Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

I mostly read newspapers and technical journals, but two books that I read that made an impression: "The Changing World Order" and "The Gulag Archipelago". Started making side projects as a developer this year and hope to start working on my own products full-time from next year. Two books I found useful for positioning the product: My favourite SF book this year was "Translation State" by Ann Leckie. It is set in the Imperial Radch world so having read the Ancillary trilogy is useful but not essential. I like it because it contains the strangest aliens (the Presger) that I have come across. They are as far from humans in costumes as you could get. What the Presger do (and their proxies in the Human world the Translators) is totally unguessable. A fabulous hard SF read and a must if you read the Ancillary trilogy. Not enough. Going to try to rein in some sustained attention in the new year. - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Playground by Richard Powers - Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman I'm curious how much AI-generated stuff I read this year... likely at least a book's worth, but it would be more like one of those books with 365+ random deep dives into stuff that's not really relevant to my life. I mostly read fiction but I made time for a couple of nonfiction books this year. On the fiction side I really enjoyed "Luminous" and "When We Where Real". Early in the year I picked up "Dark Wire" by Joseph Cox. It was a fascinating dive into the world of "secure phones", particularly a company called Anom. I also read: "Digital Fortress" - Dan Brown (not strictly technically plausible but the suspense kept me hooked) "Never Enough" - Andrew Wilkinson (meh) Currently working on: "The Technological Republic" - Andrew Karp "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" - Martin Kleppmann I had a tendency of a lot of false starts on books this year. I picked up several recent LLM/AI books and would make it like a chapter before realizing it was mostly just AI generated slop and gave up. Humble Bundle has spoiled me and my ebook library has grown by around a 100 books this year... Tech book recommendations: 'Secure by Design', 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications', 'Building Secure and Reliable Systems' and 'Fundamentals of Software Architecture'. For scifi: 'Murderbot Diaries' and 'The Expanse' - both are just great entertainment I was actually writing, been doing it full time for months. I've spent probably over 1,000 hours ... Not trying to make any money, just feel compelled to do this. A fiction story about how personal computers have dismantled society over 40 years... it takes place in 1983 and involves a vulnerable opportunistic time traveler who's getting more than he bargained for. Here's some quotes to give you a feel: "The smartphone is the electrical stunner in the slaughterhouse of society" "You’ll be able to access any TV or radio station in real time, around the...

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