Last year I set out with a goal to read 10 books. Depending on who you are, this either seems like a lot or a little. For me, it is a good way to internalize the idea that I want to read about one book a month, with the 2-book buffer allowing me the comfort to take on larger books when I want to.
Intro
First, the list of books and order in which I read them:
- January: Montaigne
- February: Siddhartha, I Who Have Never Known Men
- March: …wait for it
- April: …keep waiting, this book is huge.
- May: Shogun
- July: Aztec, Mother Night
- August: Of Mice and Men
- September: Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
- October: A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
- November: Tai Pan
- December: The Vegetarian, Project Hail Mary
Overall, that comes out to 12 books I finished in the year and I am very proud of exceeding my goal. Here are a few other interesting statistical tidbits.
2025 was a good year for reading, almost in line with my 2023 peak
- Note that Goodreads does not track my actual pages per day, week, or month, but instead assigns all pages to the month in which I finished the book. Overall, my monthly average was a little over 400 pages.
Should I read older books?
Perhaps it’s easiest to first ask, which were my most and least favorite?
- Favorite: Shogun. This was very clearly the book I returned to most in my own thoughts and in conversations with friends. It is a massive epic covering a period I knew very little about: samurai-era Japan. As you can see, it even inspired me to read Tai Pan later in the year.
- Least Favorite: Montaigne. It had the least impact on me and felt somewhat above my head in terms of why I should care. First, I had not actually read any of his essays, so I lacked an anchor for why Montaigne himself was interesting. Second, while his life was intellectually rich, it was not particularly dramatic. TLDR: Rich French guy gets exhausted by the operational burden of being rich, retreats from public life, writes some interesting intellectual work, does some travel (roughly equivalent to “YouTuber goes to China” energy, in my opinion), and then dies. Again, I think this book would resonate much more if you already love his essays – this was most likely user error on my part. No hard feelings against mister Montaigne or the author, Stefan Zwieg.
With all of that out of the way, what were the key throughlines of my reading and other reflections on the year?
Getting lost in “Epic” adventure fiction is one of the best things to do with my reading time.
Shogun, Tai Pan and Aztec were all massive novels of roughly 1,000 pages, set in rich and unfamiliar (to me) historical periods. I already mentioned Shogun. Tai Pan covers the British founding of HK, and Aztec covers the all-too-misunderstood period of Spanish conquest in Mexico and the final political struggles of the Aztec and Mixtec peoples as they tried to understand what these newcomers meant for their future.
After finishing these books I usually feel sad they’re over - the ending of Tai Pan was particularly tragic (no spoilers…). I have realized that I simply love engrossing myself in a whole world between the pages where characters, history, plot and context all weave together. This is the best thing reading offers me: a portal into another world, where I get to play the uniquely godlike role of observing everything at once. This is why I loved Harry Potter as a kid, and loved Game of Thrones later in school and why I continue to love this type of book in my 30s.
What does this mean for 2026? I hope more epic novels!
The rewards and costs of trying book clubs.
Speaking of Aztec, I actually read this book as part of a one-off book club with two friends who all started at the same time. It was a rewarding experience where each of us successfully completed the book, got together over beers, and spent an entire night discussing it. Each of us brought different interests to the conversation, which enriched the experience. One friend insisted that we go home and watch a 2hr YouTube video on the history we’d just read through.
At the same time, reading such a large book (or any book for that matter) in sync with friends is challenging. We avoided specific deadlines and didn’t have the capacity to plan out milestones. Therefore, in practice this meant waiting until each of us completed the book (I was last!) and then waiting another 3-4 weeks to find time to chat. Despite these challenges, this was my “best” book club experience in 2025.
The other attempt was with Mother Night. A group of college friends, now spread across Toronto, Vancouver and New York, thought a book would be a great way to hang out beyond our normal video game evenings. We started off strong with indivudal book submissions and voting, but things came off the tracks quickly. My diagnosis was that some folks didn’t like the book choice and found reasons why they couldn’t read it right away (Busy with work or studying). In the end, I read it within a month of choosing it (it’s a short book!) and one other friend finished about 2 months later (“Sorry I was still reading another book”). Honestly no shade towards my friends, we’re all busy. My main takeaway from both experiences is that lining up book reading (basically what we all do for fun when we can) on a timeline is difficult.
Key learning? Don’t over plan your book club. Just make sure everyone is excited by the book and leave the rest to fate.
My continued love of Sci-Fi continues, but 2025 was spent mostly in the past.
I’ll keep this one short and sweet. I loved reading Project Hail Mary. I love getting lost in the possibilities of our world and where technology can eventually take us. The best part of Sci-fi is when the things you read about don’t exist, but it can be so easy to imagine it happening. The part I struggled most with during PHM was the description of “Rocky” and his/their life form. I am not a scientist, so have no grounding in whether the chemical description of Rocky is realistic at all, but as someone just trying to imagine it, it was a challenge. That said, everything else about the book was a true delight to read and makes me want to read more Sci-fi in 2026. I’m also excited to see the upcoming movie!
It will be interesting to see how Hollywood interprets our boy Rocky 🪨
Connections to Life: Reading Tai Pan and Ending Up in HK
A funny thing happened in our travels over the holiday break. In our attempts to fly home through Singapore from a Japan + Korea trip, we were denied boarding over a 5.5 month expiring passport (I know, it’s bad on us that we didn’t confirm that ahead of time. It turns out Singapore is very strict with 6 months and we stupidly thought January -> June is 6 months…). All that to say, this resulted in us needing to change the last leg of our trip to visit and fly out of Hong Kong instead.
While this had the potential for being a downer, it ended up being a highlight of the trip. HK is magical, with a 15 min Uber or 30 min ferry taking you to the tops of mountains, beautiful beaches, hippy islands or trails. We can’t recommend enough visiting this unique set of islands for yourself!
What made it even more interesting was the connection I’d formed to the history of Hong Kong from reading Tai Pan. I was enchanted with connecting the physical locations in the book with places we were visiting, and even made my wife visit the horse racing stadium on race day as a key part of HK history.
It’s such a treat connecting books with real life and stepping out of the page and into the setting of a great read.
Key learning? Always look for chances to go beyond the book whether it’s visiting a museum, the setting of the book, or even watching the movie afterwards.
Outro
These are mostly musings, so if you made it to the end, thanks for reading. More importantly, if you have recommendations that connect with any of the themes above, I would love to hear them. You can find my contact info on the About page.
Happy reading in 2026!