2025 was a very interesting year for me because I wasn’t used to reading anymore, at least not as much as I had in the past. I remember that when I was a kid, I used to read a lot of fiction books. Eventually, I stopped reading fiction and moved on to more business-related and self-help books, and I read a lot of them over time.
One thing I realized after reading so many of them, and something I’ve described many times,is that consuming streaming content is not that useful by itself.
What you need to do when you go through one of these growth books is actually apply what you learn, and apply it fully for some time, to see results. Otherwise, you’re just consuming content; you’re not experiencing it, and you’re not really learning.
That is one of the reasons why I reduced the amount of reading I did in the growth area. I also moved to some specific podcasts, depending on what I wanted to learn and what I wanted to apply. In that sense, 2025 was a key year for me.
I started reading again thanks to The Expanse series. I was a big fan of the TV show, and I really wanted to know how it ended. So I decided to start from book one and read them all. That reignited my interest in reading, and I’m so glad it did, because I started reading a lot more books than I ever anticipated.
Here are the books I read last year, I hope you’ll find some ideas on what to read next:
- The Expanse series
- Children of Time series
- Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow
- The Overstory
- The border trilogy (book 1 & 2)
- Radical Candor
The Expanse series
The Expanse was the series that made it possible for me to get back into reading entirely. I’ve read all nine books on Kindle. Besides loving the story what really stood out to me was that every chapter took about five to seven minutes to rad. That meant I could start reading anytime, anywhere, because I knew a chapter would wrap up within that short window, that got me into reading again. So if you’re on the fence and you might like a sci-fi book, give the Expanse a go.
For those who don’t know what The Expanse is, it’s a space opera placed in the future with three main factions: The belt, which is people living in space across some asteroid belt, Mars and Earth. I loved all the characters so much, so deep, funny and human.
What made it especially beautiful to me is that I don’t like stories with a 100% evil enemy and I really appreciated that in The Expanse, most, if not all, of the characters are doing what they do for reasons and goals you can understand. Even when they side with what you might call the bad guys, you can see why it’s happening. You understand their point of view, and you might even side with them from time to time.
My take: 10/10 would recommend.
Children of Time series
Coming from The Expanse, I wanted to stay a little longer in the space genre because I wasn’t sure whether I liked The Expanse so much because of the genre itself or because of the writing. Many people suggested reading some of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s work. He’s mostly known for The Martian and other books, and I saw the Children of Time series recommended multiple times, so I decided to read it.
While I wouldn’t say it’s the most engaging book, the concept was mindblowing.
At the core of this sci-fi book is the question of how species can evolve and interact when there is no shared language to connect them, starting entirely from scratch. The idea of intertwining humanity with contact between humans and species that might be derived from other evolved animals was unexpected, even more so when you tie it with traveling across space.
It’s a series I would recommend, even though it gets a little slow at times and some parts might not be as interesting. But, overall, the concept is pure genius. Loved it.
PS: If you don’t like spiders, this is not a book for you.
My take: 8/10 would recommend.
Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow
After reading the Children of Time series, I decided to take a break from sci-fi. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a story about two people creating video games. It’s a story about life, how you grow, how you connect with people, how you love them, and how you lose them. It’s a story about grief.
I could say all the things about the story itself, but what makes it incredibly engaging and so beautiful to read is the writing style. The writing style is something I have never seen anywhere else. It’s absolutely fantastic. It flows like water, you won’t notice is there, but it will keep you on the book for the whole time.
I can see why this is a very popular book, because the writing is so good that it grabs you even if the story itself isn’t usually the kind you might love.
My take: 10/10 would recommend.
The Overstory
I also had another book that was highly recommended to me, which is The Overstory by Richard Powers. I didn’t know what to expect, and I started reading the book without understanding where it was going. For the first nine to ten chapters, I actually felt really lost .
It’s a story about nature, about trees, about the world, and about how we, as humans, are obviously part of the problem. To me it tries to depict life itself in a story arc that moves around nature.
I decided to buy a physical copy for my daughter because I think it’s a story that can change your perspective on how you live and how you interact with the world, specifically around how we should preserve our world.
I felt it was slow at times, and at times it was really hard to understand where the story was going. And yet, it was touching on so many levels. It left something within me that I will carry for my entire life and I won’t look at a tree in the same way as I did before.
My take: 9/10 would recommend.
The border trilogy (book 1 & 2)
Switching genre again, I started The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy, which is a kind of modern Western. I read book one and book two in 2025, and I’m finishing book three now.
There are two things that make McCarthy’s writing style particularly interesting.
The first is that he doesn’t use double quotation marks for dialogue, which makes it incredibly hard to understand who’s speaking. The second is that some dialogs of the book are in Spanish, because the story takes place along the Mexican border. This creates an unusual “flow” when you read, as if there are no stops when people talk together, and “time” continues, just like in real life.
In some moments there aren’t that many conversations between characters, because there are long walks and extended moments of horse-riding from one place to another, where the characters don’t encounter anyone.
Reading these books (the third one is different) feels like traveling alone in a new city: you don’t know anyone, and you’re just being in a place you’ve never been before.
Characters ride horses from one place to another for days and weeks, and the descriptions of everything they see along the way are always different and new. McCarthy finds different words to describe the things they encounter on these rides, the sunsets they see, the tacos they eat, everything is the same, yet always different.
It’s like entering a different world, a cruel world, maybe, but not cruel as in a horror movie, more like how life is sometimes cruel and we can’t find a reason for it.
My take: 10/10 would recommend.
Radical Candor
Radical Candor is the only business/growth book that I read in 2025.
The book talks about the concept of radical candor, which means being candid about what you think while at the same time being very empathetic, so the other person knows that you care about them. I would say this is a book on communication and on managing people, but more than that it’s a book on how you stay true to yourself and honest with others without being a terrible human.
There are many tools in the book, but in my opinion, it’s very easy and simple to agree with those ideas. Applying them, though, is a very personal journey. The book won’t be enough, in my opinion.It will be a starting point of you trying, failing, and trying again, and even that might not be enough.
So read it knowing that this is a piece of the puzzle. That’s my suggestion, because depending on where on the journey you are, this will be something that will take months, even years, to practice and get to the level described there.
My take: 8/10 would recommend.
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