The choice isn’t between books and screens. The choice is between intentional design and profitable chaos. Between habitats that cultivate human potential and platforms that extract human attention.
Some neat CSS from Tess that’s a great example of progressive enhancement; these book covers look good in all browsers, but they look even better in some.
I read 28 books in 2025. Looking back over that list, there are a few recurring themes…
I read less of the Greek mythology retellings than last year but I seem to have developed a taste for medieval stories like Matrix, Nobber, and Haven.
I finally got ‘round to reading some classics of post-apocalypse fiction like Earth Abides and I Am Legend.
I read lots of short story collections: Salt Slow, Bloodchild And Other Stories, The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories, Folk, and The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. There’s quite a dollop of horror in some of those.
I’m clearly hankering for the homeland because I read a lot of books set in Ireland: The Country Girls, Haven, Prophet Song, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, and Nobber.
And there’s the usual smattering of sci-fi from the likes of Nnedi Okorafor, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arkady Martine, Becky Chambers, and Emily St. John Mandel.
Here’s what I thought of these 28 books, without any star ratings…
I started this one in 2024 and finished it in the first few weeks of 2025. It’s a classic piece of post-apocalypse fiction from 1949. It’s vivid and rich in detail, but there are some odd ideas that flirt with eugenics. There’s a really strange passage where the narrator skirts around describing the skin colour of his new-found love interest. I get the feeling that this was very transgressive at the time, but it’s just a bit weird now.
The final book in Claire North’s Songs Of Penelope trilogy is the one that intersects the most with The Odyssey. There’s a looming sense of impending tragedy because of that; we’ve spent the last two books getting to know the handmaids of Ithica and now here comes Odysseus to fuck things up. I enjoyed the whole trilogy immensely.
This is a great way to get used to reading in Irish. The stories start very simple and get slightly more complex as throughout the book. None of the stories are going to win any prizes for storytelling, but that’s not the point. If you’re learning Irish, I think this book is a great tool to augment your lessons.
Nothing will ever top the brilliance of Station Eleven but I still enjoyed this time-travel tale set in the interconnected Emily St. John Mandel cinematic universe.
A very Irish western. The language is never dull and the characters are almost mythological in personality.
One woman’s life in a medieval convent. What’s really engrossing is not just the changes to the protaganist over her lifetime but the changes she makes to the community.
I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as Jennifer Saint’s previous books. Maybe that’s because this is set almost entirely in the milieu of gods rather than mortals.
A short book about a tea-making monk meeting a long-lost robot and going on a road trip together. It’s all quite lovely.
A superb collection of short stories. Bloodchild itself is a classic, but every one of the stories in this collection is top notch. Some genuinely shudder-inducing moments.
Staying with short story collections, this one is all killer, no filler. Julia Armfield knows how to grab you with a perfect opening line. Any one of these stories could be the basis for a whole novel. Or a David Cronenberg film.
The third book in Pat Barker’s retelling of the aftermath of the Trojan war is just as gritty as the first two, but this one has more overt supernatural elements. A grimly satisfying conclusion.
A collection of loosely-connected short stories dripping with English supernatural folk horror. The world-building is impressive and the cumulative effect really gets under your skin.
The description of the Nigerian diaspora in America is the strongest part of this book. But I found it hard to get very involved with the main character’s narrative.
The sequel to Dogs Of War and just as good. On the one hand, it’s a rip-roaring action story. On the other hand, it’s a genuinely thought-provoking examination of free will.
Every attendee at Oideas Gael in Glencolmcille received a free copy of this book. I kept it on the coffee table and dipped into it every now and then over the course of the year. There are plenty of fascinating tidbits in here about old Irish.
Medieval monks travel to the most inhospitable rock off the coast of Kerry and start building the beehive huts you can still see on Skellig Michael today. Strong on atmosphere but quite light on plot.
Fairly dripping with damp atmosphere, this book has three characters off the coast of a near-future Britain. The world-building is vivid and bleak. Like The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison, it’s got a brexity vibe to the climate crisis.
I found this third book in the Dogs Of War series to be pretty disappointing. Plenty of action, but not much in the way of subtext this time.
Surprisingly schlocky. Kind of good fun for a while but it overstays its welcome.
Gory goings-on in a medieval village in county Meath. For once, this is a medieval tale set in harsh sunlight rather than mist-covered moors. By the end, it’s almost Tarantino-like in its body count.
A fairly light book where nothing much happens, but that nothing much is happening on the International Space Station. I liked the way it managed to balance the mundane details of day-to-day life with the utterly mind-blowing perspective of being in low Earth orbit. Pairs nicely with side two of Hounds Of Love.
Louise Kennedy is rightly getting a lot of praise for her novel Trespasses, but her first book of short stories is equally impressive. Every one feels rooted in reality and the writing is never less than brilliant.
The second short book in the Monk and Robot solarpunk series. It’s all quite cozy and pleasant.
I said that each short story in Julia Armfield’s Salt Slow could be a full-length novel, but reading her full-length novel I thought it would’ve been better as a short story. It’s strong on atmosphere, but it’s dragged out for too long.
Another classic of post-apocalyptic fiction that looks for a scientific basis for vampirism. It’s a grim story that Richard Matheson tells in his typically excellent style.
Reading this book today it’s hard to understand how it caused such a stir when it was first published. But leaving that aside, it’s a superb piece of writing where every character feels real and whole.
If I’m going to read classic short horror stories, then I’ve got to read this. Twisted fairy tales told in florid gothic style.
An entertaining novella that’s a whodunnit in a haunted house, except the haunting is by an Artificial Intelligence. The setting feels like a character, and I don’t just mean the house—this near-future New Mexico is tactile and real.
I haven’t finished this just yet, but I think I can confidentally pass judgement. And my judgement is: wow! Just an astonishing piece of work. An incredible depiction of life under an increasing totalitarian regime. The fact that it’s set in Ireland makes it feel even more urgent. George Orwell meets Roddy Doyle. And the centre of it all is a central character who could step right off the page.
There you have it. A year of books. I didn’t make a concious decision to avoid non-fiction, but perhaps in 2026 I should redress the imbalance.
If I had to pick a favourite novel from the year, it would probably be Prophet Song. But that might just be the recency bias speaking.
If you’re looking for some excellent short stories, I highly recommend Salt Slow and The End of the World is a Cul de Sac.
About half of the 28 books I read this year came from the local library. What an incredible place! I aim to continue making full use of it in 2026. You should do the same.
As part of their on-stage banter, The Dubliners used to quip that “All the books that are banned in Ireland should be published in Irish, to encourage more people to learn their native tongue.”
There was no shortage of banned books back in the day. I’m reading one of them now. The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien.
About halfway through the book, I read this passage:
The parcels for the Halloween party were coming every day. I couldn’t ask my father for one because a man is not able to do these things, so I wrote to him for money instead and a day girl brought me a barmbrack, apples, and monkey-nuts.
Emphasis mine, because that little list sounded so familiar to me.
Back in 2011, I wrote a candygram for Jason. It was called Monkey nuts, barmbrack and apples.
It’s not exactly Edna O’Brien, but looking back at it fifteen years on, I think it turned out okay.
I read recently read two books that had writers as their main protagonists:
They were both perfectly fine. But I found it hard to get really involved in either narrative. The stakes just never felt that high.
Not that high stakes a pre-requisite for a gripping narrative. I enjoyed the films The Social Network and Like A Complete Unknown. Those stakes couldn’t be lower. One is about a website that might’ve ripped off its idea from another website. The other is about someone who’d like to play different kinds of music but other people would rather he played the same music. It’s a credit to the writers and directors of both films that they could create compelling stories from such objectively unimportant subjects.
Getting back to those two books, maybe there’s something navel-gazey when writers write about writing. Then again, I really like non-fiction books about writing from Ann Lamott, Stephen King, and more.
Perhaps it’s not the writing part, but the milieu of publishing.
I’m trying to think if there are any great films about film-making (Inception doesn’t count). Living In Oblivion is pretty great. But a lot of its appeal is that it’s not taking itself too seriously.
All too often when a story is set in its own medium (a book about publishing; a film about film-making) it runs the risk of over-estimating its own importance.
The most eye-rolling example of this is The Morning Show, a television show about a television show. It genuinely tries to make the case for the super-important work being done by vacuous morning chat shows.
I’ve been keeping track of the books I’m reading for about seven years now. I do that here on my own website, as well as on bookshop.org.
It has become something of a tradition for me to post an end-of-year summary of the books I’ve read in the previous twelve months. Maybe I should be posting my thoughts on each book right after I finish it instead. Then again, I quite like the act of thinking about a book again after letting it sit and stew for a while.
I should probably stop including stars with these little reviews. They’re fairly pointless—pretty much everything I read is right down the middle in the “good” category. But to recap, here’s how I allocate my scores:
No five-star books this year, but also no one-star books.
This year I read about 29 books. A bit of an increase on previous years, but the numbers can be deceptive—not every book is equal in length.
Fiction outnumbered non-fiction by quite a margin. I’m okay with that.
“A tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder” is promised on the cover and this book delivers. What’s astonishing is that it’s a true story. If it were fiction it would be dismissed as too far-fetched. It’s well told, and it’s surely only a matter of time before an ambitious film-maker takes on its Rashomon-like narrative.
★★★☆☆
I think this might be Lauren’s best book since Zoo City. The many-worlds hypothesis has been mined to depletion in recent years but Bridge still manages to have a fresh take on it. The well-rounded characters ensure that you’re invested in the outcome.
★★★☆☆
Part of my ongoing kick of reading retellings of Greek myths, this one focuses on a particularly cruel detail of Odysseus’s return.
★★★☆☆
Keeping with the Greek retellings, this was the year that I read most of Jennifer Saint’s books. All good stuff, though I must admit that in my memory it’s all starting to blend together with other books like Costanza Casati’s Clytemnestra.
★★★☆☆
The final book in the trilogy, this doesn’t have the same wham-bam page-turning breathlessness as Children Of Time, but I have to say it’s really stuck with me. Whereas the previous books looked at the possibilities of biological intelligence (in spiders and octopuses), this one focuses inwards.
I don’t want to say anymore because I don’t want to spoil the culmination. I’ll just say that I think that by the end it posits a proposition that I don’t recall any other sci-fi work doing before.
Y’know what? Just because of how this one has lodged in my mind I’m going to give it an extra star.
★★★★☆
I think this is my favourite Natalie Haynes book so far. It also makes a great companion piece to another book I read later in the year…
★★★☆☆
I picked up this little volume of poems when I was in Amsterdam—they go down surprisingly well with some strong beer and bitterballen. I was kind of blown away by how funny some of these vignettes were. There’s plenty of hardship too, but that’s the human condition for you.
★★★★☆
I read the Fractured Europe series throughout the year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ll readily admit that I didn’t always follow what was going on but that’s part of the appeal. The world-building is terrific. It’s an alternative version of a Brexity Europe that by the end of the first book starts to go in an unexpected direction. Jonathan Strange meets George Smiley.
★★★☆☆
Seeing as I’m reading all the modern retellings, it’s only fair that I have the source material to hand. This is my coffee table book that I dip into sporadically. I’ve got a copy of the prequel too.
I am not going to assign stars to this.
Fairly navel-gazing stuff, and you get the impression that Nick Cave thinks so too. Just as Neil Young would rather talk about his model trains, Nick Cave would rather discuss his pottery. The music stands on its own, but this is still better than most books about music.
★★☆☆☆
Now this is an audacious move! Retelling 1984 from Julia’s perspective. Not only does it work, it also shines a light on some flaws in Orwell’s original (and I say that as someone who’s read everything Orwell ever wrote). I’m happy to say that the execution of this book matches its ambition.
★★★☆☆
So if I’ve been reading alternative perspectives on Homer and Orwell, why not Shakespeare too? This is beautifully evocative and rich in detail. It’s also heartbreaking. A gorgeous work.
★★★★☆
I didn’t enjoy this as much as I enjoyed Natalie Hayne’s novels. It’s all good informative stuff, but it feels a bit like a collection of separate essays rather than a coherent piece.
★★☆☆☆
I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of this from one of the authors. I love a good short story collection and this one is very good indeed.
★★★☆☆
Remember how I said that some of the Greek retellings started to blend together? Well, no fear of that with this terrific series. Like Margaret Atwood’s retelling, Penelope is the main character here. Each book is narrated by a different deity, and yet there is little to no supernatural intervention. I’m really looking forward to reading the third and final book in the series.
★★★☆☆
This is the one I was hinting at above that makes a great companion piece to Natalie Hayne’s Stone Blind. Two different—but equally sympathetic—takes on Medusa. This one is grittily earthbound—no gods here—and it’s a horrifying examination of toxic masculinity. And don’t expect any natural justice here.
★★★☆☆
Adrian Tchaikovsky has a real knack for getting inside the animal mind. This story is smaller in scale than his Children Of Time series but it succeeds in telling its provocative tale snappily.
★★★☆☆
I described Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe series as Brexity, but this Claire North’s book is one that pushes Tory austerity to its dystopian logical conclusion. It’s all-too believable, if maybe a little over-long. Grim’n’good.
★★★☆☆
The first of Jennifer Saint’s books is also my favourite. There’s a fantasically vivid description of the arrival of Dionysus into the narrative.
★★★☆☆
I’ve been meaning to read this one for years, but in the end I didn’t end up finishing it. That’s no slight on the book; I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for it. I’m actually kind of proud of myself for putting a book down—I’m usually stubbornly completionist, which is stupid because life is too short. I hope to return to this at some future time.
Another vividly-written tale by Jennifer Saint, but maybe suffers from trying to cram in all the varied accounts of Atalanta’s deeds and trials—the character’s motivations are hard to reconcile at different points.
★★★☆☆
This was …fine. It’s the first in a series called Bomb Light. Maybe I’ll appreciate it more in its final context. As a standalone work, there’s not quite enough there to carry it (including the cutesiness of making a young Richard Feynman a side character).
★★☆☆☆
This too was …fine. I know some people really love this, and maybe that raised my expectations, but in the end it was a perfectly good if unremarkable novel.
★★★☆☆
Pairs nicely with Jennifer Saint’s Atalanta. A decent yarn.
★★★☆☆
I’ve just started this post-apocalyptic classic from 1949. Tune in next year to find out if I end up enjoying it.
Okay, so that was my reading for 2024. Nothing that completely blew me away but nothing that thoroughly disappointed me either. Plenty of good solid books. If I had to pick a favourite it would probably be Maggie Farrell’s Hamnet. And that Patrick Kavanagh collection of poems.
If you fancy going back in time, here are my previous round-ups:
Another handy list of where you can get works published by A Book Apart authors.
I miss A Book Apart, and I really miss An Event Apart—I made so many friends and memories through that conference. I admire Jeffrey’s honest account of how much it sucks when something so good comes to an end.
In 2024, A Book Apart closed its doors after publishing a much-loved collection of more than 50 brief books for people who make websites. The rights to each book have reverted to the authors — hi, that’s us — and we’ve put together this semi-official directory to help you find our books in their new homes.
…now including Going Offline.
I wrote a book about service workers. It’s called Going Offline. It was first published by A Book Apart in 2018. Now it’s available to read for free online.
If you want you can read the book as a PDF, an ePub, or .mobi, but I recommend reading it in your browser.
Needless to say the web book works offline. Once you go to goingoffline.adactio.com you can add it to the homescreen of your mobile device or add it to the dock on your Mac. After that, you won’t need a network connection.
The book is free to read. Properly free. Not the kind of “free” where you have to supply an email address first. Why would I make you go to the trouble of generating a burner email account?
The site has no analytics. No tracking. No third-party scripts of any kind whatsover. By complete coincidence, the site is fast. Funny that.
For the styling of this web book, I tweaked the stylesheet I used for HTML5 For Web Designers. I updated it a little bit to use logical properties, some fluid typography and view transitions.
In the process of converting the book to HTML, I got reaquainted with what I had written almost seven years ago. It was kind of fun to approach it afresh. I think it stands up pretty darn well.
Ethan wrote about his feelings when he put two of his books online, illustrated by that amazing photo that always gives me the feels:
I’ll miss those days, but I’m just glad these books are still here. They’re just different than they used to be. I suppose I am too.
Anyway, if you’re interested in making your website work offline, have a read of Going Offline. Enjoy!
I read Madeline Miller’s Circe last year. I loved it. It was my favourite fiction book I read that year.
Reading Circe kicked off a bit of a reading spree for me. I sought out other retellings of Greek myths. There’s no shortage of good books out there from Pat Barker, Natalie Haynes, Jennifer Saint, Claire Heywood, Claire North, and more.
The obvious difference between these retellings and the older accounts by Homer, Ovid and the lads is to re-centre the women in these stories. There’s a rich seam of narratives to be mined between the lines of the Greek myths.
But what’s fascinating to me is to see how these modern interpretations differ from one another. Sometimes I’ll finish one book, then pick up another that tells the same story from a very different angle.
The biggest difference I’ve noticed is the presence or absence of supernatural intervention. Some of these writers tell their stories with gods and goddesses front and centre. Others tell the very same stories as realistic accounts without any magic.
Take Perseus. Please.
The excellent Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes tells the story of Medusa. There’s magic a-plenty. In fact, Perseus himself is little more than a clueless bumbler who wouldn’t last a minute without divine interventation.
The Shadow Of Perseus by Claire Heywood also tells Medusa’s story. But this time there’s no magic whatsoever. The narrative is driven not by gods and goddesses, but by the force of toxic masculinity.
Pat Barker tells the story of the Trojan war in her Women Of Troy series. She keeps it grounded and gritty. When Natalie Haynes tells the same story in A Thousand Ships, the people in it are little more than playthings of the gods.
Then there are the books with just a light touch of the supernatural. While Madeline Miller’s Circe was necessarily imbued with magic, her first novel The Song Of Achilles keeps it mostly under wraps. The supernatural is there, but it doesn’t propel the narrative.
Claire North has a trilogy of books called the Songs of Penelope, retelling the Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective (like Margaret Atwood did in The Penelopiad). On the face of it, these seem to fall on the supernatural side; each book is narrated by a different deity. But the gods are strangely powerless. Everyone believes in them, but they themselves behave in a non-interventionist way. As though they didn’t exist at all.
It makes me wonder what it would be like to have other shared myths retold with or without magic.
How would the Marvel universe look if it were grounded in reality? Can you retell Harry Potter as the goings-on at a cult school for the delusional? What would Star Wars be like without the Force? (although I guess Andor already answers that one)
Anyway, if you’re interested in reading some modern takes on Greek myths, here’s a list of books for you:
This is such a great project from Jon—a mashup of two books from his childhood!
Put that RSS feed in your feed reader.
Exploring the graphic design history of Penguin books:
The covers presented on this site are all from my own collection of about 1400 Penguins, which have been chosen for the beauty or interest of their cover designs. They span the history of the company all the way back to 1935 when Penguin Books was launched.
A lovely choose-your-own-adventure blog post by Robin.
This is a damned fine list.
I’ve read 16 of these and some of the others are on my to-read list. It’s a pretty good selection, although the winking inclusion of God Emperor Of Dune by the SEO guy verges on trolling.
I can’t resist bookshelves.
If I’m shown into someone’s home and left alone while the host goes and does something, you can bet I’m going to peruse their bookshelves.
I don’t know why. Maybe I’m looking for points of commonality. “Oh, you read this book too?” Or maybe it’s the opposite, and I’m looking for something new and—pardon the pun—novel. “Oh, that book sounds interesting!”
I like it when people have a kind of bookshelf on their website.
Here’s my ad-hoc bookshelf, which is manually mirrored on Bookshop.org.
I like having an overview of what I’ve been reading. One of the reasons I started keeping track was so that I could try to have a nice balance of fiction and non-fiction.
I always get a little sad when I see someone’s online reading list and it only consists of non-fiction books that are deemed somehow useful, rather than simply pleasurable. Cameron wrote about when he used to do this:
I felt like reading needed to have some clear purpose. The topic of any book I read needed to directly contribute to being an “adult”. So I started to read non-fiction – stuff that reflected what was happening in my career. Books on management, books on finance, books on economics, books on the creative process. And for many years this diet of dry, literary roughage felt wholesome … but joyless. Each passage I highlited in yellow marker was a point for the scoreboard, not a memory to be treasured.
Now he’s redressing the imbalance and rediscovering the unique joy of entering other worlds by reading fiction.
For a while, I forced myself to have perfect balance. I didn’t allow myself to read two non-fiction books in a row or two fiction books in a row. I made myself alternate between the two.
I’ve let that lapse now. I’m reading more fiction than non-fiction, and I’m okay with that.
But I still like looking back on what I’ve been reading and seeing patterns emerge. Like there’s a clear boom in the last year of reading retellings of the Homeric epics (all kicked off by reading the brilliant Circe by Madeline Miller).
I also keep an eye out for a different kind of imbalance. I want to make sure that I’m not just reading books by people like me—middle-aged heterosexual white dudes.
You may think that a balanced reading diet would emerge naturally, but I’m not so sure. Here’s an online bookshelf. Here’s another online bookshelf. Plenty of good stuff in both. But do either of those men realise that they’ve gone more than a year without reading a book written by a woman?
It’s almost certainly not a conscious decision. It’s just that in the society we live in, the default mode tends towards what’s been historically privileged (see also films, music, and painting).
It’s like driving in a car that subtly pulls to one side. Unless you compensate for it, you’ll end up in the ditch without even realising.
I feel bad for calling attention to those two reading lists. It feels very judgy of me. And reading is something that doesn’t deserve judgement. Any reading is good reading.
Mind you, maybe being judgemental is exactly why I’m drawn to people’s bookshelves in the first place. It might be that I’m subsconsciously looking for compatibility signals. If I see a bookshelf filled with books I like, I’m bound to feel predisposed to like that person. And if I see a bookshelf dominated by Jordan Peterson and Ayn Rand, I’m probably going to pass judgement on the reader, even if I know I shouldn’t.
I think this is a terrific idea from Bobbie—be one of 25 people to get a brand new hardcover non-fiction book in the mail for just $25 and then join in the discussion afterwards.
Alas, it’s not available in the UK but US friends, check it out.
Robin Sloan on The Culture:
The Culture is a utopia: a future you might actually want to live in. It offers a coherent political vision. This isn’t subtle or allegorical; on the page, citizens of the Culture very frequently articulate and defend their values. (Their enthusiasm for their own politics is considered annoying by most other civilizations.)
Coherent political vision doesn’t require a lot, just some sense of “this is what we ought to do”, yet it is absent from plenty of science fiction that dwells only in the realm of the cautionary tale.
I don’t have much patience left for that genre. I mean … we have been, at this point, amply cautioned.
Vision, on the other hand: I can’t get enough.
2010 was a good year for me. I moved into a new home. Salter Cane released an album. We had a really good dConstruct. And I wrote a book.
It was HTML5 For Web Designers, the very first title from a new indie publisher called A Book Apart.
Back then, I wrote about the writing process, Jason wrote about the design, Mandy wrote about editing, and Jeffrey wrote a lovely foreword. What a dream team!
From there, A Book Apart went from strength to strength. Under Katel’s stewardship, they released the must-have books for web design and development.
One of the perks of being an author for A Book Apart is that I get a copy of every book published. I have a shelf of slim but colourful book spines.
Now, after 14 years and 60 titles, the collection is complete. A Book Apart won’t be publishing any more new books. Don’t worry—you can still buy the existing titles at all good bookshops, like bookshop.org. They made sure to prepare the way for this decision.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to express how grateful I am to everyone at A Book Apart. They treated me very, very well. Heck, they even let me publish a second book.
Thank you, team—it was a pleasure and honour to collaborate with you.