Book Reviews: October 2025

Another month gone, another little pile of books (in the form of audiobook files) to share my unsolicited opinions on. In this time, I've also been entertaining thoughts of setting up a Little Free Library (or bootleg alternative) as a means of offsetting the mass erasure of independent human thought and creativity. It would require tools, though, and I'm better at listening to audiobooks than I am putting physical items together. Never mind maintaining them!

But I digress.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

This was a fun listen. I needed an engaging story after September's mostly underwhelming roster of tomes, and came highly recommended by a friend.

A sexy, sapphic vampire saga spanning several centuries and two continents. How exciting! It had pretty robust character development, three interwoven perspectives, and was padded out with supporting figures whose slivers of storylines could be turned into books of their own. Very engaging.

However, and I'm not sure how fair this is, about a third of the book really did just feel like Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire but with lesbians. A large part of the issue might just be the setting of some sections (meeting up with seductive Spaniards in the streets! feeding off a pet mortal without draining them completely!), and the theme of building an undead life after crossing the Atlantic and breaking free from a toxic companion (Lestat in a dress!).

That is one thing the author got too right: Horrific behavior in the wake of a breakup with an abusive partner. Even just regular mortal exes are bloodsucking monsters that don't let go. And letting your trauma make you a perpetual user of other people is similarly unforgivable. Don't do that.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

I didn't need to be further convinced that Facebook is evil. It's dismantled democracy, divided nations, broken hearts and homes, and corrupted the minds of generations with Minions memes and worse.

I wanted to hear Sarah's take anyway.

And there are parts of her story I can really identify with. Having earnest idealism exploited and your ambitions dangled in front of you. Feeling the need to set yourself on fire to keep the company functional. Putting up with superiors' bad behavior because your job is at stake. It's frustrating how youthful naivete is made into such a disposable resource.

The first hint that it wouldn't end well was when the author was made to be the meeting note-taker. Speaking from my own experience and having observed it elsewhere, you lose all your agency in an organization when you are asked and you consent to taking notes. Never allow it.

Where Sarah lost me, though, was when she started tattling on the nefarious tech Facebook produced at the behest of the Chinese government. Her descriptions of atrocities committed in Myanmar were also disturbing. MORE disturbing was when she listed all of this out, and then spoke as if she was completely innocent and had no ownership of these gross misdeeds. Her insistence that she thought she'd do more good from the inside is wholly unbelievable, and I struggle to accept that she would have had zero job opportunities if she'd taken her legal career elsewhere.

But again, I understand how messed up becoming enmeshed in a harmful work environment can be. Sarah had more options and mobility than I've ever had, though. Her decision to set her personal life on fire while remaining complicit in crimes against humanity is pretty damning.

3.75 out of 5 stars.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Set boundaries, play, rest, do less. It's very possible that I've hit my saturation point on self-help books. This one was written well enough, but is otherwise forgettable.

3 out of 5 stars.

The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin

I nearly failed to finish this one, and took a long break halfway through. Apparently the author is some manner of marketing god (more research needed), which bestows upon him the right to make an endless stream of Lao Tzu-like pronouncements about what a world of willing consumers needs from you. It got to me after a while.

When I picked it back up, I did ultimately appreciate that this might more closely resemble a tough love pep talk for adopting better discipline around one's creative practice. (Flying too low is also a problem for would-be Icarus copycats.) It's no David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish, but what could hope to be? This tried.

3 out of 5 stars.

I hit 50 books read in 2025 in October! That's a fairly big deal, having lost my hyperlexic youth to the grind of working and sleeping some years ago. Discovering audiobooks and getting over the belief that they don't count as reading has been a game-changer. Woowee.

At the time of this writing, I've already finished four books for November. Two of them were very short. But that's content for next month!