This has become one of my favorite posts of the year. It’s the one where I get to share my favorite books of 2025! Some of these books are brand new and some are old, but if you’re looking for a good read to get you through January, look no further. And, if you like this list and are looking for even more inspiration, check out the list from 2024 and 2023 as well.
Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green
Everyone seems to be reading Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green. In fact, I picked this up because it was the #1 non-fiction book of 2025 on Goodreads this year. It’s a quick read (less than 200 pages) and packed with interesting stories about tuberculosis itself and the famous people it’s killed over the years. Did you know that tuberculosis played a role in starting World War I? I didn’t and that particular story is hilarious (well, aside from the whole assassination part). Everything Is Tuberculosis is worth picking up if you’re at all interested in history, infection, and what we’re doing to finally eradicate this disease.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Sometimes a really good fiction book comes along at the exact right time. This month, I polished off The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, incredibly quickly. Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you made some different decisions? Me too. This book is imaginative, interesting, and well-loved by many. It may bother you if you are triggered by the idea of suicide.
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan made a really good argument for focusing. This book implores you to ask one key question. That is, “What’s the ONE thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”. And, then it goes on to give you practical tips for focusing on your “ONE thing”. I wrote up a more thorough summary of this book and my key takeaways here.
Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap
I’m including Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy’s Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love—A Personal Finance Handbook for Women by Tori Dunlap because I think it’s an important book for women to read. Do you feel like you’ve got great personal finance knowledge? Do you have questions about investing, negotiating, and all manner of kicking ass in this male-dominated world? If so, this is a great book to pick up. I would consider it a beginner’s guide to personal finance with some advanced topics thrown in.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
I read so much non-fiction that when it’s time for a break, I need to poll my friends for ideas. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir came highly recommended by two of my friends and I absolutely loved it. I loved it so much that I turned around and picked up The Martian by Andy Weir as well. This book is coming out as a movie starting Ryan Gosling in March. If you haven’t yet watched the trailer — don’t. It gave away one of the most delightful surprises in the whole book. Read it, then watch the movie. Andy Weir is coming to speak at Author Nation next year and I’m pretty excited about that.
Fair Play by Eve Rodsky
Fair Play: A Game-changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do by Eve Rodsky aims to fix the problem of women doing the bulk of household work, child care, and planning in their relationships. The book introduces a way to even out the chores with your spouse. It also introduces some revolutionary concepts that make a lot of sense. Concepts like the fact that every task has three parts: conception, planning, and execution. If you don’t delegate all three, you may still be the one realizing a task needs to be done and doing all the planning (i.e., the mental load) which in many cases is still most of the work. I’ve written a more in-depth summary here. And I really do think this book could save your relationship with your spouse.
The Book of Boundaries by Melissa Urban
Still on the topic of creating the space you need in your life, here comes The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free by Melissa Urban. Are you feeling resentful towards some of the people in your life? If so, that’s likely a sign that they’ve crossed a boundary that you may not even know needs to exist. In this book, Urban does a great job of explaining when to set a boundary, how to set a boundary, and then gives you loads of scripts for actually setting that boundary. I immediately started trying ideas from this book with various people in my life and they work! It’s a very handy book for helping you say no to the right things at the right times.
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
I think about The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt a lot. I read it almost a year ago, but with four teenagers in our house, the learnings from this book come up again and again. In a nutshell, social media is particularly bad for the developing brain and Haidt walks us through not only the science behind how it’s affecting our kids, but four achievable ways to protect our children. One of them is to keep them off of social media until they’re 16 years old. Australia, this year, enacted the first law incorporating this research. If you have teenagers at home, check out my summary here and definitely consider picking up this book.
Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara follows the story of Eleven Madison Park in NYC, a restaurant that was named the best restaurant in the world, then went plant-based and did it again. This book has loads of great advice for businesses outside of the restaurant industry and interesting insights into the restaurant industry itself. Insights I didn’t know because the closest I’ve ever gotten to working at a restaurant was working at the Liz Waters dorm cafeteria my freshman year.
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
OK, OK, so I tend to resist trends, especially when they seem overhyped and Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert was so very overhyped back in the day. But, I do love to travel and I decided to finally pick up this book when I went to Portugal last summer. It was such a fun read. Then my 15-year-old daughter got ahold of it and loved it too. If you love to travel or want to be inspired by someone else’s spiritual journey or find out how much weight you’ll put on living in Italy for a few months this was a fun read.
A Few Honorable Mentions
There are a couple more books that I read this year that I think are worth reading if they pique your interest and align with your politics.
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams is all about the inner workings of Facebook and how people like Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg made their decisions. It made me stop using Facebook this year. We really need to do a better job regulating the social media companies instead of letting them make profit-based decisions that have broad impacts on our our elections, democracies, mental health, and pocketbooks. It is a fascinating tale of Sarah’s nearly seven years at Facebook as the Director of Global Public Policy and the devastating decisions they made. It is not an uplifting book, but it is an important look at what big tech is doing.
It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders is more uplifting. If you’re not super excited about what’s been going on with American politics for the past…forever and have always wondered if we should be worshipping capitalism as much as we do, you’ll find some answers and some great ideas here. I love hearing from politicians who have an actual plan for fixing healthcare, complete with data and numbers and I also love hearing from people who talk about sane and logical things. I really respect Sanders a lot more after reading this book.
Escaping from the political realm, Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself by William W Li, MD is very interesting if you’re on a health journey. I got a lot of great ideas for foods I should be eating and why. It’s nice to focus on what’s good for you and not what you should avoid. And the science behind these foods is fun to learn too.
Welcome, 2026!
2025 was a bit of a rough year here in the United States. I’m actually quite happy to usher it right the hell out of here. I have a kind of naive optimism that 2026 can turn out better. So it’s with that attitude that I’m turning my attention to a few new projects this year. I’ll introduce those in a future post. Until then, Happy New Year!
I hope your 2026 is filled with reading, travel, wonderful people, and plenty of happiness.