2025 Reading List

As 2025 closes, it’s time for my annual retrospective of the books that defined my year. Audiobooks continue to dominate my list, though physical texts made a welcome return. Thematically, I balanced the technical mechanics of building LLMs against critical perspectives like The AI Con, while anchoring a slate of new 2025 releases with the timeless essays of James Baldwin. I’ve also started using The StoryGraph, my new favourite tool for tracking my reading habits. Finally, some exciting news for local readers: Rebel Book Club has officially opened a chapter here in NYC - do check it out!

Audiobooks

• A Different Kind of Power (Ardern, 2025)
  • A candid reflection on leadership, exploring how empathy can coexist with the gritty reality of political decision-making.
• Endure (Hutchinson, 2018)
  • A fascinating dive into the science of endurance, exploring if our physical limits are real or just brain-imposed safety brakes.
• Notes of a Native Son (Baldwin, 1955)
  • A masterfully written critique of race and identity that remains startlingly relevant seventy years later.
• The Fire Next Time (Baldwin, 1963)
  • A vital examination of race relations in America; shorter than Notes but arguably even more potent.
• Private Revolutions (Yang, 2024)
  • An immersion into the lives of four women in modern China, capturing massive social shifts through deeply personal stories.
• Poverty, by America (Desmond, 2023)
  • A provocative argument that poverty persists not due to scarcity, but as a byproduct of how our economic policies and tax structures are designed.
• The AI Con (Bender & Hanna, 2025)
  • A critical dismantling of the AI hype cycle, examining the gap between marketing claims and technical reality.
• The Trauma of Burnout (Plumbly, 2025)
  • Moves beyond self-care tips to examine how chronic stress affects the nervous system.

Books

• Build a Large Language Model (Raschka, 2024)
  • An excellent, practical ‘under the hood’ guide to LLM architectures.
• Purgatory Citizenship (Smiley, 2023)
  • An academic look at the ‘half-freedom’ of prisoner re-entry, analysing how the legal system restricts rights long after release.
• The Psychosis of Whiteness (Andrews, 2023)
  • A challenging, provocative text arguing that established social hierarchies function as a collective delusion to obscure structural reality