What I read in 2025

Presenting the best of the lot

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

I laughed for the first fifty pages. Then I stopped laughing. Then I realized I was Eleanor. Not the trauma part but the coping part. The routines. The emotional distance dressed up as independence. The way she treats loneliness like a job she’s good at. This book doesn’t scream sadness. It whispers it politely. Like people who show up to office every day with broken hearts and perfect attendance. Eleanor doesn’t want saving. She just wants to be left alone, which is usually what people who need love the most say. By the end, I wasn’t entertained. I was quietly softer.

Daisy Jones & The Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid

This felt like gossip from a world cooler than mine. Everyone is beautiful, talented, damaged, and dramatic. I flew through it like binge-watching a Netflix documentary. But somewhere between the music, the fights, and the addiction, I saw something familiar that people were using passion to escape themselves. Daisy burns. Billy controls. Both are scared. Fame doesn’t solve anything here, it just gives their problems microphones. It made me think about ambition, how we chase success thinking it will settle the chaos inside us. It never does. It just makes the chaos louder.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin

I expected gaming. I got life.

Two friends building imaginary worlds while failing at the real one. Loving each other deeply but never in the right way, at the right time. Watching success arrive and still feeling empty. This book understands something important: achievement doesn’t fix wounds. It only decorates them. The friendships felt painfully real, the misunderstandings, the pride, the distance that grows slowly without anyone noticing. I kept thinking about how many relationships in life don’t end in fights, they end in silence. This book sits in that silence beautifully.

Collector Manual – MP

This book has no soul. Which is exactly why it matters.

It’s not meant to inspire you. It’s meant to discipline you. Every page feels like the government saying, “Welcome to reality.” Reading it made me realize how much power operates quietly through rules, procedures, signatures. No dramatic speeches. Just files moving (or not moving). This is where idealism either matures or dies. It’s boring in the way responsibility is boring. But it also holds the weight of millions of lives. After philosophy, this feels like gravity pulling you back to earth.

The RSS: A View to the Inside – Andersen

What struck me wasn’t ideology. It was consistency.

Decades of showing up. Training. Routine. Community building. While the rest of the country argues online, this organization builds quietly on the ground. It made me reflect on how change actually happens. Not through viral moments. Through daily habits. The book feels like opening a machine and seeing the gears turn. Not romantic. Just effective. It reminded me that passion fades. Systems last.

Quarterlife – Devika Rege

This book feels like being 24 at midnight.

Not depressed. Just tired. Tired of pretending you know what you’re doing. Everyone is chasing something like jobs, love, stability while secretly Googling “is it normal to feel lost at 25?” It doesn’t try to motivate you. It just understands you. The characters stumble, overthink, compare themselves, and keep going anyway. Which is basically adulthood. I liked how nothing gets magically solved. Because in real life, things don’t. You just slowly learn to live with the uncertainty.

How Prime Ministers Decide – Neerja Chowdhury

Power looks very different up close.

Less heroic. More exhausting.

This book shows leaders not as masterminds but as people juggling pressure, egos, crises, and half-information. Decisions aren’t made in clarity, they’re made in chaos. Sometimes right. Sometimes terribly wrong. What stayed with me was how much personality matters. One cautious leader changes history differently than a bold one. It made governance feel human. Fragile. Not a grand plan, but a series of difficult moments. It quietly kills the myth of perfect leadership.

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

I read this slowly. The book wasn’t hard but it felt heavy in a gentle way.

Death narrates, but the story is about life. Ordinary people in terrible times doing small good things. A girl stealing books because words are the only safe place left. It reminded me that wars aren’t just fought by soldiers they’re lived by families. By children. By people trying to be kind when the world isn’t. This book doesn’t shock you. It warms you and breaks you at the same time. Like remembering something beautiful that’s gone.

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario – Matt Dinniman

This book is ridiculous.

Aliens turn Earth into a survival reality show. People fight monsters for audience entertainment. There are explosions, jokes, talking cats. And yet it somehow comments on how we consume suffering for fun. I laughed constantly, then suddenly realized the joke was on us. Carl keeps surviving while being watched, rated, and monetized. It felt like a metaphor for modern life, struggle packaged as content. It’s chaos with depth hiding underneath. I didn’t expect to think this much while reading something so crazy.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World – Weatherford

This book ruined the simple villain story I grew up with.

Yes, Genghis Khan destroyed cities. But he also built systems, trade routes, merit-based leadership, religious tolerance. The modern connected world owes a lot to the Mongols. It made me uncomfortable to admire someone responsible for so much bloodshed. But history rarely gives clean heroes. This book made me realize progress often comes through brutal disruption. Not always peacefully. It doesn’t justify violence. It complicates it. And life, I’m learning, is always complicated.

The Key – Junichiro Tanizaki

This was like reading someone else’s private thoughts and feeling guilty about it.

A husband and wife write diaries, half knowing the other will read them. Desire becomes performance. Honesty becomes manipulation. It shows how intimacy can turn into a power game. The book is quiet but intense. No big events just emotions twisting slowly. It made me think about how often in relationships we don’t say things directly. We hint. We act. We hope the other person understands without us risking vulnerability. Short, strange, and deeply human.

The Passengers on the Hankyu Line – Hiro Arikawa

Nothing dramatic happens. And that’s the beauty of it.

Just people on a train. Each carrying heartbreak, hope, fresh starts, quiet pain. Their stories touch briefly, then move on- like life. It reminded me of Delhi Metro rides, watching strangers and wondering what battles they’re fighting silently. The book is kind. Soft. It believes small kindness matters. Sometimes reading it felt like taking a deep breath after a long day. Not every story needs tragedy. Some just need humanity.

The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook – Matt Dinniman

The dungeon turns political now.

Rebellions, factions, propaganda, all inside a deadly game. Carl isn’t just playing anymore, he’s questioning the system. The humor is still wild, but there’s a growing seriousness underneath. It feels like watching someone wake up slowly to injustice. The monsters aren’t the real enemy anymore. The structure is. It’s funny how a book about killing creatures in a dungeon ends up talking about freedom and control. Somehow it works.

Songs Our Bodies Sing – Lindsay Pereira

This book feels like memories stitched together.

About family, grief, love, and all the things people don’t say directly. The writing is slow and emotional in a quiet way. It reminded me how much we carry inside us, our parents’ fears, their sacrifices, their silences. Nothing flashy happens, but everything feels real. Like life in small towns, living rooms, hospital rooms. It’s the kind of book that makes you think about your own people. Your own history. Soft but heavy.

Arthashastra – Chanakya

No motivation quotes here.

Just raw realism.

Chanakya talks about spies, taxes, war, diplomacy like a man who knows humans will always be selfish, scared, and power-hungry. Morality is present, but practicality comes first. Reading it felt like realizing politics has never been pure. The same games we see today were played thousands of years ago. Only the costumes changed. It made me respect ancient intelligence while also feeling slightly disturbed by how little we’ve evolved.