I read 55 books cover to cover in 2025. So many things got in the way, but also I read a handful of bricks, and my research reading was extensive. My count of cover to cover is exactly that, those books I started and finished.
I read Isabel Wilkerson’s excellent and disturbing study of the roots of systemic discrimination, Caste. Why the West Rules…for Now by Ian Morris; Christopher Fowler’s Book of Forgotten Authors; David Graeber’s Debt: the First 5000 Years; American Colonies by Alan Taylor; Brian Greene’s Until the End of Time…
I also read Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany—a reread, for my book group—and Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle, for the first time. I have the rest of that series and I may continue, but in truth I was both pleased and disappointed in it. I expected…something else.
I’ve been working through Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott series, out loud, with Donna. A reread for me and I’m happy to report they are still very good. There were a few rereads this year. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman; the Halcyon Drift series by Brian Stableford; Underland by Robert MacFarlane; Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh; Eon by Greg Bear.
The standouts of new novels are Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal, The Necessity of Stars by E. Catherine Tobler, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
The Weir reminded me of old-fashioned idea-driven engineering SF. Very enjoyable but also a bit of a revelation in how much I am no longer the audience for this kind of book anymore.
But it was, as usual, a year of wide-ranging, barely organized reading, which brings me to an important point that has only somewhat to do with what I read.
Fifty-five books of varying subject, treatment, depth…all books I owned. All books I felt completely free to obtain and enjoy.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the culture in which I grew up that allowed me to unhesitatingly indulge in unrestricted reading is under threat. The threat is trying to manifest in the guise, as it always does, of Protecting the Children. That we must guard what unformed and innocent minds are exposed to, lest they distort and become twisted into desires and behaviors inimical to social amity.
To which I say—again, as always—bullshit. Censorship is censorship and how dare anyone presume to tell me what I may or may not read. At any age. The goal of an undeveloped mind is to develop. That cannot be done without stimulation. The best, most thorough, and safest means by which to find such stimulation is through books. All books, all kinds. The prophylactic against distortions of learning is to ensure a broader selection of what we are exposed to. More books of wider variety is a path to a healthier and richer intellectual life. Anyone coming around saying “We must bar kids from seeing Those Books” is a de facto enemy of learning, often someone who is only interested in power and acquiring it by means of fear and the ignorance thereto attaining.
I read Portnoy’s Complaint when I was 13. Also The Carpetbaggers. (Look them up if you don’t know them and want to know why they were big deals and why self-appointed guardians of childhood innocence would have had cardiac arrests knowing someone that young had access to them.) But I also read Dickens and Twain, Isaac Asimov, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Costain at that age.
Because I could. Because no one said I couldn’t. (A time or two someone suggested I shouldn’t, but that had no affect.) Because I could walk into my local bookstore and buy them for myself. Because no one was panicked by what I might become if those ideas were set loose in my psyche.
A recent court decision held that pubic libraries, being state institutions, are not protected by the first amendment because the books they offer are by definition political instruments. I have never seen such a mangled interpretation of libraries. The only purpose of such a decision is to censor what the public reads, and the only reason to do that is to predetermine our choices and make us politically pliant.
We are in the midst of an attempted reordering of what passes for civilized expectations and those doing the reordering are monsters. I say that because the motives and goals striding hand in hand along with them is designed to hurt people. People who are different, who do not conform, who express themselves in ways that reinforce liberty simply by being one more choice among many for humans to be. Ignorance is lethal. You can’t make a choice you don’t know is there and when options are closed off and hidden, people die.
Look at the books that regularly appear on banned books lists. To one degree or another, all of them give us characters who strive to be who and what they are in spite of social expectation. Please note how I phrased that. Some such characters are nothing to emulate. Hannibal Lecter is such a character. He is not a hero. But to not know such characters is to be vulnerable to them and as I said above, the safest way to learn about them is through books. Such characters, both good and evil, are arguments about human nature, about society, about culture, and it behooves us to understand these things, top to bottom, if we are to live fruitfully and intelligently in the world. Taking books away from anyone is bad; taking them away from children is morally negligent and selfishly stupid.
The simple freedom to walk into a library and acquire a book, any book, on any subject, is one of the greatest achievements of our civilization. To try to take that away is to declare yourself an enemy of liberty, of life, of joy.
Reading Review, 2025, With Observations About the Future
I read 55 books cover to cover in 2025. So many things got in the way, but also I read a handful of bricks, and my research reading was extensive. My count of cover to cover is exactly that, those books I started and finished.
I read Isabel Wilkerson’s excellent and disturbing study of the roots of systemic discrimination, Caste. Why the West Rules…for Now by Ian Morris; Christopher Fowler’s Book of Forgotten Authors; David Graeber’s Debt: the First 5000 Years; American Colonies by Alan Taylor; Brian Greene’s Until the End of Time…
I also read Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany—a reread, for my book group—and Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle, for the first time. I have the rest of that series and I may continue, but in truth I was both pleased and disappointed in it. I expected…something else.
I’ve been working through Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott series, out loud, with Donna. A reread for me and I’m happy to report they are still very good. There were a few rereads this year. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman; the Halcyon Drift series by Brian Stableford; Underland by Robert MacFarlane; Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh; Eon by Greg Bear.
The standouts of new novels are Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal, The Necessity of Stars by E. Catherine Tobler, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
The Weir reminded me of old-fashioned idea-driven engineering SF. Very enjoyable but also a bit of a revelation in how much I am no longer the audience for this kind of book anymore.
But it was, as usual, a year of wide-ranging, barely organized reading, which brings me to an important point that has only somewhat to do with what I read.
Fifty-five books of varying subject, treatment, depth…all books I owned. All books I felt completely free to obtain and enjoy.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the culture in which I grew up that allowed me to unhesitatingly indulge in unrestricted reading is under threat. The threat is trying to manifest in the guise, as it always does, of Protecting the Children. That we must guard what unformed and innocent minds are exposed to, lest they distort and become twisted into desires and behaviors inimical to social amity.
To which I say—again, as always—bullshit. Censorship is censorship and how dare anyone presume to tell me what I may or may not read. At any age. The goal of an undeveloped mind is to develop. That cannot be done without stimulation. The best, most thorough, and safest means by which to find such stimulation is through books. All books, all kinds. The prophylactic against distortions of learning is to ensure a broader selection of what we are exposed to. More books of wider variety is a path to a healthier and richer intellectual life. Anyone coming around saying “We must bar kids from seeing Those Books” is a de facto enemy of learning, often someone who is only interested in power and acquiring it by means of fear and the ignorance thereto attaining.
I read Portnoy’s Complaint when I was 13. Also The Carpetbaggers. (Look them up if you don’t know them and want to know why they were big deals and why self-appointed guardians of childhood innocence would have had cardiac arrests knowing someone that young had access to them.) But I also read Dickens and Twain, Isaac Asimov, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Costain at that age.
Because I could. Because no one said I couldn’t. (A time or two someone suggested I shouldn’t, but that had no affect.) Because I could walk into my local bookstore and buy them for myself. Because no one was panicked by what I might become if those ideas were set loose in my psyche.
A recent court decision held that pubic libraries, being state institutions, are not protected by the first amendment because the books they offer are by definition political instruments. I have never seen such a mangled interpretation of libraries. The only purpose of such a decision is to censor what the public reads, and the only reason to do that is to predetermine our choices and make us politically pliant.
We are in the midst of an attempted reordering of what passes for civilized expectations and those doing the reordering are monsters. I say that because the motives and goals striding hand in hand along with them is designed to hurt people. People who are different, who do not conform, who express themselves in ways that reinforce liberty simply by being one more choice among many for humans to be. Ignorance is lethal. You can’t make a choice you don’t know is there and when options are closed off and hidden, people die.
Look at the books that regularly appear on banned books lists. To one degree or another, all of them give us characters who strive to be who and what they are in spite of social expectation. Please note how I phrased that. Some such characters are nothing to emulate. Hannibal Lecter is such a character. He is not a hero. But to not know such characters is to be vulnerable to them and as I said above, the safest way to learn about them is through books. Such characters, both good and evil, are arguments about human nature, about society, about culture, and it behooves us to understand these things, top to bottom, if we are to live fruitfully and intelligently in the world. Taking books away from anyone is bad; taking them away from children is morally negligent and selfishly stupid.
The simple freedom to walk into a library and acquire a book, any book, on any subject, is one of the greatest achievements of our civilization. To try to take that away is to declare yourself an enemy of liberty, of life, of joy.
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