Mike's Meanderings

The Best of 2025

Mike's Best of 2025

This year much of my life started settling down. With finalizing my divorce at the end of 2024, life has moved into a more "predictable" phase for me. Allowing me to focus on my relationships and my son and partner. Building our lives together.

While politically our country is devolving into fascism, I've been able to find comfort in community. And I have a great community.

Media

Big media year, I read more and started going to the cinema more. I couldn't be happier with that. Below are some of the highlights.

Books

The City We Became (Great Cities Duology) by N. K. Jemisin

  • A magical series that tracks the birth of New York City's avatars, magical beings that embody and protect the city. NK Jeminsin has a way of describing and building her world that brings metaphors to life.

A Deadly Education (The Scholomance Series) by Naomi Novik

  • What if the system was the problem. The Scholomance series takes the trope of kids at magic school and asks, "What if most of kids that go to school die, and this is actually the best way to raise them?" And intriguing premise, with a great magic system, is really about what we do if we help each other. Alicia and I both cried multiple times reading this trilogy. I can't recommend it enough.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

  • I saw the HBO show when it first aired and loved it. I've enjoyed Lovecraftian horror for a while, and Matt Ruff does a terrific job of blending supernatural horror with the very real horror of being black in Jim Crow America. It's a road novel, that follows members of a family as they learn about the secrets of their bloodlines, and the warlocks who desire their power.

Hyperion and Hyperion Falls by Dan Simmons

  • The Hyperion Cantos came highly recommended, and I now understand why. Starting as a collection of stories in stories, ala The Canterbury Tales. It takes us on a journey to the backwater of Hyperion, where great and terrible events are unfolding. This is Sci-fi at it's best. Interesting technology, unique societies, and intriguing politics. I only wish I read it sooner.

Maus by Art Spiegelman

  • This is a biography of Art Spiegelman's father, a Jewish-Polish man who survived The Holocaust. It follows his story as Poland is invaded by Nazi Germany, and the erosion of the Jewish populations liberties. This is a graphic novel, in which the Jewish characters are mice, the Poles are pigs, and the Germans are cats. I really don't think that I can do much justice to describing this book. I do know that you can see elements of the current Fascist Republican party in the policies implemented by the Nazi's. History often repeats itself, and we need to resist these new Nazis as much as we can.

Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow

  • A fun detective novel that focuses a lens on Silicon Valley and the technofascist system being built there. As with many things Cory Doctrow, there's a societal critique, and he's right. Give it a read.

Enshittification by Cory Doctorow

  • In 2022 Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the ongoing platform decay. This explains why the platforms of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber, and more all seem to be getting worse. It's not you, they're actively getting worse. Here Cory lays out the following stages of Enshittification:
  1. Be good to users
  2. Be good to business, at the expense of users
  3. Be good to shareholders, at the expense of everyone Read this one, it's well worth it.

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

  • With the complete title of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century", Timothy Snyder dives into lessons on resisting the rise of tyranny and fascism. It's an easy read, with several tips on what to do.

TV

Andor - Easily the best show of the year. It's more than Star Wars, it's brilliant. Following the early years of the Rebellion against the Empire, we see that rebellions are built on hope. And hope is all we need.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - One of Alicia's favorite shows, and it quickly became one of mine.

The Chair Company - The funniest and most unhinged comedy of the year by Tim Robinson.

Movies

Oppenheimer - Late to the game, but brilliant film.

Superman - I loved it. It was fun, it was hopeful. It says something about those that didn't like it, but it's hard to explain what.

The Long Walk - Not what I expected, almost a low-key hunger games, but mush sadder.

28 Years Later - A long awaited sequel to 28 Days Later. Controversial in that some did not like it, but I was crying in the theater thinking about death and parenthood. I found it haunting and beautiful.

Sinners - The most unexpected movie of the year for me. A vampire movie that turned out to be so much more, and launched an era of listening to the blues. Easily one of the best movies of the year.

Music

This year I finally saw Cake, Green Day, and Fallout Boy. Wow. Cake was especially important, and I'm so happy I got to see them.

Concerts Attended

  • Cake
  • Green Day
  • Weezer
  • Fallout Boy
  • Big Wild
  • Cage the Elephant
  • Hozier