Books I read for fun in 2025

It’s good to read and I like doing it. Since 2022, I’ve been keeping track of all the books I read for fun, taking a few notes on each. I don’t use Goodreads because I’m not really into giving Bezos my hot takes for free. Unfortunately, this, along with the fact I use an e-reader, means it’s impossible for me to performatively show off all the worthy titles I’m getting through. I intend to do exactly that in this post.

You can see the table of what I read, and the all-important rating, at the bottom. This year I got through 28, almost exactly the same as last year’s 27. The vast majority were fiction, which I find myself drawn to in my free time as a contrast to all the technical stuff I need to read for work. I have tracked the books that I read a significant portion of and then abandoned, but not if I gave up in the first chapter or so.

Without further ado, here are a few selected highlights, organised into totally arbitrary categories that I just came up with. Warning: my literary analysis is probably about the level of a middling GCSE English student, so don’t get too excited.

Top rated

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

This is a fantastic book. It follows the fall of an Irish family in the Great Financial Crisis, rotating through different family members’ perspectives. It shows mastery of many different aspects of a good novel. It has beautifully crafted sentences; ones that pop. The characters are rich and well observed. It is both touching and funny. On top of all this, the story is excellent and is paced perfectly, reaching a shocking crescendo. As the book progresses, the switching between characters happens quicker and quicker, which adds a real chaotic vibe. One character’s parts are written as a stream of consciousness with no punctuation, which is very effective.

Runner up: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Best classic

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

This is a long, long book, but well worth sticking with. The first half is more fun adventure—daring prison escape, encounters with bandits—whereas the second half is all political intrigue in Paris. The basic plot is that the Count (prev. Edmond Dantès) is wronged by jealous men and jailed. He befriends a man in prison who bequeaths him a fortune, which he uses to seek revenge by integrating into the wealthy Parisian society, where his enemies reside and destroying them from the inside.

The book is complex, with a lot of plot lines to remember, so it can get a little confusing (see the crazy diagram above of all the relationships). However, I found it gripping; there’s something very pleasing about his extremely complex schemes coming to fruition. It also has a lot of interesting history woven in, and the pacing is great because it was originally serialised.

Runner up: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Most whack read

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

One of Janan Ganesh’s pretentious FT columns expounds on the need for professional judgment (Michelin star, Turner Prize, Booker Prize etc.) at a time where everyone feels they’re an expert (FoodTok, ArtTok, BookTok etc.). One of the examples he gives was that no one should want to read the top-rated book on Goodreads. While I dislike the gatekeeping, Sea of Tranquility goes some way to proving his point. This book gets a 4.1, a very high score, yet I found it to be average in almost every aspect. Perhaps this is what the wisdom of the crowd brings.

The book kind of steals the setup of Cloud Atlas (which only gets a 4.0!): multiple nested stories, from long in the past into the future. The gimmick here is that all these stories are tied together by a glitch in the simulation that actually constitutes our universe. All these different characters experience the same moment at once and then one of them is sent back in time to investigate. It turns out the investigator somehow interviews himself from the future, and this is the climax of the book.

A key element of the book is a big pandemic that hits Earth. This is obviously based on COVID, but it’s on-the-nose, obvious, and not enlightening in any way. “We knew it was coming!!!” I didn’t find the characters particularly interesting nor the world-building, and I don’t think the story made much sense, even on its own terms. If you have time travel as a mechanism at your disposal, then go crazy!

Runner up: A Half-built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys

Literally couldn’t put it down

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

My dad was so into the Slow Horses series that he started reading the books subsequent to the ending so he could find out what happened. I picked up a copy of the first book as it was half price in an airport WHSmith and my Kindle was out of charge. I must say, I was not disappointed.

It is super slick and very stylishly written—like a modern-day Le Carré, as has been much observed. I loved all the lingo and detail about the Service; it kind of made me want to be a spy. I couldn’t put it down and picked up the sequel right after, always a good sign.

Runner up: Lying for Money by Dan Davies (it’s about accounting!)

The Books