I’m very happy to sit down and compile this list of my favorite titles of 2025 and would love it to become a little ritual that I can hopefully continue for the years to come.
2025 had been a very special year for me where I spent most of it in Tokyo – something I had been wishing for a long while. I also took the opportunity to take my Japanese to the next level (well, at least my reading ability) therefore I attempted reading a couple of Japanese books and got enormous pleasure from it, so I’ll include one title in this list.
In addition, this list also includes quite a few Chinese titles. I finally gave in to Wechat Reading subscription. Despite its notorious reputation on profit sharing with publishers and authors, it unfortunately does make Chinese books a lot more accessible for oversea readers.
Money On Your Mind – Vicky Reynal
Honestly I had been searching for a book like this for a while! During the search, I read “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel a couple of years ago but realised quickly that it wasn’t what I was looking for. Vicky Reynal’s book, despite its slightly misleading subtitle as it’s not really about how to make more money, is really about what’s behind our complicated and often confusing emotions and behaviours about money. Like almost every subject that is discussed in a therapy room, a lot of it can be linked to our past (traumatic) experiences.
How to Change Your Mind – Michael Pollan
Psychedelics is something that I’ve been curious about, not necessarily from a personal experience point of view, but I’m definitely interested in how it works and hearing about others’ experience. I read Michael Pollan’s “This Is Your Mind on Plants” first and while it was also an enjoyable read, it didn’t satisfy enough of my curiosities. This is a much older purchase and I only picked it up from the shelf few weeks before leaving for Japan, and it turned out to be among my best reading experiences of the year. It also gave me a new perspective to look at the fascinating and overwhelming feeling I had during the first few weeks in Japan.
Fifty Sounds – Polly Barton
Polly Barton is a translator of Japanese to English (Asako Yuzuki’s “Butter” among others) and “Fifty Sounds” is her memoir of her time teaching English in Japan. It wasn’t an easy reading for me, especially the philosophy part (Barton’s thesis was on Ludwig Wittgenstein and she had quite lengthy reflection on the philosopher in the book). But I loved her observations on both Japanese people and her own experience, the precisions and subtlety that are common in Japanese culture but for me rarely seen in outsider’s portrait of Japan.
Tastes Like War – Grace M.Cho
I came across this title from a Mastodon friend’s recommendation. It’s a very touching and beautiful memoir of the author’s quest in understanding her mother’s mental illness from not only a personal perspective but also from a global history and social point of view. It really showed me how a person’s mental health can be formed (or should I say destroyed?) by historical and social environments, how we can be driven “mad” by the world.
重走 – 杨潇
Qian Yang 
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