8 favorite books of 2025

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - trilogy of five parts

2. The Art of Spending Money

3. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

4. Nenu mee brahmanandam

5. The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did

6. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

7. Catch-22

8. Death Note

Now to the coffee version:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Here are my immediate thoughts after finishing the first three parts of this 5 part-trilogy:

1. It took 11 years for me to come back and finish this! And I loved it even more. It's the best blend of downright silliness, real existential crisis, kidney-tickling wit and ideas that transport you across galaxies. Anything less than 42 stars out of 5 is, as Marvin would say, depressing.

2. Let's be honest. This one is 4 stars (out of 5) only because of the 'sense of proportion'. But I am going with 5 this time. Why? because the number of times it invoked laugh and genuine awe out of me, would put a sitcom and Hawking to shame. Also, to the 'me' that read this book a decade back and gave it 4 stars: you had great hopes kid. I am proud. Perhaps, I will come back and change this to 4 stars in a re-read after another decade.

3. There are three gags that were hilarious- doors that are way too happy to open for you, flying by missing, fly that “coincidentally” always gets killed by Arthur in all its reincarnations, and the alien with the clipboard. The story in itself is meh. But why 4/5? At this point, I have to accept that I am biased.

The last 2 parts invoke a mixed reaction but I am happy that I read them and if you do end up reading the first 3, we both know you are going to read the other two.

The Art of Spending Money

It's a disservice to include 'money' in the title of this book. The book is actually about how to live life.
It just happens to have money as a guiding meter.
5/5 and thanks to Morgan Housel for having such a warm and forgiving conversation. I look forward to reading this and repeating this conversation multiple times.

Without a doubt this is his best work.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

This book is not going to list 10 tips to become productive. What it does, instead, is to offer a difference lens to see the concept of time:

1. What if we accept defeat? Defeat that we can never have control of the timetable. Defeat that we can’t have possibly have all the things that are on our bucket lists.

2. Second, it asks us to confront the reality we avoid - that our time is limited. And in doing so liberates us from being certain about future.

3. Lastly, now that we are not worried about future, it offers a way to be truly present.

A 5/5 on developing healthy relationship with time. A challenge most of humanity didn’t experience a century back.

Nenu mee brahmanandam

This one is a hyper-local recommendation. So if you are not a Telugu person, you can skip this.

Brahmanandam is a great comedian in Telugu movies. He has been making me laugh with his screen presence since my childhood.

But more than the comedy, his words and presence has a calmness. His antics come from a sincerity and security that I found rare. And my admiration only compounded every time I heard him speak.

He wrote this autobiography and it was humbling to hear a man of his stature speak about his life, struggles and how he surrenders his life’s mission and goals as a gift of god.

The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did

This book made me squirm. At times, it wasn’t easy to accept what it was asking me to confront. But, when I did, I found it freeing.

Lot of wisdom in this one about your relationship with your parents. And how that can guide your journey to developing a healthy relationship with your children. Strongly recommend this one to new parents.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

For an e-book of 57 pages, it knew exactly what it was supposed to convey. It did that and a bit more. The idea of heat as a driver for time was new to me. The philosophical musing in the last chapter was 5/5. Carlo Rovelli makes you feel like you became smarter (without actually making you smarter?).

But, it makes you wonder at the breathtaking beauty of the cosmos and the reality we live in. And how many books can achieve that?

Catch-22

I picked up this book the first time 13 years ago. My English language ability just improved from being abysmal to D-. 200 pages in, I am laughing like a maniac. But I also realized I am not understanding every part of the sentence structure that's making me laugh.

So, I parked it then and picked it up 13 years later. First things first,

The SHEER AUDACITY for a human brain to write 400+ pages of Catch-22 and to release it, assuming people will read it and like it. Damn, I want to be that audacious in life.

Second things second, for another human brain to like Catch-22, it needs to miss 2 screws.
1. No one knows what this first screw is supposed to do in a brain.
2. A second screw that tells the brain that the first screw and the second screw itself are missing.
Somehow I have all my screws and I still loved it.

Lastly, the last 100 pages were so hard to read. Seeing the characters you laughed along with, fly those effing planes and die was hard to swallow. But, one thing I am glad though is that... Yossarian (the lead character) lives!

Death Note

I don’t think you are supposed to excel in creating something so good that any other book in that art form looks weak in comparison. Death Note does this without mercy. Need I say more?

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That’s my 2025! All in all a lovely reading year.