2025: reading

This is my fifth annual post recapping my year in reading. If you go back and read past year-end posts (see 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021), you’ll see an annual theme: frustration that I can’t seem to break past a certain limit of books read per year. I’d like to be in the 120-160 range, but I find myself stuck at 80-120. In line with that trend, I read fewer books this year than any in the last fifteen years—and I didn’t teach until September! If I can’t read more in a year like this, I’ll never do it; or so it feels, at any rate.

Maybe if I just stop setting the goal, it’ll happen on its own. Or not. Oh well.

As for what I did read, it was another eclectic year. Fiction was low, but the tech and nonfiction genres held some real highlights. I continue making discoveries of magnificent authors I’d never even heard of before. In that spirit I hope this list might introduce other readers to some of them for the first time as well.

(A reminder: The following is not a list of all that I read this year, just the books I enjoyed the most, organized by category.)

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Poetry

Next to nothing, except for Virgil’s Eclogues and Wendell Berry’s This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems (2013).

Fiction

8. Mick Herron, Clown Town (2025). A good back half, and an unexpected ending, but I’m starting to sour on (reading) this series. More thoughts here.

7. Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (1992). I did not “like” this book—no more than I “liked” Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)—but I’m glad I read it, and no one can deny Stephenson’s prescience.

6. P. D. James, The Taste for Death (1986). It’s not a complete year without one more Adam Dalgleish mystery crossed through. At this rate I won’t have any more James to read once I hit my fifties. I guess I’ll have to re-read them all!

5. Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021). This one crushed me.

4. Robin Sloan, Moonbound (2024). A continuous pleasant surprise from start to finish.

3. Michael Ende, The Neverending Story (1979). My final read of the year, but a pure delight so far.

2. Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life and Others (2002) + Exhalation: Stories (2019).

1. George Saunders, The Tenth of December: Stories (2013). My first. Not my last.

Christian (popular)

7. Myles Werntz, Contesting the Body of Christ: Ecclesiology’s Revolutionary Century (2025).

6. Wesley Hill, Easter: The Season of the Resurrection of Jesus (2025). Review here. I read not only Wes’s book but also the rest of the published series so far, all of which are wonderful.

5. Ross Douthat, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (2025). Review here.

4. Jonathan Linebaugh, The Well That Washes What It Shows: An Invitation to Holy Scripture (2025). Review here.

3. David I. Smith, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom (2025). Smith’s sterling reputation had me suspicious, but he overcame my doubts. A lovely read.

2. John W. Kleinig, The Lord’s Supper: A Guide to the Heavenly Feast (2025).

1. Leah Libresco Sargeant, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto (2025). Review and profile here.

Theology (academic)

8. John F. Boyle, Aquinas on Scripture: A Primer (2023). A model of lucid explanatory prose; it helped immensely as I read through Saint Thomas’s Commentary on Isaiah for the first time this fall.

7. Jonathan Rowlands, Befriending Scripture: Sideways Glances at a Theology of Reading (2025). Blurb here.

6. Ryan Darr, The Best Effect: Theology and the Origins of Consequentialism (2023).

5. Philip Ziegler, God’s Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil (2025). Review here.

4. Frances Young, Doctrine and Scripture in Early Christianity, Volumes 1-2 (2023–24). Review here.

3. David Bentley Hart, The Light of Tabor: Toward a Monistic Christology (2025) + Lewis Ayres, Christological Hellenism: A Melancholy Proposal (2024).

2. Judith Wolfe, The Theological Imagination: Perception and Interpretation in Life, Art, and Faith (2024). A model of theological scholarship. Wolfe is one of the best “younger” theologians writing today.

1. Paul T. Sloan, Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism (2025) + Jason A. Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites (2024). I love good biblical scholarship, and these two volumes are outstanding; read them as a pair and they’re even better.

Technology

9. Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Thread of Big Tech (2017).

8. John Dyer, People of the Screen: How Evangelicals Created the Digital Bible and How It Shapes Their Reading of Scripture (2022).

7. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance (2025). I’m anti-anti-Klein and anti-anti-abundance. I don’t get the vitriol or the mockery.

6. Clare Morell, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones (2025). Review here.

5. Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present (2020).

4. Matthew Ball, The Metaverse: Building the Spatial Internet (2025). Ball is way too credulous, even a hype man, but he’s also an expert surveyor, synthesizer, and hand-holder.

3. Tom Bissell, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter (2010). I secretly love to read video game criticism, and no one’s better than Bissell. But so far neither he nor anyone else has persuaded me to take it seriously as an art form except theoretically. Maybe one day I’ll be won over. Either way, these essays were worth the time.

2. Hartmut Rosa, The Uncontrollability of the World (2018).

1. David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (2019). I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Just read it. No account of digital or any other contemporary technology is complete without the story or the framework he offers here.

Nonfiction

10. Ryan P. Burge, The American Religious Landscape: Facts, Trends, and the Future (2025). Review here.

9. Alec Ryrie, The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It (2025). Review here.

8. Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Square (2000). A lesser Hitch collection, but I continue to plod slowly through his back catalog.

7. Wolfgang Streeck, Critical Encounters: Capitalism, Democracy, Ideas (2020). A powerful and challenging read. I’ve got more Streeck on the docket.

6. Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless (1979).

5. Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (1990). None of Berry’s essay collections is a dud, but this one is particularly special.

4. C. S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature (1966). Ditto.

3. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books (c. 1800).

2. P. D. James, A Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography (1999). A beautiful book from my favorite stylist. She is the very best.

1. Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (2013) + The Burning Forest: Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics (1983). A revelation. More here.