamín Labatut
In Five Years — Rebecca Serle
Books That Genuinely Shifted How I Think
Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman
This was the most impactful book I read all year. And I don’t like most of the popular hyped 50% longer than they should be self-help books.
Rather than offering productivity hacks or writing in a self-help style like many other books I have read , Burkeman dismantles the idea that life can be optimized at all. It’s a philosophy on time management and acceptance. The core premise is that we get roughly four thousand weeks (if we are lucky), and pretending otherwise creates anxiety rather than meaning. It reframed how I think about ambition, time, and self-pressure. It’s one of those books I need to reread, visit often, and take notes for so that I remind myself and hopefully integrate some of it into my life. I also read it at the perfect time, a time where I related to everything he wrote, making never ending todo lists, losing sight of what matters, prioritization. It’s a great reminder of what we forget when our lives become fast-paced.
What stuck with me:
The idea that choosing one thing is always choosing not to do something else and that this is not a failure or settling (with a negative connotation), it actually makes the choice even more special.
Letting go of “someday” productivity fantasies. Prioritizing at most 2-3 things at a time. Get through one of them before taking on a new one. Doing small increments of many things at once feels good only short term, and doesn’t create real progress.
Treating limitation as a feature, not a flaw.
This book didn’t instantly make me more efficient or offer solutions to be more productive. It makes you think about how to live your life with more awareness and intention.
Electric Runway — Amanda Cosco
This felt like reading the blueprint for a space that I’m drawn to — fashion-tech.
Electric Runway looks at how emerging technologies are reshaping the fashion industry, from supply chains to personalization, without defaulting to hype. What I appreciated most was the systems-level thinking: fashion as infrastructure, not just aesthetics, and the various perspectives on how fashion and tech influence each other.
What I learned:
Fashion is a system, not a trend machine (and a multi trillion dollar system at that). Technology reshapes labor, supply chains, identity, and power long before it shows up as style.
Many fashion-tech ideas fail not because they’re bad, but because the world just isn’t ready (actually this happens a lot in tech generally — but google glasses are a good example). Products around wearables, digital fashion, AI, and biomaterials are early signals of what is coming, not finished products.
The real question isn’t what’s new, but who benefits and who bears the cost as fashion becomes faster, more automated, and more digital.
This book gives you a map of technology, culture, economics, and identity, so you can decide which corner you want to explore more of. The future of fashion isn’t just clothes. It’s people, power, and meaning reshaped by the technologies we both embrace and resist.
One of my goals in 2026 is to read more news and books about fashion, if it’s fashion tech that’s a bonus. Let me know if you have any recommendations. I take them seriously. I’m currently reading Worn, and it’s not the easiest read tbh.
On Managing Yourself — Harvard Business Review
This surprised me by how it made me really think. Especially compared to the On Communications HBR book.
This book was less about tactics and more about self-knowledge. It dived into how you work, what drains you, what environments you actually thrive in, what limits and boundaries are healthy. It gave language to instincts I already had and helped me think more clearly about shaping work around personal strengths.
One of the few “career” books that felt genuinely reflective. Also one to reread, write notes about, and remind yourself of to put some of the ideas into action.
The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick
Practical in the best way. Small but dense. You could read it in one sitting.
This changed how I think about feedback, ideas, and validation. The reminder that people lie to you unintentionally, and that good questions matter more than encouragement, is something everyone should carry with them into anything they build. So many people are in pitch mode when talking to others instead of gathering data mode. This is high on my list because it actually changed how I think and interact if I am talking to someone about tech, or anything I want to learn about. I think actually asking people questions in a similar way when learning about anything, even them, is good. Definitely better than just pitching a business, or maybe even yourself. Because in the end, nobody really enjoys that but yourself.
Don’t Believe Everything You Think — Joseph Nguyen
A short book about over-identification with thought.
This book is high on the list because it changed me and left an impact. It did that in a very simple way. In the beginning it asks you to do an exercise that makes you think. First you get a thought, then you begin to really think about it. It asks what emotions you feel during that process. I realized that the first thought itself was neutral, and the thinking that came after it was not. The thinking is when I began to feel emotions, when I started to dig into the thought and ask myself questions like “well what about this or that? should my answer be different? maybe more? maybe less? what would I do then?”. And that emotion from thinking about the thought, the author explains, is where we suffer, and we don’t need to. This thinking causes us to waste our energy. And that realization was actually a really cool moment for me.
I think I think less now (lol) in the moments when the thinking is going nowhere except to worrying, doubting, and wasting my energy. And I’m not sure if you’ve experienced this before (maybe you have never been an over thinker — if so, good for you), but thinking a lot about these unnecessary things is so draining. Keeping all of this noise in your head at all times is exhausting, and causes you to not be present. When someone is with you and present in that moment, that’s a great feeling. When they aren’t it’s bad vibes. If you are in your head overthinking, having a miserable time, wasting energy, and you also aren’t being present with the people around you, that feels like a sad way to live. It’s just a bad cycle all around. All these things we worry about and analyze — most of the time we can never actually get answers on. What people think, what will happen, etc. And really why do we even care. Most of the time these thoughts don’t matter at all and they aren’t productive. If you care about yourself, you respect yourself and your time and energy, why would you put yourself through that? Anyways.
(rant)
I don’t actually agree with everything in this book. I think it’s way oversimplified and realistically doesn’t make sense. What do you mean I need to stop thinking completely? What about thinking about what I need to pack and what I need to do next week. Like sure, maybe if you are some artist out there and can be disconnected from most things, then great for you. But, that’s not how most people live, and also thinking about people you care about — family, friends, etc — is…really good? Being thoughtful and doing things for others because you think about them, seems like a good thing too. What if you have actually been a bad friend to someone? Shouldn’t you think a little about that? Seems like not thinking in that case is a little..wrong. Bad human vibes. Sure don’t ruminate on it, but maybe consider how your actions affected someone else, which I think… involves thinking. It also doesn’t really touch on community and feels very individualistic. But maybe that’s the point. It’s a short book. Maybe the author is rage baiting.
Anyways, my only problem is he doesn’t address any of these nuances. He acts like the only problem you will have is that once you are so calm from not thinking, your brain will try to trick you into thinking again. Yeah, sure. But also what about everything else that could be an issue.
Life is short. Be considerate of others, especially your friends and family. But stop caring so much. It’s weird, it’s annoying, it’s not attractive, and it’s causing you to be inauthentic (bad vibes). Sorry, but it’s true. And I’m speaking to myself also. For example, I really don’t care what anyone thinks of my Substack. I hope people like it but maybe someone thinks it’s cringe. Maybe one person reads it. I really don’t care. I’m doing it because I like it. I think it would be a shame to not be creative in whatever way you feel like being creative just because you are afraid people will think you are cringe. I also think it would be a shame to create just for validation.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil — Hannah Ardent
Challenging, uncomfortable, and important.
Arendt’s central idea is that great evil can be committed by ordinary people who simply stop thinking. And how people will excuse themselves of responsibility because they didn’t directly hold the gun or simply carried out the order. Then who is to blame? If the order giver didn’t “do” it, and the person who killed was forced to carry the gun (or they’d get shot), the person threatening them was also ordered to do so, and there were 10 layers in between, where does the responsibility fall? People are so good at crafting stories in their mind to avoid accountability. The heaviness of this book stayed with me long after I finished. Ardent does a good job at articulating the volume at which these events took place. It’s truly just heartbreaking.
This isn’t an easy read, but it made me consider how I think about responsibility, systems, and moral abdication.
Strong Reads
I Regret Almost Everything — Keith McNally
Sharp, opinionated, and deeply human.
A memoir about taste, risk, mental health, and building places that matter. It’s witty and heartbreaking. A story about perseverance, tragedy, and hope. What resonated most was McNally’s refusal to soften himself. A reminder that enduring work often comes from caring too much and accepting the consequences, and you never know what life will throw at you, just keep doing the best with what you have.
McNally is a bit self deprecating, but it has a humor to it. He is obviously very intelligent and gifted. I love his restaurants also.
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly — Anthony Bourdain
A great read. My intro to Bourdain content. I learned something (I bought the knife he recommended, and learned about when to eat what at restaurants), and he has a great voice and story.
More than a food memoir, this is about obsession, craft, ego, and chaos. Maybe it’s true that behind every great system is a messy, human underbelly.
Small Things Like These — Claire Keegan
Quietly devastating.
A short book about moral courage, compassion, and silent complicity, where you figure out the pieces of the puzzle with the protagonist. Based on a real institutional cruelty in Ireland (~1985). This book made me feel something (really sad). But it’s good and a quick read, I recommend.
The Leopard — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
A slow, reflective novel about decline, adaptation, and illusion.
Less about plot, more about perspective. Watching an old social order pretend to modernize while protecting itself felt disturbingly contemporary. A good read.
Intermezzo — Sally Rooney
A quiet, interior novel about grief, desire, and emotional dissonance. A story of two brothers and their personal growth.
Intermezzo sits in the spaces between people. In what’s left unsaid, what’s misinterpreted, what’s felt but never articulated. Capturing that well in a book is beautiful. The book explores how loss destabilizes identity and intimacy, and how people cope by withdrawing, attaching, or circling each other without resolution.
This is a book about sitting with discomfort, about the awkwardness of living through transition while still needing connection.
Crying in H Mart — Michelle Zauner
Grief, food, identity, and inheritance. All deeply intertwined.
I appreciated how grounded this book felt. It was about loss. Grief shows up in grocery aisles, in half remembered recipes, in habits you don’t realize are sacred until they’re gone. It’s also a nuanced portrait of a complicated mother–daughter relationship, shaped by love, expectation, guilt, unmet expectations, and cultural distance.
This book does a great job at bringing you in to feel the slow, uneven process of learning how to carry what remains.
The Personal Librarian — Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
I really enjoyed this book. It’s a good, easy, engaging read. I generally love historical fiction because even if it’s fiction, I still learn a lot about the time and place the book is set in. This one is also based off of a real person, which is even better. The story line, the cultural perspective of the librarian, etc. was great. There are just certain books where the writing is amazingly elegant, and this one lacked it in some places in my opinion.
This book tells the story of Belle da Costa Greene, based on J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian. Her story is fascinating, and I especially enjoyed the ideas around identity, power, and self-invention.
Still, it raised compelling questions about:
Who gets to be remembered.
Identity in elite spaces.
The cost of access.
It gave me a new appreciation for the Morgan Library. This book tells the story of how it came about. I recently went to a gala there, but I didn’t finish the book before then. Now I want to go back since I can appreciate it more.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein — Coco Mellors
A novel about modern adulthood disguised as a love story.
Emotionally messy, set in NYC, and very attuned to the patterns of miscommunication and avoidance in young American relationships. The characters circle each other, the patterns of miscommunication, wanting closeness but not knowing how to hold it. It touches on being self-aware without being self-directed. The ending is just reality, not a fairy tell. It’s bittersweet. I tend to like those more.
Good, Enjoyable but Not Defining
The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) — J.R.R. Tolkien
Ok, don’t be upset at me for this. I know it’s a classic, and I love the classics, but this one was boring to me. I liked the hobbit a lot. Maybe this is just supposed to be the one setting the stage, but I have so many other books I want to read that this one didn’t motivated me to read the next one right now. Maybe I just had too high of hopes.
Normal People — Sally Rooney
Intimacy, power, communication.
The author captures how people can be deeply connected while still failing to meet each other. Kind of like Cleopatra and Frankenstein. Not because of lack of feeling, but because of silence, insecurity, and unspoken assumptions. The book touches on how class, self-worth, and emotional asymmetry shape relationships, often determining who adapts and moves on and who remains left behind and fixed.
This one is good, I just liked Intermezzo more.
Fourth Wing — Rebecca Yarro.
Dragons, stakes, escapism.
I’ve always loved sci-fi and fantasy (Red Rising, The Hunger Games), but as I get older, I find the first books in long series harder to love. Like Harry Potter, they often mature as they go. So the first one often feels pretty immature. This wasn’t an exception.
The protagonist, Violet Sorrengail, is compelling, but the explicit sexualization felt unnecessary and occasionally distracting. I don’t mind sexuality in books, but the execution here gave me the ick, and I was surprised, given it’s written by a woman. I expected it in books like Snow Crash, but honestly I didn’t expect it in this one. The story would’ve been better without it.
Fun, but I didn’t read the next one.
Honorable Mentions
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Communication
Solid frameworks around persuasion, clarity, and influence — useful, but more reference than revelation.
The Art Thief — Michael Finkel
A compelling premise with uneven execution.
I learned about certain art pieces and the psychology of obsession, but the pacing never fully pulled me in.
When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamín Labatut
Ambitious, unsettling, and hard to finish.
I admired the themes of science, madness, and obsession, but the emotional distance made it feel anticlimactic. Still worth reading, especially if you’re interested in the limits of human knowledge and alternative realities. It just felt a bit womp womp.
More interesting than enjoyable, but a popular book so worth reading.
In Five Years — Rebecca Serle
This one was just disappointing. To be fair, I randomly picked it up at McNally bookstore without knowing anything about it. Don’t judge a book by its cover? The cover was nice, the book wasn’t. I honestly do not understand why someone would consider this weird and disconnected story good. It follows a girl who has built a good life, and then she has a dream that’s a vision of the future and she’s with her best friends boyfriend. Ok, so then she sabotages her engagement because she’s bored basically, but not in a clever way at all. If it was done in a clever way I could respect it. Things don’t line up. Like the ring. (not going to spoil it), but when she saw the ring in the vision, why didn’t she know when she saw it in real life? Whatever.
An easy read and dramatic. If you only have one brain cell working and at the same time really want to read then you may enjoy it. Please tell me if you think I am missing something here.
Closing Thoughts
Whew, that was a lot. I already have a big stack of books I am excited to read in 2026. I love reading so much. I’ve read a lot since I was a child. It’s always been a hobby I want to do more of.
If you enjoyed this, you can follow my Substack for more writing on books, technology, fashion, systems, and other curiosities. I publish thoughtfully, but not always frequently.
Let me know your thoughts on these books and/or any recommendations.
xx Alexa Griffith <3