From Sight & Sound, a list of the best video essays of 2025. I have barely seen or linked to or even heard of most of these. What am I even doing here, besides utterly failing you?
Matriarchs, absent fathers and troubled childhoods: 2025 was the year French literature focused on family
Bookshop’s Bestselling Nonfiction Books of 2025
For finding a good book, there is no substitute for going into your local independent bookstore and browsing what’s on the front tables, the bestsellers shelf, and the staff picks.
But bookshop.org is an amalgam of online sales some of the best indie bookstores in the country (and websites like kottke.org), so the list of their bestselling nonfiction books for 2025 is pretty darned good. Here are a few from the list that I’ve featured (or should have featured) here this year:
- The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
- Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.
- One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.
- Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green.
- Good Things by Samin Nosrat.
- Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba.
- Bad Company by Megan Greenwell.
- Liftoff by Casey Johnston.
- Black AF History by Michael Harriot.
Bit too late to order in time for the holidays, but there are also bookshop.org digital gift cards.
At the BBC Clare Thorp looks at The Salt Path and 2025's most scandalous books.
(I don't know that these were '2025's most scandalous books', but as a not-huge-fan of the genre I can only hope that: "The Salt Path scandal will make publishers nervous about commissioning real-life stories" .....)
Tracking how much of Project 2025 the Trump administration achieved this year PBS
Through the lens of history, Trump’s legacy will be more of a blotch than a Maga masterpiece
German communists’ bank accounts terminated RT
From the kiss-cam scandal to Wicked witches, these are our top pop-culture moments of 2025
Is the Trump administration just a reality TV show?Vox
Uber Cleared Violent Felons to Drive. Passengers Accused Them of Rape. New York Times
SPOTIFY MUSIC LIBRARY SCRAPED BY PIRATE ACTIVIST GROUP Billboard
There’s so much stolen data in the world, South Korea will require face scans to buy a SIM The Register