Books of the Year 2025
(Originally posted on LinkedIn): Every December since 2020, I’ve posted about my books of the year: to mark the passing of the year, as suggestions for anyone looking for holiday gifts, and to start a conversation with my network about books at a time when many of us would like to read more, but struggle to (I wouldn’t have got through many of them without the option to listen as audiobooks on xigxag).
Naomi Alderman’s Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today is something I’d definitely recommend in audio because it’s read by the author and comes alive with her warm, knowing reading. It’s like listening to a hypersmart friend explain things. It compares the challenges of the social web and AI with previous information revolutions: the emergence of written language, and the development of the printing press. The parallels that emerge are fascinating and, in the case of her thoughts on the BBC, incredibly prescient given the book was presumably finished months before its latest crisis. Just brilliant.
The same developments in information are the subject of Michael Robb’s Shelf Life, a delightful history of publishing and bookselling in the UK which does a lot to explain the evolution and idiosyncrasies of the book trade.
Three memoirs chart the arc of the digital world. Bill Gates’s Source Code reflects on the formative years of the personal computing revolution. Tim Berners-Lee’s memoir of the web that connected it all is more conflicted: candid about how far the web has drifted from its ideals, but hopeful it can be reclaimed. Sarah Wynn-Williams’s Careless People provides the necessary counterpoint, laying bare the culture and consequences of social media from inside Facebook.
Two books set out more optimistic visions of the future. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance is about America, but writing this the week after a UK budget, their prescriptions for growth are highly relevant on this side of the water too. I spent a lot of time this year talking to people about AI, and Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato’s Superagency provided grounded optimism.
Historical context came from two books about Europe. Peter Heather and John Rapley’s Why Empires Fall is a fascinating reappraisal of the fall of the Roman Empire, with uncomfortable resonances with our world. Oliver Moody’s Baltic is a combination of history and reportage on the nations surrounding that sea and why it is such a flashpoint today.
Finally, my personal taste skews to non-fiction, but Alexander Starritt’s Drayton and Mackenzie is unusual in many ways and the first novel in years to make the FT Business Book of the Year Award. It’s a beautifully written story about friendship and ambition, and one of the most convincing depictions of entrepreneurial life I’ve read.
As always, I’d love to know what you’ve been reading this year—especially anything that challenged your assumptions or sparked new ideas.