Dear Reader,

I warned you in my previous letter that would be infiltrating your inboxes with a review of the 23 books I read in 2025. What I didn’t tell you was that I would be doing so in the form of a video. Since I’m writing a dystopian sci-fi thriller, I read a lot of classics in those genres (also some contemporary), but I also read some non-fiction, magical realism, even poetry.

Here are the books I read by genre, to pique your interest:

Dystopian: 1984 -Orwell, Brave New World -Huxley, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep -Philip K Dick, Wool - Hugh Howey, Neuromancer (1-2) -William Gibson, A Scanner Darkly -Philip K Dick , What We Can Know -Ian McKewan

Science Fiction: Dune - Frank Herbert, Foundation -Isaac Asimov, Hyperion (1-2) -Dan Simmons, Red Rising (1-3) -Pierce Brown ,

Other Fiction & Poetry: Kafka on the Shore -Haruki Murakami, The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa, A Litte Larger Than The Entire Universe (Selected Poems) - Fernando Pessoa , The Crying of Lot 49 -Pynchon,

Non Fiction: The Ministry of Truth -Dorian Lynskey, How Tyrants Fall -Marcel Dirsus , Writing as a Vocation -Haruki Murakami, Brave New World Revisited -Huxley

Hear me rank and give very brief reviews on all of these in this video, on YouTube.

If you’re like me, you watch YouTube more than TV. Recently, I’ve been living vicariously through this guy who builds intricate, biodiverse rainforest terrariums inside his house; for me, it’s as fun as reality tv and more thrilling than sports.

There’s also lots of great content about books and writing (highly recommend Brandon Sanderson’s lectures on writing sci fi & fantasy), and it’s been fun to pivot my content creation journey along with my transition from musician to first-time author. While content creation is and will remain secondary to the actual process of writing my novel, I find making videos and sharing knowledge helps me internalize and derive new insights.

As I mentioned in my last update, I’ve started posting regularly on TikTok, mostly about writing and books, but also movies, politics, travel, etc.

Imaginative, insightful, delightful, somber, funny, delirious, beautiful, relatable, poetic, and existential, this one’s for the thinkers, dreamers, artists, and weirdos forced to conform and embrace the disquiet of modern tedium, yet never allow it to suppress our imagination.

The Book of Disquiet is the anonymous artist’s anthem, opus of Portugal’s multi-identity poet Fernando Pessoa, written on scraps of paper discovered in a trunk and arranged/published posthumously by scholars. Around 100 years later, it still feels poignant and relatable; Bernard Soares is all of us creatives reckoning with our anxieties, dreams, and the prospect of finding (and escaping) our corners of this uncaring world designed to dominate more sensitive souls.

It’s a somewhat challenging but rewarding existentialist read. I keep list of “Great Quotes” on my phone, and Pessoa is now one of the most-quoted authors on the list from this book alone. If you’ve read philosophy, it’s a breeze. If not, it’s a great intro that eases the reader in through beautiful descriptions (especially of Lisbon), humor, emotion, and the (ultimately unfulfilled) hint of a plot. On that—It’s important and remarkable to keep in mind that this is essentially a cross between a journal and a first draft, unlike any book you’ll ever read, which is part of the joy and privilege of reading it—but the critic in me wonders how much better it might’ve been had Pessoa had the time & courage to finish it, which is why I give it a 4/5 stars.

I’m glad I chose the Serpents Tail edition, which has roughly half the total entries as the original/complete edition (I think), and still felt completely satisfying to me. Even across this abridged version, the repetition of subject and style blends and builds on itself.

I just finished reading “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which heavily inspired Orwell’s 1984. Perhaps next post I’ll say something about the fine line between taking inspiration and stealing… It’s the subject of my next YouTube video, so I’ll be sure to link that too.

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Thanks for reading! You’ll hear from me again soon.

-Brendan