Rapid Fire: Books I Read in 2025
It’s a new year, and with every new year comes a new post on RyanWoerner.com, your home for all things posts.
I read 59 books in 2025, up from 48 in 2024. Those 59 books totaled 19,929 pages. If we assume about one minute per page read, that’s about 332 hours, or almost 14 full days spent reading last year. I should probably get more hobbies.
Below are the books I read in 2025, and my thoughts on some of them.
The List
Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow
Mans Search for Meaning
Project Hail Mary*
Siddharth
The Devil in the White City*
New Teeth
Private Rites
Flowers For Algernon
Smart Football
Kafka on the Shore
A Dirty Job
The City We Became*
The Thursday Murder Club
Bossypants
Dopesick
Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered
The Catcher in the Rye
You Like It Darker
Between Two Fires*
Chain Gang All Stars
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Sabriel*
Seven Empty Houses
Night Shift
You Are Not So Smart
The Hobbit
Swamp Story
The Alloy of Law*
The Shining
Naked Economics
The Man Who Died Twice
Maybe Not
The Mother Tongue
The Road
Shadows of Self*
Flashforward
Yes Please
Payback
You Suck
The Midnight Library
Jurassic Park
The Bands of Mourning*
The Deception Point
Mistborn A Secret History*
The Body Has a Mind of its Own
The Lost World
The Bullet That Missed
Thinner
The Appeal
Gone Girl
The Lost Metal*
A Brief History of Vice
Hearts in Atlantis
The Last Murder at the End of the World
Finders Keepers
Daisy Darker
Everything I Never Told You
Endurance*
Italics indicates the book is one I’ve read previously.
* Indicates that this book was read as a part of a book club.
Favorite Book of the Year
This one is tough, and I’d like to give shoutouts to a few here. Flowers for Algernon was unexpectedly stellar, moving, and less mouse-centric than I imagined. New Teeth puts on full display the brilliance that Simon Rich brought to the most underappreciated show in existence, “Man Seeking Woman.” The Appeal, while ending on a meh note, was an inventive, enthralling, and easy to follow story that I absolutely blew through.
Least Favorite Book of the Year
There were a few books I read this year that I didn’t particularly care for. Hearts in Atlantis was a solid 5/10, and I generally expect spookier stuff from Mr. King. Sabriel, which I suppose is a young adult book, was weirdly difficult for me to follow at times (I am dumber than most young adults) and the plot didn’t really grab me. The City We Became was a miss for me. I get what she was going for, but I dont think Jemsin nailed this one, it was a little bit on the nose, and as someone who isn’t from New York, the plot didn’t grab me. Also the whole avatar thing was kinda confusing and felt like rules were being made up as she went.
However, none of those were the worst book of the year. That honor goes to Colleen Hoover’s Maybe Not. Listen, when I mention my least favorite book of the year, I usually don’t lean too hard into them (despite the fact that no one reads this website whatsoever). This book, however, was just straight up bad. I had heard of Colleen Hoover due to all of the rigmorale around the movie adaptation of her book It Ends With Us. I was aware that some people didn’t like her writing due to claims that it glorifies abusive relationships, or is just straight up bad. This book was both! The plot was truly awful, and it’s incredibly clear she doesn’t use an editor (or uses one from Friverr) because there were at least two typos in the book, including using “our” instead of “are” (or vice-versa; I don’t remember and I’m certainly not going to go back and check). Like, c’mon.
Fastest Read
Because I often have more than one book in my rotation at any given time, I can’t conclusively say which book I blew through the quickest. Flashforward, though, took me like, 3 days max. I actually got this book in 2010 (16 years ago!) after the plot of the television show reeled a young Ryan in (and then was promptly canceled after like 6 episodes*). The book had sat on my shelf (various shelves really) ever since. But holy moly, when I started it, it was both quite good and really sucked you off in. The plot moves quickly, doesn’t drag even in the slightest, and is engaging enough that you really really wanna keep going. This one honestly may have been one of my favorites of the year, sorry for not mentioning it earlier.
Books I Reread This Year
I’m not a total stranger to reading books I’ve read before. Some people don’t enjoy it, but those people also watch The Office on repeat in the background of their day to day life, so let he who is without sin etc etc etc. I reread a handful of books this year for various reasons.
Bossypants — I have had a crush on Tina Fey for a solid 10 years. Great writer, great humorist, great lady (probably, I dont know).
The Catcher in the Rye — I read (“read”) this one in high school. Decided to reread it (“re”read) this year. Good book. I think this Salinger guy has got a future ahead of him. Let me just Google him real quick.
You Are Not So Smart — I read (actually read) this one in college for one of my classes, and it was one of my favorites. Educational, well written, titularly insulting; it checks all the boxes.
The Midnight Library — This was my favorite book of 2024. It’s actually a bit wild that I reread it a year after reading it the first time.
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own — Yeah this one was another one that I read for a college class, but it was less interesting. I mean it was cool but I am too dumb to understand most of it.
*Don’t fact check this, I didn’t.
