I like to read. When I worked a 9-5, I had little time to read much beyond a daily newspaper, but I have always been interested in learning, so when I ‘retired’ it was the perfect time to read more. For me, reading is not a race. While I read 58 books during 2025, I like to read slowly and take notes. I even write summaries so I can refer back to them. Because they are stored digitally, I can also search for topics long after I have put down the book (or usually in my case, my e-reader). You can find my summaries on my website. By the way, I hated writing book reports when I was in school. But, back then, I was reading for a grade, not really to absorb facts.
I’m fascinated by statistics, so I had to do a comparison:
In 2025, I read 58 books (362 pages average) and 20,993 pages
BOOKS I READ DURING 2025
| 107 Days | Kamala Harris |
| 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation | Andrew Ross Sorkin |
| 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America | Josh Dawsey, Tyler Page, and Isaac Arnsdorf |
| A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space and Have We Really Thought This Through? | Kelly and Zach Weinersmith |
| After Disney: Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of America’s Favorite Media Company | Neil O’Brien |
| Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present | Fareed Zakaria |
| Alaska’s History: The People, Land, and Events of the North Country | Harry Ritter |
| American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson | Joseph Ellis |
| Apple in China | Patrick McGee |
| At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House | HR McMaster |
| Big Dumb Eyes: Stories From A Simpler Mind | Nate Bargatze |
| Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education | Salman Khan |
| Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan | Inazo Nitobe |
| Catechism of the Catholic Church | Ascension Edition |
| Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind | Annaka Harris |
| Dad Is Fat | Jim Gaffigan |
| Daily Rituals: How Artists Work | Mason Currey |
| Death Is Our Business: Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare | John Lecher |
| Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska | Warren Zanes |
| Eat Move Sleep: How Small Choices Lead to Big Changes | Tom Rath |
| Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s Open AI | Karen Hao |
| Engineering In Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide To The Constructed Environment | Grady Hillhouse |
| Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection | John Green |
| Fodor’s Alaska | Fodor’s Travel Guides |
| Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us | Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall |
| Forward for the People: The Autobiography of America’s Longest Serving Legislator | Fred Risser and Doug Moe |
| Funny Because It’s True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire | Christine Wenc |
| Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden | Steve Coll |
| History Matters | David McCullough, Dorie McCullough Lawson, Michael Hill |
| How To Be A Stoic | Robert Dobbin, C.D.N. Costa, Martin Hammond |
| If It Sounds Like A Quack: A Journey To The Fringes of American Medicine | Matthew Hongolitz-Hetling |
| James Madison: American Prophet | Duane Ostler |
| John Hancock: First to Sign, First to Invest in America’s Independence | Willard Sterne Randall |
| Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House | Jared Cohen |
| Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success | Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig |
| Mad House | Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater |
| Lunkers, Keepers, and Ones That Got Away: Fish Tales From Four Generations of Anglers | Jerrsy Apps |
| On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR | Steve Oney |
| On Character | Stanley McChrystal |
| On The Shortness of Life | Seneca |
| On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century | Timothy Snyder |
| Plucked: Chicken, Antibiotics, and How Big Business Changed the Way the World Eats | Maryn McKenna |
| Polarized Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics | Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins |
| President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman | William Lee Miller |
| Replaceable You: Adventures in Humanj Anatomy | Mary Roach |
| Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Wrong With Our AI Future | Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato |
| The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World | David Robson |
| The Federalist Papers | Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay |
| The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More | Jefferson Fisher |
| The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple | William H. McRaven |
| The Mission: A True Story | David Brown |
| The Notebook: A History of Thinking On Paper | Rolland Allen |
| The Sirens Call: How Attention Became The World’s Most Endangered Resource | Chris Hayes |
| Tonight In Jungleland: The Making of Born To Run | Peter Ames Carlin |
| Tunnel 29: A Story of Courage and Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall | Helena Merriman |
| Washington: A Life | Ron Chernow |
| Way To Wealth | Benjamin Franklin |
| When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows | Steven Pinker |
| Why Taiwan Matters: A Short History of a Small Island That Will Dictate Our Future | Kerry Brown |
Dave Edwards Media 