For me, 2025 was a year of mostly digital consumption: YouTube videos/essays, podcasts, webinars, and more audiobooks than physical books for the first time in my life. I’ll talk more about the latter in just a few.
As for this site, here are the 5 most popular articles of 2025:
In keeping up with my hope and goal at the beginning of this year, I fulfilled a goal to get rid of more physical things in my life. So, with that, I traded in hundreds of records and books back to stores where someone else can give them a new home. Rather than buying more physical things, I opted to consume more audiobooks than physical books, and more digital albums than ones I could hold and display.
The list below is the 123 books I consumed this year. My favorite novel of 2025 was The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb and my other favorite novel in the list, not released this year, was The Extraordinary Life Of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni (Thank you, Melissa L.)
1-If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
2-How To Hug A Porcupine by Julia A. Ross
3-High Achiever by Tiffany Jenkins
4-Vicious by V.E. Schwab
5-Vengeful by V.E. Schwab
6-Let Him In by William Friend
7-Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
8-The Invisible Life Of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab
9-Black Noise by Tricia Rose
10-Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
11-Walking Disaster by Deryck Whibley
12-The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew B. Crawford
13-A Mystery Of Mysteries by Mark Dawidziak
14-The Butterfly Effect by Marcus J. Moore
15-The Connector Effect by I. Misner, G. Weihmiller, and R. Skrob
16-Get To The Point! by John Schwartzberg
17-The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
18-Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa Terkeurst
19-Family Dog by Richard A. Wolters
20-The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
21-Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
22-Blood by Dr. Jen Gunter
23-Confessions by Kanae Minato
24-Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
25-The Extraordinary Life Of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni
26-Good Talk by Mira Jacob
27-Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
28-King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
29-Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
30-The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
31-Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson
32-Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
33-The Year Of Less by Cait Flanders
34-The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
35-Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
36-Break Free Of Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth
37-Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
38-Every Time I Find The Meaning Of Life, They Change It by Daniel Klein
39-Surrounded By Idiots by Thomas Erikson
40-The Obvious Choice by Jonathan Goodman
41-Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
42-The GLP-1 Solution by Lyle McDonald
43-The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest
44-Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
45-Tampa by Alissa Nutting
46-Welcome Home by Najwa Zebian
47-Gogmagog by Jeff Noon & Steve Beard
48-What My Mother And I Don’t Talk About by Michelle Filgate
49-In A Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
50-This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp
51-The Woman Who Fooled The World by Beau Donnelly and Nick Toscano
52-The Tell by Amy Griffin
53-A Promised Land by Barack Obama
54-Sociopath by Dr. Patric Gaigne
55-The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
56-William by Mason Coile
57-Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Levin
58-The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
59-Come Together by Emily Nagoski
60-I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
61-This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley
62-180 Days Of Physical Wellness For Busy Educators by Tina H. Boogren
63-Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice For Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
64-The Tenant by Freida McFadden
65-The Thicket by Noelle West Ihli
66-Gray After Dark by Noelle West Ihli
67-Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
68-Your Second Life Begins When You Realize You Only Have One by Raphaelle Giordano
69-It Was All A Dream: Biggie And The World That Made Him by Justin Tinsley
70-Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography by Staci Robinson
71-Playworld by Adam Ross
72-White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
73-Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
74-Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
75-Wintering by Katherine May
76-One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig
77-Something In The Walls by Daisy Pearce
78-Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su
79-The One by John Marrs
80-A Physical Education by Casey Johnston
81-The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
82-Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
83-These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant
84-Menopause Plus by Girls Gone Strong
85-The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
86-On Immunity by Eula Biss
87-Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
88-How We Learn To Be Brave by Mariann Edgar Budde
89-Unbreakable by Dr. Vonda Wright
90-The Manor House by Gilly Macmillan
91-The Age Of Diagnosis by Suzanne O’Sullivan
92-The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton
93-The Will To Change by Bell Hooks
94-The Guncle by Steven Rowley
95-Dilla Time by Dan Charnas
96-Most Dope: The Extraordinary Life Of Mac Miller by Paul Cantor
97-Food Intelligence by Julia Belluz & Dr. Kevin Hall
98-The Hidden by Heather Graham
99-The Science Of Nutrition Coaching by Dr. Brad Dieter
100-The Art Of Nutrition Coaching by Dr. Brad Dieter
101-The Art & Science Of Nutrition Coaching by Dr. Brad Dieter
102-Music Is History by Questlove
103-The Death Of Us by Abigail Dean
104-Hold On To Your Kids by Dr. G. Neufeld and Dr. G. Mate
105-The Death And Life Of The Great Lakes by Dan Egan
106-All The Ugly And Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
107-Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
108-How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra
109-We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kleiwer
110-Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
111-The Only One Left by Riley Sager
112-Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson
113-When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
114-The Wedding People by Alison Espach
115-Being Human by Robert Sapolsky
116-Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
117-The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb
118-Together At Baptism by Robert M. Hanna
119-Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky
120-The Business Trip by Jessie Garcia
121-King Of Ashes by S.A. Cosby
122-After Taste by Daria Lavelle
123-The Devils by Joe Abercrombie
(Photo courtesy of Ed Robertson)
Jason Leenaarts 
Leave a comment