The books I’m reading in 2026

Coming soon

Of all the books that I’ve read from Fredrik Backman this year (and they are plenty), this was probably my least favourite, not because it’s not excellent, but because a big part of it is too violent for my taste. Unlike the other books, there isn’t a character that I feel connected to. In fact, I dislike most of them (which perhaps is the point??), and while the ending is really enjoyable, I spent too long feeling like it wasn’t a pleasent experience.

I knew this book wasn’t for me about 25 minutes into it. It’s not that it’s bad, but I’ve learned enough about how Big Tech works from other sources and books to find there was nothing new in it for me. I pushed through and finished it, and I could recommend it for anyone who hasn’t read anything about the dangers of Big Tech and social media but, as I said, I found everything in it was just repetitive for me.

This is essentially a book that explains how tech companies inflate the AI bubble artificially with the sole purpose of creating potential value for investors, without any real consideration for what the actual users may want or need.

 

It’s why you see AI everywhere: every company is trying to show its potential for growth so companies invest in it and some people get richer. The key phrase here is “potential for growth”, not actual growth, and every tech company uses messed-up metrics to show that “growth”. It’s why you see ‘self-driving’ cars that require a team of engineers actually watching what it does, or why Amazon Go’s ‘AI’ checkout was actually thousands of Indian people looking at video footage to figure out what people were buying.   

 

The reality, however, is that there’s no real demand for AI products to justify the unbelievable amount of money and resources being spent on it, which is why, when the AI bubble bursts, it’s going to be worse than the 2008 crisis and the pandemic combined and, as usual, the rich will benefit from it, and the average guy will pay for it. Great book, though!

Coming soon

As popular and well-liked this book is, it just didn’t click for me. The format makes it quite confusing and hard to follow at the start, and once it gets going, it’s just a long, rather boring story during which you spend too much time reading addresses to figure out who is writing to whom. On top of that, I found the ending extremely underwhelming. 

I’ve probably read too many books on habits, and at this point I feel pretty confident about how to build one so it sticks. So maybe I didn’t need to read this one because it’s very similar to others. Still, this is one of the best books to recommend to someone who hasn’t read something like this before. It’s a bit on the long side, though, and often not really justifiably so. 

This was the final one of my Fredrik Backman streak (for now, at least), and it’s just a fun little book about him as a new parent. It’s written mostly as comedy but, like his other books, with a serious undertone and plenty of life lessons along the way.

Like the one below, this is another beautiful sad story with incredible character development. I was hooked from the start, although sometimes it can feel a bit dense. Still, another incredible book.

This is a beautiful, funny, emotional and sad book all at the same time. It might make you cry a few times. What I’m finding with Fredrik Backman’s books is that he’s a master at offering valuable life lessons through his books’ characters and their interactions with others. I liked this so much I felt compelled to read his latest book next (as you’ll see above). 

It’s hard to overstate how important this book is in understanding the online surveillance state that we live in, the horrible people behind it, their lack of even the minimum amount of human decency, and how far they will go to make a profit and grab more power at the expense of everything that’s moral. It’s no wonder Facebook tried to ban the author from publishing this, although it’s also a worrying sign of the times how the one decent person in the company is treated like an alien and gargabe while the rest continue to make millions while keeping their jobs. Everybody should read this one.

I found this book to be delightful. It essentially focuses on ways to appreciate the nature that surrounds you – from bird watching to equipment you can buy – and it includes tips and tricks to do it in a meaningful and practical manner. It’s short and sweet. The only downside is that it’s mostly based on UK stuff, so some things will not apply if you live somewhere else.

This book is a perfect example of what anyone should read to understand the climate crisis, how we got here, and what the solutions are. If you’ve read enough about it, there’s not an awful new information in it, but it’s still great to hear it from David Attenborough’s perspective. What you realise with these books is that the second halves are usually hopeful as they talk about solutions, but then you see that things have only got worse since they were written. In this case, this book was written six years ago, before the world wasted even more resources to generate fake TikTok videos. What’s also remarkable about this book is that he wrote it when he was 94.

The whole idea behind this book is that it’s always better to have constraints when working or creating things, be it books, companies or products. It’s a sound idea and it’s not hard to get behind it if you find areas in which you can apply the theory. Having said that, this book could have been a long blog post, as it gets a bit repetitive once you get the gist of what he’s trying to say.

You can never learn enough about ADHD, particularly if you learn it from the experience of people living with it, both as person who has it or the person supporting a person who has it. This is not a scientific book (as you may guess by the title) but I found it valuable to see how certain behaviours that you never thought of are actually a result of ADHD.

I had watched the movie before I read the book, and yes, the book is much better, despite the fact that I love Tom Hanks.

I could see why this book could be useful for a teenager with anxiety and, and even for someone who is prone to auto-criticism. As a novel, however, it wasn’t my favourite.

I think that what you learn from this book depends on how willing you are to sit down with it and try to get a good grasp of all the contents, because it’s mostly like a textbook. It’s fascinating, to be sure, but a quick read won’t really do if you want to understand how the universe works. Or maybe I’m not smart enough, I don’t know.

This is a book about metabolism and anthropology. However, it’s framed around weight loss, because apparently that’s the only way to sell books like this. It’s still interesting enough though. The main hot take is that you can’t “out-exercise” a bad diet, which is something that most people get wrong.

I loved this story, and it’s, coincidentally because of the previous book I read, a great example of how social media can be used for good. A guy becomes friends with a robin, and he shares it with the world, and people love it because why wouldn’t you. I read it in one sitting.

A great read on how greed has ruined tech and what we can do about it (not much except for not using the products that suck), from the creator of the Enshittification himself.

This is a short and sweet novel that you can finish in a day. It’s about quiet acts of everyday courage and kindness. That’s about it.

I’ll be  honest: I forgot I had already read this one when I picked it up… So here’s what I wrote in 2024, because nothing much has changed since: While this is a very painless book to read, I didn’t find it very inspiring or interesting. I suppose it’s about the process of mastering something (in this case archery), but I just didn’t get much out of it.

To be fair, the ‘theory’ in this book is something that you may need to hear and that it might actually help you. Does that mean you need to read about it for some 10 hours to get it? I’m gonna say no… If you’ve ever heard of Epictetus’ “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.” quote, that’s pretty much half this book you don’t have to read.

This is a book about dying, which means it’s a book about living. It’s short and sweet, and filled with life lessons from a dying person. It’s really wonderful. “We need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.”

Generic life advice, as you might expect from the title. At least it’s pretty short.

As with every book by Yuval Noah Harari, the lessons to learn are based on centuries of history which, in my experience after reading three of his books, make for pretty scary reading because he clearly shows evidence of how the past has shaped our present and will likely shape our future. It really makes for a fascinating read to understand how information and misinformation has worked throughout human history, and how it works and affects us on a daily basis now. As with his previous two books, I’m left with the feeling that he can sort of predict what’s coming based on what’s already happened in the past and, as you can imagine, it’s not all that pretty.

Funny story this… I meant to pick up The Consolations of Philosophy and instead bought The Consolation of Philosophy, which are very different books. The former is a modern book, while the latter is a classic philosophical text written around 523 AD. As much as I tried to pull through, I just couldn’t do it and gave up after about an hour, the language too… classic for me.

I could tell this book was going to be rough to read just by looking at the title. It’s based on a tweet by the author: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” It’s sort of an uncomfortable read because you are faced with the question of what your impact will look like when the current things going on in the world become history. In the end, I don’t think the author has a solution to the problem, which is essentially being silent or passive while there’s a genocide (and other things) happening in the world, but he explains in such an incredible way that he at least manages to help you untangle your thoughts on why we act (or not act) the way we do, and the dangers associated with it. 

I’ve read books on sleep before, but this one highlights how pretty much everything in your body has a circadian clock. In that sense, some parts are pretty interesting. Having said that, almost the entire book is just a big ad for Time-Restricted Eating (TRE). I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing if you are into that, but it makes a significant part of the reading unnecessary because at the end of the day the author’s solution to most sleep issues is to practice TRE.

It’s sort of pleasing to see this book had nothing new for me, given everything I’ve read about stoicism. I imagined that would be the case going in, though, but I still wanted to find another “entry-level” book I can recommend, and this one does that job. Still, if you’ve read about the Stoics virtues before and don’t want to be told the same concepts and stories again, you can skip this one.

You need to be really into Seinfeld and/or Curb Your Enthusiasm to care about or appreciate this book. Fortunately, I’m a huge fan of both, so reading this was delightful. There is so much to learn about both shows and about Larry David. Plus, it’s full of unseen (by me) photos and it would make for a great coffee table book. If I had a coffee table book.

This is a very well researched, but also very technical book, so while there’s a lot to learn about the regulatory and technical parts of the plan to be net zero, it’s not a particularly easy read. The bottom line here is that reaching net zero is not enough to save us, and that even reaching net zero by 2050 is nearly impossible given the power of the oil industry and how the world functions. So you know… good luck?