2025: Year Review
Another one bites the dust...
A tad late to the obnoxious and overly done year review party, but I figured I’d do one of these since this year has been a lot of ‘firsts’. First time quitting my six figure job. First attempt at writing a novel. First summer spent entirely reading & writing. And first blog with consistent output. Plus a few other personal firsts I’m sure I’ll get around to writing about eventually.
So it feels time to document the hard work and gloat a tad. Since that is what everyone else on this platform is doing. But I feel as though I did actually put in some decent literary efforts this year that I can look back on with fond memories and a sense of pride. Here goes…
Books Read —>
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (2020) by Eric Jorgenson
Solid, useful for business & start up considerations.
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine (1990) by Robert L. Moore & Douglas Gillette
Jungian archetypes analysis of manhood. Great read for such a short book, plus brilliant 90’s hard hitting style & rhetoric.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005) by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin
Slaps the movie out of the park, and it was a damn good movie. Perspectival shift on how big a deal the nuclear arms race was: serious people reckoning with serious world changing technology. Felt like reading about a different species to be honest.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021) by Oliver Burkeman
A decent self-help book about how you haven’t got time to do all the things you want to do. So just get started and stop stressing.
Why I Write: Inadvertent (2018) by Karl Ove Knausgaard
A book about writing from the legend himself. The third time I’ve read this perfect little meditative book. Writing ‘advice’ doesn’t get much better than this.
Fuccboi (2022) by Sean Thor Conroe
Sometimes you have to read contemporary fiction to remind yourself of why you should be reading The Classics™️. Enough said.
Bird by Bird: Sone Instructions on Writing and Life (1994) by Anne Lamott
One of the great writing books and it does live up to the hype. She’s a progressive hippy but that doesn’t matter: she is earnest and will make you a better writer.
The Elements of Style (1959) by William Shrunk Jr. & E.B. White
If you want to well write in the English language, you must pass through the pearly gates of Shrunk & White.
Think and Grow Rich (1937) by Napoleon Hill
Written by a nut-job with some whacky views, but worth trudging through.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (2016) by Cal Newport
A great manual for how to buckle down and get your ass into gear. Necessary reading in the productivity genre.
The Anthology of Balaji: A Guide to Technology, Truth, and Building the Future (2023) by Eric Jorgenson
Snippets of insight, aphorisms of discernment, tweets of the prophetic. Take Balaji’s ideas with a large chunk of Himalayan salt though.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990) by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
The original ‘productivity guru’, but based on rigorous science and experimental methodologies. Flow is good, flow is God, you want flow, flow wants you. Also… what a name!
The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles
Morocco’s most famous novel, written by an American expat though. The desert has its own laws, its own spells, its own abyss. A pivotal forgotten 20th century novel.
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (2019) by Cal Newport
The follow up to Deep Work, it explores how to disconnect from our digitally imbedded lives and why you should consider doing so.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) by Jonathan Haidt
Long story short: conservatives embody all 6 moral intuitions and liberals only have 2! And wow: 2012 feels like a previous century instead of only a previous decade. How times have changed…
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (1919) by Hermann Hesse
Short, elegant, sweet to the taste. Hesse’s other bildungsroman book that seldom gets mentioned. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire (2011) by Sam Gaddam & Ogi Ogas
Now highly dated by over a decade – pre dating apps and large scale social media. Essentially: men are from Mars ogling at naked alien chicks and women are reading erotica novels on Venus. End of story.
The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus
Sometimes a novel’s first line can be more famous than the novel’s content itself. In this instance: The Stranger out competes them all. Having ‘read’ the novel in high school, I wanted to revisit it and was slightly disappointed. Meursault is a bit of a dolt.
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure (2018) by Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff
To be coddled is to view oneself without agency, as a perpetual victim. But once one does that, then the race to the bottom is endless. Do not give in to The Three Great Untruths: 1) what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, 2) always trust your feelings, and 3) life is a battle between good people and evil people.
The Shadow of the Sun (1991) by Ryszard Kapuściński
Now this is how to do journalism. Biting, intense, rapturing. An absolute must in travel literature. Kapuściński’s Africa is immense.
Let It Come Down (1952) by Paul Bowles
His second follow up novel set in Tangier where it is always raining. More blatantly nihilistic and edgy but also perhaps lacking in depth & substance. Great read nevertheless. Premium prose and diction.
Total: 21
Didn’t finish:
* Americana (1971) by Don Delillo —Started off strong then got boring midway through. Sorry Don. Gotta keep me interested.
**The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man (1973) by Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird — Fascinating read. Annoyed that I didn’t finish it at the time. Will try return back to it eventually (book is in another continent right now unfortunately!).
Articles Read —>
This is not an extensive list since articles are harder to keep track of and I read too many in any given week to record them all down. But here are the major ones that got my noggin in a twist and are worth reading, organized by publication:
Compact Magazine
The Rise and Fall of Urbit by Adina Glickstein (June 18 2025)
Money by Vile Means by Peter Ryan (July 25 2025)
Goodbye Britain, Hello ‘Yookay’ by Peter Hitchens (August 26 2025)
The Faith of Nick Land by Geoff Shullenberger (October 15 2025)
The Great Feminization by Helen Andrews (October 16 2025)
Regime Change in Venezuela Is Bad for America by Juan David Rojas (October 17 2025)
The Lost Generation by Jacob Savage (December 15 2025)
Harper’s Magazine
The Goon Squad by Daniel Kolitz (November 2025 Issue)
The American Mind
What Is Total Boomer Luxury Communism? by Russ Greene (December 10 2025)
Everything is NOT Fine by Michael Anton (December 15 2025)
Quillette
Sexual Perversity in Ontario by Marilyn Simon (July 30 2025)
The Murder of Iryna Zarutska by Jukka Savolainen (September 13 2025)
The Fugitive Mind by Joan Maltese (March 27 2025)
Follow Substackers —>
Derek Thompson by Derek Thompson
The Death of Partying in the U.S.A.—and Why It Matters (July 9 2025)
Why Are Liberals More Depressed? (September 30 2025)
The Monks in the Casino (November 11 2025)
The 26 Most Important Ideas for 2026 (December 10 2025)
Crypto Trader Digest by Arthur Hayes
Sasa (January 7 2025)
The Ugly (January 28 2025)
The Genie (February 6 2025)
Zero Knowledge Proof (February 13 2025)
KISS of Death (March 3 2025)
The BBC (March 31 2025)
Ski Cut (April 23 2025)
Fatty Boom Boom (May 15 2025)
Assume The Position (June 17 2025)
Quid Pro Stablecoin (July 3 2025)
Time Signature (July 23 2025)
Buffalo Bill (August 27 2025)
Four, Seven (September 23 2025)
Bastille Day (October 2 2025)
Long Live The King! (October 9 2025)
Hallelujah (November 4 2025)
Snow Forecast (November 17 2025)
Adapt or Die (November 28 2025)
Love Language (December 19 2025)
Billionaire Psycho by Billionaire Psycho
Crocodile Tears and the Conservative Movement (February 10 2025)
Soviet America (July 10 2025)
Young Radicals (September 10 2025)
Frontier to Money Printer (November 20 2025)
Postcards From Barroom by John Carter
Ukrainada (March 21 2025)
Post-Mortem for the Canadian Election (April 30 2025)
Stripping the Word of its Power (May 2 2025)
The Class of 2026 (June 10 2025)
Homo Umbrans (September 25 2025)
Poastocracy (October 11 2025)
The Canadian Political Class Is Ideologically Incapable of Rebuilding The Military (November 13 2025)
The Simp-Rapist Complex (November 29 2025)
The Sweden Syndrome (December 6 2025)
DEI, the Dispossessed Generation, and the Digital Koryos (December 19 2025)
The Intrinsic Perspective by Erik Hoel
Stop speed running to a dystopia (January 10 2025)
Our Overfitted Century (December 8 2025)
Letter’s from Fiddler’s Greene by Dave Greene
An Age of Illiteracy - The Blessings of Babel Part I (February 21 2025)
Lost in the Infinite Library - The Blessings of Babel Part II (March 9 2025)
The Cantos of Criticism - The Blessings of Babel Part III (April 23 2025)
How Progressivism Died (August 1 2025)
“How Conservatism Died”, An Open Letter to Rod Dreher (November 18 2025)
Numb at the Lodge by Sam Kriss
Numb at Burning Man (November 2 2025)
What’s the point of words? (November 28 2025)
Cultural Capital by James Marriott
The dawn of the post-literate society (September 19 2025)
Cassandra Unchained by Michael Burry — The only Substack I pay for = well worth it. How he writes this fast must be pure autism. Or he has had these posts written up and saved for a while, ready to unleash to the platform that will garner him the most subscriber revenue…
The Cardinal Sign of a Bubble: Supply-Side Gluttony (November 24 2025)
Foundations: My 1999 (and part of 2000) (November 24 2025)
Unicorns and Cockroaches: Blessed Fraud (November 26 2025)
Foundations: The Tragic Algebra of Stock-Based Compensation (December 1 2025)
Fannie & Freddie, Toxic Twins No More No More? (December 8 2025)
The Supply-Side Gluttony Recurrence (December 11 2025)
Foundations: The Big Short Squeeze (December 16 2025)
Foundations: The Psychology of Investing in the Information Age (December 19 2025)
Plus a bunch of names that I intermittently read when they come up on my feed: Curtis Yarvin, Ed West, Dominic Cummings, Christopher F. Rufo, Rob Henderson, Dmitry etc.
My Own Writing! —>
Last but not least… I wrote the most this year than all other years in my life combined. Continuing to post here on Kill The Switch, alongside moving to a different continent and deciding to document my travels & thoughts via The Morocco Diaries – all in all it’s been a splendid output and majorly rewarding!
Kill The Switch
The Ultimate Guide to: Accelerationism (June 3 2025)
The Case For Self-Help Books (July 22 2025)
The Kids Will Be Alright… (July 28 2025)
Why You Should Buy & Own A Printer 🖨️ (December 7 2025)
The Morocco Diaries
1) September 6 2025 (September 20 2025)
2) September 7 2025 (September 22 2025)
3) The Bad Eye 👁️ (October 5 2025)
4) ‘Farm in Africa’ (October 10 2025)
5) 9/11 & The French New Wave (October 12 2025)
6) The Minzah & Lamb Chops (October 14 2025)
7) The Fahim Quintet (October 16 2025)
8) Battery on 2% (October 18 2025)
9) Barcelona Surgery (October 30 2025)
10) Google Translate & The Dogs (November 12 2025)
11) The Doctor & Groceries (November 13 2025)
12) Whiplash & 200 MAD Bills (December 2 2025)
Writing Goals for 2026:
Finish first draft of novel
Finish non-fiction book of philosophy
Write 1 post a month for Kill The Switch
Get over 50 posts for The Morocco Diaries (currently at 12)
Reading Goals for 2026:
Read more total books than 2025 (emphasis on novels)
Read a wider range of articles from different publications & historical dates






very honored by the inclusion! be sure to place me ahead in the hierarchy of importance with Yarvin!