Six of My 2025 Reads: Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

At the top of 1997 I sat down and listed all the books I’d read up to that point. I came up with ~40 titles. I’m sure this was not all of them, but it was a fair start. Beginning that same year I began to keep a list of the books I’d read each year.

With the end of 2025, I’ve highlighted six of the past year’s reads—a book of poetry, two novels, and three non-fiction titles. Perhaps you’ll find one you wish to add to your 2026 reading stack. Of course, I’d recommend you add all of them.

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

I’ve read little science fiction; only select works of a few authors—Ray Bradbury, Walter M. Miller Jr., and Arthur C. Clarke. I’d read 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I found to be a very engaging. So when my friend Phil Beetley recommended Clarke’s 1953 novel Childhood’s End, I was immediately open to the idea. 

Readers of genre fiction often read it not solely or primarily for the conceit of the form, but for the setting and place it offers. Childhood’s End, considered a classic of the genre, has all the necessary set pieces—earth-conquering aliens, advanced technology, apocalyptic sensibilities—but it also offers a glimpse into the upper-middle class zeitgeist and lifestyle of the early 1950s. There is a fascination with technological advancements, dinner parties, and a sensibility that looks toward the 1960s. Childhood’s End offers a vision for how humanity might adapt to a future we can’t immediately define, and over which we have less and less control.

Leave a comment with a title you read in 2025!