At the end of each year, I list the books that I have read during that year. Earlier years were 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012. Below, you will find the list of books that I’ve read in 2025. Every year, I also include an overview of my other media consumption habits (magazines, RSS feeds, podcasts, etc.). In the last couple of years I’ve added some of the films and other arts and culture I’ve seen during the year.
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This year, I managed to read 64 books totalling 16,641 pages (averaging just over 45 pages a day). This is a lot more than last year and way more than the year before that. One thing that I’ve started doing is to really try and read at least 50 pages every single day. I don’t make that, but it does help me prioritise reading over other things.
I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable listing the presumed gender and ethnicity of the authors, so I will no longer do that. However, I can say that about two-thirds of the books I read were in English and one-third in Dutch (the only two languages which I can read). On average, I appreciate books in the former more than the latter. 20 of the authors were born in the Netherlands, 18 in the United States, 9 in the United Kingdom, 2 in Russia, and the rest were the only authors to come from their birth country for this particular year of my reading (Albania, Algeria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Greece, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Portugal, South Korea, and Ukraine). Looking at this, it is clear which worldview I am wallowing in.
I’ve ordered the list of books into categories that make sense to me (and that are in many ways overlapping and arbitrary). These are the books that I’ve read, and what I thought of some of them:
My yearly reading challenge
2025 was the fourth year of my personal yearly reading challenge. Basically, I’ve tasked myself with reading a bunch of prize-winning books, mostly fiction. I was supposed to read these 21 books and managed to read eleven of them (of which I already read one in 2024). I also managed to read two books of the 2023 challenge. This challenge has given me a lot of reading joy in 2025, with a lot of books that I wouldn’t have read otherwise.
Kingsolver wrote the single book that I enjoyed the most this year. I couldn’t stop reading it. Her retelling of David Copperfield through an orphan in the opioid crisis-infused Appalachian mountains is a masterpiece. Everett also did a fabulous retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with the enslaved James (Jim) as the protagonist. The Weinersmiths managed to write both the most funny and the most informative book of my year. Fransen showed that philosophers can be funny. El Khannoussi’s book is overhyped and was a disappointment.
- Barbara Kingsolver — Demon Copperhead (link)
- Kelly and Zach Weinersmith — A City on Mars (link)
- Han Kang — The Vegetarian (link)
- Jonathan Escoffery — If I Survive You (link)
- Maria Kager — De buitengewoon geslaagde opvoeding van Frida Wolf (link)
- Percival Everett — James (link)
- Samantha Harvey — Orbital (link)
- Tim Fransen — In onze tijd (link)
- Annejan Mieras — Het kleine heelal (link)
- Esther Gerritsen — Gebied 19 (link)
- Maarten ’t Hart — De Vrouw Bestaat Niet (link)
- Martha Claeys — Trots (link)
- Tjibbe Veldkamp — De jongen die van de wereld hield (link)
- Safae el Khannoussi — Oroppa (link)
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The book club was in its twelfth year. Once again, we read seven books, the same as last year. Wang led to the most discussion and is definitely worth a read. Hao wrote the best book of journalism about AI, and I now understand why everybody is always so lyrical about Chiang’s short stories. Mcgee’s book about Apple in China probably taught me the most.
- Dan Wang — Breakneck (link)
- Karen Hao — Empire of AI (link)
- Ted Chiang — Stories of Your Life and Others (link)
- Jathan Sadowski — The Mechanic and the Luddite (link)
- Patrick Mcgee — Apple in China (link)
- Marietje Schaake — The Tech Coup (link)
- Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares — If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why AI Is On Track To Kill Us All, And How To Avert Extinction (link)
Amsterdam (Noord)
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be moving to Amsterdam Noord (to the NDSM, the former shipyard to be precise). To prepare for this, I’ve been reading about what is clearly the most special part of Amsterdam. Van Engelen’s book about the recent history of Amsterdam is a must-read: I now have so much more understanding of the city and how it came to be this way. Donkers and Kok both see Noord as the place they love to hate. Donkers’s book captures the soul of Noord much better than Kok’s, but Kok’s international comparison of cities with rivers running through them (bridge or no bridge?) is not to be missed.
- Marcel van Engelen — De stad (link)
- Jan Donkers — Zo dicht bij Amsterdam (link)
- Bas Kok — Oerknal aan het IJ (link)
- P.N.M. Roemer — Buurten in Noord (link)
Joke van Leeuwen
I had the opportunity to choose a piece of art, and I decided I wanted to get an original drawing by my hero, Joke van Leeuwen. In the end, I chose a drawing from Kukel, this one:
I am still amazed that a drawing from a book that I’ve loved is now hanging in my apartment. I read three very different things by Van Leeuwen and enjoyed Leestekenen the most.
- Joke van Leeuwen — Leestekenen (link)
- Joke van Leeuwen — Levenslust (link)
- Joke van Leeuwen — De weg naar morgenochtend (link)
Reading for my PhD
I am now in my second year of doing a PhD on neorepublicanism and automated decision-making. Most of my related reading is scientific papers, but I’ve also read a few books on related topics. Lovett and Viroli both wrote excellent books on ‘republicanism’ as a political philosophy (Skinner’s was useful, but way less accessible). Lam’s book on the need for discretion is an easy read, and Robinson convincingly showed how it is possible to design an algorithm that divides scarce resources (donor kidneys in this case) in an equitable manner (through the real involvement of all stakeholders).
- Frank Lovett — The Well-Ordered Republic (link)
- Barry Lam — Fewer Rules, Better People (link)
- David G. Robinson — Voices in the Code (link)
- Maurizio Viroli — Republicanism (link)
- Quentin Skinner — Liberty as Independence (link)
Travel-related reading
When I travel somewhere, I enjoy reading about it. Macfarlane’s book about Japan was great (the one by Davies and Ikeno can be skipped). The guide to New York City was amazing, I want somebody to make a similar one about Amsterdam, highlighting all the historical places of solidarity.
- Alan Macfarlane — Japan Through The Looking Glass (link)
- Carolina Bank Munoz and Penny Lewis, Emily Tumpson Molina — A People’s Guide to New York City (link)
- James Heneage — The Shortest History of Greece (link)
- Roger Davies and Osamu Ikeno — The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture (link)
Peace
The current war enthusiasm dismays me to no end. I am working on starting a course at my university about peace. These two books got me going. Sasse provides a good framework for building a course, whereas De Haan’s principled stance is inspiring. Expect this category to grow next year.
Other fiction
The three books that stand out in this list are the books by Matar, Nabokov, and Grossman. I read the latter as an introduction to reading Life and Fate and thought it was great. Powers’s book was all up my alley too: AI, Chess and Go, octopuses, and diving. I did enjoy One Piece very much, but decided against investing my time in reading the rest of the endless volumes that are available. It doesn’t happen often that a book gets me actively angry, but Yanagihara managed to do it. What an immoral scam of a book.
- Benjamín Labatut — The MANIAC (link)
- Eiichiro Oda — One Piece, Vol. 1 (link)
- Hisham Matar — My Friends (link)
- Richard Powers — Playground (link)
- Vasily Grossman — Stalingrad (link)
- Vladimir Nabokov — Lolita (link)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald — The Great Gatsby (link)
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky — White Nights (link)
- Jose Saramago — Het verzuim van de dood (link)
- Zadie Smith — The Fraud (link)
- Barbara Gayle Austin — What You Made Me Do (link)
- Hanya Yanagihara — A Little Life (link)
Other non-fiction
Everybody should read Bouteldja. Nobody should read Bender & Hanna or Çankaya. My friend Ot wrote an insightful book about being prepared for disasters, and I very much enjoyed Otterspeer’s biography of Michaël Zeeman.
- Houria Bouteldja — Whites, Jews, and Us – Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love (link)
- Ian Rowland — The Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading (link)
- Ot van Daalen — Voorbereid (link)
- Antony Penrose — The Lives of Lee Miller (link)
- Emily Nagoski — Come As You Are: Revised and Updated (link)
- Lea Ypi — Free (link)
- Nigel Poulton — Docker Deep Dive (link)
- Pascal Wiggers — Prachtige onbetrouwbare technologie: Verantwoord ontwikkelen en gebruiken van AI (link)
- Richard Dawkins — The Genetic Book of the Dead (link)
- Willem Otterspeer — In alles ben ik groot (link)
- Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna — The AI Con (link)
- Plato — The Apology of Socrates (link)
- Sinan Çankaya — Galmende geschiedenissen (link)
My consumption of other media
I track the articles I’ve read and want to keep for use in the future via insights.hansdezwart.nl (which I programmed myself). It allows me a structured (and searchable!) view of the sources, topics and authors I read. It also powers my newsletter and fills up the Racism and Technology Center website.
My top 25 sources (in this order) for 2025 were (in brackets the number of articles that I saved from the source in the year): Het Parool (182), The Economist (144), De Correspondent (126), De Groene Amsterdammer (125), The Guardian (103), Volkskrant (63), The New York Times (54), The New York Review of Books (53), NRC (40), Bert Hubert (40), Follow the Money (40), Vrij Nederland (38), Trouw (31), HvanA (27), Current Affairs (25), MIT Technology Review (24), Marginal Revolution (23), Jacobin (19), WIRED (18), Bits of Freedom (16), OneWorld (13), Pluralistic (13), Tweakers (12), VOORBEREID (12), and xkcd (11). The Markup and The Atlantic dropped from this list, and Current Affairs is a new source that provides me with a lot of interesting reading.
The top 50 tags that I used in 2025 were: artificial-intelligence (424), netherlands (329), united-states (219), generative-ai (135), black-struggle (118), education (108), china (104), amsterdam (86), eu (78), politics (78), racist-technology (74), large-language-models (74), war (67), digital-sovereignty (66), privacy (65), openai (64), israel (62), feminism (60), inequality (58), facebook (55), google (53), palestine (51), microsoft (50), social-media (50), surveillance (46), housing (46), russia (46), chatgpt (46), copyright (43), labour (41), art (39), democracy (37), regulation (37), rule-of-law (37), artificial-general-intelligence (36), capitalism (35), journalism (35), united-kingdom (35), activism (35), police (34), ukraine (34), music (34), defense (34), amsterdam-noord (34), colonialism (33), literature (33), open-source (32), funny (30), nato (30), and geopolitics (29)
These tags give a good overview of my current interests. New in the top 50 this year were: digital-sovereignty, artificial-general-intelligence, united-kingdom, activism, ukraine, music, defense, amsterdam-noord, literature, funny, nato, and geopolitics.
Finally, these are the people that I’ve read the most pieces from: Bert Hubert (40), Maurits Martijn (24), Ot van Daalen (24), Michiel de Hoog (19), Cory Doctorow (17), Nadia Ezzeroili (17), Tyler Cowen (16), Mirjam de Rijk (16), Bruce Schneier (14), Maxim Februari (12), Randall Munroe (11), Nathan J. Robinson (11), Kate Mothes (10), Benne van de Woestijne (10), Alex Tabarrok (10), Stephen Downes (9), Peter Olsthoorn (8), Rejo Zenger (8), Yasmin Nair (8), Matt Burgess (8), Zeynep Tufekci (8), Kashmir Hill (8), Marc Kruyswijk (8), Dan Milmo (8), and Arvind Narayanan (7). I am proud to call some of these smart people my friends. If I had to pick one favourite, then I would choose Mirjam de Rijk, whose economic analysis is continuously nailing it.
The number of articles by one author does not necessarily reflect how much impact they’ve had on me. The top three people shaping (in the sense of innovating) my thinking the most were likely to be Bert Hubert, Tyler Cowen, and Nathan J. Robinson this year. I should, once again, give a special mention to Stephen Downes, whose summaries of all the pieces he curates for me (and for the rest of the world) often are gems of insight.
How I read and follow the news
I refuse to read (or listen to, or watch) any medium that personalises its content for me specifically. This means I avoid recommender systems and don’t go through the ‘most read’ or ‘most shared’ lists. And I’ve completely quit following or regularly looking at any social media. I consider this to be an inoculation against disinformation and manipulation, as well as the filter bubble (if it does finally turn out to be for real).
I stay up to date by following specific sources, either in their magazine form or via RSS. I go through the whole source and then pick what I want to read. I strongly prefer to keep updated through RSS instead of email newsletters (read Doctorow on why you should be using an RSS reader too). Substack newsletters can be read via RSS, but there are still a few sources that I am forced to read via email (and I actively resent those).
When I noticed that I was spending too much time refreshing my RSS client to see if there was something new, I created a new methodology for looking at my feeds. I put my feeds in three categories: morning, daily, and weekly. I check out the ‘morning’ feeds once a day when I wake up (it has the stuff you might want to talk about at the proverbial water cooler), and combine this with reading the Economist’s Espresso app, ANP press service newsletter, and a browse through Het Parool, marking the things I will likely read during the rest of the day. I then allow myself to go through the ‘daily’ feeds only once a day (and in one go) and look at the ‘weekly’ feeds only once a week, on Fridays.
I’ve now a year of using my opinionated read-later app, and it really works for me. It helps me to read the longer and more important pieces.
The podcasts I listened to
Using AntennaPod (my much-loved replacement of the rapidly commercialising Pocket Cast), I listen to all new episodes of Napleiten and its sister show Pro Forma, De Jesse Frederik Show (as long as it isn’t about the elections), the Bits of Freedom Podcast, De Stad (a ‘micropodcast’ by my friend Inge Wannet), Search Engine, and (forever) This American Life. I wish Sef and Willem Schinkel would make new episodes for Een Goed Systeem.
I’ll listen to most episodes of Conversations with Tyler, Against the Rules, Serial, and What Now (with Trevor Noah). When the topic fancies me, I’ll listen to the Ezra Klein Show (which is becoming more and more boring), 99% Invisible, Cautionary Tales, Podcast over Media (POM), Babbage (science from The Economist, with my early podcast crush, Alok Jha), Question Everything, Freakonomics Radio, Philosophy Bites and Philosophy Books, Filosofie in Actie, Docs, Planet Money, Radiolab, Talk Easy, and Van Alles de Waarde. I look forward to listening to more of Heavyweight, which I’ve just discovered.
There were a few one-off podcasting series that I listened to this year and enjoyed: Zwart Gat, Jacob: dood in Qatar, Onaantastbaar, and Het Verhaal van de Schaal. I am also loving the second of Shell Game. Every day, I listen to the Life and Fate – Chapter A Day Read Along by the Slavic Literature Pod. They accompany me with Grossman’s Life and Fate, of which I read one chapter a day.
Three series have earned a special mention. I very much enjoyed THC Artikel 140: De Rest Is Geschiedenis, a genealogy of the making of a classic rap album (required listening for anybody living in Amsterdam Noord). I am still knee-deep into Fela Kuti — Fear No Man, which is a rich history of the legendary Nigerian musician and Afrobeat, going deep into the context. The Economist’s Scam Inc. is an incredible piece of investigative journalism, going deep into the Myanmar-based Chinese criminal enterprises that are responsible for ‘pig-butchering’ scams worldwide.
The films that I saw
Films are probably my favourite art form. You are transported to a different world in two hours, completely immersed and without distractions. I saw 80 films in the cinema in 2025 and 9 on a screen at home. I won’t list them all here, but I have tried to make a list of the best old films I saw, the best documentaries, and the best new films.
This was another year where the Lindy Effect proved to be true. I had the opportunity to watch many older films, and usually, there is a reason we are still watching them many years later. Here are my highlights:
- Eye did a retrospective of Akira Kurosawa, and I saw seven of his amazing films on the big screen. High and Low was my clear favourite, but I also enjoyed Seven Samurai (epic!), Yojimbo (and even the ridiculous Last Man Standing, which it inspired), and the beautiful Ran. I am not sure why people are always gushing about Rashomon. I thought it was pretty boring.
- Once again, there was Studio Ghibli pleasure this year. I saw and enjoyed Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, and Grave of the Fireflies.
- Tampopo was a highlight for me last year, so when I had the chance to go again, I did.
- When I saw that a Jodorowski film (about the circus!) was playing, I didn’t hesitate to go and see it. Santa Sangre was delightfully absurd and a visual joy.
- I was completely captivated by the nearly three hours of the Taiwanese Yi Yi.
- Camp de Thiaroye was a forbidden film in France for many years. I can see why, as it taught me about a shameful part of French history in Senegal.
- The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie and Network are two films that both take the mickey. The former is about the bourgeoisie (it is in the title) and the latter is about American network television.
I love documentaries, and I saw plenty, some older and some newly released. My highlights were these:
- Tardes de soledad was nearly impossible to watch. After Pacifiction, this was another Albert Serra film where many people left the cinema before the end of the film. I don’t think there has been another film that was such a full-body experience as this one about a testosterone-infused bull fighter and his lackeys.
- Monikondee desperately made me want to spend time on the river in Surinam.
- After 20 years of nagging, Laura Poitras finally managed to convince Seymour Hersh to participate in Cover-Up, a portrait about him and his groundbreaking investigative journalism.
- I didn’t see coming how much I would enjoy Hollands Licht, a film about the elusive ‘Dutch light’ which allegedly no longer exists since we turned the Zuiderzee into a polder. Vincent Icke’s totally deadpan demonstration of why this is actually more true than you might think shouldn’t be missed.
- Even though a lot of the documentary was too engineered for my taste (how many people can just “happen to come by”), I was still completely smitten with the humanity of Swampp Dogg and his legendary sidekicks, Guitar Shorty and Moogstar, in Swampp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted.
- If you want to understand the connection between fascism and sports, then you should watch Riefenstahl. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more fascist images than the shots of divers during the nazi Olympics.
These are the new films that were my favourites:
- Three of my favourite films this year felt incredibly real and raw, and gave me access to alien worlds. L’histoire de Souleymane is a heartbraking film about a food delivery rider in Paris, Black Dog is about man and a dog in a very remote village on the edge of the Gobi desert in China, and Mike Leigh shows the anger of a Black working class woman in Hard Truths (its release allowed me to rewatch the much older Secrets & Lies which was fabulous too).
- Iranian filmmakers delivered as usual, always with films that are veiled criticisms of the regime. The Seed of the Sacred Fig and Holy Spider are nail-biting thrillers, and It Was Just an Accident is just mostly funny in its total messiness (although it, too, is about a painful topic).
- I think it was a pretty good year for Dutch cinema, with at least four quintessentially Dutch films that I would recommend without hesitation: Voor de meisjes, Rietland, Drie dagen vis, and Nesjomme (which was so good in its use of archival materials, I saw it twice).
- Three films gave me a delicious film experience. One Battle After Another and The Brutalist were both big screen films (thank god for Eye 1, in which I saw both, the latter on analogue film), and The Last Viking was just very funny.
Other beautiful or interesting things I saw
I saw 15 exhibits and went to 54 programmes (think things like dance, theatre, debate). Here are some highlights that I don’t want to forget:
- After many years, I saw the musical Hamilton again (twice, in London), and I still can’t believe how good it is. I don’t think I ever need to see another musical. Why go see anything else, if I can go and see this again?
- It was another great year for seeing circus. The best ever festival, Circusbende, had two long weekends of killing it in Amsterdam. My favourite performances were the death-defying clowns of Los Galindos, the unbelievably beautiful performance, Obaké, by Maison Courbe (my mind was blown), Sono Io by Circus Ronaldo, and the anarchist clowns of Intrepidus performing Stek. Circus Zanzara was a joyful and creative family affair, and the Wereldkerstcircus in Carré had some incredible and gut-wrenching acts (but should finally drop the horses from the programme).
- The three exhibits I enjoyed the most were Lee Miller at the Tate Britain (go and see her sitting in Hitler’s bathtub till February 15th), Design and Disability at the V&A in London (also there till February 15th), and Joke van Leeuwen at WG Kunst (no longer there).
- I did a tour through Dudok’s city hall in Hilversum and was shocked by its beauty and entertained by the stories about Dudok’s persistence and particular style of hustling.
- I laughed the hardest seeing Modi performing his standup in Antwerp and David Linszen doing his utterly weird and transgressive act in Utrecht.
- Seeing Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78 made me realise once more how perfect I find Pina Bausch’s pieces. I should really try and go to Wuppertal again.
What do I look forward to in 2026?
I will try (and fail) to complete my personal reading challenge for 2025; there is a lot to look forward to in these 21 books, particularly A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East, Flesh, and The Story of a Heart. I will also continue to read one chapter a day of Life and Fate (which should finish somewhere mid-June).
I intend to read a lot more about war (in order to help us get to peace). Lying on my desk are Very Short Introductions- Peace, Why Civil Resistance Works, Revolutionary Nonviolence, On Violence, Testament Of Youth, and Why War? I hope to get to at least some of them.
My dear friend Massih Hutak will publish his debut novel in the Coming year, Voor Issa. I very much look forward to reading it.
In order to renew my educational practice in times of AI, I’ve decided to make this the year I will finally read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (on my wishlist for more than 15 years now). And I want to brush up my Socratic conversation skills, so I will read Open Socrates and Socratic Design. I am open to suggestions for more books on the topic.
Finally, I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to seeing Louis C.K. perform in Belfast in February.