Images taken from unsplash.com.

Introduction

Fortunately as we come ot the end of this year, I’m in much better health than in 2024, avoiding whatever superflus that have been circulating around the UK and the US, but I thought, similar to last year I’d do a little bit of reflecting on the books I’d read this year - what hit the mark, what didn’t, and what I want to more and less of in 2026.

Similar to last year, I’ve read a bit across fiction, non-fiction, with most of the books this year being winners. Interestingly, I’ve managed to end up not reading any horror books this year - something to improve on in 2026! According to my story graph account, I’ve managed to hit my goal of 15 books this year, which excludes some of the technical and career-focussed books I read; I’ve decided to keep the books on story graph those I read “for pleasure”, rather than for work, although I’m lucky enough that those two often overlap.

Fantasy and sci-fi

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine
A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine
The Rose Field (Book of Dust #3), Philip Pullman

One of the first books I read this year was A Memory Called Empire. I picked this up solely based on a recommendation note at the wonderful Golden Hare bookshop in Edinburgh and it proved to be a great be a great bit of sci-fi; like the best sci-fis it uses the world and technology to explore questions on identity, nationality, diplomacy in a plot of political intrigue. Some aspects might be a little bit too ‘young adult’ for some, but this book is a great read and a bit more accessible in terms of time commitment than some other hard scifi books. I was very happy to be gifted the sequel later on in the year, which was a great follow up. I think a new direction would be needed for a third book in the series (although there doesn’t seem to be any explicit plans from the author for this), but the world created is ample ground for spin-offs and short stories.

One of the final books I finished this year was The Rose Field by Philip Pullman, the conclusion of the Book of Dust trilogy. While I understand why the community didn’t like a lot of the aspects of the previous book, The Secret Commonwealth, I appreciated the chance to spend more time with Lyra and Pan and the direction the book took, saying that even though Lyra and friends had saved the world, dealing with the aftermath and finding herself was still a struggle. Basically, anything that came out of this book was going to be a bonus for me, so I can’t really get it an objective rating, but going with the characters on another adventure was great again. My major problem with the book was that, despite its length, there actually wasn’t enough exploration of the philosophy the book presented on imagination, free will, and escaping your past. It also felt like there were several characters who didn’t get full conclusions to their arcs, or part of their arcs were missing; I can hope that Pullman might have it in him to expand on some of these characters and parts of the stories in short stories, like he did with Lyra’s Oxford and Once Upon a Time in the North.

Crime and espionage

The Seventh Floor, David McCloskey
All the Sinners Bleed, S.A. Cosby

I really wanted to love David McCloskey’s latest book; my wife and I went to see him at his book signing on Edinburgh and he seemed like a really genuine, knowledgeable, and passionate guy. Unfortunately, The Seventh Floor just didn’t hit the mark for me. I hadn’t read the previous books in the series so maybe had’t got as attached to the characters as required, but for me, this book’s problem is trying to be a CIA version of Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy. I can’t elaborate too much without spoiling the whole thing, but my recommendations are for espionage novel fans that have read the John le Carré classic, give this a miss, but for anyone else who likes espionage novels, this is worth picking up for some good fun.

All the Sinners Bleed was a Christmas present from my wonderful wife and a brilliant thriller. Based in the Southern US, this is a gritty and fast-paced book with a strong main character and a disturbing antagonist. I’d fully recommend this for anyone looking for a good thriller and will definitely be aiming to pick up more of Cosby’s work in 2026.

Other fiction

Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan
The Atomic City Girls, Janet Beard
James, Percival Everett
Rabbits, Hugo Rifkind
When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamin Labatut

The themes and settings of what I’ve thrown together as historical fiction seem fairly varied! I finally got round to reading Small Things Like These after really enjoying Foster from Claire Keegan last year. This is a perfect little book and everyone should pick it up at some point, even better if it’s during the winter. The Atomic City Girls was a nice bit of light historical fiction, set in the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility during the Manhattan project. Despite not being groundbreaking in many ways, some of the characters are interesting, so I’d recommend anyone looking for some light historical fiction to have a read through this.

James is a re-imaging of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the slave Jim. This was a really good read, with a surprising amount of humour, but almost feels slightly held back by needing to be based on another book happening in parallel. Rabbits was one of my favourite pieces of fiction this year, really diving in to the indulgences and debauchery of the Edinburgh and wider SScotland upper class, and the exclusivity they present to the outsider main character.

Labatut’s novel was a great read, lent from my good friend Dr. Chris Dillon. I’ve always been fascinated by how the groups of physicists that led the quantum revolution of the early 20th century were pretty out there and quite often would definitely not meet the moral standards of the 21st century. This work of only partial fiction is great for anyone interested in the personalities of famous mathematicians and physicists.

Non-fiction

The Bridge Between Worlds, Gavin Francis
A Wing and a Prayer, Harry H. Crosby
The Siege, Ben Macintyre
Source Code: My Beginnings, Bill Gates
Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams

The Bridge Between Worlds was the first book I read this year - a nice travelogue across the years of Francis’ life and the many bridges he had seen and crossed through them. This book admires the engineering required to create these bridges and also the reasons these are built, including for trade, war, or transport. This book was a nice read about the constructions across the world and I enjoyed the personal connection I felt; two of the bridges mentioned were the Peace Bridge across the River Foyle in Derry/Londonderry I walked across earlier this year on the way to Dr. Dillon’s wedding and the Queensferry Crossing, which opened in September 2017 when I first moved to Edinburgh.

Having loved watching Masters of the Air earlier in the year, A Wing and a Prayer by one of the key members of the Bloody 100th, was a great read. Chronically Harry Crosby’s time during the war, we see the life of this humble and inspirational individual. Definitely one for anyone interested in WW2 or aircraft warfare. Continuing the military history theme, The Siege documented the hostage crisis at the Iranian Embassy in London. Macintyre has been my favourite historical non-fiction author for a while as his ability to blend the technical details of events, bring the individuals in those events to life, and make every chapter a riveting read is brilliant. Another great book from Macintyre.

The final two books can be thematically grouped into the good and bad of technology. Bill Gates’ Source Code is the first of several books that will comprise the autobiography of his life. This first one covers his early years, up to the founding of Microsoft. Gates is honest about the privileges and opportunities he had growing up and reading how he describes his passion about computers and solving problems was really good. Reading about how much support and freedom his high school give him and his friends to explore the early versions of computers was really enlightening; it seems difficult to imagine a school nowadays would allow students to leave the path of the curriculum so explicitly. Sarah Wynn-Williams was the director of global public policy at Meta (Facebook at the time) and this book covers her time there, including close insights into how Facebook operated and the decisions of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. People have criticised Wynn-William’s lack of action on some parts of the decisions that Facebook made, but this book gives a great insight into the apathy and rule-bending the big tech company has undertaken and feels extremely relevant in a time when the power of big tech continues to grow and the development and usage of tools like AI has been under increasing ethical scrutiny. This one is worth reading for the sole fact Meta’s lawyers tried to stop getting it published.

Data Science and AI

Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch), Sebastian Raschka
Build a Reasoning Model (From Scratch) – In Progress, Sebastian Raschka
Governing the Machine, Ray Eitel-Porter, Paul Dongha, Miriam Vogel

While books on machine learning aren’t what I want to focus on here, I thought I’d call out a few of the things here. As a few people know, Sebastian Raschka is one of my favourite AI educators with a great ability to make things clear and parse the hype-filled and academic language of AI development into straightforward descriptions. I would recommend Build a Large Language Model from Scratch to anyone who wants to understand the working of LLMs more deeply, as this book shows, with theory and code that the reader can implement themselves, the end-to-end construction, training, and evaluation of the models. Raschka has built on this book through his new book Build a Reasoning Model (From Scratch). Currently 4 of 7 chapters are available through his publisher Manning’s early access programme, which is a very pertinent feature given how quickly AI development can move between the time it takes the first and final chapters of a book to be written. This one is great as well and brings together theory, complete code, and practical guidance that make Raschka’s work some of my favourite AI and data science resources.

Released earlier in 2025 was Governing the Machine, which I was fortunate enough to get a signed copy of. Paul Dongha is the head of Responsible AI and AI Strategy within NatWest Group. This book covers in a practical way how robust and effective AI governance can be built in and has been getting rave reviews on Amazon. I’m only about halfway through this book, but I think the same things. I think this is a great book for any business leaders who want to understand how AI can be developed in an organisation in an ethical and complaint manner. Upon reflection, I think a lot of the things that make Raschka’s work really good to me apply to this book; it gives and end-to-end description of how a governance programme can be developed (with no additional reading mandated) and brings together theory and practical implementation to form a vital resource.

Substacks/blogs

Similar to 2024, I spent a good amount of this year reading Substacks. This has solidified itself over other websites like Medium for me as a place to read other’s writing (aside from a certain AI & Engineering blog). In fact, I’ve actually reduced the number of Substacks I read as I become more selective with the reading. I would definitely give a shoutout to the NatWest Group AI & Engineering blog which myself and my colleagues have contributed to, including Cristovao Iglesias’ new blog on NatWest Group at NeurIPS 2025, which includes a great selection of papers from the conference.

My 2025 in reading