What have you read/watched/played/created/listened to this year?
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I finally read through all 9 main books of The Expanse and I cannot recommend them highly enough. for fans of the show, the books have so much more. including a 30 year time skip. the events also happen in a slightly different order than in the series, which, to me, changes the overall story more than I expected.
if you like sci-fi that doesn’t skimp on the physics, pick up a copy of Leviathan Wakes (looking at you, Andy Weir fans)
currently reading through Asimov’s Foundation series of novels and I’m loving them so far
The Expanse series is definitely on my to read list. So is the foundation series.
I’m on book 4 of The Expanse right now. +1 from me.
I really enjoyed the Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee, a trilogy. Then I read everything else by yoon ha lee, mostly good, the Thousand Worlds series was a bit clunky at the start.
If anyone wants a read that’ll seriously fuck with your head, try Hardfought by Greg Bear. A somewhat small novella, it takes place thousands of years in the future where humanity is engaged in a fight for survival against an enemy that no-one can understand.
The military patois is thick and barely understandable, with turns of phrases that you are forced to figure out on your own. The physics reads more like mysticism and religious doctrine. The combatants are modified from childhood to become perfect warriors until it is debatable if they are still human. A budding romance between a particularly talented pilot and the civilian analyst tasked to figure out and replicate the successes that produced her - which, ironically, was the humanizing elements of the highly illegal romance in the first place - sets the stage for humanity’s defeat.
And yet, a project started by the enemy in an attempt to understand the humans comes within a hair’s breadth of actually ending the war… until the alien’s own hidebound and ideologically blinkered leaders kill the project out of horror at the heresy it encapsulates.
Its ideas and concepts are maximally dense while the prose itself is sparse to the point of being almost haiku-like. The descriptions alone hew strongly to Chekov’s Gun, with no excess characterizations that don’t directly contribute. I have re-read it over a dozen times in the decades since I got it and every time I have peeled back more layers to find new revelations and themes.
Interesting, I’ll be checking it out.
If you want a good David Brin book that isn’t very serious try the practice effect.
I’m taking a long break from him. He frustrated me with how long it took for real pay off but I’ll make sure to check this book out.
All the chapter names are jokes and puns. Some in latin.
Highlights from this year include:
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All Systems Red by Martha Wells First in a series of short novels about a cybernetic construct owned by a corporation in a dystopia. I found it extremely relatable and humorous in relation to my own autism. Please do not watch the Apple TV series; it’s a literal hate crime.
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Other Ever Afters by Melanie Gillman A graphic novel of fairytale stories which teach good values.
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Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans Basically cyberpunk in fantasy clothes. Rather than hacking, our heroes deal in illegal magical practices. Very light-hearted and fun, especially if you want read about boys holding hands.
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Unnatural Magic by CM Waggoner Takes the basic premise of Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett and expands on it dramatically. Especially recommended if you’re into wholesome dom/sub relationships.
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The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu Humanity makes contact with an alien intelligence and politics ensue. More of a serious/heavy sci-fi.
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You Weren’t Meant to be Human by Andrew Joseph White Extreme body horror. One of the best things I’ve ever read. Deals heavily with mental health, self-harm, and abuse/torture. All of this guy’s stuff is great, but this is the first one written explicitly for adults, so he doesn’t hold back.
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Don’t Let the Forest In by CG Drews Also a horror story dealing with mental health and self-harm, but intended for a younger audience.
All of these except Three-Body Problem are explicitly LGBT-friendly and come with representation euphoria built-in.
Thanks! I’ll be putting at least one of these on my reading list.
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Yo! I just finished Project Hail Mary today!
What did you think? I won’t say too much other than I found it to be very poorly written.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really loved The Martian, and although Project Hail Mary was less grounded in “hard” sci-fi, Weir’s writing style was compelling as ever (on a related note: I had to take a day off work when I read Artemis). He’s the only author I’ve read who can capture in writing the excitement that you get when you make a breakthrough in the lab or get into a flow state fixing a broken gadget.
So much. 42 books so far and 32 movies since July. I don’t know how many before that because I imported data into Letterboxd and it messed everything before July up. I feel the full lists would be too long. And Letterboxd includes my ratings and I don’t feel like getting dissed. Looking over it I feel like a lot of my ratings are contentious.
I also played through all Horizon games and DLC again.
I started a new book series this year.
Started reading T Kingfisher last year, really enjoyable books. The warhammer 40K books are on my list but there’s so many of them!
I love T. Kingfisher books! The Horus Heresy series is good, but I’m getting tired of it. I think I’ll take a break and read some other books for a bit in 2026.
I just finished Bobiverse series. It was such a fun ride. I won’t say anything about it in fear of spoiling the ride, but I am going to start book one again. Oh and the last in the series in coming next year hopefully. Bobiverse first book = We are Bob, we are legion.
I read the first book earlier this year and thought it was a very fun adventure story, but I feel like it could be doing a lot more with its premise. Books like Children of Time or All Systems Red made me think about things like the nature of life and consciousness, and different ways to run a society. Would you say I should read the rest of the series, or does it continue to simply be fun?
For anyone who hasn’t read it, I want to be clear that I’m not saying it’s bad by any means. I fully recommend it to anyone capable of enjoying entertainment for its own sake, especially if you appreciate gen X nerd culture.
Just finished Project Hail Mary the other day. Really enjoyed it, one of my favs this year.
Others I enjoyed were:
-The Way by Cary Groner. Reminiscent of King’s The Stand but more accessible.
-Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. Sci-fi based on a distant planet with an old lady narrator. Refreshing change of pace from teen narrators. Really enjoyed it.
-The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. A first (well not quite first) contact story from the perspective of a missionary sent to evangelize the aliens. A bit heavy on the narrator’s inner thoughts, but very creative. Should make you reflect on your priorities and whether God and his Promises make sense outside of earth’s context.
-The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach. Another one that I found to be a nice change of pace from my usual sci-fi thrillers. Beautiful writing. Worldbuilds an entire galactic universe by weaving together short stories about various citizens.
-All the Water in the World. Dystopian climate sci-fi following the child of a museum scientist on her journey away from the flooded rooftops of NYC. Narrator driven and contemplative story about finding and protecting our humanity in a broken world.
I haven’t gotten around to reading anything of King’s yet. In what way is the Stand not accessible?
I haven’t read a lot of King either but I read The Stand in honor of the pandemic. I also typically like ‘on the road’ adventure stories so I thought it was a good bet. It’s a long book. It has a lot of characters and puts a lot of time into developing each of them so the whole thing feels very meandering at times (though not quite tedious in my opinion).
Here’s most of what I watched in 2025(not all released in 2025).
Movies
- A House of Dynamite
- The Amateur
- The Bad Guys 2
- Ballerina
- Black Bag
- Blue Moon
- Bring Her Back
- Captain America Brave New World
- Cunk on Life
- Elio
- F1
- Friendship
- Good Boy
- Good Fortune
- The Gorge
- London Calling
- M3GAN 2.0
- Fantastic Four First Steps
- Materialists
- Mickey 17
- Minecraft Movie
- Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning
- The Naked Gun
- Nobody 2
- Novocaine
- Primitive War
- The Running Man
- Roofman
- Sinners
- Superman
- The Watchers
- Thunderbolts
- The Toxic Avenger
TV Shows
- Arcane
- Black Doves
- Common Side Effects
- DAN DA DAN
- Fallout
- Farscape (Just started)
- Frieren
- The Last of Us
- Last Samurai Standing
- Love, Death & Robots
- Magic and Muscles
- Marvel Zombies
- Monsieur Spade
- Mrs. Davis
- Murderbot
- The Night Agent
- Pantheon
- Platonic
- Poker Face
- SAKAMOTA DAYS
- Scavengers Reign
- Shrinking
- Silo
- The Recruit
- Wednesday
- WITCH WATCH
- Zero Day
- Zom 100
Games
- Red Dead Redemption II
- Witcher 3
- Star Renegades
- Tower Wizard
- Noita
- Chained Echoes
- Severed Steel
- skate.
- Glyphica
whatd you think of noita?
Love it. I just wish I was better at it lol. I’ve played about 35 hours and still do poorly but I still think it’s fantastic.
Sitting at over 30 books and 30 audiobooks so far. Plan on 2 more books to complete for the year then I will post my list. Shorter then 2024 but not bad.
My list is a wee bit longer. I listen to audiobooks most days while driving. I will often go through 3-4 books per week.
I have used everyone of my 10 audio borrows on one app. So that’s 120. I also took advantage borrows on a other app for around 45-50 more. So that would put me at somewhere around 165-170 books.
Honestly I am down significantly from last year. I did 25-30 books per month last year for a total of over 325. Been too busy this year.
Weee! Looking forward to looking up some books here and finding something new to read!
Used to read a lot, but struggle to find novels I like, to get back into it. So it’s mainly non-fiction now.
Autocracy inc. by Anne Applebaum - very well done book
How to win an information war: The propagandist who outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev - It’s pretty much the story of Sefton Dehlmer and the group of counter-propaganda he led in Britain.
On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
Nobody’s Girl by Vrginia Roberts Giuffre
Code Name Pale Horse How I Went Undercover to Expose Americas Nazis by Scott PayneCurrently on Mysticism in the 21st Century by Connell Monette - very high quality text, picked it up after reading some of the things in the aforementioned book and wanting to dig in deeper.
Also reading some Graeber. Started with an audiobook and tried for months, but I just can’t for this type of stuff.
Thanks for the recommendation on the propaganda war book, will check it out.
Since I’m an audio book guy I really only read one book this year, I was a Shelby Foote on the second year of the civil war so I used it and chased down most of that battles in the VA/MD/WV area.
I did however listen to 261 audio books
One of the best things I ever did for myself was realize that I’m not “less than” other readers or book enjoyers because I only have time for audiobooks.
I have been able to dive back into a hobby that was a vital part of my childhood and teenage years with fervor and I feel like I’m such a better person for it.
TV and such are every bit as good as books, and it’s a real shame people get elitist about it. Different mediums offer a variety of storytelling techniques.
I’ve read 49 books so far this year. Some of my favorites include:
Road to Ruin by Hana Lee
Consortium Rebellion trilogy by Jessie Mihalik
All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy by Jacqueline Carey
I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom Com by Kimberly Lemmings
Jules & Bun series by J.M. Griffin
Run by Blake Crouch
Awesome! I’m going to check these out.
