I actually read pretty cool books this year. I was on a book-a-month pace for pretty much the whole year until October. In that month, I spent an unbelievable amount of time going to and from work, almost always using multiple bus & train rides each way. I should've read 12 books this year but that number ended up being 15!
Note: the image above is from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life
My top picks this year, and sorry, but I'd rather not rank them:
- In a Thousand Different Ways / Cecelia Ahern
- Endurance / Alfred Lansing
- Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life / Amy Krouse Rosenthal
- Hostage / Eli Sharabi
- Three Musketeers / Alexandre Dumas
Here is my full 2025 list:
Books I read in 2025
- The Morning After / Nir Menussi
- In a Thousand Different Ways / Cecelia Ahern
- Nexus / Yuval Noah Harrari
- Animal Farm / George Orwell
- Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1st part)
- Endurance / Alfred Lansing
- Twelve Rules for Life / Jordan B. Peterson
- Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life / Amy Krouse Rosenthal
- The Alchemist / Paulo Coelho
- Philosophers Against God: Essay on Faith in Doubt / Jeremy Fogel
- A Line in the South / Eran Bar-Gil
- Metamorphosis / Franz Kafka
- Hostage / Eli Sharabi
- Start-up Nation / Dan Senor and Saul Singer
- Three Musketeers / Alexandre Dumas
You can skip to the review, which should be story-like and interesting. The next paragraph is mainly lessons that I implemented from 2024 and a story emphasizing about how books really enrich life.
2025 vs 2024
Some lessons learned in 2024 were implemented in 2025. For example, I learned to stop reading if I can't get myself to decent focus on a book. In 2024, many times I read on 10-minute or 15-minute breaks. I read complicated books in those time windows. For example, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. That impacted my reading experience a lot.
With that being said, my focus capabilities improved a lot! I feel like the more you read, you develop a muscle to blur out the outside world. And boy how necessary that muscle is when there are babies crying in your train wagon or when the bus engine starts roaring for no reason (those are real stories).
I read 15 books this year and 12 books last year. At my 2024 yearly book review I wrote that my target for next year is to not only read a lot, but to deeply understand and summarize what I'm reading. I wrote that "I hope to get close to 2 books a month next year". But, like every single time... this year started and the work load became instantly insane. So I couldn't even get close to 2 books a month. If I think about it, hitting this goal means probably reading multiple books at the same time. Otherwise, how do you squeeze 600-page long books in 2 weeks with full work schedule and everything?
I did hit my other goal. I summarized A LOT. Countless hours put into summarizing Yuval Noah Harari's or Jordan Peterson's books (which are not easy to summarize tbh). I am not sure it helped me to keep the book's information in my mind. I find myself implementing stuff that I learned from story-rich books often though I don't summarize them at all. All that I do, regarding those books, is think about them (while reading and sometimes after) and somehow that thinking impacts me. That thinking process leaves a real change inside me. Maybe it's because it's easier to see a change in your behavior than in your knowledge.
For next year, I can write here that I aim to read more... But I really can't promise that. What I can wish for, is that I'll pick up good books in 2026. Which is also a skill, by the way. When I started reading, I thought that every book is probably "OK". Every book must be, at least, decent. That's wrong. There are bad books. And it is better to NOT pick them.
I picked some good ones this year though - and that was so much fun!
I sat on the bus a couple days ago, on my ride home from work. Having finished Three Musketeers 4 days ago, I really thought to myself:
"Wow, life really lost some color since than. Like, it is super silly but somehow my life was full of glorious sword battles, honor wars, kings, politics, french romance... And now it is just... dull."
Watching the traffic, I realized how much fun it is to be in the journey of reading good books. I write "journey", because a 600-pages book is no one-day task. It is not unlikely that we get involved in a book's story for a month.
For context, here are:
Books I read in 2024:
- Crime and Punishment / Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Catch 67 / Micah Goodman
- Juniper Hill / Devney Perry
- Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind / Yuval Noah Harari
- 1984 / George Orwell
- All Quiet On the Western Front / Erich Maria Remarque
- The Story of Human Thought / Doran Shafrir
- The Daughter from Paris / Kristine Hermel
- The Ferryman / Justin Cronin
- Undercover in Gaza / Tomer Tzaban
- Babel / R.F. Kuang (long Hebrew review)
- Tales From the Cafe / Toshikazu Kawaguchi
This year, I will make the reviews less bulleted, and more story-like. I think this is the proper way to summarize 2025 in books I read.
2025 in reading
There's a weird thing about me... I kinda love a good love story. Also, I love normal stories. I feel like living in Israel... Since like... 2020, is so chaotic and so eventful that many times I just want to hear a... normal story. Regular. Usual. Routine story if you'll like.
So I picked up a title suggesting a regular story on a regular guy in the big city. I was wrong. The first book I read was Nir Menussi's The Morning After.
This books covers love in the modern age. How, even though everyone is so free and limitless, and can hook up and be with whoever they want - it seems like real love is impossible to be found. This wasn't a love story, it was a DIY about how you should approach finding love.
Nir Menussi is a non-religious turned religious guy, so at the end there is a lot of talk about how judaism concepts can elevate relationships... Stuff like that. Sometimes, in arguments I will argue that being with many individuals is actually bad. Because, you will have your firsts with different people and when finally you will get to your wife, you will be filled with memories regarding other people. Your first ski was made with X, your first date meal with Y, your first competition with Z. What will be left for your wife? It doesn't mean you need to one-shot marriage but, you shouldn't aim to maximise relationships amount that way. My opinion at least.
Also, he will argue for example, that we didn't only gain from becoming so free in who we date and how we dress, etc. We gained some freedom, but we maybe lost value...
Searching for a regular story still, I started reading Cecilia Ahern's In a thousand different ways. That was a regular story with a twist. Alice can see feelings. Like, really see them. As colors. if it was Marvel's, maybe her power was super-sensitivity. This is a great story involving love, toxic family issues and just... life. I loved that book. It really seems like Cecilia Ahern put some of hers (or someone other's) real life in this book.
Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari was full of knowledge. I always feel like I come out way smarter (on the other side) after finishing Yuval's books. Sapiens was amazing. This book, emphasizing that history is a set of choice and not just deterministic.
It talks about the history of information networks from Stone Age to AI. WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN you ask?
Well, for example, why did the Soviet Union fail? What was problematic in their information network? Everybody were too afraid from their superior, which made the information flow badly from bottom to top. Also, how was the information gathered and where was it stored? Who had access to it? In the Soviet Union - everything was centered at one point. Is it good? What's bad about this? How does it work in the United States? All of that, in Yuval's book.
Next one was my second George Orwell book. It was Animal Farm.
After the previous book, I already learned why totaliarnism is bad. In general, I am not a totaliarnism fan, like most of people I guess... so I didn't need another reminder why its bad. But... Animal Farm is a good story about how naive people, upon gaining power, become what they hated most. That is why we don't want to leave everything to men and bound them by rules. Also, this book is a reminder for how certain situations can seem like the worse, but they are really nothing compared to how worse they can be. What I mean is, when the foundation of a community rots, it is a pitless fall.
Number 5 was a book I picked up because my grandfather suggested it. My grandpa is from the Soviet Union and I wanted to see what's the hype. Actually, I wanted to understand what it's been like. The book's name is Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1st part). Alcohol, Stalin's police, WWII, rural lifestyle, comedy... is what you should expect from this book. Mainly, this is just a writing about times passed in a nation that no longer exist.
Apropos adventures, the next book might be THE BEST one of 2025. Even the story of picking it up was amazing.
It was a rainy February day in Tel-Aviv. I went to it's university open day, the one where you learn about what the uni has to offer. On the way there, I passed in Halper's secondhand bookstore.
I never been to such bookstore. Turns out, buying a book from a second, third, etc. hand is not only cheaper, but is actually a bit more special. For example, I bought there Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which I'll talk more about in a bit. At it's first page though, there was written a letter, in German, to a travel guide in New York! The year: 2006! What?! Isn't that crazy? And so, I would really recommend trying such bookstores. Also, the store is just beautiful. The vibe was amazing. The rain helped it for sure.
All of that to say... It is there that I bought Endurance by Alfred Lansing. A courageous story about an expedition to Antarctica in the 1910s, before ships were really built for that kind of environment.
It is a story of how Shackleton and his ship's crew basically came back from the dead after an almost two-year survival journey. It shocks you to the core that this story is real.
"And then the sun set for the last time". I live in 31° lat. 35° long. so I cannot comprehend even what it feels like. Sentences like that, really put me in their shoes. It is months after I finished that book, and I still remember those environment-drawing sentences.
The fact that there are no animals. That it is cold as ****...
Full of twists and enriched with journals written by people on board - it is really one of, if not the best book I read this year. The story is just unmatched. Made me REALLY dive in into antarctica, latitude, & longtitude, maps, northen poles. Amazing book. If you want to read about a journey, this one is a must.
The fact that there was a photographer on board, makes this story even better:
Just think about how he defended the photographs' tapes, how they survived that whole journey. Keep in mind they had to get rid of stuff all the time. And that's not counting their whole ship, filled with their items, which just sunk.
Ok next.
Here, I'll put a divider.
Next book was Jordan B. Peterson's Twelve Rules for Life. It probably impacted me more than I can tell. I am pretty rough myself, so I wasn't surprised by his in-your-face attitude. But it was a good book. It is a book advocating for taking responsibility, for standing tall, and for being a man. I say "being a man", because even though women can take a lot from that book, I feel like it is a bit centered around men. I could be wrong here. Also, after reading the previous book about such extremely cold places, reading Jordan's book didn't feel very "hot", as many of his lessons come from his childhood experience, from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (A very cold place).
That was a long book. After it, I decided to pick up a book that layed down on my shelf for months. The book was Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Just as it sounds, it is an encyclopedia-style book. Beautiful book, with lots of drawings and graphics about what a normal US life looked like in the 80s and 90s.
At last, I finally found a book about normal life. This book felt like home. Felt cozy. Very cool book. One of this year's bests. Here is an example of what you might find in it:
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is a super hyped book. I don't think it matches the hype. Maybe for children it does. But for me, it felt like a childish book with simple mantras that are not really backed by something in this book, other than magic stuff that keeps happening. It was nice, but not more than that in my opinion.
Philosophers Against God: Essay on Faith in Doubt by Dr. Jeremy Fogel is a VERY passionate book. It's aim: replace your faith in god by faith in doubt. Because when people are too sure of their faith, they start doing things in the name of god. Written in Hebrew, and talking about events in Israel, it is easy to connect "do things in the name of god" to terror attacks, but there are bad things that are done daily in the name of god that aren't deadly suicidal attacks. Anyways, that book was not for me as I am far from a religious guy.
Don't mistake it for being a simple opinion book. It is backed with lots of philosophy against god and faith in god. A serious book. 100 pages.
Here, the October book rush began.
First book was A Line in the South by Eran Bar-Gil. A book about a transgender figuring how to come out of the closet in a weeks-long stay in the Arabah, Israel's south. The kind of south where there are few people and lots of sand. I am gen Z, so I don't understand why I needed to be "taught" about why it is alright to be a trans for 100 pages. But, after that, the story actually started moving. Until a crazy twist in the last dozens of pages. That was actually very unbelievable for me. I have no idea why to connect such 2 subjects in one book.
Thanks to that twist, at least in the surprising aspect, that book caught my eye. It was an OK book. I am just not that into genders, i guess.
After that book, I read Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. My 2nd or 3rd classic of the year. That book was written in a special boring manner I guess. So the story itself wasn't WOW. But it made me think. And looking back now, this book... changed me. Like, REALLY changed my day to day actions.
It talks about a person who is being neglected because of becoming unhelpful or meaningless to it's family. I thought about people I've been neglecting because of that. People who are maybe not benefiting us in our productivity but are still people. People that want to talk with others and be heard. And I really started talking more with such people. I started reaching to my family more. It hit me how badly we treat older people. Those living in the "golden years" (which in Hebrew means, around 60 plus). And I really tried to better myself in that area. I wrote more about it here.
The next book, was a book that made me read at least 70 pages a day. That was a book that the whole of Israel waited for. An instant best-seller. Eli Sharabi's Hostage is a memoir about his life being a hostage in Gaza, for 491 days. Made me cry in the end. I remember October 7th, 2023. And I remember how much "life" I lived for the next 491 days. While I was busy living, he was deep in the tunnels. Like many others. And now we finally got to see what it was like. Amazing book. Can't be apathetic when reading it.
Then I read Start-up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer which was a super complimenting book about Israel. Israel is a country full of disagreements. Our default is to disagree. So it was cool to zoom out for a minute and see the whole picture. To see the general curve going upwards. This wasn't a super interesting book. It it good that I read it though. Learned a lot about Israel's financial history.
My crème de la crème of this year was Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. I finished reading it just a couple days ago. It deserves the hype. It is a classic for sure. A fun, fast-paced story (but don't mistake it for a short one) about 17th century France, about kings and queens, about political conflicts, about romance, about war, about soldiers, about bravery, swordplay, gambling. There is some comedy too. Written extremely good. I liked the English translation very much. It enriched my last month of the year a lot, as was written at the start of this blog. Really, really a great book. And a great story.
If you just started reading though... It is a bit hard book to finish. I, myself, put it aside after 100 pages at the beginning of the year. There is many context, many characters and the buildup feels slow. Only after reading 14 books, I came back to it and felt like I have the capacity to finish it. And I did.
That's it.
Those are the books I read this year. What's cool about next year - is that I have 2 books currently. Other than those two (short books) - I am completely open to new possibilities.
We'll see what the new year brings us.
Until next time.
