Hoping to do a little blog post for my top 10 reads of the year but here is what goodreads spat out at me for my 2025 “year in books”. I still have 2 books on rotation that I might finish before the end of the year but 41 (48 if we are counting the solar cycle as individual books) is still pretty damn good. More than doubled my reading from last year. I don’t set reading goals and I never will because turning reading into a daily habit is the only thing that matters whether I’m reading for 10 minutes or multiple hours. Excited to see what 2026 has in store for me.
my favourite piece of "AI art" is something that was not intended to be AI art at all, and was made and posted online as a joke. which is "salmon in the river", from 2023.
this is how the AI apparently understood the above prompt. salmon filets jumping in water.
in this case, not only do i think this is interesting art, but i think it is interesting art only because it was not made by a human. like, this reads to me as art about alienation and commodification, right? obviously we all know that under capitalism products become separated from the labour and processes that created them. you buy a shirt and you don't think about the hands that sewed it, and so on. the commodity form hides its own origins. and food in particular hides not just labour, but life. the animal disappears. like, if you think about how meat reaches you at a western supermarket, typically it arrives on a styrofoam tray, wrapped in plastic, cut into shapes that don't resemble the body they came from. a chicken breast doesn't look like a chicken, and likewise a salmon filet does not look like a salmon. many times people actually find it gross or distasteful to see the animal! the filet is literally the shape that says don't think about it.
so the art, then. the filets are appearing in the river, which is where the living salmon would be. the commodity form is occupying the space of the creature. the erasure itself is swimming upstream. that's sick!!! and the wrongness of it, the visual absurdity, is exactly what reveals how much work the commodity form normally does. We're used to seeing filets in kitchens, on plates, in supermarkets. In those contexts, they look right. they look like what salmon IS! it's only when you put the filet in the context of a living animal that you suddenly see how strange it is and how much has been removed. it's good art!!!
AND YET if human artist had made this image, i don't think it would be very good art. filets swimming upstream as a commentary on commodity food culture is fine but it would feel very on the nose in a banksy, makes-u-think kind of way. this would be a human saying "here's what I think about how we relate to what we eat." like imagine this as a political cartoon, right? immediately the exact same image would make me want to fucking roll my eyes. it would be kind of insufferable!! and to me i think that's because it is making an argument. the artist has to be visibly making a point and the finger is always wagging. we live in a society, bottom text. UGH!
whereas, when an AI produces filets in the river, it's not making a claim. it doesn't think and it doesn't care. it is just outputting based on what it's been trained on and based on the prompt. it's saying "here's what salmon actually means in the aggregate of human visual culture." it says something in and of itself that an AI image generator was asked to create salmon swimming in a river, and it produced filets. boneless, skinless, ready-for-the-pan filets, floating serenely through the rapids. and that's because the AI was trained on us. it was clearly not primarily trained on, e.g Coast Salish art like on carved salmon with eyes and spirits or more generally on cultures that really focus on holding the sustenance and the creature together. instead it was trained on an aggregate blob of the internet, including the very massive and alienated western commercial relationship to food. our images, our photographs, our stock photos and food blogs and recipe sites. and in that corpus, salmon is overwhelmingly a filet. when you throw everything into the pile and ask "what is salmon," the commodity form rose to the top.
thus when the model produces filets in the river, it's not really making an error in the same way we would; it's just accurately reflecting what "salmon" means in the aggregate, and putting it in a context that makes it seem incredibly absurd. it literally works as art because it's not A Guy saying eyy, look what you've done, it's just showing what we've done, without commentary or judgment and without even knowing it's showing anything at all.
but then ALSO. was this really an "error" generated by an AI? or was this a human who prompted it to make a picture of salmon filets in a river and posted it as a glitch for internet points? i don't know!!!
and at first this bothered me, because I've been so hard on arguing that the image only works because it wasn't made intentionally. like, that the lack of human intent is what gives it evidentiary weight and what transforms it from trite political cartoon into Good Art.
but i literally think that's still true. if a human made this, if someone deliberately prompted an AI to produce filets in a river and then framed it as an accident for heckin reddit updoots or even legitimately to make a political point, then what they created is a piece of art about the difference between intentional and unintentional meaning. they used the AI as a medium, but more importantly, they used our expectation of AI failure as a medium. The art isn't just the image; it's the image plus the caption plus our willingness to believe it.
either way, the image only works as art if we believe an AI made it, because that belief is what transforms "salmon in the river" from a heavy-handed political cartoon into a piece of evidence about how we see. but only a human could post it and have it work, because the act of posting it as a mistake is also an artistic gesture, regardless of whether it actually was one. the AI can't do that part. it doesn't know what it made or why it's either profound or funny. but a human couldn't do it alone either, because a human making this image deliberately would just be making a statement, and statements are easy to dismiss. the art exists in the gap between the generation and the framing, and that gap is where the human goes.
I will never get over the fact that project hail mary is a story about a guy who goes from having no one - no family, no close friends, no one he has to tell when he gets forced onto an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean for several years, no one to mourn him when he is forced into a suicide mission, and perhaps most significantly, no one he is prepared to die for, to having one person who he is prepared to die for again and again and again.
You had to go lightyears across space to a different solar system and learn a new language you can't even speak unaided to find the platonic love of your life but when you did you burnt and starved and hurt for them without hesitation. Ryland Grace saves the world, but more importantly, he finds something bigger than himself to believe in and it's loving a lil alien crab dude.
If you have more than an 8th grade reading comprehension the "There Is No Patrick Bateman" passage in American Psycho is one of the most breathtakingly tragic tear jerking sections in any book that I have ever read I cannot think of an excerpt from a story that is such an insane mournful hopeless bleak gut-punch its in competition with The Pigman and Pink And Say for tragic moments in literature.
"oh hes so scary so wacky he puts the rat in her pussy the movie cut out the best gore" THE HORROR ISNT THE GORE. THE HORROR IS TRYING TO SOCIALLY SURVIVE IN AMERICAN CULTURE AS SOMEBODY SUFFERING FROM THE OCD-CLUSTER B-AUTISM TRIPPLE WHAMMY! THE HORROR IS HAVING NO SENSE OF SELF OR CONNECTION TO THE POPULATION OF THE WORLD YOU EXIST IN AND THEN LOSING YOUR OWN GRIP ON REALITY IN PRIVATE SILENCE WHILE TRYING TO KEEP UP THE ACT THAT EVERYTHING IS OKAY AND YOU ARE ACCEPTABLE AS A HUMAN AND YOU BELIEVE YOU DESERVE TO EXIST! THE HORROR IS HOW CLUSTER B ANTISOCIAL TENDANCIES AND IDEATIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE IS SO NURTURED BY THE SELFISH CULTURE CAPITALISM FACILITATES. THE HORROR IS CLINGING TO MEDIA LIKE A LIFE RAFT BECAUSE IT IS THE ONLY MATERIAL REALITY YOU CAN BE SURE OF WHILE YOUR OWN CONCEPT OF NOT JUST YOURSELF AS A PERSON HAVING OR LACKING VALUE BUT YOUR VERY RIGHT TO EXIST AS A MENTALLY ILL PERSON ERODES ALONG WITH YOUR ABILITY TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FACTUAL EVENTS AND DELUSIONS. THE HORROR IS FEELING LIKE A MONSTER EVEN WHEN SURROUNDED BY MONSTERS!
"he electrocute the boobies and they explode"
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED CONNECTING TO OTHER PEOPLE AS NOT ONLY AN AUTISTIC BUT A "BAD" CLUSTER B AS YOU SLIP DEEPER AND DEEPER INTO PSYCHOSIS THAT YOU MUST KEEP PRIVATE OR FACE COMPLETE SOCIAL CRUCIPHION AND BEING SHUNNED FOR SCENARIOS YOU NEITHER CARRY OUT NOR CONTROL THE IDEATIONS OF?
HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED FEELING LIKE A DIFFERENT SPECIES FROM THE "NORMAL" PEOPLE AND COMPLETELY FAILING NOT ONLY TO CONNECT WITH THEM BUT TO COGNITIVELY REMEMBER THEY ARE AUTONOMOUS?
HAVE YOU EVER DEALT WITH SEVERE NON-TIKTOK-FRIENDLY MENTAL ILLNESS? HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED THE KIND OF MENTAL ILLNESS THAT THERE ARE NO POSITIVITY OR ENCOURAGEMENT MEMES FLOATING AROUND THE SUPPORT GROUP MEME COMMUNITY FOR? HAVE YOU EVER GOOGLED YOUR CONDITION AND FOUND PARENTS ASKING IF THEIR CHILD IS CAPABLE OF LOVING BACK OR GIVING INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO IDENTIFY AND ABANDON "TOXIC" PEOPLE WITH YOUR CONDITION ND ENTIRE BLOGS CALLING YOU AN UNLOVABLE MONSTER WHO WILL ONLY HURT ANYBODY WHO INTERACTS WITH YOU WHEN YOU SEARCH YOUR CONDITION AND THE WORD "HELP" ON GOOGLE INSTEAD OF A SINGLE PIECE OF ADVICE ON LIVING WITH THE CONDITION AND MANAGING SYMPTOMS OR POTENTIAL TREATMENTS?
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVINCED THAT YOU WERE SO COMPLETELY BEYOND HELP THAT YOUR ONLY OPTION WAS TO DISSOCIATE INTO NOT ONLY COMPLETE SELF-ABANDONMENT BUT COMPLETE ABANDONMENT OF YOUR PERCEPTION OF REALITY EXISTING ONLY IN ANTISOCIAL IDEATIONS THAT HAVE BECOME AN ESCAPIST FORM OF MALADAPTIVE DAYDREAMING BECAUSE YOU LITERALLY CANNOT COPE WITH YOUR DISGUST WITH BUT LONGING FOR BELONGING IN THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN UNTIL YOUR RESENTMENT AT YOUR INABILITY TO ASSIMILATE TO IT IN A GENUINE WAY RATHER THAN A CONSTANT EXHAUSTING PREFORMANCE CAUSES YOU TO LITERALLY DETERIORATE INTO MADNESS?
"Ohh scary spooky sociopath washing his face" obsessively and preforming an entire routine of compulsions related to his obsession with his appearance because he feels his soul is unpresentable and that others will mock and reject him if he does not have a perfect appearance which he sees as his only offering to other humans
"he goes on creepy rants about music" he's autistic as fuck and media specifically music is not only one of the only things he's trained himself to make conversation about but the only solid thing as he floats through a reality made of jello he's retreating into media to cope with the isolation of going insane
"hes a scary bad NPD because he watches himself fuck in the mirror" how about the man is so disconnected from the act of sex, which is supposed to be an act of love and sensation or at least connection and intensity and even that the only joy he can extract from this most primal of human bonding acts is if he is performing well and looks dong it in a way that he thinks would make others approve or admire him more for how visually pleasing his disconnected sex is to the point where its not even an experience of sensation just performance for an invisible audience
DO YOU KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE SPENDING EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY PERFORMING FOR THE INVISIBLE AUDIENCE
Patrick is not a horror villain hes not a leatherface or Mike meyers or Freddy or Ted Bundy or Jigsaw. he's a mentally ill man who if we only take what we can prove to be true to be true which is a very small amount he's not only harmless and terrified but actually a better-behaved person than almost anybody he associates with. Patrick Bateman's story of not one of brutal dominance but the tragic decline of a sick person's health as they attempt to hide an escalating neurological failure. its the story of a man who feels so disconnected from others that the only way he can imagine he would feel a connection to somebody is by inflicting violence on them. Its a tragic depiction of mental illness like Charlie from Flowers For Algernon.
Do you like movies like Alien vs Predator, Venom, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes? Do you enjoy dragon riders and talking animal companions? Friendly yet deeply inhuman aliens? Monster children and monster parents? Consider yourself less of a monster fucker and more of a monster best friend? Watch horror movies and fantasize about befriending the horrifying ghosts and ghoulies? Then this is the list for you!
A note: some of these books do have romance subplots, but not as the most important relationship or focus.
A (second) note: the criteria for "monster" are subjective. I looked mainly for titles featuring creatures who neither look nor act/think human. In cases where they are more human looking, I wanted a distinctly inhuman mind and morality, meaning most books featuring vampires, werewolves, fey, etc are excluded. I may have included books you feel aren't monstrous enough, or excluded ones you feel are sufficiently monstrous but I don't agree about. Again, it’s subjective.
Feel free to leave your own recs in the notes, but please know that if you rec books featuring mostly human vampires and werewolves I will be judging. I have separate lists for those, go look there instead.
For more details on the books, continue under the readmore. Titles marked with * are my personal favorites. If you want more book recs, check out my masterpost of rec lists!
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir*
Ryland Grace just woke up from a coma, unable to remember anything. He finds himself alone on a space ship, and as his memories slowly trickle back, he realizes he’s been sent on a mission: to find a solution to the impending doom of the earth. Still struggling with holes in his memories, Ryland tries to fulfill his mission, but as he gets closer to his goal, he discovers someone else got there first. And they aren’t anything close to human. Funny, heartfelt, and heavy on the science.
Fragment by Warren Fahy*
The reality TV show Sealife is having a rough time - as it turns out, a ship full of scientists doesn’t make for the kind of drama they hoped for. Hoping for some excitement, they reach Hender’s Island, a fragment of a lost continent that may contain an interesting new ecosystem. But as they step foot on the island, they quickly come to realize the ecosystem isn’t just new, it’s highly dangerous and very hungry. Among all this life is one single species that may be more dangerous than any other, but which may also be the salvation of the scientists on the island. A bit wonky, but genuinely one of the most fun books I have read, I love it so much.
The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis*
Francie has just traveled to Roswell to attend her college friend’s wedding to a UFO conspiracist. Not a believer herself, Francie is shocked when she finds herself abducted by an alien. Her abductor is not much what popular media would have you believe, looking more like a tumbleweed than a grey alien, and is clearly on some kind of mission it isn’t willing to put on hold for the sake of Francie attending to her duties as a bridesmaid. As more people get roped along - among those a conman, an old lady, a ufo conspiracist, and a retiree with an RV - Francie finds herself getting closer to the alien and wanting to help it succeed.
The Last Human by Zack Jordan
Young adult. Sarya is a human - the only one of her kind. Living with her adoptive mother - a vicious, insectile alien - on a space station surrounded by hundreds of other alien species, Sarya spends every day staying below the radar and hiding her true identity. But when an odd new alien arrives on the station, she may finally get an answer to her biggest question: why humanity was deemed too dangerous to be allowed to exist.
Alien vs. Predator: Prey by Steve Perry & S.D. Perry*
On desert planet Ruyshi, businesswoman Machiko Noguchi is about to take over the leading position in a small human colony. Her job is made infinitely harder when the colony comes under attack on two fronts as two species of vicious aliens choose it as their battle ground. If you're reading this list, you probably already know of the movie by the same name. The book, while completely different in setting and cast, does feature many similar plot points, among those a third act team-up between a human woman and a murderous alien.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky*
Millenia and generation spanning scifi. After the collapse of an empire, a planet once part of a project to uplift other species to sentience is left to develop on its own, resulting not in the intelligent monkeys once intended but in sentient giant spiders. Millenia later, what remains of humanity arrives looking for a new home, only to be met by the artificial remains of the ancient woman who once led the uplift project - and she is not willing to let them on her planet.
The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. McIntyre
You can’t go wrong with a Vonda McIntyre novel just, like, in general. This one is set in 17th century France, where a young woman and her brother travel to live at the royal court, where they are to care for and study a strange captured sea monster fabled to have the ability to grant eternal life. A lot of focus on court politics as well as the cultural and biological differences between the humans and the mermaid. Also available as a movie (but it’s not very good, please just read the book).
Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys*
Lovecraftian fishpeople! Aphra and her brother are the only survivors after the government raided their home, Innsmouth. Their only living family are the amphibian people of the deep, whom they will one day join, but until then they are bound to land where they struggle to build new lives for themselves after the great loss of their home and loved ones. Then rumors start to spread of a russian agent seeking dangerous and ancient magic, forcing Aphra to involve herself as they try to stop it. Does contain horror elements but is generally a much more optimistic look on cosmic horror than most lovecraftian stories, told from the perspective of one of his monsters. Lots of focus on found family and rebuilding of community.
The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky*
The Doors of Eden is something of an experiment in speculative biology, featuring versions of Earth in which various different species were the one to rise to sentience, from dinosaurs to neanderthals. Now, something is threatening the existence of all timelines, dragging multiple different people and species into the struggle, among those a pair of cryptid hunting girlfriends and a transgender scientist. Together, can they find a way to save the multiverse?
The Spider and Her Demons by sydney khoo*
Young adult. All teenager Zhi wants is a normal life (and possibly for her harsh aunt to be a bit nicer), but it’s hard when she’s half spider demon. Every day she must conceal her true nature and hide in human guise. When she slips up and eats a man in front of her rich, aloof classmate Dior, Zhi thinks her life is over. But Dior has secrets of her own, and she is dead set on making herself a part of Zhi's life.
Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson
Young adult fantasy. Artemisia prefers the dead to the living, and is training to become a Gray Sister, a nun who helps the souls of the deceased pass on to the afterlife rather than remain as dangerous spirits. To defend her convent, Artemisia accepts the help of a dangerous revenant, a powerful spirit which grants her great power but also could possess her the moment her guard is lowered. As evil threatens her homeland, Artemisia and the revenant must find a way to work together.
Slewfoot: a Tale of Bewitchery by Brom
Historical horror. Young Englishwoman Abitha has only recently arrived and married into a Puritan colony when she unexpectedly becomes a widow. As she strives to save her small farm from going under in the wake of tragedy, something dark and dangerous stalks the surrounding woods. He doesn't know whether he's spirit, devil, or god, doesn't even know his own name, and in requesting Abitha's help, both their lives are changed forever.
Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O'Neal*
Young adult. Priya had plans to go to Stanford, but is derailed when the fallout from lyme disease puts her back, making her question if she'll ever get back to normal. Luckily she has her discord support group with whom she can chat and vent about her illness. Even more - she has Brigid, online fandom friend and fellow chronic illness sufferer. But when Brigid disappears from the web without warning, Priya must drive to Pennsylvania to make sure her friend is okay - and finds that Brigid's condition is a bit hairier than she expected.
Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
Young adult. Elisabeth is a librarian, trained to handle grimoires - books of magic which, if mishandled, can turn into horrifying monsters. When an act of sabotage leads to the release of one of the library's most dangerous grimoires, Elisabeth finds herself implicated in the crime. Forced to team up with an enemy sorcerer and his loyal and unpredictable demon servant, Elisabeth sets out to find out the truth of what happened.
The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
In a post apocalyptic, zombie-infested wasteland, a group of characters try to stay alive and hope to find a cure. One of the characters is Melanie, a young girl who carries the contagion inside of her and hungers for flesh, but like many children of the apocalypse has kept her humanity. Is she and children like her the answer to the cure we are looking for? Or are they the start of something entirely new? This book has also been adapted as a movie!
Malevolent by Harlan Guthrie*
Lovecraftian horror mystery. Private detective Arthur Lester wakes up in his office, his partner dead, memories fuzzy, vision gone, and the voice of a malevolent entity in his mind. Unable to see, Arthur is forced to rely on guidance from the entity as he attempts to solve the mystery of what it is and where it came from. Is this a book? No. But as someone who reads mostly audiobooks, the difference between a book and a fiction podcast is negligible, and also I love this story and its characters and want all of you to do so too.
Parasyte by Hitoshi Iwaka*
Horror manga, heavy on the bodyhorror. Shinichi Izumi wakes one day after a strange dream: that an alien parasite crawled into his arm. Soon he realizes it was more real than dream, and that an inhuman creature, having failed to eat and take over his brain, now controls his arm. Forced to cooperate, the two do their best to survive as more parasites quietly infiltrate society, meaning to devour our entire species. Also available as a very faithful anime!
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy*
Young adult. Twelve-year-old Stephanie Edgley's uncle, famed horror writer, just died mysteriously and left her his entire fortune. As it turns out, the stories he wrote weren't entirely made up, and that which killed him wasn't entirely human. In trying to avenge his death, Stephanie joins forces with Skulduggery Pleasant, sorcerer, detective, and living, walking skeleton.
The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
Moon doesn't know what he is. Having lost his family young he lives on the move, shifting his shape to hide his true form. The only ones similar to himself he's ever encountered are the vicious, bloodthirsty Fell, but he knows he cannot be one of them. When chance leads to a meeting with someone like him, he hopes his days of loneliness are over. But his new people stand against a dangerous enemy, and not all of them welcome Moon's help. A departure from other titles on this list in that it features only creatures, with not a single human on page.
The Girl From the Well by Rin Chupeco
Young adult horror. Okiku died three hundred years ago, her body thrown down a well. Now she spends her days hunting for and punishing murderers like the one who once killed her. When a strange boy bearing odd tattoos appears in her area, he catches Okiku's attention - as does something that follows after him. To save the boy, Okiku will be drawn into a journey taking both of them from American suburbia to a faraway shrine in Japan.
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
When Magos loses her son Santiago to a longtime illness, she loses herself to grief and cuts out a piece of his lung. After hearing old folktales, she begins feeding it - and is shocked to find it growing and alive. Soon finding herself in charge of a hungry and bloodthirsty creature, Magos and her family must come together to care for what they can only see as a second chance for Santiago.
Semiosis by Sue Burke
A generational story following a group of humans trying to survive on a new planet, where a strange and unkowable intelligence is finding ways to use them to its whims. As the humans come across an abandoned city wrapped in the roots of a strange plant, they slowly come to the realization that mutual communication is the only path to peace and survival. Meanwhile, the alien finds itself tied all the more tightly to the growing human community.
The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei
Maya Hoshimoto used to be an art thief, and a damned good one to, until a disastrous heist made her retire into academia, hoping for peace and coping with an alien disease which causes her to see glimpses of the future. When an old friend tracks her down and asks her help to find and steal a legendary artifact that could save his entire species, Maya is convinced to do one last job.
Magical Girl Dandelion by Mizuho Kaeru
Manga. Tanpopo Ohanami's parents were killed by a phantom monster when she was young, but her life was saved by Shade, another phantom. Ever since then, Shade has been her friend, watching over her and keeping her safe. But then Tanpopo is revealed to be a potential magical girl, meant to fight the phantoms and protect humanity. Her and Shade are meant to be enemies, but can they instead work and fight alongside each other?
His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
It’s the height of the Napoleonic Wars, and soldiers on dragon back fight each other in the air. Will Laurence isn't a dragonrider but a sea captain, but when his ship captures a French frigate and discovers a dragon egg about to hatch in his cargo, his life changes forever when he and the dragon hatchling bond.
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Middle grade. In Lyra's world, every person has a daemon: a talking animal companion who follows them throughout life. When children begin being stolen off the street, among them Lyra's friend, she must embark on a great journey to save him, taking her to the furthest north - and beyond.
A Redtail's Dream by Minna Sundberg*
Graphic novel inspired by Finnish mythology. When an irresponsible fox spirit accidentally traps an entire town in the dreamlands, it’s up to slacker Hannu and his talking, shapeshifting dog Ville to save everyone. Together the unwilling heroes must travel the dreamlands and locate the townsfolk, returning them to the waking world before the fox spirit sends them all on to death to hide his mistake. While the physical copy is all but impossible to get a hold of, the original webcomic can still be read for free here.
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