In 2025 most of the books I read were courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library. I read parts of books and checked out books that I was simply curious about. The San Francisco Public Library is an amazing resource. You can even check out vinyl records!
Below is a list of books that I finished. I do this exercise to simply reflect on the previous year.
Books I Read 2025
Crow Planet Essential Wisdom From the Urban Wilderness
Haupt, Lyanda Lynn
New York : Little, Brown and Co., 2009.
The Explosion of Deferred Dreams Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965-1975
Callahan, Mathew
Oakland, CA : PM Press, [2017]
see review
This is a really interesting book for those interested in San Francisco history.
Eiger Dreams Ventures Among Men and Mountains
Krakauer, Jon
New York, NY : Lyons & Burford, c1990.
The Fifth Risk
Lewis, Michael
New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Michael Lewis has spent the last few years investigating what the federal government does. The Fifth Risk illuminates how behind the scenes, dedicated, often eccentric federal employees do jobs that are very important for our safety and also simply to advance pure science.
James A Novel
Everett, Percival
New York : Doubleday, [2024]
see review
The review of James linked above is the most viewed post on this website.
Rasputin The Untold Story
Fuhrmann, Joseph T.
Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, c2013.
Barbarian Days A Surfing Life
Finnegan, William
New York : Penguin Press, 2015.
see review
Indeed, underestimation is practiced with the greatest aplomb on the North Shore of Oahu. There, a wave must be the size of a small cathedral before locals will call it eight feet.
Buzzy Trent, an old-time big wave rider, allegedly said, “Big waves are not measured in feet, but increments of fear.” If he said that, he got it right.
– “Barbarian Days A Surfing Life”
Knoxville: This Obscure Prismatic City
(American Chronicles) Neely, Jack
The History Press; Illustrated edition (November 13, 2009)
Technofeudalism What Killed Capitalism
Varoufakis, Yanis
Brooklyn, NY : Melville House, [2023], ©2023
Indeed we are all serfs in the new economic order, with every social media post adding to the coffers of the the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. Give not your children away to these schmucks!
Notes From Underground
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Grand Rapids, Mich. : William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2009.
1984
Orwell, George
San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, [1984], ©1949
It is always good to revisit the dystopian works of the twentieth century. 1984 rings true still.
The Song of the Hawk The Life and Recordings of Coleman Hawkins
Chilton, John
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c1990.
see review
Walden and Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
New York : Union Square & Co., 2023.
Simplicity is a virtue. I think that Thoreau has vanished from the American psychique. We are a country where more is better and the accumulation of stuff is really the only virtue.
Tropic of Cancer
Miller, Henry
Mexican Publisher
Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
Miller, Henry
New Directions
“The language of society is conformity; the language of the individual is freedom. Life will continue to be hell as long as the people who make up the world shut their eyes to reality. Switching from one ideology to another is a useless game. Each and every one of us is unique, and must be recognized as such. The least we can say about ourselves is that we are American, or French, or whatever the case may be. We are first of all human beings, different one from another, obliged to live together, to stew in the same pot.”
– Henry Miller from “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”
Teaching to Transgress Education as the Practice of Freedom
hooks, bell New York : Routledge, 1994.
Abundance
Klein, Ezra
First Avid Reader Press
Good grief! I have no idea why this book was taken seriously. The rose-colored glasses this book takes on the current situation is so devoid of the realities on the ground. It is for those who have this delusional idea that somehow technology will fix all our problems (Bill Gates is in this camp). Climate change is but a bug that we can fix. Miraculously affordable housing will emerge just as long as we get government regulations eradicated. It is as if the authors have no understanding of history.
The World’s Fastest Man the Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America’s First Black Sports Hero
Kranish, Michael
New York : Scribner, 2019.
Highly recommended book about Marshall “Major” Taylor and a view into the Gilded Age, extraordinary racism, courage and a short period of time when bicycles were the modern thing. The odd fact that the story of Major Taylor is obscure is unfortunate.
The Pirate’s Wife The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd
Geanacopoulos, Daphne Palmer
Toronto : Hanover Square Press, [2022]
King of Kings The Iranian Revolution : A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Anderson, Scott
First Doubleday hardcover edition
see review
Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service
Lewis, Michael
New York : Riverhead Books, [2025]
The Phantom Tollbooth
Juster, Norton
HarperCollins 1964
Not really a kids book, Norton Juster was a genius.
From Counterculture to Cyberculture
Turner, Fred
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2006.
From 2006, From Counterculture to Cyberculture is a bit of love-letter to Stewart Brand and an interesting view of how counter-culture morphed into the techno-libertarian world we live in today. It was written before “social media” and illuminates how the New Communalists of the early 1970s morphed into a notion of a digital utopia where people became one and could communicate for the good of all humankind. Enter, Newt Gingrich and an ethos of libertarian deregulation and we have the current world we live in today. It briefly goes into the Telecommunications Act of 1996 but does not even mention the Digital Millennium Copyright Act – DMCA of 1998.
While Tanner’s thesis is correct, the book ignores a lot of the events and forces that were going on at the time and instead redundantly drives home the point that the people who drove VW Westphalia’s in the seventies are now surely driving Tesla’s and living in gated communities, counting their millions.