All things considered, I had a great year. The family stayed healthy, my oldest started college, I made some new friends, and work was meaningful. Everything wasn’t easy or perfect—it never is, or should be—but I’m hopefully better than I was twelve months ago.
For a while I’ve been doing these annual recaps, as much as for me as for you. I find it useful to pause and reflect, and I like going back through all the books I finished to pull out key insights worth remembering. Let’s take a quick look at some items I created, and then a roundup of the best from the 53 books I started and finished.
Things I Wrote (or Said)
I kept up my daily reading list and published hundreds of entries. If you scanned some of them, I hope you learned as much as I did!
In terms of what I created last year, I’m thrilled that Google keeps letting me co-host our Google Cloud Next developer keynote. Helping write and prepare it is a professional privilege and joy. It’s also a bonkers amount of work!
I delivered a few recorded talks in 2025—this on platform engineering, that on career management, another on AI app development, plus one on our AI strategy, and a look at using AI in your daily workflow. Between public talks and customer talks, I somehow found myself standing on stages in Seoul, Istanbul, Paris, Las Vegas, Stockholm, Hyderabad, Bangalore, New York, Sunnyvale, Austin, Vancouver, and Philadelphia.
What written posts stood out to me? I kept up a decent blogging rate and these were my favorites:
- Here’s which Google AI developer tool to use for each situation. This is up on the Google blog, and I’m glad I had a chance to think through a decision framework.
- What does a modern, AI-assisted developer workflow built around Google Gemini look like? Let’s explore. I need to write a new version of this. We’re sitting through the biggest changes in decades.
- The Gemini CLI might change how I work. Here are four prompts that prove it. This post took off a bit, and I like helping people imagine use cases for new technologies.
- Did we just make platform engineering much easier by shipping a cloud IDP? Will you succeed in AI without a good platform strategy? For most, no. Google’s finally productizing what you need to get better at platforms.
- Quality-focused prompts for the vibe coding addict. Dismiss the ideas of vibe coding or AI-driven development at your own peril. While you’re hand-wringing or dismissing the work, those doing it are lapping you with shippable products. Let’s help them build more responsible and maintainable systems.
- Code was the least interesting part of my multi-agent app, and here’s what that means to me. The cost of producing code is now zero. What will you do in response?
- How to build and deploy a portable AI agent that uses a managed memory service. I was doing some uncharted work here, and it helped being able to go to the people who built the underlying tech for help.
- Go from prompt to production using a set of AI tools, or just one (Google Antigravity). I’d imagine that 2026 will be less about model breakthroughs, and more about how agents and agentic tooling take advantage.
- Stop following tutorials and learn by building (with Antigravity) instead. If “learning how to learn” is the key still for this generation, here’s one way you should start learning differently.
Things I Read
I started and finished 53 books last year on a variety of topics. I usually read three at a time. Some are breezy books that I finish in a weekend, others take months to navigate. Here’s a batch I enjoyed most:
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I’d never read it, and my Dad gave me a physical copy. Really enjoyed it.
Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke. Perseverance is overrated. We waste time sticking with things when something better should be occupying our time. Great book on learning how to quit, and why it’s so tough.
The Trench: MEG 2 by Steve Alten. Maybe the campy movies aren’t your thing, but these books are super engrossing. I also read book 3 and book 4.
438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea by Jonathan Franklin. Speaking of adventure, this story is one that’s stayed with me for months. Floating helplessly at sea for over a year? I wouldn’t survive a week.
Cold Service (Spenser Book 32) by Robert B. Parker. I’ve been reading this series for years, and finished a few more books about Spencer. I think it’s Spencer’s fault that I started boxing last year.
The Shroud of Jesus by Dr. Gilbert Lavoie. I knew about the Shroud of Turin that purports to have an image of a crucified man imprinted on it. This book went super deep on its legitimacy and its implications. Pretty wild.
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose. Most Americans know “Lewis and Clark” were explorers. I really loved this book and how it brought their country-defining journey to life.
The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team by Patrick M. Lencioni. We’re not all good at, or enjoy doing, the same things. Here’s a good categorization of different types of work and what it means to excel at each.
Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World by Max Lucado. The US is the most anxious country in the world. Not good. How we respond to life depends on what we believe about life.
Command by Julian Stockwin. I read a couple more books in this series about Captain Kydd and (fictitious) sea adventures from centuries ago. Always enjoyable to read about this life and time.
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes by Morgan Housel. Does it feel like everything is changing around you? This book reminds us of what’s true all the time. Good perspective to have!
Men and Rubber: The Story of Business by Harvey S. Firestone. The best business-y book I read this year. Can a book about tires be compellling? Absolutely. Read this to uncover piles of well-tested and honest wisdom about leadership, selling, and continuous improvement.
The Lessons of History by Will Durant, Ariel Durant. I’ve said before, I think the secret to life is perspective. The authors point out what they’ve observed about biology, civilizations, and human behavior throughout history. Unfiltered, sometimes uncomfortable realities for anyone who doesn’t want to acknowledge how things really turn out!
The Mediterranean Caper by Clive Cussler. I went overboard on Dirk Pitt this year. I’m a sucker for a good adventure series, and read through the first eight books in this series.
Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire by Eckart Frahm. I was in the British Museum again this year and realized I knew too little about the Assyrians. This book took me months to finish, but I enjoyed it.
The Problem of Life: How to Find Identity, Purpose, and Joy in a Disenchanted World by Mark Clark. Is your joy and happiness shallow? Life isn’t easy or fair, but it’s certainly not meaningless. I always love Mark’s books, and this one reminds us that we innately know there’s more to life than what’s in front of us.
Human Hacking: Win Friends, Influence People, and Leave Them Better Off for Having Met You by Christopher Hadnagy, Seth Schulman. We can all get better at steering others in a fashion where everyone wins. Empathy is key, and this book outlines many practical steps for becoming significantly more influential.
Get Over Yourself: How to Lead and Delegate Effectively for More Time, More Freedom, and More Success by Dave Kerpen. I’m a work in progress here, and this book gave me more ways to think about how (and why) to delegate better. I liked the framework it provided for deciding what to spend time on yourself.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. The most important book I read this year? It’s a classic, but I had never read it. It’s a brutal look at life in a concentration camp, but also a convicting lesson on how we approach our lives. We’re all meant to do different things, and our pursuits define our time here.
The Museum of Desire: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman. Another series I’ve read for a decade+ now. I picked up a few more of these books about a detective and psychologist who solve grisly murders. Light reading.
The Five Temptations of a CEO, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series Book 38) by Patrick M. Lencioni. These business fables are a terrific way to absorb a key idea while staying entertained. As I somehow keep moving up the leadership chain, I’m trying to make sure I don’t fall into predictable traps. This book helped me.
Spurgeon: A Life by Alex DiPrima. He’s one of the most prolific writers of all time, and one of the most impactful humans that have walked on Earth. His pastoral work in the 1800s is legendary, but his relatability is why his impact was so big then, and now.
The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume by J.R.R. Tolkien. The movies are among my favorites, but embarrassingly, I’d never read the books. This novel represents three of them, and I truly loved it. Wonderful writing, expansive worlds, and characters you care about.
Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal by Oren Klaff. My speaking engagements in 2026 will absolutely be impacted by what I learned in this book. Many of us are doing it all wrong, and missing every opportunity to get an audience to care about (and resonate with) the message we’re sharing.
How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between by Bent Flyvbjerg, Dan Gardner. Fantastic book. We’re all terrible at delivering big projects, whether an opera hall, kitchen renovation, or IT project. Why? This book offers hard-fought knowledge about what it takes to reduce risk and complete work that matters.
The Prayer That Turns the World Upside Down: The Lord’s Prayer as a Manifesto for Revolution by R. Albert Mohler. It’s a short, radical prayer that fundamentally reorients your heart. Powerful book.
The Western Star: A Longmire Mystery (Walt Longmire Mysteries Book 13) by Craig Johnson. I’m not a cowboy, but I like reading about them. Walt’s a great character, and I read a couple more books in this series.
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar. Yes, a book about parking can be fascinating. We spend more time thinking about housing cars than housing people. The shapes of our cities and suburbs is driven by this unspoken desire to put our car wherever we want to, as easily as possible.
Bottom of the 33rd: Hope and Redemption in Baseball’s Longest Game by Dan Barry. I got near the end of the year and realized I hadn’t read a baseball book. I fixed this injustice by picking up this gem. Maybe the best written book I came across all year.
Once again, thank you for spending some time this past year with me. I genuinely hope that your 2026 is full of purpose, learning, and frequent moments of delight.
Richard Seroter's Architecture Musings 
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