2025: What’s on your TBR list?

[Steve]

What books are at or near the top of your techno-thriller to-be-read (TBR) list right now for 2025?

Post: [Title] by [Author] (Year first published)

For bonus points:
- Use the add book/author button to add a book cover and author photo.
- Share 1-5 lines about the plot and why you want to read it.

[Steve]

The Stand by Stephen King (1978)

[Steve]

Ubik by Philip K. Dick (1969)

[Steve]

Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy (1994)

990 pages

I have read this before. This happens every year where I come across a book in a Goodreads list and realize … I think I read that. I didn’t track what I read nor rate it or review it before Goodreads and before I started diving into Goodreads lists in earnest about 5 years ago in search of “good” books to read next … a constant struggle. I end up abandoning as many books as I finish. Hard to find good books, but this is as good of a resource as any. I wish I had started rating and reviewing earlier. I probably read most of Grisham’s books back in the day, but couldn’t tell you one thing that happened in any of them, though I think I did like all of them. My memory isn’t bad. I have truly outlier memory … but only for what I deem significant. This book I know I read. I remember my reaction real-time as 9/11 was happening, and after the fact as talking heads on TV proclaimed who could possibly have ever foreseen any such things? Well, I had … even before I read this book. But, also, everyone who had read this book, which was written in 1994. That’s how I know I’ve read it. But I can’t remember anything else about it. I’m going to read it again to refamiliarize as I continue to work through the Clancy novels, before I read Executive Orders.

[Steve]

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (1898)


I saw the movie with Tom Cruise. Not everyone is a fan but I liked it. I unfortunately utterly relate to all hell braking loose in life and scrambling to stay alive. As Viktor Frankl, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, or Louis Zamperini would relate from their war concentration camp experience, the vast majority of the most seemingly robust people you know would be completely shattered and melt into a small shadow of themselves as they weather a truly adverse experience in real-time. And yet, a rare fraction will just scramble, scrap, cope and persist. That was arguably the story of that character in the movie. The character was nicely flawed, not truly a good dad or good person, but when something hit the fan, … regardless of the state of your pants, think fast or die … and he lived. My guess is that movie bears little resemblance to the book, which must have been of a very different character at least when the radio broadcast happened. Having just read The Wizard of Oz this year, it is remarkably distinct from the 1950s classic movie. It was an interesting quick novella read. I expect the same here. It’s 192 pages. Can bang this out pretty quick and see what the real McCoy is all about.