I (almost) read 52 books this year so you don't have to
See what I read and loved this year!
Wait, Weren’t You the Guy Who Read 52 Last Year?
Guilty as charged. But this year, I only finished 45. Life got busy—but it got better too. No regrets. Besides, who’s counting?
(I am definitely still counting.)
Here’s the good news: I can still rank 52 books. Because I didn’t read alone this year. A few friends joined on the reading journey, and I asked them to provide a few thoughts on their absolute favorites of the year. 2025 is on the horizon, and a fresh slate awaits. If you want a reading buddy or a group nudge, I’ve got a spreadsheet for that - hit me up to join the fun for next year!
Without further ado, let’s talk about the books. And if you’re new to my yearly ritual, here’s the gist: I rank books in tiers, from the ones I’d possibly use to even out a wobbly table to the must-reads. Let’s do this.
Tier A: Forgettable Non-Fiction
Good info, but I’ve already forgotten most of it.
Good to Go – Christie Aschwanden
The Death of Public School - Cara Fitzpatrick
Brave New Words - Salman Khan
The Battle of Bretton Woods - Benn Steil
The Warriors - Sol Yurick
The Everything Store – Brad Stone
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder – Salman Rushdie
Honestly, not worth reading any of these. If you want a one-line takeaway, Good to Go = stretching is overrated. The Death of Public School = the current voucher wave had its genesis since Brown v Board and is an unlikely combo of religious racists and Milton Friedman free-market acolytes. Brave New Words = Sal Khan pumping his own bag with a pretty poorly-informed AI take (something like…everyone’s getting their own personal tutor! What I said was going to happen with Khan Academy is actually going to happen now!) You know what they say - fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice? Shame on me.
The Battle of Bretton Woods = a marathon of economic wonkery that’ll have you dozing off faster than you can say “gold standard.” And I haven’t seen the cult-classic film, but it can’t be worse than The Warriors so maybe give the movie a shot instead. The Everything Store = Amazon’s origin story for people who want a 300-page reminder that Bezos was once just a balding dreamer with a garage—fine for a Wikipedia skim, but not worth the full deep-dive. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder = Rushdie’s post-attack reflections are brave and sometimes moving, but reading it feels a bit like reading through someone’s diary without the scandalous bits. Feel bad saying this because Rushdie is on my Mount Rushmore of authors (let me take this time to tell you to read Midnight’s Children if you haven’t!)
Tier B: Forgettable Fiction
When world-building backfires.
The Wind in the Door – Madeleine L’Engle
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
Hollow World – Michael Sullivan
I wanted to like A Wrinkle in Time and the sequel, but they felt like books trying way too hard to be smart and just didn’t strike a chord. Hollow World is a time-travel sci-fi that didn’t make me care enough about the future.
Tier C: Couldn’t This Have Been A Blog Post?
Great points, but why 200+ pages?
Turning Education Inside Out – Judy Dempsey
Somehow: Thoughts on Love – Anne Lamott
Blue Ocean Strategy – Renée Mauborgne & W. Chan Kim
The Gardener and the Carpenter – Alison Gopnik
Weapons of Mass Instruction – John Taylor Gatto
Reminder: I believe blog posts are distilled, better versions of most nonfiction. These authors have solid insights—especially Gatto on schooling—but each concept felt stretched. If you’re into short, punchy articles, you’ll wish they’d kept it to blog length.
That being said, quick tangent: I stumbled across Somehow at the airport (someone had clearly mistakenly left it behind at QDoba) and proceeded to read it on a whim on the flight home. Lamott’s reflections on love were at times lovely, but more importantly, it was the first religious book I’ve read in years! Made me realize I’m missing a little spiritual beauty in my life - if any of you have a great read in the realm of religion or spirituality, please let me know. I’m looking to add 3-5 to my list for 2025.
Tier D: Couldn’t This Have Been A Podcast?
I’d binge these on a commute, but the books dragged a bit.
The Child is the Teacher – Cristina De Stefano
Chasing Perfection – Bob Ladouceur & Neil Hayes
Storyworthy – Matthew Dicks
The Smartest Kids in the World – Amanda Ripley
In Storyworthy, Matthew Dicks reveals how to craft compelling personal narratives—except I found myself wishing I could actually hear him perform those tales. Chasing Perfection takes us into De La Salle’s world of relentless excellence, practically begging for a documentary or a locker-room podcast series. (I also would love the Jim Harbaugh version of this book). Meanwhile, The Child is the Teacher is a really cool look at Maria Montessori’s visionary spark. She definitely deserves more fanfare as a keen business mind—and as I’m plotting a new path for secondary schools, I found her story inspiring. And The Smartest Kids in the World pulls off an impressive global tour of schooling, but hearing Amanda Ripley’s interviews firsthand might’ve made it feel more binge-worthy and less repetitive.
Tier E: Series That Take Over Your Shelf…
…or Your Brain.
33-30. The Murderbot Diaries – Martha Wells (Trevor’s rec)
29-18. The Sandman Series – Neil Gaiman (12 volumes)
For The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, I only read the first volume (All Systems Red), which I found enjoyable but not quite gripping enough to continue. Trevor, on the other hand, swears the series deepens with each book, so maybe I’ll circle back one day. Then, I’m counting all twelve volumes of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, which I devoured. I’m a huge Gaiman fan, and while Sandman has its highs and lows, the sheer ambition of its world-building is almost unparalleled in modern literature. The Netflix adaptation hasn’t blown me away, but I could devour a hundred more Sandman stories and still crave more. And if you’re thinking, “You padded your numbers with comic books,” I say: reading is reading, and it sure beats an audiobook in my book.
Tier F: Fiction for the Soul
Novels that remind me why reading’s fun.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon – Grace Lin
The Stone Home – Crystal Hana Kim
My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
North Woods – Daniel Mason (Rishi’s rec)
Grace Lin’s magical tale blends Chinese folklore with family-friendly wonder, perfect for rekindling childlike awe. The Stone Home is a quieter gem that sneaks up on you—Crystal Hana Kim’s writing is simply gorgeous, and I can’t wait to see what she does next (and yes, she’s a friend!) My Brilliant Friend was a reread on our trip to Italy, and it’s every bit as mesmerizing as I remembered—I definitely plan on doing the rest of the Neapolitan series down the road. And then there’s North Woods, championed by Rishi, who says:
“This book takes you through time, but keeps you rooted to the same place. You will be afraid for, laugh at, and shed tears with the multitude of characters (animals, plants, and people) you meet throughout the four centuries this tale traverses. Elegant, immersive, propulsive prose. One of the best reads of the year.”
I’m sold - adding it to the 2025 list. If that glowing endorsement doesn’t make you want to pick it up immediately, I’m not sure what will.
Tier G: Self-Help & Personal Growth
Because sometimes we need a pep talk.
On Having No Head – D.E. Harding (Greg’s rec)
On Call in the Arctic – Thomas Sims (Greg’s rec)
The Five Invitations – Frank Ostaseski (Greg’s rec)
The Courage to Be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga
The E-Myth Revisited – Michael Gerber
On Having No Head, On Call in the Arctic, and The Five Invitations all come courtesy of Greg—whose recommendations, by the way, have a great track record. According to ChatGPT, Harding’s short treatise challenges your very notion of self, Sims’s real-life Arctic medical tales are humbling and inspiring, and Ostaseski’s reflections on mortality fill you with renewed appreciation for living. The Courage to Be Disliked brought me back to the conversational magic of Ishmael, laying out Adlerian psychology as a surprisingly accessible path to self-acceptance. Finally, The E-Myth Revisited might be the most practical business book I’ve ever read—enough to rival years of consulting or business school in one concise guide. Highly recommend to anyone starting or running a business of their own (or aspires to one day).
Tier H: Identity Fiction
Stories that explore who we are (and who we might become).
8-6. The Immortals of Meluha (and series) – Amish Tripathi
The Tennis Partner – Abraham Verghese
The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese
The Immortals of Meluha (and its sequels) is a mind-bending collision of Hindu mythology and Harry Potter–style world-building. It’s an addictive page turner, especially for someone like me who grew up immersed in these cultural touchstones—pure, unadulterated fun. Abraham Verghese, on the other hand, writes with a depth and beauty that can leave you breathless. The Tennis Partner resonated with my own love for tennis, but The Covenant of Water is on another level entirely—an opus spanning generations, so rich that even a re-read feels justified just to bask in his language. (Rishi also read it this year and called it the best book he’s read in a decade, so you know it’s special.)
Tier I: The Best of the Best
The books that made me believe Astra is on to something special.
Never Enough – Jennifer Breheny Wallace
What School Could Be – Ted Dintersmith
The Anxious Generation – Jonathan Haidt
These three books genuinely re-lit my fire for rethinking education and validated the work we’re doing at Astra. Never Enough shines a spotlight on the toxic achievement culture brewing in our schools and homes, underscoring the urgent need for places that nurture curiosity and well-being over test scores and gold stars. It’s a sobering, necessary look at why “always pushing harder” might break more kids than it helps.
What School Could Be offers the blueprint for how to pull all this together. It shows that we’re not reinventing the wheel at Astra, just pulling the best practices into one operationally sound, scalable model. By focusing on real-world learning, agency, and community engagement, Dintersmith makes it clear that the path to a better school system is already lit—we just need to follow and refine it.
The Anxious Generation ratchets up the urgency by detailing how smartphones (and the never-ending scrolling they bring) are eroding teens’ in-person interactions, creativity, and even their sleep. Haidt argues it’s a collective-action problem—banning phones from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. doesn’t solve the 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. issue—and that leaves parents resorting to uneasy alliances or awkward email pleas. It left me with a deep conviction that the real solution is to create an opt-in school community that sets and enforces healthy norms around phone use.
In concert, these three books helped me see that phones, anxiety, and overblown achievement pressures aren’t unsolvable problems. They’re opportunities for a new kind of school—one that tackles the 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. challenge, fosters authentic community, and lets every student flourish without doomscrolling their teenage years away. That’s precisely what we’re aiming to build at Astra.
A Parting Note (and a Spreadsheet Invitation)
That’s my year in books, from the downright forgettable to the absolutely transformative. If any of these piqued your interest, give them a shot—if not, let me know what you read instead. If you’re itching to read more in 2025 but need that accountability boost, jump into my Reading Spreadsheet and Whatsapp group—no forced Zoom calls, just a supportive space to swap recommendations and celebrate tiny victories. Add your name in the spreadsheet to join or just message me.
Verghese wrote in The Covenant of Water, “Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!” It’s a reminder that stories, even the made-up ones, can show us our deepest realities. And if you’re ready to help write a new story—one that’s not fictional, but is just as epic in its ambition—consider joining Astra. My DMs are open - let’s tackle the future of schooling together.
Here’s to a fantastic 2025, friends—may it be filled with bold goals, better books, and unstoppable curiosity.
Until then,
– Arvind
Still reading, still dreaming, still building the school of the future.
I look forward to reading some of your recommendations especially "Where the mountain meets the moon" and "The Stone Home". My favorite this year are "Quiet" by Susan Cain which is about introverts and their role in world that prizes extroverts and "Haben - the Deafblind woman who conquered Harvard law" by Haben Grima (self explanatory).