Books I read in 2025
The books I enjoyed the most in 2025 were:
- Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass: I occasionally consume young adult books that my kids are ploughing through. This might be my favourite. I didn’t enjoy the next two in the series as much.
- Nate Silver, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything: I loved the first half of this book, when the focus was on poker and gambling. The second half on tech and investing was less convincing. Among other things, Silver gives too much credence to grifters (e.g. a16z) and pathological liars (e.g. Sam Altman). The ChatGPT material is already feeling out of date.
- Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain: Another book for which I loved the first part on language and the brain. I was less excited about the rest when Deacon got into brain structure and the like, but overall a great read.
Below is the list of books I read in 2025 (with a star if I have read them before).
Non-Fiction
- Anil Ananthaswamy, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI
- Orin Bar-Gill, Seduction by Contract: Law, Economics, and Psychology in Consumer Markets
- Omri Ben-Shahar and Carl Schneider, More than you wanted to know: The failure of mandated disclosure
- Rob Brooks, Artificial Intimacy: Virtual friends, digital lovers and algorithmic matchmakers
- David Chalmers, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy
- Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain
- Emanuel Derman, My Life as a Quant
- Michael Hallsworth and Elspeth Kirkman, Behavioral Insights
- Karen Hao, Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination
- Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
- Keith Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
- Gary Marcus, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind
- John Romero, Doom Guy: Life in First Person
- Stuart Russell, Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control*
- Ben Shneiderman, Human-Centred AI
- Eric Siegel, The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment
- Nate Silver, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
- Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma
- Toby Walsh, Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World
- Mark D. White, The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics, Libertarianism and Paternalism
- Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
Fiction
- Isaac Asimov, I, Robot*
- Richard Adams, Watership Down
- Frank Herbert, Dune* (It was so long since my last read it was like a new book.)
- Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man*
- Neal Stephenson, Seveneves
- Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
- Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife
- Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
- Martha Wells, All Systems Red
Previous annual book lists: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024