Every January, I give myself a target to read a certain number of books during that year. For the first time this year, I read some fantasy fiction that I never would’ve if it hadn’t been for my best friend who loves steampunk, urban fantasy, and exploding worlds in the sky. She chose books we’d read together, so I ended up peering into stories about astronaut schools and moon-hopping rebel cadets; about bone witches discovering their witchiness and bitchiness at the same time; about vampire knitting clubs; and all such woo woo-ness.
Although I enjoyed these strange stories at the time, many of them didn’t challenge me too much. That sounds pretentious, I realise, but they were largely short-lived fun. Not unlike the feeling you get after watching a salacious TV series about steamy affairs and greedy cocaine snorting gangs. You know it’s wrong, and you feel bad that you enjoyed the experience of being embedded in that world, even if just for a few hours.
Surely my year in books wasn’t all that bad?
It wasn’t. I was just blowing things out of proportion. Because when I scrolled through my Goodreads account, I realised I’d also read some fantastic books that kept me obsessed, curious, questioning, and challenging my own assumptions and long-held beliefs.
Like This I Would Kill For by Anne Buist, a book that goes into the mind of a psychiatrist who has bipolar disorder. It was the first time in my life that I’d considered that a mental health physician could live with a complex mental health condition themselves, and that that doesn’t mean they can’t function or do their job admirably.
Or Theory & Practice by Michelle de Krester, a book that challenged my notions of what a story is and how narrative fiction should look and read.
Or The Lasting Harm by Lucia Osborne-Crowley that chronicles a day-by-day account of the now-renown trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, and goes into harrowing details of Epstein’s empire of abuse. This book kept me up at night.
As did the controversial Ayn Rand’s popular Atlas Shrugged that made me think about the parallels between our modern AI-driven world of business and creativity, and the world that John Galt tried to destabilise. I wrote about it, too.
That book nicely sandwiched Cal Newport’s thoughts on the nature of workplace communication in A World Without Email, where he explores how much we’ve let email run our lives even when we’re supposedly switched off, and Johann Hari’s rather disturbing, illuminating, and complementary observations in Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.
It was with that solid backdrop that I went into the next great read of the year: The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer, a beautiful and honest exploration of why we sometimes struggle to like our international colleagues, and how our traditions and cultures influence the way we think, work, and approach life and play. This stuff should be essential reading in colleges and universities. This is what young people should know as they step into the real world of The Workforce.
Then there was Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankar Chandran. It had been on my list for a few years and is the kind of book that immediately reveals its nature in the title, and stays true to every unspoken promise it made in said title. Having read Song of the Sun God by the same author earlier in the year, and as someone born and raised in Sri Lanka during the civil war, I knew what I was getting into with Chai Time and felt connected to these books in a way that I hadn’t connected with a person this year.
Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It by Kashmir Hill pulled me sharply back to modern day reality, making me pick up my jaw from the ground several times over the course of fabulous narrative prose. The author tells a story I wish weren’t true—the tale of dangerously powerful people like Hoan Ton-That (an Aussie computer engineer) Richard Schwartz (former Rudy Giuliani advisor), and Peter Thiel, and the unregulated facial recognition technology they championed, offered, and sold to businesses, private investors, and law enforcement agencies. A technology so questionable that even Google and Facebook considered it too immoral to release.
One of my favourite pieces of screenwriting comes from BBC’s Sherlock: “Don’t make people into heroes, John. Heroes don’t exist, and if they did, I wouldn’t be one of them.” Once again this year, I was reminded of how true those words are when I settled into finally reading Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies and War Crimes by Chris Masters. The author, a journalist, explores how Australia fell in love with Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG, the most decorated soldier of the Australian army, who after leaving the force, became the epitome of success and gallantry, and the general manager of Seven Media in Brisbane. Masters goes on to explain the biggest defamation trial in modern Australia, one that shed light into the horrific war crimes, bullying, executions, blooding, and abuse that Ben Roberts-Smith (or BRS for ease) was responsible for. I was living in Australia when the war crimes allegations against BRS came to light and the defamation trial was being heard. So I knew what I was getting into with this book but that didn’t make it any easier to digest. Heroes really don’t exist.
It wasn’t all dismay and despair, though. This year’s reading list also included some gloriously heartwarming stories of love, life, and choices that make your heart sing…
Like Two Steps Onward by Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist, a sequel to the story of two people who first met on the Camino de Santiago (Two Steps Forward), and find that circumstances bring them together again to walk the Chemin d’Assise.
Like Northbound: Four Seasons of Solitude on Te Araroa by Naomi Arnold. This woman, who’d been watching the Te Araroa and dreaming of walking it for 20 years finally did it when she was 41. Te Araroa is a 3000 kilometre through hike that goes through the entire length of New Zealand. Most people take 3-5 months to walk the trail, during the spring-summer walking season. But the author, an adult with life and responsibilities and an active job, did it in 10 months. I love this book because the author talks about how we can become obsessed with the idea of perfection (of walking every damn inch of the trail), and how that sometimes leads to missed opportunities and more pain than pleasure.
Like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, a great story about soulmates who aren’t lovers. This is such a deep exploration of love and relationships, how personal insecurities get in the way of happiness and honesty, and all the reasons we hold people close in our lives. All the feels.
Richard Flanagan is one of my favourite Australian writers. His love for Tasmania, nature, people, history, and country shine through in his personal examination of morality and storytelling. Question 7 is one of those books that doesn’t seem all that coherent on a surface level but illustrates how seemingly random events lead to the here and now. Reading Flanagan is like stepping into a dream where you confront reality in poetic form.
I can’t speak of poetry and dreams without paying homage to Dirrayawadha by Anita Heiss. The author of Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (glorious read, btw), Heiss has a way with words and stories that made me fall in love with Australia’s aboriginal heritage like nothing else did. She sets humble fiction within the harsh history of Australia; her simple prose slices through any illusions that modern/migrant Australia might still have about the role of invasion in the destruction of aboriginal culture and lifestyle; and she shows that love stories and happily ever afters are so much more nuanced than “boy meets girl.”
So there you have it—the end of another year of reading, thinking, learning about life, work, and the purpose of everything. It’s been a great year of pushing boundaries, sitting in discomfort, keeping an open mind (as much as possible), and reading more of writing that brings me joy.
What are your favourite reads from this year, and what’re you looking forward to reading in the next?
My bookshelf from 2025 – full list of books I enjoyed this year.
The Chaos Within 