# The Best Books We Read in 2025

An episode of [Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1082244480), 4 Feb 2026, 15 min.

Audio: https://mgln.ai/e/187/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/b69b2795-5503-4de1-ac91-af460017906e/63333a78-395b-4abb-8c88-b3d600cec4dc/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=a05f1702-0c0e-4b0f-8014-af460017907c

Some books entertain. Some books inform. And then there are books that unsettle you—and quietly change how you see the world, your kids, and the systems shaping their lives. In this episode, Kylie and I step away from parenting advice (just briefly) to share the books that mattered most to us in 2025. These aren’t light beach reads. They’re confronting, provocative, and deeply relevant for parents raising children in a digital, diagnosed, distracted world. If you love books—and you care about the future your kids are growing up in—this one stays with you. Books & Resources Mentioned • Boys — Dr Justin Coulson (join the waitlist to learn more!) • Careless People — Sarah Wynn-Williams • Searching for Normal — Sami Timimi • Essentialism — Greg McKeown • The Let Them Theory — Mel Robbins • A Thousand Wasted Sundays — Victoria Vanstone • Mumming — Victoria Vanstone • 1984 — George Orwell • Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry • A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles • Greenlights — Matthew McConaughey • Parenting ADHD \[The Course\] • My 8 Favourite Books in 2025 \[Article\] ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS • Choose one book this year that challenges your assumptions—not just your habits • Notice what makes you uncomfortable while reading—and sit with it • Talk with your partner or teen about what you’re noticing in tech, mental health, and culture • Remember: protecting kids starts with seeing the systems shaping them See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:06] Speaker 1: Hi, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Sometimes it's nice
[0:08] Speaker 1: to escape the daily grind. Sometimes it's nice to step
[0:12] Speaker 1: away from parenting and step in to I don't know,
[0:17] Speaker 1: like just being a normal person who has time to
[0:19] Speaker 1: read a book. I know it's a luxury. I know
[0:21] Speaker 1: not everyone gets to do it, but there's something almost
[0:24] Speaker 1: sacred about reading. It's an indulgence, a form of intellectual
[0:29] Speaker 1: and emotional nourishment that feeds part of me that not
[0:32] Speaker 1: much else reaches. And at the end of the year,
[0:35] Speaker 1: at the start of the year, every year I write
[0:38] Speaker 1: a blog, I write an article about my best books
[0:40] Speaker 1: of the year just gone. And it was just yesterday
[0:43] Speaker 1: or the day before that we realized we haven't done
[0:45] Speaker 1: it this year. So missus Happy Families has her book
[0:48] Speaker 1: lists all ready to go. I've got mine as well.
[0:50] Speaker 1: After the break, we talk about our best books of
[0:53] Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. If you're a reader, I hope that
[0:57] Speaker 1: you love this episode. Stay with us. Hello and welcome
[1:03] Speaker 1: to the Happy Family Podcast, where you get real parenting
[1:04] Speaker 1: solutions every single day except today on Australia's moost downloaded
[1:08] Speaker 1: parenting podcast. Why except today? Well, we are Justin and
[1:11] Speaker 1: Kylie Colson and normally we're talking parenting, but today we're
[1:14] Speaker 1: talking books. Our favorite books of twenty twenty five. Normally
[1:17] Speaker 1: we talk about this at the end of the year,
[1:18] Speaker 1: or maybe at the start of the year. I can't remember,
[1:20] Speaker 1: but we've kind of let it slip. It its February
[1:23] Speaker 1: and I just realized, So, Kylie, let's follow the usual pattern.
[1:27] Speaker 1: You first, what were your favorite books of last year?
[1:29] Speaker 2: Well, I don't know how much honesty you want right now,
[1:31] Speaker 2: but I literally completely just grabbed last year's diary out
[1:36] Speaker 2: of the rubbish pin, right, because did you actually I did?
[1:41] Speaker 2: I literally did.
[1:42] Speaker 1: Diary is done and taken to a February.
[1:44] Speaker 2: Because you asked me how books I read, and I
[1:46] Speaker 2: was like, oh, I read that in last year's Diary,
[1:48] Speaker 2: and I'd only just decided to get rid of it.
[1:52] Speaker 2: And I'm looking at this list of books that I
[1:55] Speaker 2: read in January and February of last year.
[1:57] Speaker 1: You stopped the list.
[2:00] Speaker 2: I don't think I stopped the list stop reading. I
[2:02] Speaker 2: think I stopped reading.
[2:05] Speaker 1: Lives like that.
[2:06] Speaker 2: And the only reason I can tell you with all
[2:09] Speaker 2: certainty that I did read Essentialism by Greg McKeon is
[2:15] Speaker 2: because as I go through the pages of my diary
[2:17] Speaker 2: from last year. I have filled it with quotes that
[2:21] Speaker 2: came from the book. They are brilliant.
[2:23] Speaker 1: You don't remember it.
[2:24] Speaker 2: I don't remember reading.
[2:26] Speaker 1: It's really bad. It's a good book. It is a
[2:28] Speaker 1: good book. Can I read a few quotes?
[2:31] Speaker 2: Since I don't have a review, you can determine whether
[2:34] Speaker 2: or not it's worth reading based on these. Tell me
[2:37] Speaker 2: what is it you plan to do with your one,
[2:40] Speaker 2: wild and precious life.
[2:42] Speaker 1: He didn't say that that's somebody else's.
[2:43] Speaker 2: It is somebody else's, Mary Oliver, but it was in
[2:46] Speaker 2: the book right. It's not about getting more things done,
[2:51] Speaker 2: it's about getting the right things done. If you don't
[2:54] Speaker 2: prioritize your own life, someone else will. I feel that
[2:58] Speaker 2: all the.
[2:59] Speaker 1: Time, pushing buttons. There someone not respecting boundaries.
[3:02] Speaker 2: And we can either make our choices deliberately or allow
[3:05] Speaker 2: other people's agendas to control our lives. The thing, the
[3:10] Speaker 2: ability to choose, cannot be taken away or even given away.
[3:14] Speaker 2: It can only be forgotten. So you read Essentialism and
[3:17] Speaker 2: did and you read it was clearly a brilliant book, because,
[3:20] Speaker 2: like I said, every other page is full of quotes.
[3:22] Speaker 1: You said that you had January and February books plural.
[3:25] Speaker 1: Was there anything else that's worth talking about?
[3:27] Speaker 2: No, No, you're cracking up. Most of them were church related.
[3:33] Speaker 1: Okay.
[3:34] Speaker 2: I did read the Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, yeah,
[3:37] Speaker 2: which I do remember that.
[3:38] Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about it. I didn't like it at all.
[3:40] Speaker 1: I thought it was a five page book that was
[3:42] Speaker 1: stretched out for two hundred and eighty pages.
[3:44] Speaker 2: Well, when you think about the fact that we need
[3:47] Speaker 2: to hear things repeatedly for them to sink and for
[3:53] Speaker 2: you're making fun of me. But I actually, as a
[3:55] Speaker 2: woman who has been conditioned to believe that it's my
[4:01] Speaker 2: job to control everything in my environment, learning to actually
[4:06] Speaker 2: let other people make their choices for good or bad
[4:12] Speaker 2: is really hard. Like it's completely a retraining. It's a
[4:16] Speaker 2: reconditioning of everything I've grown to believe is my role.
[4:20] Speaker 1: So you rated the book, I did write it, I didn't.
[4:22] Speaker 1: I did, and I think.
[4:23] Speaker 2: That it was I think that it was a necessary book.
[4:26] Speaker 1: Okay, all right, anything else on your book because I'm
[4:28] Speaker 1: asking because I have a lot to talk about today.
[4:32] Speaker 2: It did take me take me about seven months to
[4:35] Speaker 2: finish the last book that I read. But again, another
[4:37] Speaker 2: church book, right, and what's so crazy about it? And
[4:40] Speaker 2: this is this is the crazy thing is I actually
[4:42] Speaker 2: saw this guy speak and I loved what he shared,
[4:45] Speaker 2: like it revolutionized the way I saw my life. And
[4:50] Speaker 2: I just struggled to pick up a book. You know,
[4:54] Speaker 2: there are times in our lives where I just I
[4:56] Speaker 2: feel so encumbered by life that the idea of taking
[5:00] Speaker 2: someone else's thoughts on is just beyond me.
[5:02] Speaker 1: Okay, can I do my turn? How many books did
[5:05] Speaker 1: you read this last look? Well, I didn't actually read
[5:07] Speaker 1: as many as normal. The indulgence of book reading was
[5:11] Speaker 1: really hard to come by because, because you're right, I
[5:14] Speaker 1: was writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting my book
[5:19] Speaker 1: about boys, which comes out on June too, And you
[5:21] Speaker 1: can join the wait list for the book. Oh my
[5:22] Speaker 1: website Happy families dot com dot Are you just putting
[5:24] Speaker 1: it out there? The book I'm holding. I'm holding a
[5:28] Speaker 1: copy of it. Nobody can see it, right, I know,
[5:31] Speaker 1: but I'm just going to see I'm holding it. It's
[5:33] Speaker 1: called Boys, Building Strong young Men from the inside out.
[5:36] Speaker 1: Not what today's podcast is about it all, But if
[5:39] Speaker 1: you're raising tween of teen boys, this is the book
[5:42] Speaker 1: that you definitely want and I'm just looking at the
[5:45] Speaker 1: cover makes me happy, I does, I'm so excited.
[5:48] Speaker 2: And and again I look misconnection. Yeah, you've got this
[5:54] Speaker 2: really angsty teenager.
[5:55] Speaker 1: On, this teenage girl who's looking at the camera like
[5:57] Speaker 1: come on, bring it on. Yeah, yeah, define, let's go.
[6:00] Speaker 2: And then the cover of this, you've got a couple
[6:04] Speaker 2: of boys who are just so carefree, and they looks
[6:07] Speaker 2: like they jump.
[6:08] Speaker 1: Rocks into the water, into the water. I can't even
[6:10] Speaker 1: see their faces though, Like it's just these these these
[6:14] Speaker 1: bodies enjoying life and everything that you can throw at it.
[6:17] Speaker 1: It's wholesome childhood at its best.
[6:20] Speaker 2: And what I love about that depiction is just if
[6:25] Speaker 2: we can just bottle that up, so we can bottle
[6:27] Speaker 2: up that beautiful, positive, exciting energy of boys and help
[6:32] Speaker 2: them to navigate the challenges ahead.
[6:34] Speaker 1: You really don't want me to do my book reviews?
[6:36] Speaker 1: Do you'd rather talk about the book that I wrote
[6:38] Speaker 1: that stopped me from reading books this year? I'm feeling
[6:41] Speaker 1: you know what's coming, that's why, isn't it? You're just
[6:44] Speaker 1: just stalling. I read twenty five books this year.
[6:47] Speaker 2: Wow, which that's about half what you normally do.
[6:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, normally get somewhere between forty and fifty twenty five books,
[6:53] Speaker 1: smallest canon years because writing and rewriting and refining arguments
[6:58] Speaker 1: and wrestling with work and trying to articulate ideas that
[7:01] Speaker 1: were urgent but elusive is what my year was. Nevertheless,
[7:08] Speaker 1: even in a year of fewer books, there were a
[7:10] Speaker 1: handful of transformative And we're going to have to do
[7:12] Speaker 1: it after the break. Now, how am I going to
[7:14] Speaker 1: get through eight books? My eight frames?
[7:15] Speaker 2: You're not going to get through eight books?
[7:18] Speaker 1: How many am I allowed?
[7:19] Speaker 2: You're that too?
[7:20] Speaker 1: Once?
[7:20] Speaker 2: And two terrible ones?
[7:22] Speaker 1: Well I didn't. I didn't keep a record of the
[7:23] Speaker 1: terrible one. No, actually I did, but I'm not. I
[7:25] Speaker 1: just I can't throw shade at people because writing a
[7:28] Speaker 1: book is such an it's such a big deal. But
[7:31] Speaker 1: it just feels unfair to tell people.
[7:33] Speaker 2: All Right, So here's the deal. You can share two
[7:35] Speaker 2: books that transformed your life, and you can share two
[7:38] Speaker 2: books that you read that was super fun.
[7:41] Speaker 1: Okay, after the break, the best books that you should
[7:44] Speaker 1: read this year based on what I read last year.
[7:46] Speaker 1: Stay with us. We're back as the Happy Families podcast.
[7:56] Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I feel like I'm under so much
[7:58] Speaker 1: pressure this is kind of the pad and of every
[8:00] Speaker 1: one of our book club book discussions, isn't it. I
[8:03] Speaker 1: get excited about too many books and then you get
[8:05] Speaker 1: cranky at me and tell me that I'm not allowed
[8:06] Speaker 1: to talk about them. Let me do my two best
[8:11] Speaker 1: books of the year. I'm just I only put eight
[8:14] Speaker 1: in this time, like I was really really well behaved,
[8:17] Speaker 1: So I'm not going to talk about essentialism. I also
[8:19] Speaker 1: read it last year. You've already talked about it. I'm
[8:21] Speaker 1: going to cross that off. Also, I read two memoirs
[8:23] Speaker 1: from Victoria Vanstone. One was called A Thousand Wasted Sundays
[8:26] Speaker 1: and the other was called Mumming. They were delightful and
[8:29] Speaker 1: I loved them, but I'm not going to talk about
[8:32] Speaker 1: them either. Okay, So that takes three off eight straight out. No,
[8:35] Speaker 1: I'm not cheating, not cheating. I also read some classic
[8:38] Speaker 1: literature that is so durable. I read nineteen eighty four
[8:42] Speaker 1: by George Orwell and Lonesome Dove by Larrying Murtry, and
[8:46] Speaker 1: I completely I inhabited Bluntsome Dove, and nineteen eighty four
[8:49] Speaker 1: was so precient, like I was written in nineteen forty nine,
[8:53] Speaker 1: and it felt like it was about what's going on
[8:55] Speaker 1: right now in terms of the political landscape. So rather
[8:57] Speaker 1: than talking about them, I'm just going to talk about
[9:00] Speaker 1: two books, because that's what you said I could talk about.
[9:03] Speaker 1: Is that? Okay? First one, Careless People, a memoir by
[9:07] Speaker 1: Sarah Win Williams. You're looking at it right now, it's
[9:10] Speaker 1: directly above your head. This is my non fiction book
[9:14] Speaker 1: of the year. So I picked it up. And everybody
[9:18] Speaker 1: knows how I feel about Facebook. The people who run
[9:21] Speaker 1: it are the most mendacious people on the planet. I
[9:23] Speaker 1: think that Facebook is responsible for more suffering, particularly for
[9:26] Speaker 1: young people on our planet, than perhaps any other Specifically,
[9:31] Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg is responsible for more suffering in the lives
[9:33] Speaker 1: of young people than any other person who has ever
[9:35] Speaker 1: inhabited the planet. By the time I finished the book,
[9:39] Speaker 1: I could not find words to describe my revulsion when
[9:44] Speaker 1: it comes to meta and what they're about. When Williams
[9:47] Speaker 1: doesn't just critique, she was working at the highest levels,
[9:50] Speaker 1: like she was catching Zuckerberg's private playing with him to
[9:52] Speaker 1: go and meet with presidents and prime ministers. She prosecutes,
[9:57] Speaker 1: and she very very clearly. I mean, she has to
[10:00] Speaker 1: have so much evidence for what she's saying because otherwise
[10:03] Speaker 1: Facebook would take her down in court, and they haven't.
[10:05] Speaker 1: She lays the Rahinga genocide in Myanmar entirely at Facebook's feet,
[10:11] Speaker 1: deaths of despair, points a finger at Facebook the erosion
[10:15] Speaker 1: of our democratic institutions Facebook. This is a meticulously documented
[10:22] Speaker 1: indictment of what happens when a company prioritizes engagement metrics
[10:28] Speaker 1: over human welfare. And the thing that I found most
[10:33] Speaker 1: challenging about it is that nothing's going to change. So
[10:39] Speaker 1: the book left me furious. It left me feeling helpless
[10:43] Speaker 1: and just profoundly unsettled, which is precisely why the book matters.
[10:49] Speaker 1: And I wish more people would read Careless People by
[10:52] Speaker 1: Sarah Winn Williams more politicians, particularly because it could actually
[10:56] Speaker 1: change the world if they did.
[10:57] Speaker 2: So.
[10:57] Speaker 1: That's my first of the two that you've given me
[11:00] Speaker 1: to talk about. Super Blue by Nicholas Carr. I loved it,
[11:02] Speaker 1: but I'm going to move instead to Searching for Normal
[11:04] Speaker 1: by Sammy to Mimi, which we did talk about of
[11:07] Speaker 1: the podcast a couple of times last year. It's dense,
[11:09] Speaker 1: it's often technical. Occasionally it's just way too wordy, but again,
[11:14] Speaker 1: I just think it's absolutely essential for the same reason
[11:17] Speaker 1: like Careless People, it's a brilliant book that's unsettling, and
[11:22] Speaker 1: it matters tremendously. Raises really complex questions about big farmer,
[11:27] Speaker 1: the mental health industrial complex, the usefulness of psychology and psychiatry,
[11:34] Speaker 1: and it asks a whole lot of questions that people
[11:36] Speaker 1: in psychological and psychiatric practice particularly would rather avoid. I
[11:41] Speaker 1: think that I think that this is a book that's
[11:43] Speaker 1: going to have more impact on my work than maybe
[11:46] Speaker 1: anything else that I read in twenty twenty five, and
[11:49] Speaker 1: it's definitely forced me to reconsider systems and diagnoses and
[11:53] Speaker 1: interventions and ways of doing psychology that I've long long
[11:58] Speaker 1: considered normal and taken for granted. Searching for Normal Normal
[12:03] Speaker 1: by Sammy to Mimy. So there you go. There's my
[12:05] Speaker 1: book list. That's my best books I've read in twenty
[12:09] Speaker 1: twenty five, and I think I did it fast and appropriately.
[12:11] Speaker 1: Any feedback, any response, I'm impressed, Thank you, I feel did.
[12:17] Speaker 2: You read anything that was fun?
[12:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, I said, A Victoria Events, Stone Books, Mumming, and
[12:23] Speaker 1: A Thousand Wasted Sundays were definitely fun. And as I
[12:27] Speaker 1: quickly scanned through the list of others, I mean I
[12:29] Speaker 1: only read twenty five, So it's not a particularly deep list.
[12:34] Speaker 1: I mean, I really there's a couple of books that
[12:37] Speaker 1: I really wanted to love but they just didn't get
[12:40] Speaker 1: me there, Like Green Lights by Matthew mcconnie.
[12:43] Speaker 2: I was looking at that and I'm like, I'm pretty
[12:45] Speaker 2: sure I read that last year too.
[12:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, so I read it. I think you told me
[12:48] Speaker 1: that you really liked it. I mean, fascinating story, huge adventure,
[12:52] Speaker 1: nice insights, an amazing life, a guy who's really aware
[12:57] Speaker 1: of the change and the growing up and maturation that
[12:59] Speaker 1: he's been through. I just I gave it a four.
[13:02] Speaker 1: It wasn't a five, and I think that's probably probably
[13:07] Speaker 1: about it. I mean, I read a lot of serious
[13:10] Speaker 1: stuff last year, and I was so absorbed in the
[13:12] Speaker 1: book that I was writing, well, I'm.
[13:14] Speaker 2: Pretty impressed because I think that was the shortest book
[13:17] Speaker 2: review you have ever.
[13:18] Speaker 1: Done, and it was a whole year.
[13:20] Speaker 2: Well, it's only because you read half the books.
[13:22] Speaker 1: That I know, none we would care. Maybe I'm off
[13:26] Speaker 1: to a good start this year, though. Oh my goodness,
[13:28] Speaker 1: I've just closed the cover of the most exquisite novel
[13:32] Speaker 1: I've ever read. I think, I mean, I loved Lonesome
[13:35] Speaker 1: dub that was pretty that was pretty exquisite. But A
[13:38] Speaker 1: Gentleman in Moscow you can't share that yet by a hotel.
[13:42] Speaker 1: That's going to be next year's fiction book of the
[13:44] Speaker 1: Year for sure. Oh my goodness. That was like seventy
[13:47] Speaker 1: five out of five. That was You've got to read it.
[13:50] Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I've read two books to start this year,
[13:54] Speaker 2: so I'm doing well.
[13:55] Speaker 1: That's about how many you wrote down that you read
[13:57] Speaker 1: last year.
[13:57] Speaker 2: That's right.
[13:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm on track. Yeah, you're doing really, really well.
[14:02] Speaker 1: Let's see how the rest of the year goes. Hey,
[14:05] Speaker 1: thanks so much for listening.
[14:06] Speaker 2: Says you don't read fun books. I just finished reading
[14:09] Speaker 2: the Thursday Murder Club.
[14:11] Speaker 1: I'm reading something fun now. That's why I'm reading Richard
[14:13] Speaker 1: Osman not loving it after reading A Gentleman in Moscow
[14:16] Speaker 1: and it's just so good.
[14:17] Speaker 2: It was so much fun, so much fun.
[14:20] Speaker 1: All right, number of book clubs until next year, but
[14:22] Speaker 1: we'll look forward to seeing it tomorrow. On the Happy
[14:25] Speaker 1: Families podcast, which is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media,
[14:28] Speaker 1: Mimhammonds provides all of our additional admin support. If you've
[14:32] Speaker 1: got a child who is struggling with ADHD We've got
[14:34] Speaker 1: a course available online that I think might just change
[14:37] Speaker 1: the game for you. Check out Parenting ADHD the Courts.
[14:40] Speaker 1: It's available at Happy Families dot com dot au.

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