Statistics: 2025 in media

Here are the books and other media I consumed in 2025. (Here's 2024 for comparison.)

Books

Spending less time traveling meant less time reading, unfortunately. That said, I managed to read 29 books and finish 25, including:

• Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Totally different than the TV series (see below) but just as fun.
• Iain Banks, The Algebraist. Very fun novel that's worth its 900 pages.
• Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, his semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in Waukegan, Ill., in the 1910s. I read it back in high school English class; it hits differently as an adult.
• Cory Doctorow, Enshittification. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand why the Internet (and lots of other things) completely suck.
• William Gibson, Agency, the sequel to The Peripheral, which I read in January 2024.
• Kevin Hearne's Ink & Sigil trilogy took me back to the Iron Druid universe, but with an irascible Scot instead of an ancient Irishman as protagonist.
• Ezra Klein, Abundance, one of the most talked-about books of the year. I'm not sure I agree with him completely, but he made a good argument.
• Kat Kruse's first short-story collection, To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone. I've known Kat for years and was happy to be one of the first people to buy her first book.
• George Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By. I should have read this book 30 years ago.
• Michael Lewis, Going Infinite, which follows Sam Bankman-Fried from the height of his wealth to his trial.
• Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, his seminal work from 1922 on how propaganda works.
• Ian McEwan, What We Can Know, which I just started this week. I'll let you know.
• Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap. Excellent analysis of how the Left lost its mind in the last 10 years.
• Rich Simon's story collection The Last Girlfriend on Earth took me half a flight to Seattle, and it stayed there because the friend I visited wanted to read it.
• Matt Ruff, The Destroyer of Worlds, his sequel to Lovecraft Country. Very fun read.
• John Scalzi put out two new novels this year: When the Moon Hits Your Eye and The Shattering Peace. I read both of them in a couple of days. I also read his novella 3 days, 9 months, 27 years in Amazon's anthology The Time Traveler's Passport, along with Constituent Service, which was hilarious.
• John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers, a history of chartography that started slow but got much more interesting as I got farther into it.

Other Media

I watched 20 films last year, attended one play, went to two baseball games, and watched (or re-watched) a lot more TV than is probably healthy (mainly because I spent much of the summer going through about a hundred boxes of documents and needed something on in the background).

• Recommended movies: Abigail (2024), The Accountant (2016), Companion (2024), Dogma (1999), Just Like Heaven (2005), Margin Call (2011), My Old Ass (2025), Poor Things (2023), The Princess Bride* (1987), Rogue One (2016), Roxanne* (1987), Superman (2025), Twisters (2024). (* re-watch)
• Recommended TV shows: Andor (2023-2025), Bodies (2023), Le Bureau des Légendes (2016-2020), Death By Lightning (2025), Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016-2017), Foundation (2021-), Justified (2010-2015), Murderbot (2025-), Paradise (2025-), Plur1bus (2025-), Slow Horses (2022-), Wednesday (2022-).

Oddly, I didn't see any concerts, and I only saw two live events. I plan to get out a lot more in 2026.