Robin's Blog

Favourite books I read in 2025

I really haven’t got much time or energy at the moment (I spent most of the Christmas break with an extremely painful back, which was exhausting and frustrating), but I wanted to post a very brief list of books I read this year. I read a total of 44 books this year, which includes re-reads and audiobooks. A lot of them aren’t included here as they’ve been included in other lists I’ve posted, or are childrens books I’ve been re-reading.

The books listed below have a significant tech/nerd/infrastructure focus, but cover a fairly broad set of fields even so. I hope you find something interesting to add to your ‘to read’ list!

• Killing Thatcher – About the attempted assassination of Thatcher by the IRA. Fascinating in general, covers a lot of Irish/British history, police approaches, IRA structures and so on. I learned a lot, was shocked by a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
• A Brush with Steam: David Shepherd’s Railway Story – Very good, lots of stuff about how the early steam preservation movement got going, plus crazy tales of African railways in the 60s. Remarkably funny in places, with absurd BR bureaucracy and things falling off the back of lorries.
• The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage – I’d never quite got round to reading this before, but enjoyed it like I thought I would.
• Concorde – One of the best Concorde books I’ve read, with a load of stuff that was new to me.
• The Boy Who Played with Fusion – I read The Radioactive Boy Scout last year, and found it really depressing. This is a far happier book, and still interesting.
• Dome Raiders: How Scotland Yard Foiled the Greatest Robbery of All Time – Picked up from a charity shop but was surprised how engaging it was.
• Fuelling the Wars: PLUTO and the Secret Pipeline Network 1936–2015 – Very good; fascinating the way the oil pipeline network in the UK developed over the years, and the amount of infrastructure involved. Something I knew barely anything about before, but I’m now pointing out ‘pipeline posts’ to my wife when driving down country roads!
• A Passion for Space: Adventures of a Pioneering Female NASA Flight Controller – Long and very detailed, but gives a good insight into what her role actually involved.
• Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell – Very interesting – I knew about phone phreaking but not the details. I’d have liked a few more technical details and less about the groups of people involved though.
• Command and Control: The Story of Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Safety – One of my favourite books, this was a re-read this year, but I strongly recommend it. Scary but fascinating. The audiobook is good too.
• Petroleum Refining in Nontechnical Language – Bits of it were a bit above me (I only did chemistry to GCSE level), but it gave me a far better idea of what goes on at the oil refinery near us (Fawley, on the shore of Southampton Water).
• When the Dust Settles: Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster – Covers lots of the infrastructure around disasters and how they are managed. Some very sad stories and some surprises.
• Safecracker: A Chronicle of the Coolest Job in the World – Christmas present that I’ve finished already. Generally very interesting, but some weird bits of philosophy in it and not quite as good as it could be.
• Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components – Beautiful pictures and I learned a lot, even for components I thought I already understood!
• A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s by Alwyn W. Turner – a fascinating tour through the 1990s in Britain, covering everything from politics and law to popular culture. As someone who lived through the decade but didn’t really pay attention to the wider world (I was still a young child), it was fascinating.
• All in it together: England in the early 21st century by Alwyn W. Turner – not quite as good as his book about the 1990s, but still fascinating, and a bit of a trip down memory lane as I actually remember quite a lot of this period
• The Cut Throat Trial by The Secret Barrister writing as S. J. Fleet – very good, presumably very accurate to real legal cases (given the author’s experience) and with some nice twists and turns.

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This post originally appeared on Robin's Blog.

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