Last year was more about buying books rather than reading them. A. and I love going to book stores. At home, on holiday, everywhere. And how good a visit in a book store would be without buying any?
This is why, after countless of book buying sprees in Prague, London and in Edinburgh (on Christmas!), I have certainly piled up more books in 2025 than what I was able to read.
Now the question, is it a bad thing?
Anti-library of Books
A common expectation, especially among people who do not read that much, is that one actually has to have read most of, if not all, the books in their library. They cannot fathom why would anyone buy more books than they can read. Piling the books then looks nonsensical.
Though it is anything but.
There can be reason for buying more books than one can read. Late Umberto Eco, known also for his large library, coined the term anti-library (of which I learned from Nassim Taleb in his seminal work, Black Swan). Apparently, there is the word for anti-library in Japanese too, tsundoku.
Such anti-library, shelves of unread books, may be of value as a catalogue of possibilities, it is nice to look at (superficial, yes) and may eventually lead one to actually read more.
There is also nice video from Vashik Armenikus on Youtube on this topic:
Bottom line and the key takeaway is that there is value in piling more books and that there is no need to feel bad about it.
Reading in 2025
As to the actual reading, it is a sadder story. I didn’t read as much as I would have wanted, but still I managed to complete my goal on Goodreads. I’ve read 19 books out of 12 (I’ve grossly undercut my goal based on previous years in which I failed to fulfil it and I grew tired of the failure).
In 2025 I have read something from Haruki Murakami for the first time. And not just one, but two books. The City and Its Uncertain Walls and Super-Frog Saves Tokyo. Both were so wonderfully weird. I have not become a devoted fan of Murakami but still his books were something I enjoyed.
Zarathustra
Then, I managed to go through Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, of which I am particularly proud. It has taken great effort and was really hard but Nietzsche’s thoughts are something I often go back to. I’ve even made a Youtube video about Zarathustra:
The Stranger
Other than that, I’ve re-read The Stranger / Outsider from Albert Camus. There is only a handful of books that I have re-read as this is not something I usually do (because there is simply so many books in my Anti-library that I haven’t even read once). But The Stranger is something else.
After I’ve read The Stranger for the first time, it made a huge impression on me. So, I was curious to find out if I would feel the same way as I had when I read it for the first time. Well, not entirely, but still, it was great. I’ve made the video on Youtube about The Stranger too:
New Brown, Peter May, Advent in Iceland and More
I also had to read the new Dan Brown’s book, The Secret of Secrets, especially as its plot is based in Prague. I liked that one but it’s not the best Brown’s book in my opinion.
Of the similar sort, I’ve read the remaining books of Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy (The Lewis Man, The Chessmen) and the fourth, newest, book, The Black Loch. Those are all great, especially because the plot takes place on Outer Hebrides, one of my favourite places I’ve visited.
Moreover, as we have visited Iceland in 2025, I was drawn to buy and read Gunnar Gunnarsson’s book Advent as a perfect seasonal read. It is described as Icelandic Christmas Carrol. I don’t know about that but when reading it I was able to vividly imagine the harsh conditions and weather on Iceland thanks to our holiday there. Much like when reading May’s novels about Hebrides, reading about Iceland has helped me to think back to our stay there earlier that year.
Other than that, there have been some other books as well – Julian Barnes’s The Noise of Time (Barnes is one of my long time favourites), Michel Baitaille’s Coeur rouge(which I got from my grandpa, it is about First War, reminded me of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front), Peter Attia’s Outlive (not to miss out on the longevity hype), Lin Rina’s Animant Crumbs Staubchronik (a feel good read, selected by A. as part of our reading challenge), Stephen Fry’s Heroes (a retelling of the classic Greek mythology), Toby Ord’s The Precipice (on existential risks of our time), Sam Harris’s Waking Up (about meditation and nature of consciousness), Carlo Rovelli’s White Holes (I like Rovelli’s books on physics for their accessibility and poetic qualities), and lastly, Syndikát from Leoš Kyša (fiction about AI that could well become reality).
Welcome, 2026
The topics in the books I’ve read are wide in scope and each would probably deserve a dedicated post. Maybe it will come to that.
So, stay tuned.
For now, I wish you all the best in 2026. Buy books and read them too.
