How 31 Books Reframed My Understanding of the World in 2025
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| Screenshot grab from Goodreads |
The year 2025 was tumultuous for many reasons, but as always, some things are in our control whereas others are not. I was able to read 31 books in 2025, putting aside all the chaos and unpredictable aspects of my existence and I am happy and content with that.
I read a wide variety of subjects in the nonfiction category, books ranging from science, history, philosophy, sports, biography, psychology, health, etc.
Rather than enumerating those 31 books below, I'm attempting to classify them into several categories and will provide a general overview of the lessons I acquired from each.
One simple theme that comes out from the below books is:
" Power is rarely moral — it is merely justified."
- On Palestine by Noam Chomsky
- Pakistan: A Hard Country By Anatol Lieven
- Permanent Record By Edward Snowden
- Bullshit Jobs: A Theory By David Graeber
- How Democracies Die By Steven Levitsky
- The Palestine Laboratory By Antony Loewenstein
The New Nuclear Age by Ankit Panda, The books On Palestine, The Palestine Laboratory, and Permanent Record talk about how surveillance, occupation, and control are normalised, exported, and defended as necessary. When European settlers come to a foreign land, settle there, and either commit genocide against or expel the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this respect; they are following the same playbook. Snowden taught me that nothing is harder than living with a secret that can't be spoken. Snowden couldn’t hide and digest it for sure and thus became a whistleblower. And ultimately, saying that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. Anatol Lieven's book shows that Pakistan is a 'tinderbox', forever on the brink, in the eye of the storm, or descending into chaos. It is an 'Insh'allah nation' where people passively wait for Allah. "countries own army but in Pakistan army owns a country". And David Graeber's book shows that economies around the world have, increasingly, become vast engines for producing nonsense jobs.
The following books can be shortly summarised by this line:
"Humans Are Fragile, Mortal, and Pretend Otherwise, "
- Being Mortal By Atul Gawande
- Why We Die By Venki Ramakrishnan
- Everything Is Tuberculosis By John Green
The key learning from these books is that modern society is deeply uncomfortable with death, so we medicalise, delay and sometimes elongate the suffering in this process and deny it. The hard truth is "we are all going to die". Atul Gawande's book especially shows that none of us are spared; we are going to be dealing with such decisions sooner or later, and it's strange that we have all been so dense about it. I read this book when my dad was struggling with his life (he is no more) in the ICU. Here is the blog:https://asiforyou.blogspot.com/2025/08/an-ode-to-my-dad.html
The next category can be shortly summarised by this line:
"History Is Not the Past—It Is an Argument"- The Language of History by Audrey Truschke
- The Golden Road By William Dalrymple
- Courting India: By Nandini Das
- The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine By Serhii Plokhy
- Divided by Partition By Mallika Ahluwalia
Vietnam: A War Lost and Won By Nigel Cawthorne
The key learning from the above book is that history is less about facts and more about who gets to narrate them. History cannot be neutral; thus, it can be converted into a weapon, a mirror and sometimes a confession. And often we hear that history repeats, but I guess it rhymes!. Truschke's book dismantles a very simplistic theme about Hindu-Muslim binaries. Dalrymple's book enlightens us that India's ideas spread with its traders along the Golden Road and transformed the world, creating around itself an Indosphere, a cultural zone that spread over political borders. Plokhy's books again dismantle a common theory that Ukraine is NOT a buffer state but a civilisation in itself.
The next category of books are one of my favourite categories and can be easily summaries as:
"Science Is Not Cold — It Is Philosophical"
- Physics and Philosophy By Werner Heisenberg
- The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
- Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nick Lane.
- Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.
Heisenberg's book shows us how observation itself changes reality and how modern physics bears a striking resemblance to the doctrines of Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher. If we replace the word ‘fire’ with ‘energy’, we can almost replicate his statements from our modern perspective. Brian Greene's book, which talks about string theory, demonstrates that sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer. Nick Lane's book continually asks "why" things happen the way they do. How mitochondria holds the key answer to key topics such as ageing, power and death. The more deeply we understand nature, the less arrogant we should be.
The next category of book holds the key answers to our hyperactive virtual world and the real world. Proabably can be summarised as:
"The Mind Is Being Rewired—and We’re Not Ready"
- The Anxious Generation By Jonathan Haidt
- Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting By Lisa Genova
- The Ten Types of Human By Dexter Dias
- The Practice of Not Thinking by Ryūnosuke Koike
The key learning from the above book is that we are cognitively overloaded, emotionally dysregulated, and socially fragmented. Jonathan Haidt's book shows that humans evolved in a world of scarcity, so we are not wired to get this abundance; we are like those cacti in the rainforest, drowned in dopamine. And Lisa Genova's book shows that it's perfectly okay to forget something and why we should not bank too much on our memory; it's manipulative and not so reliable. One of my favourite books of all time is Dexter Dias's book, which shows that empathy is not optional – it's survival. Paying attention is now a moral choice.
The last category of books shows that:
"Meaning Comes From Endurance, Not Comfort"
- North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail By Scott Jurek
- I Too Had a dream by Verghese Kurien
- My Autobiography by Charlie Chaplin
- Source Code: My Beginnings By Bill Gates
The key learning from the above books written by athletes, actors and businessmen was very precise: fulfilment emerges from commitment, not optimisation. Scott Jurek's book shows that we often think we can’t go any farther and feel like we have nothing left to give, yet there is a hidden potential and strength in all of us, begging us to find it. Verghese Kurien's book shows institution-building as moral labour, and “When you stand above the crowd, you must be ready to have stones thrown at you.” Chaplin's autobiography humanises genius, and we all are a sum total of our desire, dreams, uniqueness, aspiration, trauma and happiness. Bill Gates's book shows that legacy is built quietly over a long time, with stubborn integrity.
I have pasted the URL of my Goodreads web link and listed the books that I read in 2025.
https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2025/117699836
1. A (Very) Short History on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters
By Henry Gee
2. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
By Atul Gawande
3. Pakistan: A Hard Country
By Anatol Lieven
4. On Palestine
By Noam Chomsky
5. Source Code: My Beginnings
By Bill Gates
6. Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
By John Green
7. Vietnam: A War Lost and Won
By Nigel Cawthorne
8. The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule
By Audrey Truschke
9. How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter
By Sherwin B. Nuland
10. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
By Serhii Plokhy
11. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
By Werner Heisenberg
12. The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World
By Antony Loewenstein
13. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
By Jonathan Haidt
14. Divided by Partition: United by RESILIENCE: 21 Inspirational Stories from 1947
By Mallika Ahluwalia
15. Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life
By Nick Lane
16. The Ten Types of Human: Who We Are and Who We Can Be
By Dexter Dias
17. Courting India: Seventeenth-Century England, Mughal India, and the Origins of Empire
By Nandini Das
18. North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail
By Scott Jurek
19. How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
By Steven Levitsky
20. Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting
By Lisa Genova
21. The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
By William Dalrymple
22. Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality
By Venki Ramakrishnan
23. Why the Poor Don't Kill Us
By Manu Joseph
24. Permanent Record
By Edward Snowden
25. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
By David Graeber
26. I Too Had a dream by Verghese Kurien
27. The New Nuclear Age by Ankit Panda
28. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
29. My Autobiography by Charlie Chaplin
30. The Practice of Not Thinking by Ryūnosuke Koike
31. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.
