Books I read in 2025 (Ongoing)

What an powerful, punchy, but ultimately incredibly depressing read. You'll read stories of people who are stuck in a cycle of poverty, addiction and crime. Specifically, how they think, and how they justify their actions. Most importantly though, Dalrymple goes over the policies that not only enable this behaviour, but make it worse for them, from the welfare state to the criminal justice system. Don't let the weird "underclass" title tag fool you. Give it a read.

One of the canonical stoic texts. Some of it's hard to digest, but it's an excellent read. I picked it up in Ancient Greek, with a modern Greek translation that stays true to the original. I say this because every English translation I've seen takes a few liberties with the original and reads much more modern and "quotable".

If you're new to stoicism, I would also recommend A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine, for a gentler introduction.

A frustrating read. It does have some insights though if you're curious about the music industry. Other than that, expect a lot of rambling about how socialism is amazing, why we need Universal Basic Income and how globalism is the solution to humanity's problems. There are some other stuff that irked me, like stating that a genre is a community. Here's an example. A moderator of a minecraft server called "Dream SNP", made some music. So naturally, he argues that the since his music was mostly consumed by the server's community, it's a new genre, and it's name is Dream SNP. Don't waste your time.

I picked this up because I couldn't find "There's No Antimemetics Division" anywhere in print . It's a collection of short stories, and some of them are pretty good. I can't say I cared for a specific one, like I do with Ted Chiang's stories, but they were all interesting. It's a fun read if you like science fiction.