Hot Book Summer: My 2025 Reading List
I’m officially calling it Hot Book Summer, mostly because the only heat I’m interested in is whatever’s in these books I’m about to read.
Hello and welcome back to Productivity, Without Privilege, a newsletter where I both share productivity tips to help you succeed at work, sharply criticize legacy media, and occasionally tell you about a cool steam mop or video game that I found! I’m your host, Alan Henry, and my book, Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized is available anywhere you choose to get your books. Buy one for yourself, buy one for your friend, buy one for your dog and read it to them. I’m sure they’ll love it, but they may not find it terribly practical on their end. If you already have a copy, consider supporting me and this newsletter by either sending me a tip here, or subscribing to my Patreon, which gives you early access to this newsletter, among other perks.
Speaking of books, I’ve had more time than I’m used to having lately, which means I’ve had time to dive into the pile of books that have been slowly growing on my bedside table. In this newsletter, I want to share some of those titles on my reading list with you! I’ll include fiction and nonfiction, books that I’ve finished, and books that are on my reading list to get through this summer, and a few that I’m eagerly looking forward to.
I don’t want to pretend this list is horribly special or will give you some deeper insight into anything specific, though. Most reading lists promise to hook you into The Book That Everyone Will Be Talking About or something, or the books you’ll see people reading in airports when they want everyone around them to know what they’re reading. That’s not me. This is just a list of good books that I personally enjoy, have enjoyed, or will enjoy, and I hope that you will too.
If you prefer to just shop the whole list at once (with one notable omission, sadly. Taking Denver isn’t on Bookshop, so you’ll have to get that one from Amazon), you can shop this list on Bookshop here.
Oh, and disclaimer: if you buy one of these books from my Bookshop list, or using the Amazon links below, I get a small portion of your purchase. They’re affiliate links.
Now, let’s get to it, shall we? Here are my picks below, with descriptions from each book’s publisher, listed alphabetically by author’s last name.
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The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, by Matsuo Basho, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa
In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. When he composed The Narrow Road to the Deep North, he was an ardent student of Zen Buddhism, setting off on a series of travels designed to strip away the trappings of the material world and bring spiritual enlightenment. He wrote of the seasons changing, of the smells of the rain, the brightness of the moon, and the beauty of the waterfall, through which he sensed mysteries of the universe. The seventeenth-century travel writing not only chronicles Basho's perilous journeys through Japan, but it also captures his vision of eternity in the transient world around him.
In his lucid translation, Nobuyuki Yuasa captures the Lyrical qualities of Basho's poetry and prose by using the natural rhythms and language of contemporary speech. In his introduction, he examines the development of the haibun style, in which poetry and prose stand side by side. This edition also includes maps and notes on the texts.
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When The Earth Was Green, by Riley Black
Fossil plants allow us to touch the lost worlds from billions of years of evolutionary backstory. Each petrified leaf and root show us that dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and even humans would not exist without the evolutionary efforts of their leafy counterparts. It has been the constant growth of plants that have allowed so many of our favorite, fascinating prehistoric creatures to evolve, oxygenating the atmosphere, coaxing animals onto land, and forming the forests that shaped our ancestors’ anatomy. It is impossible to understand our history without them. Or, our future. (Disclosure: Riley and I are mutuals on Bluesky and I adore her.)
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Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, by Brene Brown
Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable or to dare greatly. Based on twelve years of pioneering research, Brené Brown PhD, MSW, dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and argues that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.
Brown explains how vulnerability is both the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief, and disappointment, and the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation, and creativity. She writes: “When we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.”
Daring Greatly is not about winning or losing. It’s about courage. In a world where “never enough” dominates and feeling afraid has become second nature, vulnerability is subversive. Uncomfortable. It’s even a little dangerous at times. And, without question, putting ourselves out there means there’s a far greater risk of getting criticized or feeling hurt. But when we step back and examine our lives, we will find that nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous, and hurtful as standing on the outside of our lives looking in and wondering what it would be like if we had the courage to step into the arena—whether it’s a new relationship, an important meeting, the creative process, or a difficult family conversation. Daring Greatly is a practice and a powerful new vision for letting ourselves be seen.
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Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, by Peter S. Goodman
The history of the last half century in America, Europe, and other major economies is, in large part, the story of wealth flowing upward. The most affluent people emerged from capitalism’s triumph in the Cold War to loot the peace, depriving governments of the resources needed to serve their people, and leaving them tragically unprepared for the worst pandemic in a century.
Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative “Davos Men”—members of the billionaire class—chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man’s wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more.
Goodman’s revelatory exposé of the global billionaire class reveals their hidden impact on nearly every aspect of modern society: widening wealth inequality, the rise of anti-democratic nationalism, the shrinking opportunity to earn a livable wage, the vulnerabilities of our health-care systems, access to affordable housing, unequal taxation, and even the quality of the shirt on your back. Meticulously reported yet compulsively readable, Davos Man is an essential read for anyone concerned about economic justice, the capacity of societies to grapple with their greatest challenges, and the sanctity of representative government.
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Australian Food, by Bill Granger
In the 20 years since Bill Granger published his first book of recipes, Sydney Food, the world has fallen in love with the joyfully casual Australian way of eating. As a self-taught cook, straight out of art school, Bill furnished his first street-corner eatery in minimalist style, serving a small but perfectly formed menu of domestic dishes around a central communal table. He captured the hearts of Sydneysiders and visitors alike, while setting an exciting new standard for cafe dining.
Since then, Bill has been crowned the 'egg master of Sydney' (New York Times 2002), the 'king of breakfast' (The Telegraph Magazine, 2016), the 'creator of avocado toast' (Washington Post 2016) and 'the restaurateur most responsible for the Australian cafe's global reach' (The New Yorker 2018).
Nowadays, from Sydney to Tokyo, and London to Seoul, queues form to enjoy ricotta hotcakes ('Sydney's most iconic dish' Good Food 2019), fluffy scrambled eggs, lively salads and punchy curries. It is a bright picture of Australian food that has travelled across the globe, packed with fresh flavours and local produce, healthy but never preachy, whose main ingredient seems to be sunshine itself. The plates at any of Bill's restaurants are more sophisticated today, reflecting decades of global experience and culinary creativity-but the warmth of atmosphere and joy of eating remain the same.
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Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream, by Megan Greenwell
A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers.
Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Private equity controls our hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prisons. The industry even manages highways, municipal water systems, fire departments, emergency medical services, and owns a growing swath of commercial and residential real estate.
Private equity executives, meanwhile, are not only among the wealthiest people in American society, but have grown to become modern-day barons with outsized influence on our politics and legislation. CEOs of firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, and Apollo are rewarded with seats in the Senate and on the boards of the country’s most august institutions; meanwhile, entire communities are hollowed out as a result of their buyouts. Workers lose their jobs. Communities lose their institutions. Only private equity wins. (Disclosure: Megan and I worked together at WIRED when she was Executive Editor there and I was Service Editor, and she was EIC of Deadspin shortly after I was EIC at Lifehacker, when both sites were in the same corporate portfolio. Also, she’s incredible.)
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How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, by Daniel Immerwahr
We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country has governed and inhabited?
In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.
In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.
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The Backwater Sermons, by Jay Julme
Jay Hulme is an award-winning transgender poet, performer, educator, and speaker. In late 2019, his fascination with old church buildings turned into a life-changing encounter with the God he had never believed in, and he was baptised in the Anglican church. In this new poetry collection, Jay details his journey through faith and baptism during an unprecedented worldwide pandemic. As he finds God in the ruined factories and polluted canals of his home city, Jonah is heckled over etymology, angels appear in tube stations, and Jesus sits atop a multi-story car park. Cathedrals are trans, trans people are cathedrals, and amidst it all, God reaches out to meet us exactly where we are. Jay’s poetry explores belief in the modern world and offers a perspective on queer faith that will appeal not only to Christians but young members of the LGBT+ community who are interested in faith but unsure of where to start.
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Taking Denver: A Dark Marfia Romance, by Kayla Kyng
Taking Denver is an age-gap, dark mafia romance with a love triangle consisting of a strong female lead, a hero with secrets, and a possessive, morally gray gangster. This is a triple POV, but it is Denver's story, and the majority of chapters are from her POV. (Disclosure: Kayla and I are friends, and I want to support her book in any way I can. This is the first in a three-book series, with the second one being available by the time you read this, and the third on the way soon. Plus, it’s incredible and I’ve been reading more romance lately.)
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Everything But Money, by Jessica Morehouse
Why is money the #1 stress in my life? How do I keep getting into debt after working so hard to get out? Will I ever have enough money to make me feel secure?
If this sounds like you, it’s time to think about your money story. For the past decade, Jessica Moorhouse, an Accredited Financial Counsellor Canada and money expert, has had intimate conversations with strangers from around the world who trust her to listen without judgment and offer solutions to their financial problems. It is Moorhouse’s experience (as well as a fact supported by research) that a lot of stuff prevents you from thinking about money clearly and getting out of your own way. This book includes all the insecurities, fixations, and inherited ideas about money that you carry around—and provides a guide on how to get past them. No number of top-ten tips or golden rules will help you with your money struggles unless you confront what is causing them in the first place—be it trauma, human behaviour, or an unjust social system. It’s only when you acknowledge and understand the real source of your money issues that you can start making a plan to finally overcome them.
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Automatic Noodle, by Annalee Newitz
You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food—the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around—for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.
But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them. (Disclosure: Annalee and I are friends, and worked together when they were the EIC of both io9 and Gizmodo and I was EIC of Lifehacker, when those two sites were in the same corporate portfolio. Also they’re amazing and I look up to them so much. You should absolutely read everything they’ve written, not just this new book.)
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Tilt, by Emma Pattee
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.
Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life. (Disclosure: Emma and I have worked together when I was at The New York Times, mostly on freelance stories that she wrote and I edited.)
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Personally, I like a good mix of fiction and nonfiction, romance and narrative science, which I think you can see reflected in this list.
This is a lot of books, and I don’t think I’ll get them all done by the end of summer. That’s fine with me—the important thing is to read, and to read a diverse mix of books and authors. So, if you see something above that looks interesting to you, by all means, support the authors (and me, for that matter) by picking it up. And if you have your own suggestions for the list, or maybe for a future reading list, send them to me! Just hit reply and start typing.
Why, and How, Journalists Must Cover Racism, by Jamil Smith: Jamil is editor in chief of The Emancipator, and has written more than a little about how and why major newsrooms should cover American racism for what it is, instead of making excuses for it—coverage that’s probably more important today than it’s ever been. And for what’s one of his final pieces for The Emancipator as it changes publishers, he speaks to several contributors to the site about the importance of the work they do, and how media as a whole can do better approaching racism without fear and without immediately ceding ground to the privileged people who are happy to take it and then demand more. It’s worth a read, and the wealth of opinions from extremely talented journalists in the interview section is a delight.
Americans Want More U.S. Factory Jobs—as Long as They Don’t Have To Work Them, by Alicia Adamczyk: This piece is a little bit of Americana that I think more people, especially my fellow neighbors, should face. So much of American Mythology (which is what I generally call the sanitized, glowed-up version of American history that we’re often taught from childhood) is presented with this idea that there was a time where America was a hard-working nation that actually built and made things and that we don’t do that anymore. Not only is that false on its face (American industry is still alive and still very productive) but the only ways in which it is true have nothing to do with the American people and more to do with American companies embracing the globalization wave of the 1980s-2000s, realizing it’s cheaper and easier to exploit workers abroad to make cheap products for us to consume at home rather than employ workers at home and pay them living wages in safe working conditions. But the mythology persists, with people dreaming of an America where everything they consume is made locally, obviously without any of them having to take any kind of accountability for what that would actually mean.
What To Do if You Find a Shipwreck, by Justin Pot: My friend Justin strikes again with a story that reminds me of my Lifehacker days: the kind that answers a question you didn’t even know you had, with an answer that’s satisfying to read. This piece is in Popular Science, and sure enough, if you’re ever diving and think you’ve encountered a shipwreck, whether you think you’re the first person to ever find it or you just didn’t know you were diving where it was, he knows what you need to know. And not just legally, either! We’re talking legally, ethically, and environmentally. It might be tempting to sift around looking for some gold dubloons, but you might want to check your greed and contact the authorities instead.
You all probably know that I’m pretty terminally online. I have younger friends who remark that I’m somehow more gen-alpha than they are because I’m the one who sends them memes before they see them, but I’m also older than they are, so I shouldn’t know about any of them. It makes me pretty happy, and honestly, the memes can be pretty good these days, so if you’re not watching with an open mind, you’re definitely missing out.
But the flip side to being online so much is that, well, everything is terrible.
The news is awful, everything is “BREAKING” because publishers are fighting for your eyeballs, and combine that with social feeds of people either being consistently angry for good reason or being consistently angry for bad reasons, and it’s a recipe for burnout. Now, I’m not the type of person who believes in “social media detoxes.” Some people do, many, many words have been written about why and how to take one, so if that’s you, I’ll leave you to it. Personally, I’ve declined more of those pitches than I care to remember.
Instead, here’s what I do: I check in with myself every so often as soon as I decide to look at social media of any form. And I say “every so often,” but honestly, I do it within the first 30 seconds of opening my app of choice, whatever app that is: Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, or heaven forbid, Twitter (no, I’m never calling it the other thing.)
I ask myself, “How am I feeling right now? How has what I’ve seen so far changed my mood?”
If I feel worse than I did when I opened the app, I close it. If I feel good and happy with what I’ve seen, I let myself keep looking. If I’m on the fence, I close it. In all of those cases, I might try a different app, one that might make me feel better instead of worse.
It helps that I mainly use social media less for news and updates and more to actually keep up with and stay connected with friends I have around the world. I use news feeds and follow individual journalists instead of entire outlets when it comes to staying informed, which I wholeheartedly recommend. Instead, I make lists of friends for sites like Bluesky and Twitter, where I can check in with just the people I care about and see what they’ve posted recently. If I want to check in on the news, I have specific lists for that. So sometimes I’ll open Bluesky, scroll through my “Fam” list, of just people whose posts I want to see, and when I’ve seen them all, I’m done.
But if I’m bored, or have time, I’ll check out my Mutuals list, or my Following list to see what everyone else is talking about. If I catch myself getting angry, unhappy, sad, or feeling helpless or frustrated and alone (which is what usually happens after doomscrolling for too long), I remind myself it’s time to log off. My first check-in is generally 30 seconds to a minute of scrolling. That sounds quick, but you really see a lot in that short time period. My next check-in is usually a minute or two beyond that, and I’ll space it out from there, but never longer than 5 minutes per check-in.
So while I definitely recommend making topic-specific lists for your interests on social media—I’ll walk you through how I do that another time—my Try This today is to try those regular check-ins. I know far too many people who have either disconnected with the information ecosystem entirely and find themselves uninformed when, for example, the national guard marches on unarmed protesters in LA, or the US government builds concentration camps in their hometowns. Then there are others who feel miserable but keep scrolling because they feel like they have to stay connected and bear witness, no matter what that does to their mental health.
There is a middle ground, and you’re free to define it for yourself.
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That’ll do it for me this time around. Like I said at the top of this newsletter, I started a Patreon for the folks who want to support me and this newsletter. There is a tier that gets early access to Productivity, Without Privilege, and to any other media commentary or streaming stuff I get up to over there or on my Twitch channel. You’re by no means required to sign up, and this newsletter will always remain free, promise. If you don’t like the idea of a subscription but would love to support me otherwise, drop me a tip here.
Now then, be good to yourselves and each other, and I’ll see you back here soon.