Cal's 2025 Reading Wrapped

The very best books I read in 2025

Every December, Spotify tells us who we were that year.

What we played on repeat. What we couldn’t let go of. What we discovered.

The Spotify Wrapped feels a little like time travel. Don’t you think?

As far as I know, Goodreads doesn’t do a “wrapped” for books—so I made my own.

These are the books that followed me through 2025. I read them on long flights, on top of mountains during an ultra marathon, and on safari in Africa. Mostly, I read them on my couch, in the early morning, before the sun comes up, with a cup of coffee.

This isn’t a list of the best books I've read. It’s a playlist of the ones that stuck—the ones I still think about and recommend. They’re my quake books of 2025 – the ones that shook me to the core.

Welcome to my 2025 Book Wrapped. Share your own in the comments.

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Night of the Grizzlies

by Jack Olsen

A true story about a grizzly attack that literally ripped my face off! (Ok, not literally).

I ran a multi-day ultramarathon in Colorado over the summer and wanted something nature-y to read between runs. I found this gem at a bookstore in Durango. I’d never heard of this crazy event before (or the book), but I think it’s the best thing I read in 2025.

Seriously – it reads like you’re inside a Jaws movie, with jump scares and carnage that left me unable to sleep for weeks.

Quick summary: During the summer 1967, park staff at Glacier National Park allowed a heavily trafficked chalet to feed garbage to bears because it “made a good show.” If you’ve spent any time in mountain towns, you already know why trash bins are locked down tight—we don’t want bears getting comfortable around people.

That’s exactly what happened at Glacier. And it led to the worst grizzly bear accident in U.S. history. To this day, nothing has surpassed it.

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of The Donner Party

By Daniel James Brown

A few things surprised me about the Donner Party ordeal. First of all, I assumed maybe one or two people were consumed. Nope, most of the perished ended up in the survival food bank. Second—and this really stuck with me—the heroism of many of the emigrants, especially the women, was nothing short of extraordinary and has been overlooked for far too long.

What shocked me most, though, is how few people today have even heard of the incident. The majority of my friends didn’t know the story. The rest only know it through cannibalism jokes. “Well, I hope we don’t get lost and end up like the Donner Party on this hiking trail.”

In the fall and winter of 1846–1847, roughly 90 emigrants traveling from the Midwest to California in search of better land and better prospects found themselves trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains. They had followed a so-called shortcut promoted by a famous frontiersman and entrepreneur, Lansford Hastings. Here’s the rub: the shortcut didn’t exist. Well—it technically did, but no one, Hastings included, had ever tested it. The route was essentially conjured to funnel more settlers into California, where Hastings had invested heavily in real estate. Today, this would be like someone convincing you to buy cryptocurrency when they’ve never made a dime from it themselves.

The Donner Party became a deeply troubling American story. A group of people driven by the promise of the American Dream, following a path designed purely out of greed. Add in grit, sacrifice, and flashes of unbelievable heroism, and you get something uniquely American—both inspiring and devastating.

Should you read this book? Yes. There are horrifying scenes, no doubt. But there’s also hope. The author—who also wrote The Boys in the Boat—tells the saga largely through the eyes of a young woman named Sarah Graves. Honestly, she might be the bravest person I’ve ever read about. As far as I can tell, her story has never really been told, which makes this perspective feel fresh and deeply human. In the end, it’s not just a story about survival—it’s a story about hope.

Last of The Wine

By Mary Renault

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t read much fiction—a condition I vow to break in 2026. I read exactly two novels in 2025: The Road by Cormac McCarthy (coincidentally, also about cannibalism) and The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault—a mostly forgotten novel from the 1950s.

I discovered The Last of the Wine at Ryan Holiday’s bookstore in Bastrop and picked it up mostly because the cover art grabbed me. That, and I’ve recently fallen down a full-blown Ancient Greece rabbit hole. Who needs dragon fantasies when the Greeks basically lived in one? I’ve loved learning about the battles between the Spartans and Athenians, and the philosophers knocking about—Plato, Diogenes, and of course Socrates.

The Last of the Wine takes place during the final phase of the Peloponnesian War, a time when Socrates bummed around Athens, educating (some would say corrupting) the city’s troubled youth. That’s the backdrop—but at its core, this is a coming-of-age story. It follows a young man named Alexias as he tries to live up to an accomplished father, dodge annoying and intolerable suitors, fall in love, train in sports, and go to war.

It’s one of the most beautiful novels I’ve ever read, and I genuinely couldn’t put it down. Why do I think this book is relatively unknown? My guess is that it was simply ahead of its time. The “suitors” are other boys in Alexias’s neighborhood who are trying to sleep with him, while he’s quietly falling in love with his friend Lysis. I can’t imagine that was exactly a crowd-pleaser in 1956.

I’m here to tell you it’s a perfect novel. And if it were released today, I’m convinced it would be a bestseller.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

By Patrick Radeen Keefe

Maybe it’s because I’m Catholic, but reading about The Troubles always feels visceral. The book is about an unspeakably violent act committed in the name of political leverage and control – it’s about probably the worst crime during the height of the Troubles. Here’s what really scared me about this conflict. Northern Ireland turned into a divided society rife with political dysfunction, extreme nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. Sound familiar? I believe The Troubles are the red herring for the US, which is why everyone should read this book… or you can watch Derry Girls on Netflix, which is also great. Also, I’m pretty sure the author solves a cold case murder while writing this book which I don’t think happens very often in the true crime genre.

Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation

By John Carlin

I’m not sure this is the best-written book I read in 2025, but few people inspired me more this year than Nelson Mandela. One of the greatest thrills of my life was traveling to South Africa last March and walking Robben Island—standing beside the prison cell where Mandela spent 18 years. It was there that he studied Shakespeare, Martin Luther King Jr., and Maya Angelou, and emerged with an almost inhuman capacity for empathy and forgiveness.

Playing the Enemy follows Mandela’s journey from incarceration to saving the soul of a nation—partly by leaning on the Springboks, South Africa’s national rugby team, to help bring the country together. In many ways, he’s a modern Lincoln.

Read this book—and Long Walk to Freedom—if you’re interested.

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Other books I really enjoyed this year include:

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi. Not enough people know the story of Emmett Till. If you don’t, please read The Barn.

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant. Vaillant might be the best narrative nonfiction writer alive. While not as good as The Tiger, it’s still a great read.

Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King. If there’s one thing I took away from this, it’s that Shakespeare and Timothée Chalamet got Henry totally wrong—but who cares.