The Very Best Books I Read in 2025

For the past five years, I’ve set out to read 100 books a year. Until now, I’d hit that goal every time. This year, I didn’t.

I’m on the verge of finishing book number 51.

It’s been a strange year for me — full of shifting priorities, changing energy, and a lot of reflection about goals and what they’re actually for. But 51 books is still a lot of reading. According to Goodreads, it adds up to just over 15,000 pages, which feels worth honoring, even if it doesn’t come with a nice round number attached.

Reading remains one of the most grounding habits in my life. Some years it’s about momentum and volume; other years it’s about depth and timing. This was very much the latter.

Here are the five books that stayed with me the most.

A Marriage at Sea — Sophie Elmhirst

This is a gripping, intimate account of a marriage tested by survival. What begins as an adventurous sailing journey turns into a brutal fight against the elements and against despair itself. At its core, this is a story about partnership — how love, resentment, hope, and fear all surface when everything else is stripped away.

It’s both harrowing and tender, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how relationships change when survival becomes the only goal.

Lines that stuck with me:

“Love, she realized, was not just about devotion, but endurance.”
“Out there, the sea didn’t care who they were or what they’d planned.”
“They learned each other again in the quiet spaces between fear.”

Mailman — Stephen Starring Grant

Mailman is odd, funny, and deeply human. On the surface, it’s about the routines and quiet observations of a mail carrier. Underneath, it’s a meditation on work, loneliness, dignity, and the unnoticed lives unfolding all around us.

This book made me slow down. It reminded me how much meaning can live inside repetition — and how much we miss when we’re always rushing toward something else.

Lines that stuck with me:

“Everyone wanted their mail, but no one wanted the mailman.”
“Routine was the closest thing he had to peace.”
“He knew these houses better than he knew himself.”

Meditations for Mortals — Oliver Burkeman

No one writes about time, productivity, and mortality quite like Oliver Burkeman. This book is a gentle but firm reminder that you will never get everything done — and that trying to is often what makes life feel so overwhelming.

I found myself returning to this book throughout the year, especially during moments when I felt behind or restless. It doesn’t promise control; it offers acceptance.

Lines that stuck with me:

“You are not failing at productivity; productivity is failing you.”
“The true measure of a life is not how much you manage to fit into it.”
“The day will always end before the to-do list does.”

The Five Types of Wealth — Sahil Bloom

This book expands the definition of wealth far beyond money. Sahil Bloom breaks wealth into five categories — financial, social, physical, mental, and time — and argues that a rich life requires attention to all of them.

What I appreciated most is how practical and values-driven the book is. It doesn’t reject ambition; it reframes it.

Lines that stuck with me:

“Money is only one scorecard, but too many people treat it as the only one.”
“Time is the one form of wealth you can’t earn back.”
“A wealthy life is built deliberately, not accidentally.”

One Second After — William Forstchen

This was the most intense read of my year. One Second After explores the aftermath of an EMP attack on the United States and what happens when modern life collapses instantly.

It’s terrifying not because it’s flashy, but because it feels plausible. More than anything, it’s a book about community, leadership, and the moral compromises people face when survival is on the line.

Lines that stuck with me:

“Civilization is thinner than we’d like to believe.”
“In the end, the only thing that mattered was who you could count on.”
“The past disappeared in a second. The future followed soon after.”

Final Thoughts

I didn’t read 100 books this year. I read 51 — and a handful of them landed exactly when I needed them to. Maybe that’s the real metric that matters.

If nothing else, this year reminded me that goals are useful, but meaning isn’t measured solely by completion. Sometimes it’s measured by what stays with you after you turn the last page.