Reading List: Q4 2025

I make these lists public to try to build readership across multiple dimensions. Keeping with the “1,000 True Fans” theme, anything I can do to help deserving authors receive more exposure and small bumps in sales volumes is worth transcribing some notes.

More time as an NYC commuter and a few weeks of “beach days” had impacts on my reading consumption - I’m reading more on the train and less at night, and not at all on airplanes. With the right combination of surf, salt and iced coffee I can consume a book a day in the sand. Highly recommended to reset the increasingly jaded world views.

Inspirations this quarter: Hockey season begins anew. The annual countdown of days separating the holiday seasons. Losing some wonderfully large and loud musicians. Picking up recommendations from authors who are inter-book and writing about things they find inspiring.

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Happy New Year, readers. Here is hope for a gentle, wonderful, family- and friend-filled 2026 where books, art, music, and warmth permeate all creases of our lives.

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36. “Winners,” Fredrick Bachman, fiction, finished October 18.
    Finishing my tour of Beartown.
    Perhaps I was hoping for more closure pulling on all of the threads of the middle book, or maybe the “life goes on” as the hockey seasons roll into each other theme was the message all along. While there were parts that had me sniffling, the tragedies and conflicts seemed forced to branch to a conclusion, and less the results of the compounding conflicting interests in the first two books. Still a great way to land this triple jump, and a more than gentle reminder of the power of teammates and team leaders.

37. “The Shattering Peace,” John Scalzi, sci-fi, finished October 31.
    Unabashed Scalzi fan-boy.
    Every solid Scalzi novel has core elements that I anticipate with the fervor of unwrapping a holiday gift: complex political situations, a seemingly intractable problem, tension defused through snark, and a heart punch. The conclusion (?) of the “Old Man’s War” series delivers, again, in a wonderful way that literally bends space and time.

38. “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” Warren Zanes, music, finished November 13.
    Continued Springsteen depth, coincident with our half-move to Asbury Park.
    If Bruce’s autobiography was the tip of the iceberg, and “Tonight in Jungleland” represented the dark, brooding bulk below the surface, then “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is (as the film captures) those middle layers, compressed by fame, fortune, and perhaps an outcome Springsteen didn’t fully want or anticipate after “The River” tour. Zanes explores “Nebraska” source material, Bruce’s approach, and the mechanics of taking the first at-home multi-track recording to vinyl. What’s staggering is how many musicians find “Nebraska” to be not only one of Bruce’s best albums but one of the best written albums, full stop.

39. “The Saint of Bright Doors,” Vajra Chandrasekera, fantasy, finished November 14.
    Locus Award Winner.
    Equal parts post-Covid, surveillance driven paranoia, weirdly extruded racial, political and religious extremism, all institutionalized and set against a background of the seen and unseen that would make Castenada proud. There’s a weird twist in the narrative as it reaches its conclusion that I found strangely satisfying.

40. “Amp It Up,” Frank Slootman, business, finished November 15.
    On my boss’s bookshelf
    I have general disdain for business books because they tend to over-generalize the author’s experiences in a set of circumstances, organizations and markets that are already post-post-whatever. Slootman’s book however was much more useful, and the three big things I took away — thinking about aggressive growth, removing incrementalism, and calibrating your team — were the things that generated the most anxiety for me working for large enterprises.

41. “The Answer Is No,” Fredrik Backman, fiction/short story, finished November 15.
    On a Backman tour
    An amuse-bouche between longer reads, it combines the cultural quirkiness of Backman’s fiction with an HOA gone non-linear to the point of farce. And it’s fun.

42. “The Everlasting,” Alix Harrow, fantasy, finished November 20.
    Should win more awards than it will
    I have not historically been a fan of fantasy but Alix Harrow’s writing marries the romantic gut punches of John Scalzi with elaborately researched, detailed, thematic storytelling. Somewhat of a Sir Lancelot and King Arthur story re-imagined, along with time travel and a very powerful commentary on the long term evolution (or not) of monarchy, “The Everlasting” is revealed through multiple time travel jags to have multiple, wonderful interpretations.

43. “Thirteen Ways To Kill Lulabelle Rock,” Maud Woolf, sci-fi, finished November 30.
    Recommended (and I forgot to note where)
    What happens when you create clones of yourself to manage your over-scheduled life, and then decide to do a literal clean up by killing them? Real life intervenes and it gets complicated and messy. Despite a few character jump cuts that were abrupt, I finished this one in three daily train commutes.

44. “Fever Beach,” Carl Hiaasen, fiction, finished December 15.
    Recommended by Cory Doctorow’s pluralistic newsletter
    Hiassen takes today’s political climate, conspiracy theories, poor behavior, poorly veiled heroes without capes (or actual work clothes) and likely a steady stream of “Florida Man” memes and spins a story that is equally horrifying and hilarious. Focusing on corrupt government officials and their incompetent street teams, “Fever Beach” shows what happens when only a few people say “no” as a form of resistance. If you liked “Palm Royale” then this is where it meets “Ozark” and dances, wobbly, into the Florida sunset.

45. “Squeeze Me,” Carl Hiaasen, fiction, finished December 27.
    Following the Hiaasen canon.
    Similar to “Fever Beach” but acting out more of the frustration with the current administration and less about “Florida Man” memes, “Squeeze Me” is equal parts whodunnit and gentle eco-warning. Still fun although I feel his female characters are a “type.”

46. “Life After God,” Douglas Coupland, fiction, finished December 27.
    Digging into old Gen X narratives.
    Coupland is the voice of the youngest Boomers and oldest of Gen X, quite literally. This is already 20 years old so it pre-dates the true smart phone and internet boom — I worry what this would have been when swirled with Twitter and Facebook. With a mid-book tribute to Michael Stipe of REM, “Life After God” is serialized, out-of-sequence memoir of a man who lost religion as a Boomer (or so we want to believe). Coupland has been equated to JD Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut, and “Life After God” does not disappoint in that window of comparison.

47. “Ask Iwata,” Hobonichi, business, finished December 28.
    From my new manager’s sparse bookshelf.
    Iwata was president of Nintendo during the Nintendo DS and Wii roll outs — as much of a hardware as a game developer view of ecosystem development. I found the book fascinating on a half dozen levels: it’s a nicely curated collection of blog posts and interviews, assembling into a true 360-degree view of a superb business leader. Iwata eschews the usual hierarchical Japanese corporate structure for one where his individual maxims drove the company (hard) but he also found time to talk to, absorb from and learn about his line level developers. Like Slootman’s “Amp It Up,” I found the guidance about scale, shocking users (in a positive way) and innovation useful, even with a quarter-century, pre-Internet boom distance between now and the events transcribed.

48. “Stoner,” John Williams, fiction, finished December 28.
    Historical recommendation (via Catherine Valente perhaps)
    Perhaps auto-biographical, definitely conveying a sense of love, loss and the human condition, I felt like this imparted the lessons I should have learned from reading Thomas Mann in freshman lit. It also felt like Williams was describing the relationship of a couple at different points on the neuro-divergent spectrum, without the contemporary vocabulary or science. It is a sparse in plot, detailed in nuance book about a literature professor who is easily forgotten. It is, in some ways, the Seinfeld of post-war literature — it’s not really about anything more than the life of a minimally competent scholar. While some see the titular Stoner as a hero, he’s written as the Constanza of the early 20th century: he seemingly tries hard to care, and finds disaster in every attempt.

49. “The Uncool: A Memoir,” Cameron Crowe, music/bio, finished December 30.
    Because I am very late to the Cameron Crowe party
    There are certain aspects of my life I always feel are ninety degrees out of phase, ahead of me, as I am late to the party. The oevre of Cameron Crowe is one; from his highlight Rolling Stone interviews to “Fast Times” and “Almost Famous,” most of my friends are incredulous that I don’t know him or his work better. The perfect end to a delightful year of reading was “Uncool,” his memoir, the backstory to the movies, interviews and most important, life as one of the other/uncool kids in the 70s. I smiled to the point of unbounded joy and perhaps some happy sniffles at the way Crowe describes music and its impact on us, and how we learn to love our favorite songs in the moment.