There’s something almost sacred about reading. For me it’s an indulgence, a luxury, a form of intellectual and emotional nourishment that feeds parts of me little else reaches. It’s my stepping outside of life’s demands and immersing myself in other worlds, other minds, other ways of seeing.

This year, that indulgence was harder to come by.

I only managed 25 books in 2025. That’s my smallest annual count in years. Why? I was deep in the trenches: writing, rewriting, and rewriting again my latest book, Boys (which launches June 2 – join the waitlist here). Every moment was invested in wrestling with words, refining arguments, and trying to articulate ideas that felt simultaneously urgent and elusive.

But even in a year of fewer books, some stood out as transformative. These weren’t just stories or arguments. These were experiences that challenged me, provoked me, and in some cases, fundamentally shifted how I see the world.

Here are my favorite books of 2025.

Technology and Society

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Careless People is a memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams. It is my non-fiction book of the year. I picked it up feeling negatively toward Facebook. By the time I finished, I couldn’t find words adequate to describe my revulsion. Wynn-Williams doesn’t just critique – she prosecutes. She lays the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar entirely at Facebook’s feet. Deaths of despair? Facebook. The erosion of democratic institutions? Facebook. This is a meticulously documented indictment of what happens when a company prioritises engagement metrics over human welfare. The most haunting realisation? Nothing will change. They’re too powerful. Politicians fear them because Facebook can weaponise the platform against anyone who pushes back. This book left me furious, helpless, and profoundly unsettled – which is precisely why it matters.

Superbloom by Nicholas Carr

Superbloom by Nicholas Carr is a masterful critique of our wholesale embrace of technology. Carr is thoughtful, articulate, and devastatingly precise in showing how technology reshapes not just our behaviors but our very consciousness. The extensive historical and legal sections occasionally felt laborious, and the America-centric lens sometimes frustrated me. But these are minor complaints about a profoundly important work. Carr illuminates technological impact with a clarity that makes denial impossible.

Psychology and Professional Impact

Searching for Normal by Sami Tamimi

Searching for Normal by Sami Tamimi is dense, often technical, and occasionally too wordy – but absolutely essential. This provocative examination of psychology, psychiatry, Big Pharma, and the Mental Health Industrial Complex raises critical questions that most practitioners would prefer to avoid. It’s uncomfortable reading, challenging assumptions I’ve built my career upon. This book will likely prove more impactful on my work than almost anything else I’ve read this year, forcing me to reconsider systems, diagnoses, and interventions I’ve long taken for granted. If it were an easier read, it would have been my book of the year. Careless People takes the trophy, but this is a brilliant book that is similarly unsettling and matters tremendously.

Classic Literature That Endures

1984 by George Orwell

1984 by George Orwell remains a classic for good reason. Compelling, insightful, terrifying – and utterly absorbing. Orwell’s 1949 vision feels less like historical fiction and more like prophecy. The surveillance, the manipulation of truth, the erasure of history – it’s all here. He called it nearly 80 years before it happened. In a year dominated by concerns about technology and misinformation, 1984 felt uncomfortably relevant.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry stands as the indisputable masterpiece in a four-book series I devoured over four weeks. Despite the extreme and murderous brutality and the occasionally slow, repetitive writing in the final installment, I fell completely under the spell of McMurtry’s world. But this review is about Lonesome Dove, and not the whole series. The slow amble through challenges, the humor threaded through hardship, the gorgeous prose, and the deeply human way of being portrayed in this book kept me utterly absorbed. Reading a book about the men who tamed the American West at the same time I was writing a book about masculinity gave me lots to think about too. In terms of exquisite books… Some you read; this one you inhabit.

Memoirs That Matter

A Thousand Wasted Sundays by Victoria Vanston

A Thousand Wasted Sundays by Victoria Vanstone is a compelling memoir of recognition, reckoning, and redemption. Vanstone chronicles her journey through alcoholism – one that began as an adolescent – toward sobriety as an out-of-control mum. And she does it with exceptional honesty and craft. The writing is strong, though occasionally the non-linear structure felt jarring, and some passages ventured into territory more explicit than I wanted to read. But this is a raw, honest account of what it takes to face yourself and choose differently. I loved it.

Mumming by Victoria Vanstone

Mumming, also by Victoria Vanstone, proved a surprisingly delightful memoir about parenting. Easy to read without being lightweight, it offered the rare pleasure of a book that’s both substantive and genuinely enjoyable. Oh so human, Victoria Vanstone knows how to make you giggle and then laugh out loud, weep and then sob, and see your kids with the deepest compassion and love. 

Revisiting the Classics

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Essentialism by Greg McKeown deserves mention as a book I returned to this year, reading it through the lens of family life. Second time through, and I didn’t extract as much value as initially – probably because I’m actually living it better than I used to. Still a great book, with a powerful message about living a life on purpose.

The Unifying Thread

What connected these books – from McMurtry’s brutal West to Orwell’s dystopian nightmare, from Wynn-Williams’s corporate prosecution to Tamimi’s professional provocation – was their unwillingness to offer easy comfort. These books challenged, disturbed, and demanded something of me as a reader.

In a year when my own writing consumed most of my reading time, these books reminded me why reading matters and made me want to write a better book for precisely those reasons. They’re not just entertainment or information – they’re windows into understanding, catalysts for transformation, and sometimes uncomfortable mirrors reflecting truths we’d prefer to avoid.

Twenty-five books might be fewer than previous years, but these eight stood as intellectual and emotional landmarks worth the journey.

I hope they inspire your own reading adventures. And if any of these resonate with you – or if you think I’ve completely missed the mark – I’d love to hear about it.To read my previous favourite book lists, see 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019.)