The Blog of Bob Rubbens
Inspired by Fernando’s post on the same topic.
These are the books I read in 2025:
From top left to bottom right in reverse chronological order, because that happened to be the sorting order of Goodreads. The last three should really count as one, as they are actually the three volumes of the White Sand graphic novel by Brandon Sanderson.
From a performance perspective, this year continues the trend of a steady decline of the books I read yearly:
If you factor in the White Sand miscalculation, the trend is even more dire. I’m not too worried; I have a good excuse. At least I’m still reading at all, and that will have to be enough for now.
Doesn’t a nice graph always leave you with the taste of wanting one more? Here you go:
I disliked 20% of the books I read in 2025. I wonder how likely that is.
Okay, one more graph, “to unlearn it,” as the Dutch say:
Looks like there’s a bit of a gap in my progress in the middle of the year… I wonder what I was up to. I’m pretty sure I still did some reading. That’s how I managed to finish two books in rapid succession around September 1st.
Let’s briefly discuss the ones I disliked, and then move on to the ones I did like, all in chronological order. I try my best to avoid spoilers, but still, read beyond this point at your own risk. I’ll end the post with my plans for 2026.
I accidentally jumped right into part two of this series. I can’t exclude that’s the main cause of me disliking the book. I do have to give the author credit: the book read pretty well as a standalone, meaning I could follow along with only minor confusion.
I otherwise found the book nice and cosy, but a bit superficial and basic as well. The book is composed of several somewhat independent stories, which all play out in the same location (in a way). The stories are also all connected with a light but pleasant overarching thread. Some of the stories caught me off guard, but most of them felt standard (though not in a bad way).
I might give the first chapter of book one a try; if the pacing or atmosphere feels different, I might continue. I also don’t want to miss out on the original stories that inspired this series. We’ll see.
Honestly, this book is pretty decent. I think I’m just not in its target audience.
It took me a while to figure out what was going to be the angle in this book. I’m usually a bit slow with these things. Still, when it was revealed proper it still surprised a little bit. I had an idea of the general shape of things, but the details made it stand out a little bit more and feel more authentic. That part of the book is well done. I have no clue about the literary significance of these details; I’ll let some highschool student figure that out when they need to write their book report.
The book is maybe a little bit too cynical for my taste. I can imagine some people will actually enjoy the cynicism.
Even though it’s cynical, I like the ending, in the sense that it fit the book well. I don’t agree with the picture it paints of the world, though (and that’s okay.)
Now for the books I liked!
I listened to this over the course of maybe two years or so. I’m not sure why it took so long, maybe it was the pacing. Sanderson’s books can sometimes take a while to get going, and this being one of his earlier ones is certainly no exception. When the story got going in the final quarter I had a hard time putting it down.
I listened to the dramatized adaptation by GraphicAudio. I usually start out with finding all the particular voices and sounds used annoying. Then after a while I either start liking them, or I don’t notice them much anymore. The few GraphicAudio books I’ve listened to so far are White Sand, Elantris, and The Emperor’s Soul. All three are decent enough. Of the three, Elantris is both the best and the worst. I remember some of the parts of the story where the added sound effects really enhanced the experience for me, whereas in other parts the sound effects were objectively bad. Maybe it’s because I’m not a native speaker, but in particular the voice of the floating orb was hard to understand at times. For White Sand, the accents were a bit much, but I got used to them after a while. I did feel the accents emphasised everyone being from different cultures; maybe that’s worth the cost.
I liked how Sanderson tried to explain the history and current standing of the sand mages through an analysis of, more or less, their financial policy 🙂. While I’m not sure it would hold under scrutiny of a proper accountant, as a laymen I thought it was quite entertaining. I also liked how the main character’s relation to the strength of the sand magic was kept hidden for a while. It made for a nice subplot about discovering the rules of sand magic.
This book is part 5 in Sanderson’s ongoing 10-part Stormlight Archive series. It is the ending of a major arc of the story, and hence ties up a lot of loose ends.
On it’s own, I’m not sure if I would’ve placed this book in the “like” category. This might be related to the fact that I read book four of the series back in 2022. I had forgotten the thread of the main story a bit, you could say. However, as I said before, it does tie up many loose ends, which easily got the book a ticket to the “like” category. Finally getting to know why things are the way they are is super satisfying, even though I didn’t always appreciate how those facts were conveyed in the story.
I think the book felt a bit lore-dump-y at times. I’ve spoken to several people who disagree with me on this, so it’s likely it’s just me.
The book is packed full of clever character progressions, captivating fights and world-shaking events. I just hope next time I can prepare better. There’s still time: book 6 is planned for 2031!
I could write much more here, but in the interest of keeping this post free of spoilers, I’ll just leave it like this.
I went into this story completely blind (though I had some ideas, given the cover.) I had no idea an actual slasher novel was waiting for me right around the corner.
I liked the raw and blunt descriptions of places and feelings throughout the book. Not just of the gore-related parts, but also of the more mundane parts of the book.
I had the pleasure of reading a hardcover edition. It felt like a book I would definitely consider when I’m being chased by a serial killer and need a sturdy and blunt object. Thanks, UT PhD book club, for letting me borrow it.
The book also made sure not to take itself too seriously, by really going over the top with some stereotypes, combined with morbid humour. For me, that was the icing on the cake. I’m guessing that attitude comes with the slasher genre.
This is book is just catnip for scientists.
The way it discusses topics like linguistics, physics and anthropology feels to me like discussing such topics with other (computer) scientists over lunch, except way more thorough. It drops the main character in an interesting situation, and explores implications, based on the aforementioned fields, the all the way to a fun and unavoidable conclusion.
While I’ve not read The Martian, I’ve heard stories about how some parts of it are basically just biology textbook excerpts. I’ve not had that experience at all with this book. More strongly, being a computer scientist, I think that the parts related to computers were even a bit shallow, but that’s okay. The rest of the book more than made up for it.
Fun fact: I tried listening this book early in 2024, perhaps even before that. I stopped because, somehow, the first few scenes of the story combined with the voice of the narrator made me severely dislike the book. I remember not wanting to listen to it anymore on a visceral level. Later, I got the physical book as a gift for my birthday. When I read those scenes, I had none of the reactions I had with the audiobook, and easily read through the first few chapters. I have no clue how my brain works.
I’m on an ongoing quest to read every book of Brandon Sanderson, both past and future. So naturally, I was bound to encounter Skyward on my path. I had been subconsciously avoiding this book for a while. I think I might’ve thought this book is too childish for me. Somehow, I put it into the same category as Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, without much further consideration.
What turned me around is implicit reading advice from a friend of mine. Coincidentally, the same friend who had gifted me Hail Mary. After having a blast reading that story, and remembering that I had spotted Skyward in his living room, I realized that probably I should bump Skyward up my priority list.
It’s not as deep as Hail Mary, but definitely fun. I’d say it’s at least as enjoyable as Hail Mary if you’re looking for a light read. The characters and their problems are flippant, in a good way. Yet later on the story becomes a whole lot more serious, without losing its initial flippant undertones. For me, the world and the characters started out as superficial, but after only 20 pages or so I had a hard time putting the book down.
Fun fact: I tried reading the Spanish version of this book to improve my Spanish in 2024. As I still cannot Spanish at all, you can guess how that turned out.
I had not expected to enjoy this book as massively as I did. And I’m saying that fully taking into account that I’ve had a brief obsession with Asimov’s short stories years go.
Looking back at reading it, what made the book enjoyable for me is the following: the duality of the story being both childish from a factual point of view, yet completely accurate when you ignore details of the story.
For example. The stories in this book take place far into the future. Like, really, really far, to the point that the records which show which planet humanity actually originated from are lost to time. Also in these stories, people still smoke tobacco; as far as I can remember, cigars. In case you’re curious, the tobacco comes from the planet Vega, which is a great place to grow it, apparently, though the why of this is not further discussed. In any case: looking at the current trend of tobacco use globally, you’d be inclined to put down the book for not being realistic.
However, as I followed the storyline further along, I realized the events that happened made complete and exact sense within the world Asimov had established (and were, in fact, independent of both the act of growing tobacco and smoking it).
This relentless chasing of truth is a property I generally like in science fiction and fantasy books. Sanderson’s books also tend to be written this way, as is The Martian. To summarize: the author paints a world, brings it to life with characters, and structures it with (possibly implicitly stated) rules. After that, the rest of the story boils down to “just” following the unavoidable implications of all that.
Note that unavoidable does not mean boring!
I have yet to find a name or trope that captures this particular “analytic” or “rule-based” style of storytelling. The concepts of soft and hard magic systems go in the right direction. Also, books in the hard science fiction genre typically follow this style. E.g. the story Coding Machines by Lawrence Kesteloot.
Stories that follow this structure can sometimes feel chaotic and unstructured in their early parts. However, usually in the last 100 pages or so, this chaos transform into an immutable structure, which approaches an ending in the same way a train approaches a station. Somehow these kinds of stories are extremely satisfying for me to read.
There’s one argument that frequently applies to stories in this genre: if the writer sets up the story’s conclusion too perfectly, it can start to feel artificial, too deus ex machina. This is a fair point; I think, in the end, whether or not you enjoy these types of books depends on how much freedom you’re willing to give the author. For me, Foundation had the right balance, but I can easily see someone disliking the story because it all played out too perfectly.
To be honest, even for me there were a few plot points where I felt they were just a little bit too convenient. Nevertheless: I cannot wait to start book two of the Foundation series!
What caught me entirely off guard about this book is that it’s a collection of short stories! This left me seriously confused when chapter one (= short story one) ended and chapter two began and immediately introduced a bunch of completely new characters.
This is such an exploratory and mind-blowing book. I know this will make some people angry, but I in my opinion it falls in the same category as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Discworld. Except it’s less chaotic good and more sensible. I recommend the author’s youtube videos as well. The Answer is Not a Hut in the Woods is one of my favourites.
This is a great book if you’re looking for a new approach to shake up your dungeon master style.
If you can get the buy-in from your players to go in this direction, likely you’ll have tons of fun. Some of the benefits the book promises are players becoming attached to both their player characters and the campaign in general, and less prep for the DM. I don’t think these promises are much over-exaggerated.
With “less prep” here I mean that, obviously, it’s not like you’ll actually need to prep less. But it will be easier because it will be clearer what you need to prep, in terms of story beats, and encounters that fit those story beats. You can’t avoid having to look up a bunch of stat blocks, but you can make it easier to know what type of encounter your players will find engaging in this phase of the story.
Naturally, the fact that you need buy-in plus effort from your players means that the approach described in this book will not fit all groups.
The influx of good books into my bookcase was quite high during the last quarter of this year, so I’m going to have a hard time picking what to read next. I’m currently making my way through Ashes of the Sun. I’m liking it a lot! It took me a while to get used to everyone being gay. I guess it’s good to look at the world through the eyes of the LGBTQ+ community every now and then.
A month or two ago this was my estimate of what I was reading at the time, and what I might be reading next:
While I correctly predicted that I was going to be reading Ashes of the Sun, the accuracy of the rest of this list is still entirely up for debate. In particular, I should probably make an effort to finish the books that I started but dropped halfway through soon, or kick them off my mental reading list. The list is way too long… Food for thought.
The books that were added to the list during the winter months: What We Can Know and Lessons by Ian McEwan, and Openbaring (Revelation, in the biblical sense) by Jeroen Windmeijer and Tjarko Evenboer. I hope I’m not forgetting any. I’m going in pretty blind with these books; I’m really looking forward to that experience.
I’m also listening to The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington. Took a while to get going, but I’m enjoying it a lot now that I’m about a third into the book. I feel like I’m recognizing a lot of fantasy tropes, yet this particular mix of them makes the story that much more enjoyable.
I’m also about halfway through Wool by Hugh Howey; the way it deviates from the TV series threw me off in a good way. I’ll probably try and finish that after I finish The Shadow of What Was Lost.
If you got this far: I hope you will have an enjoyable the end of the year, and lots of luck and good health to you and your close ones for 2026!
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