My favorite media of 2025
2025 has been a big year, and a really good one for my media consumption. I've read, listened to, and watched a lot this year, and I wanted to document some of my favorites from the year in the hope that others can find something new, and so I can marvel at my lack of taste in years to come. Because I don't really care about it, quite a few of these picks are not strictly "releases" from this year.
Reading
Best page-turner permalink
I'm a little biased on this one because I absolutely devoured the last series from these authors, The Expanse. Still, it's unusual for lighting to strike twice and few first books in a series are as immediately captivating as this one. Not only are you getting a truly unique spin on the invasion sci-fi subgenre, you're also getting stakes that routinely ratchet up to levels I last experienced in Cixin Liu's The Dark Forest (if you know, you know). One of those rare books that feels like it is physically pulling you through each chapter and leaves you with a little empty hole when you can't immediately pick up the next book.
Best one-shot story permalink
What a strange, strange book. I don't know what kind of a mind you have to have to write this story, but I'm glad that Scott Hawkins has one. I would advise prospective readers to check some trigger warnings on this one, but if you don't hit any non-negotiables, I'd also strongly advise giving it a go. What you'll get is something wholly original, truly horrifying, but also earnest, darkly funny, and thoughtful. On top of all that, Hawkins has such a knack for writing non-human characters. It isn't a spoiler to say that Dresden was one of the most memorable characters I discovered all year in any media, and he was a lion.
Most human permalink
If you know my book preferences at all, you'll know that I am completely captive to sci-fi and fantasy. It takes a lot to get me to read a contemporary novel with about as low-stakes a plot as you could conceive, but the number of friends recommending this book became pretty hard to ignore after a while. Having now read it, I am so grateful they did. There's something about the way that these characters are written that transcends their medium. It feels bizarre that another human being could invent three other souls like this, let along transmit them into my brain through the written word. That alone, was a pretty special, unique experience.
Best novella permalink
For such a short book, this had a outsized impact on my recommendations to friends this year. For one, it's got one of my favorite premises I've ever come across. Our robots gain sentience, decide factory work sucks, and decide to leave to "watch the river flow". Moreover, it just feels perfectly placed for the times we find ourselves in. It's cozy, solar-punk, gentle, tender, and wise. It's slow and thoughtful and low-stakes. When I need this book, it provides.
Most helpful permalink
When I joined Owner this year, this was in their reading list for me. I'm very grateful it was. To be clear, our culture is not a carbon-copy of Netflix's and even in the places where it is, we often don't hit the very lofty bar that this book sketches out. Still, at some point in every chapter of this book, something would resonate with me deeply. A behavior displayed in an example, a phrase that they have for something previously unnamed, a idea or principle to work by. I have taken a lot of things from this book into my own working practices since I read it, and I'm much better off for it.
Best non-fiction permalink
This is the book that made me think and self-reflect the most this year. A fair bit of that thinking was disagreement, a lot of that thinking was having my mind changed, and some of it was imagining what a world of "abundance" might look like. In the end, I would recommend that anyone reading this book (and I would recommend it to folks across the political spectrum) to view it as a facilitation tool. Here's some ideas, what do you think? If you see it that way, and not as a gospel, I think you'll have as good a time with it as I did.
Best book permalink
This is such an entertaining book and in general I think the less you know about it in advance the better off you'll be, so I'll be brief. This is a book that takes some of your favorite tropes, does them really well, mixes them into a setting that feels both novel and familiar, and is constantly driving the plot forwards with higher and higher stakes, tension, and drama. As someone who craves plot with every fibre of my being, I felt extremely well pandered to.
Listening
Best guilty pleasure album permalink
After a blockbuster year for pop-girlies in 2024, I was quietly resigned to a pretty dry 2025. So imagine my happiness in discovering that Tate McRae, who for whatever reason I had never really given a fair listen, has been producing bangers. This is just an exceptionally produced pop album, and every time I listen to "2 Hands" I feel like I discover some new little detail in the tracks production that makes me fall in love with it all over again.
Best album permalink
I've always enjoyed Sam Fender's output, but I've never fallen in love with a complete album of his. People Watching has been the first time the entire disc has really sunken it's claws into me. There isn't a single skip here for me, and it's often the quieter, more melancholic tracks that have become my favorites. Sam's profound talent for lyricism is on full display in "Crumbling Empire" and the title track, and "Remember My Name" delivers a catastrophic final blow on my heart. I'm begging you, go and listen to this album from start to finish and read the lyrics as you do.
Watching
Best TV season permalink
This series came out of no-where for me. I wrote it off simply because it was a medical drama, which in my general experience has meant melodrama. I only tried it because it was an option on a flight, and it completely knocked me on my ass. This is everything that I want my TV to be. It uses it's length to really sit with characters, it interweaves storylines, it delivers astonishing highs of tension and counterweights them with thoughtful, slow silences. Everyone is delivering a stellar performance, but it's really the writing that shines for me. Of particular note, I love that in addition to having an incredibly diverse cast, each characters identity informs the stories they tell without ever becoming the story.
Best movie-going experience permalink
Joseph Kosinski has become a master of making movies which people say "hell yeah" to.
Best film permalink
Once in a while, you come across a piece of media which takes something you thought you knew, and presents it so strikingly that it changes your brain chemistry when you think about it again. Make no mistake, this is a horror movie. With little more than a few office rooms, thirty minutes, and some actors, A House of Dynamite is able to confront you with the existential fear that a nuclear scenario ought to. It's structure will understandably irk some people, but I loved how each perspective added a new sense of impossibility, fragility, and dread. A movie that you can't un-see.