The year is coming to an end. Time to look back and reflect. What are the books you've read in 2022? Which books made you change your mind or you simply enjoyed? And which books would you recommend to others for 2023?
One book stuck out to me this year: Blindsight by Peter Watts.
What happens when humankind on the verge of post-scarcity suffers its first alien contact -- truly alien contact. A team of engineered humans is sent to meet them.
What really stuck out to me is how the content of the book could be applied to a potential AGI -- an alien, intelligent entity that we can't really understand and still have to interact with. I can't go further without delving into spoilers. It's really good. But, also, very bleak.
If you like dense SF you'll like Watts. Specifically Watts is like Gibson, Banks, Stross etc. in that he has throwaway ideas in his books that would be the entire basis of a novel for lessor authors. With Blindsight most famously it's his Vampire character but also there's the character with beneficial split-personalities, "heaven", and more others may remember that have faded for me since I read the books 5+ years ago.
Incredible book and your post has reminded me that I need to reread it.
This is definitely a book that stuck with me over the years. The concepts were very foreign and unusual at the time I read it, and I still find them novel to think about. Definitely in my top five recommendations for sci-fi reading.
I haven't read the book, just some plot spoilers, so take this with a big grain of salt: it seems to be yet another book that flatters the reader by positing that humans are relatively more sentient than other spacefaring species. Where are the books that posit the opposite (which I'd think is actually much more likely) ?
Trying to summarize a half-remembered book, but the big revelation is that the aliens are not sentient at all. They are rather operating on instinct. The point of the book was more to discuss the nature of being human and is consciousness/sentience all that necessary. Lots of philosophical waxing on the nature of thought.
As to your question about other species, I think you are posing a rather challenging problem. How does an author write from the perspective of a being significantly more intelligent than themselves? Their actions and motivations become wholly alien as comprehension is not within our reach. One can justify any alien action as the unknowable motivations of a capacious god.
The Three-Body Problem is an iconic example of the opposite, with humans simply struggling to survive in a universe where every other space-faring species is vastly more intelligent.
I really enjoyed this book as well. Just a heads up for anyone interested, there is a vampire character, which seems very out of place initially, but just something that needs to be accepted for the story. It does all kind of fit in by the end though.
Blind sight has been recommended enough times so I'll add a note about the sequel.
Watts wrote a loosely related sequel called Echopraxia that was not nearly as good as Blindsight but expands on some of the concepts. It was much more of a slog to read through and a bit confusing to follow the story and I had to force myself to finish it. If you are thinking of picking that up after reading Blindsight.
Both books have a good section after the story where Watts explains the research and citations of how he came up with the story. If you read that part it may break your brain in a questioning existence kind of way.
Heh, +1 on Blindsight and also on the sequel not being as good :) I think Watts had remarked something like, people complained there was not enough action, so he added more action. But based on the comments I keep seeing (and Amazon stars) people like it much less...
To each their own, but I thought this book was at best just ok. Had some neat parts but overall I didn’t get very into it. To anyone reading this comment, it’s from 2006 btw, not that the OP specified new books in 2022.
This book gave me mixed feelings as well, spoilers ahead.
On the good side, I think the author is brilliant, the way he created this new race of aliens, how he explains their physiology, faster than what it takes for your brain to process images, their camouflage, how their body is a whole lens, their communication system, their way to accumulate energy, etc... that was amazing and worth reading.
On the bad side, I hated every character in the book, it's maybe expected to not like the protagonist with his "lack of empathy", but who makes a crew of such a bunch of uncooperative people, is like nobody wanted to do their job properly; All their conversations felt hostile, not sure how to put it, but I would expect a sense of wonder, curiosity and cooperation from the people sent to do a first alien contact.
The part that I disliked the most is how the human ship felt so abstract, they are in a ship, but everyone stays in some sort of independent tent, I thought this was my problem maybe I missed some key information about it, but after reading some critics, other people also have this feeling of disorientation.
Overall, it's worth it if you really like the genre, but not a must in my opinion.
* Three Body Problem. I've heard of it many times, but never read it. Picked it up a month or two ago, read the whole thing in a few sessions, one of my favourite sci-fi books ever. Will read the next book in the series.
* Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive. Best pop-sci book I've read in a while. Strikes the right balance between including pertinent information without being overwhelming, explaining things in a digestible way without dumbing down, etc. Inspired me to read a proper immunology primer (How the Immune System Works), which was also very good.
* How Rights Went Wrong. An excellent, level-headed take on the U.S. conception of rights, and how it leads to zero-sum thinking in supreme court cases. The author is so relentlessly reasonable that it's hard not to buy into his argument. Even though this book is about the U.S., it has lots of case studies where it contrasts with various other countries, which helped me understand my country's (Canada's) court system and system of rights better.
Let-downs:
* Seeing Like a State. The first few chapters are interesting, and do a good job of explaining the world-view of the author. Worth buying just for this. However, the last half or two-thirds of the book is a tedious re-hashing of the same ideas through various examples.
* The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Many interesting factoids in here (killer asteroids: solved problem). However, the book's central argument failed to convince me. Many of the analyses and probability estimates were disappointingly shallow and hand-wavy, especially for the #1 risk cited in the book--unaligned AI--which he thinks has a 10% chance of ending civilization this century.
Three Body Problem's sequel, The Dark Forest, is one of the most mindblowing books I've ever read. When they go over the Dark Forest theory, I thought, wow, the author came up with a novel solution to Fermi's paradox, after all this time.
After reading Seeing Like a State and Utopia of Rules, I'm keen to learn more about "bureaucracy". My hunch is the battlelines and dogma wrt making the world "legible" (measureable, manageable) and "bullshit jobs" (make work, no value add) are overdue for an update.
I'm going to use my vote to vote against the Three Body Problem. If more people keep recommending it, more people will have to read it, and that would make me sad.
Because it's a terrible book.
It epitomizes the sort of sci Fi that sci Fi people keep recommending, with it's kinda interesting concept and embarrassingly bad writing. It's just hundreds of pages of unreadable.
And it ends abruptly before resolving anything so it tricks you into getting the sequel. Which is somehow even more poorly written.
I wouldn't call it bad writing. It is different from what I used to. It is non-linear, which is actually quite common (eg see Hyperion) and I would say not-character-focused. It is more about a concept itself. And even though latter I don't like much, the core idea of the book is very interesting.
For me it was harder to read, but still very enjoyable experience.
>And it ends abruptly before resolving anything
hmmm, I wonder what kind of books you usually read. Because this is very common approach, when authors don't do full LoTR ending, but end story at the point when reaching it would be rewarding, but won't everything to the last bit, so readers can still think about for a while.
I know what you mean about the bad writing, but I don’t think that makes it a terrible book. Unfortunately most sci-fi has flat writing for the same reason most great literature recycles the same ideas and concepts: it’s hard to do everything at once.
Sci-fi generally sacrifices prose quality and character depth to pack in more interesting ideas; great literature generally makes the opposite tradeoff. If you read a sci-fi novel expecting great writing you’ll be frustrated.
Three Body Problem had enough interesting ideas to keep me turning the page, where most sci-fi novels don’t—I prefer short stories for sci-fi exactly because of the generally low quality writing.
Some people like this kind of book. In fact, I sometimes wonder if explicitly "bad writing" is good for hard sci-fi, at least some authors. My personal favorite example is Greg Egan. In Permutation City/etc., characters are cardboard cutouts, but the books are wonderful based on the ideas. Then in Teranesia he tried to write characters but the ideas fell flat IMHO. It's almost like there's limited bandwidth...
+1 for poor writing. I tried to read it after hearing recommendations and being interested in the idea of Sci-fi happening outside of the US. I got bored halfway through the first volume and dropped it.
If you haven't read Ted Chiang's short stories yet, do so. His first collection (Stories of Your Life and Others) was my favourite, but his more recent one (Exhalation) was also very good (the title story, Exhalation, is gorgeous). Stories of your Life is what the movie Arrival was based on and (as ever) the story was better than the movie.
As far as sci-fi novels, I have pretty generic tastes for this crowd: Dune, The Dispossessed, The Martian. The Crying of Lot 49 is one of my favourite books. Not exactly sci-fi but close.
I really had hard time getting into the expanse and dropped it in the middle of first book. Heard so many good things about it I was maybe biased but I couldn't stand every chapter being written on the exact same structure with the mandatory cliffhanger just before the next one.
I couldn't get the idea of a book being written following a formula learned in writing school off my head.
Early last year I read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I found it deeply affecting. The quality of the writing is incredible and I enjoyed the structure which alternates progressing the main story and vignettes of life around the main characters. But mostly I was shocked to realize how little has changed in ~90 years in terms of worker exploitation and the ability to fall through the cracks in the USA.
More astonishing is that he wrote it in 100 days by hand and published almost exactly what came out of his mind on the first draft. If you find the scans of his manuscript, it's shocking how few changes he made.
1. Breathe - James Nestor
I was a lifelong nighttime mouth breather due to a very dry winter climate growing up in Chicago, clogged up my sinuses. The book inspired me to look into solutions for this problem and now wake up with considerably less brain fog than I did before.
2. War and Peace / Anna Karenina - I wanted some sort of insight into Russian Imperialism and was surprised by how much my father was like some of the characters (his grandfather was a 'count'). I thought his personality was just a quirk of his since he was unlike anyone I knew growing up. He fit the Tolstoyan characterization of a noble like a glove, warts and all.
3. History of the Peloponnesian War - So many of the conflicts today are exemplified in the ancient Greek world and the relationships between the city states as described in the book. Hard to believe (I don't believe) that Thucydides could remember these lengthy speeches given by emissaries in various scenarios, but what is written is nonetheless riveting. It's great context for my current read, Plato's Republic, which was heavily influenced by the Athenian (democracy's) defeat against the Spartan oligarchy.
4. Come As You Are - Emily Nagoski
Shedding light on different sexual perspectives and experiences for something that is usually kept deep in the dark.
I recently read Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad and really enjoyed it. There is a dense playfulness with words in a way that doesn't exist in my diet of Internet reading. The plot is unfurled from questionable narrators, deft time shifts, and overall is compelling and peppered with ethical dilemmas.
If I had to pick one book from 2022, I would definitely go with Carlo Rovelli’s “The Order of Time” https://amzn.to/3W4PdVG
In the book, Rovelli explores the concept of time and how it has been understood by scientists and philosophers throughout history. An intellectually stimulating and not overly technical read about the concept of a universe without time and some of the latest developments in Loop Quantum Gravity (Rovelli’s field of work).
I'm about 25% through this book and struggling with it a bit. It's interesting, for sure, but it's kinda just going in one ear out the other for me. Don't feel like i'm learning or gaining new insight. Not to say I'm an expert -- anything but -- but don't have much to takeaway from it yet. Will trudge along...
Did not read that many books this year but this two books makes my list:
1)The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Tasting_Tea
This book is about the history of Statistics which is weaved through the some remarkable personal stories behind the history of Statistics. If you have ever used statistics, some of the words will sound familiar and will help to understand the history behind it.
2)The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Song-of-the-Cell/...
I am still reading this book but I have read his previous book, "The Emperor of All Maladies" so knew his style. Again I enjoy historical perspective and this one tells about how we thought of the cell. It almost reads like textbook but is much interesting read than textbook. Brought some of the memories from my cell biology class. Always fascinating on how we take some things for granted such as blood transfusion came along in first place. He also narrates some his personal experience in between to make it even more readable.
In short, I love tech and biology sparkled with history.
The Song of the Cell is on my list for 2023. My local library has ordered few more copies after they realized the demand for this book. I have been waiting more than a month and my expected waiting time is another month!
I'm very interested in The Song of the Cell, thanks, I love books like that and I tried to read The Emperor of All Maladies and I enjoyed the writing but I just couldn't keep reading, Cancer and terminal illnesses just terrify me, that was truly a horror book for me.
* The End of the World is just the Beginning, by Peter Zeihan
How the globalisation is coming to an end, how the US Navy made Chinese power possible, how the 21st Century will be American after all, and many other counter-intuitive things. A must read IMO.
* Atlas of AI, by Kate Crawford
Politics of AI: power, exploitation, colonialism, global surveillance and control... Fascinating. Another must read.
I'm in the middle of the Zeihan book right now. Even if his prediction about globalization's end turns out to be wrong (not that I don't think it's possible), the history and worldview in this book has been really enlightening for me.
I'm reading this book too. I have to admire his case for the end of globalization. He presents the facts in a very convincing and logical manner so it's hard to say he's wrong.
Last year was a terrible year for me for reading. I think I only completed one book, and that's Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.
The book is full of describing some different fictional city (or is it? one passage suggests maybe that's not the case), often with a different theme or flavor of strangeness that might be a metaphor for something in our lives. Every so often it changes it up by having Marco Polo (who is telling the stories of these cities) have a conversation with Kublai Khan.
I don't know if I enjoyed it as much as everyone else did (going off the almost universal glowing critic and reader reviews). Part of that might have been because I kept assuming the story was leading to some big reveal or something bigger than the structure of '4 chapters each describing a fantastical city followed by 1 chapter of conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan'. I wanted something that tied it all together and made me go 'Aha! That's clever!'.
I never got that. If it was just billed as like a bunch of short vignettes about fantastical cities and that's it (no conversations), I might have just enjoyed picking it up, flipping to a random city, reading it, and enjoying it that way. The conversations periodically kept misleading me into thinking it was more than that, and I ended up getting impatient with the city chapters, wanting to get to the conversations where I was hoping a little more of the real story got revealed.
I'm still somewhat hopeful there really is more to it and I just missed it, although reading some reader reviews didn't seem to suggest otherwise.
That being said, maybe check it out, and if you go into it without the expectation that there's a grand overarching story to it you might enjoy it more. And some of the city vignettes were quite interesting. Although there were more misses than hits for me amongst them.
I might be wrong but I think I remember reading that the book is meant to be a love letter to the Italian city Venice and that all the “cities” are actually just describing Venice from different perspectives.
Edit:
Just had a quick look at the Wikipedia page.
> In one key exchange in the middle of the book, Kublai prods Polo to tell him of the one city he has never mentioned directly—his hometown. Polo's response: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."
Ah fair enough. I think I went into the book knowing that already so I enjoyed it. I think I’d either recently visited Venice or went shortly after reading the book so it resonated with me. I think if I was going into the book expecting a standard novel then I would be disappointed.
I've never been to Venice so perhaps I would appreciate it more after that.
I did become a bit more interested in visiting Venice after watching this one video by DamiLee on Hurry Sickness and how the structure of Venice is like a labyrinth, designed to slow you down and encourage you to wander, as if it were somewhat of a soul-healing mechanism. She also mentions Invisible Cities in the video:
It’s absolutely incredible. It literally feels magical, like you’ve stepped through a portal into another realm. We walked around and deliberately got lost just to see where we ended up. One moment you’re on some bustling tourist street with throngs of people, the next you’re on some quiet passageway where all you can hear is the water, turn another corner and all of a sudden you’re in a courtyard and there are couples ballroom dancing in the moonlight. It really is an amazing place.
Out of 36 books I read this year, these 4 positions have the biggest impact on my life:
The gene: an intimate history by Siddhartha Mukherjee - fascinating book about genes and medicine. Author explains ~150 years of experiments and findings in genetic science without going into technical details.
The child in you by Stefanie Stahl - it is one of the most important books I ever read. This book helped me understand myself, discover and overcome some of my traumas.
Nonviolent communication: a language of life by Marshall Rosenberg - very good handbook for improving your communication skills.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus - when I think of this book word "charming" comes to my mind.
On The Clock by Emily Guendelsberger - Gave me a glimpse into how it is to work at Amazon, McDonalds and Convergys. Though the subject is not the most positive. her style of writing is quite funny, and the combination worked well.
Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series. He drops you into the middle of his universe without explaining it all at once, and he's very eager about explaining all the new technology he's dreamed up. He also makes sure the books are written so that they could all have been a standalone title. Depending on what you've read before, things he mentions will often remain a "mystery" until you find the answer later in the series, or in one of the standalone short stories.
Maus av Art Spiegelman - Graphical novel about being a Jewish WW2 concentration camp prisoner. Highly recommended.
Flowers for Algernon by David Keyes. From 1959, I liked it a lot. About a mentally handicapped man who receives a surgery that gradually turns him into the smartest man alive. Lots of focus on how empathy, humility and respect has to go alongside pure knowledge. And also that mentally handicapped are people too.
Gateway by Frederik Pohl - Sci-fi from the 70s. Quite good. A comet is discovered, full of million-year old ships pre-programmed for roundtrip flights to unknown destinations.
Next year I'd like to look more into Haruki Murakami's books. The one I've read was slow to get started, but I liked it a lot in the end. It had some things in common with regular sci-fi, but he seems to lean more towards the dreamy/odd/artsy side of things than what I'm used to.
And you'll see a lot of hype around Norwegian wood and it is solid, it's not "fantastic" so if you pick it up you might be surprised/disappointed.
I'll also give a rec to a slightly off the beaten path book I read this year Speculative Japan: Outstanding Tales of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy
It's interesting as these are works that would have absolutely influenced Murakami's writing. (First story is gruesome but the rest are not)
I focused on copying sketches from books, versus reading, as a way of training up drawing skills. The one that occupied most of my drawing year was Morpho: Anatomy for Artists. Later on supplemented by Ken Hultgren: The Art of Animal Drawing. The thing about art books is that when studying off of them you extract quite a bit more than just glancing at the page, so one book lasts a very long while.
Morpho is pretty easy to recommend as a way of getting better at human figures; it has a lot of coverage, and while many of the drawings are a bit on the scribbly side, they're easy to follow and show lots of poses and perspectives. The Hultgren book, OTOH, is definitely a tough one to study from - lots of detailed ink work with hatch lines flung all over, shrunk down to cram them five to a page, and an uneven grabbag of topics(half of the book is horses, which are used to show animation, construction, various phases of sketching, and cartooning - nothing gets a very detailed anatomy treatment or a lot of structure). Working through it was a bit like reverse-engineering, but at the halfway point, I find the exercise worth the effort.
I read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death recently after seeing Alan Kay mention it glowingly in interviews. There are many great insights in the book, one that stuck with me in particular is to observe the relationship between the nature of a medium and the goal it is ostensibly trying to accomplish. For example learning by watching a video where the activity is passive observation when the goal is to become adept at something that doesn't have anything to do with passive observation.
"What if? 2" by Randall Munroe is a great sequel to the first "What if?", especially the index.
Also, "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir as many others have mentioned. I enjoyed the scale and interleaved timeline in this book, the only bit it's slightly lacking is the humor found in "The Martian".
My best nonfiction read was The 1619 Project. It's a heavy read, but I highly recommend it. The runner up would be Christian Livermore's We Are Not OK.
Best fiction read was Tim Winton's Breath or (there's probably some recency bias at play here) Sebastian de Castel's Traitor's Blade.
I also read a few comic books. I love the East of West series (at least the first three books).
"The 1619 project" purports to demonstrate that the primary motivation behind the American Revolution was to preserve slavery in the 13 colonies. But this conclusion is false, not supported by the evidece. And, interestingly, some of the best rebuttals of it were published by the World Socialist Web Site, a Trotskyist publication:
> My best nonfiction read was The 1619 Project. It's a heavy read, but I highly recommend it. The runner up would be Christian Livermore's We Are Not OK.
Many people consider The 1619 Project to be politically-biased fiction.
I have no opinion myself (haven't read the book, don't know much beyond the official grade school history curriculum), but some of the criticisms come from superficially reasonable people.
If you take the book content to be meaningful, you should at least survey the criticisms. Of course you'll want to ignore the virulently anti brigade, which is numerous, very loud, and insufferably stupid.
Did not downvote. I think this is what the downvoters meant. As a reader, you deserve an explanation, IMO.
Subversive content in general tends to get that reaction from intelligent people and that book is more rightly considered propaganda than actual history.
If you understand what propaganda is, what its goals are, and can recognize it easily you probably wouldn't have been blindsided.
I don't know why you were downvoted, but your comment made me google some of the books to see if there's something to the recommendations.
I don't know what the 1619 project is; but the first few google links are all adverts like
> What Is The 1619 Project? - The 1619 Project And Socialism
> 1619 Project Debunked - What parents should know.
So i assume there's a certain section that disagrees with the book so much that they're paying for ads to counter it! Maybe there's an answer lying there. i.e. it triggers the left versus right debate and hard!
From what I heard, there have been a number of historians that aired concerns of factual issues pre-print who were ignored, and its marketed as a history book despite not being a history book.
One of the goals of propaganda is to cause disunity.
The idea being you divide people and conquer. You force people into psychological states where there are two minorities where some people don't react, and some who react violently at shadows, and it allows a smaller third group to do things that couldn't normally be done. That's the gist of it. You get them to that point by corrupting social norms, and other factors that make up individual and national identity. Its quite evil, and often uses sophisticated techniques that are designed to work on psychological blindspots we all have, the only defense for that type of material, is to limit exposure and view that material with critical thought and attention.
Obviously this kind of content would be harmful to any children younger than 12 as they would lack the developmental faculties needed to discern lies from truth and just accept what is provided.
American conservatives (myself included) generally dislike the book, for its incorrect account of the motives behind the American Revolution. But interestingly, many old-school economic leftists also disagree with it, as by incorrectly chalking up every historical injustice to "white supremacy", it obscures the economic forces that were the real driving factors. Some of the best rebuttals were published by the World Socialist Web Site, which is Trotskyist.
2022 was a great year for my reading (in order of my favorites):
The Great Demographic Reversal by Charles Goodhart - this book changed my life, but now that inflation and the retirements are in full swing it might be harder to make early moves on the knowledge. The graphs are also beginning to become outdated since the book was written in the end of 2019/early 2020? Either way, it inspired my decision to move closer to family.
The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan - this book is well worth the read. Peter is a very educated and factual guy, and it's hard to disagree with the normalized vectors of change he is describing. The magnitude of these vectors however are up for much debate. Lots to think on, agree with, and disagree with.
American Icon by Bryce G. Hoffman - a book on Ford's handling of the 2008 crisis. It's got some flowery parts that idolize these men too much IMO but a great book on leadership and problem solving.
Lights Out - a book on how GE failed. If hypothetically American Icon was paid for to make Ford look good, Lights Out would have been paid for by disgruntled investors to burn that company's reputation to the ground. By some Wall Street Journal employees, this book is bonkers and a really frigid lesson about how incentives play out and a sober view of work in the real world.
I enjoyed "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien, an author who died in the 60s but who had been completely unknown to me until this year. It's a short and very surreal novel, with an Irish dark tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.
(Note: I listed to these all via the Audible audiobooks, they were all very well narrated and I’d highly recommend listening this way.)
#1: The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
This is amazingly fascinating from beginning to end, if you like speculative evolution zenofiction space operas, you’re in for a real treat. I feel like these books were written for me. I went the audiobook route and chugged through each (roughly 600 page) book, neglecting focus to almost anything else in my life. I would be playing Tetris on my phone (via the Tappy app) while listening at 1.1x speed, which is the perfect amount of mental stimulation to have massive amounts of time go by without noticing.
#2: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
I don’t want to spoil too much, but this is a must-read for engineer-brain nerds like me that yearn to understand complex systems recreationally. Enough said. Mandatory. I read Artemis by Andy Weir afterwards and enjoyed it too, but Hail Mary is my fave.
#3: The Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
After obsessively finishing the Children of Time series there was a huge hole in my heart, so I started this series. I didn’t really latch on until 15% through the first book, but once I did I was once again obsessively hooked.
#4 (Bonus) I’m now reading Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward and am very excited to report back when I eventually finish. It involves alien life that evolved in the atomic strata of neutron stars (nerd drool).
I’ve now mostly taken a break from reading as it became all-consuming. But it was very worth it overall, best reading year in my life so far.
Am 90 pct through Project Hail Mary and agree this book is brilliant. If you're technically / sci-fi inclined you'll love this. The author ties together a great story with scientific knowledge which must have taken significant research. Children of Time is my next audio book coincidentally.
I'd agree, and I really enjoyed it.
Bad news though. You're at 90%, and the last 5% felt rushed to me. So enjoy 90% to 95%, and here's hoping that 95% to 100% is just my personal preference!
1) Chris Moriarty. Spin State - relatively-hard sci-fi with decent non sci-fi elements (i.e. characters and stuff), which I think is rare.
2) Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man. I really enjoyed the writing, among other things, and how he captures short moments and scenes with sort of a hard-to-describe quality of a visual art, almost.
3) Ilya Somin. Free To Move. To me most of the book was "duh" but I think it would be a good read for people on the fence about immigration and private vs public institutions.
4) Vaclav Smil. Energy And Civilization; possibly How the World Really Works, still reading that one. Really dense and detailed examination of energy history of mankind for the former, and infrastructure of technological civilization for the latter.
5) Pluckrose & Lindsday. Cynical Theories. Good 101 on CRT and modern woke movement.
6) Alexander. New Jim Crow. Good 101 on war on drugs, although some broader social arguments the book makes straightforwardly don't seem to follow, or are contradicted by, its factual base IMHO.
7) Stephenson. Seveneves - really good hard sci-fi imho, although felt very, very long.
8) Orwell. Down and Out in Paris and London. A good book about poverty only 70-100 years ago. Also a good perspective for modern complaints about poverty - I have some non-US background for that, so I think many US readers might benefit more.
On the fence.
1) I want to plug Seleukid Royal Economy, just for the hell of it, if you are interested in ancient economy :)
2) Galef. Scout Mindset - on the fence about this one, but it seemed like it was way too long for what it offers. Maybe I've just read a lot of the same stuff ago.
3) Okorafor. Binti - not bad as a YA book, but sci-fi aspects are remarkably bad.
I realized I can't really recommend books to audiences much anymore, because I don't read those types of audience-books as much as I used to.
But still, here are some I probably bought for $0.99 and enjoyed:
Lost Restaurants of Seattle
This Outcast Generation by Taijun Takeda
The Royal Navy Lynx: An Operational History
A Doctor's War by Aidan MacCarthy
Sniping in France by Hesketh-Prichard
The Art of Whittling by Faurot
Moscow Calling by Angus Roxburgh
Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow
Icelandic Folk Tales by Stefansson
If you like any of those topics then you have my random recommendation, and possibly the indulgent vanity of once more having avoided consumer risk, or maybe consumer regret.
These were fun in 2022, in addition to 1) web browsing, which I find is definitely reading, despite all its numbered-pagelessness, and 2) dipping back into lots of classics and favorites, from Blacksad to Darwin to Scaramouche and Tom Sawyer.
(Possibly throwing in a volume on the adventures of Groo, a Weird Tales, a Comics Cavalcade, some TTRPGs, and a Scooby-Doo Team-Up...)
For some more local flavor, you might also enjoy Seattle Justice (eg SPD started as a protection racket) and Woodland for the "stone soup" origins of a local institution.
-Demon Haunted World A Candle In The Dark - Carl Sagan
I enjoy his writing in general, but this one talks a lot about being a skeptic and critical thinking which is paraphrasing strongly.
-The Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follett. Could not stop thinking about it when I wasn't reading it and was pretty bummed when it was over. Its about a cathedral being built in the 1100's. My most favorite book this year and probably ever.
-The Knowledge - Lewis Dartnell If all people were to suddenly disappear leaving the current world infrastructure still in place, how you could go about restarting civilization. Its more a manual than a story, but I enjoyed learning how so many different things work.
-Alas Babylon Pat Frank - A story about a family and some friends and how they survive in Florida after a nuclear attack on the US.
If they only cut out all the 'bad guy does a rape, again' stuff, it would be a fantastic read. Otherwise it's a fascinating read, populated with bad characters.
Children of Time is a great scifi novel. I like scifi but sometimes Im annoyed by great world buildings that are poorly explored or with a lousy story, CoT was a pager turner since day one and I couldn’t recommend it more. No details for no spoilers
You might also like Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. It's focused on fungi rather than trees, but has a similar outlook. Overall it's a bit more down to earth and factual (or at least it seems that way to me, having no special knowledge of the subject matter), but no less eye-opening or fun to read.
"Out of the Software Crisis" by Baldur Bjarnason. It's about applying systems thinking to software projects. As a systems thinking novice I found it really interesting. https://softwarecrisis.baldurbjarnason.com/
London Calling: A Countercultural History of London since 1945 - Barry Miles
This is a few years old but I found it at a library. As the title says its a walkthru of London and British culture from 1945 covering artists, and musicians during this period
Barry Miles was at the centre of this culture running the indica bookshop - so knows a lot of the people
The one thing that sticks out is his discussion whether counter culture exists or can exist in the internet age because everything that happens now is filmed and on social media so quick it finds an audience or is drowned out.
I am about halfway through Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler 1880-1918. Kessler was an extremely well-traveled and well-connected person and his diaries follow him through ±1900-era Mexico, Japan, India, and then back in Europe amongst figures like Rodin, Nietzsche, Verlain, and others. It's a super interesting read if you're interested in turn of the century art and culture, and also for a behind-the-scenes look at the German upper class perspective of World War I.
This sounds super interesting, I plan to read it now. I read John Dos Passos: 42nd parallel (1930) and it's set during WWI. It was enlightening how similar problems are then and now. And made me realize there is so much WWII era knowledge and glorification in society, but much less about WWI.
These three books are some of the best books in their respective categories. All three are about product design in a way. Build is about the development of the iPhone and Nest. Hard Drive is about the early history of MS and about the stunts Gates pulled to win. Inmates argues that programmers tend to hijack the product design process because they can (programmers write the code after all), and that products suffer as a result.
> Inmates argues that programmers tend to hijack the product design process because they can (programmers write the code after all), and that products suffer as a result.
Yikes! The typical HN post says MBAs ruin everything. Who knew programmers who have troubles interacting with people would build products which have troubles interacting with people!? (i'm not an MBA)
The engineering and tech mind is different from most. We tend to focus on adding function because we think it's cool. Eventually the software gets so complicated that general users find it a chore to use. All they want to do is get their work done and move on. It's hard for us to truly believe that more function is not always better.
BTW, look at HN. It can have so many more functions but it does not. As a result it's very easy to use for everyone no PhD in HN needed.
Thanks! I don't have a great recommendation. About Face by Cooper (same author as Inmates) is good, but only covers inclusive design indirectly. Good design makes products automatically more inclusive, but design specifically for people with impairments is something I know nothing about.
Yeah, believe the hype. Definitely the most important novel of this century.
The story revolves around the deaths of over 500 women and children in a small border town in Mexico. Absolutely devastating read, It feels like most novels are rather silly in comparison (2666 even pokes fun at literature in general for ignoring the atrocities in Mexico.) 5 stars.
> Definitely the most important novel of this century.
There is no such thing as “the most important novel of this century”. “Importance” is subjective based on the values of the beholder.
It’s an especially ludicrous claim if by “this century” we are to assume you mean 2000 - 2100 considering we are not even a quarter of the way through it.
> It feels like most novels are rather silly in comparison (2666 even pokes fun at literature in general for ignoring the atrocities in Mexico.
I for one am glad that J K Rowling chose not to mention the atrocities occurring in Mexico in the Harry Potter series as it has zero relevance to the plot, as it probably does in 99.99% of all novels written.
No, not really. "Importance" is a rough proxy for legacy and influence. This is why one can say without any trace of subjectivism that Shakespeare is the most important writer of the English language, or Kafka the most important writer in modern German, etc. Maybe this is slightly less rigorous in the case of '2666' which is still a relatively young work, but it is widely hailed as a landmark novel.
Disagree with your definition of importance. Go interview 1000 modern English speakers and ask them what the most important book is to them - I doubt if anything by Shakespeare would make it in to the top ten. Go ask 1000 literature professors and maybe something by Shakespeare will crop up.
Was Shakespeare a great writer? In my opinion, yes. Is he still influential? To a lot of people yes, but to a growing amount of people probably not, in the same way that Beethoven and Mozart are only really important to classical music fans who no longer represent the majority of music listeners. Your average clubber probably doesn’t give a fuck. You could argue that the professors could get extra weighting for having dedicated their lives to studying literature but who’s to say that social factors aren’t at play and that people who become professors of literature become professors of literature because they conform well to the standard viewpoints and social norms circulating in those circles? Birds of a feather flock together.
Literature is not like science - there are no hard and fast rules where you can be outed as a bad literature professor the way a bad scientist can be identified after publishing papers which can be later demonstrably disproved by experiments. Judging a book is a personal evaluation of a piece of art.
Importance is subjective depending on the individual and the group and it is also temporal and fleeting in nature.
To quote Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
A very important man that Ozymandias, in his time. Not anymore.
If you were to ask 1000 English speakers what their favourite food was, the average would be some kind of fast food slop. Shakespeare is going to be sitting very pretty near or at the absolute tippity top of importance in literature for a very long time.
You are attempting to imply that consuming food and consuming Shakespeare are the same which they are not. Consuming fast food likely has a negative physical outcome in most people. Can you prove that consuming Shakespeare has a corresponding positive mental outcome for the majority of people? I suspect not.
The argument is also flawed because favourite is not important. If you asked someone what their favourite food was they may say Chinese takeout. If you asked them what their most important food was, they may say Sunday dinner because it reminds them of their deceased mother. There is a significant difference between the two, one is a personal preference but the other could compromise a bigger part of one’s identity.
Here’s a thought experiment:
Which book is more important? The book that the most influential man in the world considers the most important but which nobody else has read? Or the book dismissed by all elites but that is the most important book to the least influential billion people on the planet?
Yes it is taught in school. But have you ever thought to think why? Is it because he is the greatest writer that ever lived? Or is it because he was in favour with the British monarchy who use tradition as a way of maintaining power and the status quo and who then went on to conquer most of the planet, exporting their culture as they went? The upper class Oxford and Cambridge professors who determined the curriculum would have made studying his works mandatory and other universities would emulate. A couple of centuries of inertia and you end up where we are today.
Notice you said Shakespeare is taught in high school. In that sense it carries importance in that people are exposed to it whether they like it or not. But it doesn’t mean that once those people leave school it continues to be of importance to them and to most people I would argue it doesn’t. The majority of people run a mile when you start mentioning Shakespeare because they have less than fond memories of being sat and forced to read something written in archaic English that in the present day requires either a teacher or another book written in modern English to understand if you have never encountered it before.
The original comment talked about “most important novel of the century” which is a ludicrous claim. The assumption in that sentence is that there is a universally agreed upon consensus for evaluating literature in comparison with other literature that allows us to rank them like you would football teams in a table and that the commentator’s choice is the undisputed winner of this gladiatorial death match. If you can point me towards this criteria please do so. Otherwise what you actually have is ‘This is the most important thing to me so I’m going to assert grand unprovable statements as proof in order to propagate my personal tastes and beliefs”.
- The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Really solid cli-fi (climate-science-fiction). Tells the story of a fictional United Nations that begins to seriously take on the role of ensuring the survival of the human species.
This year I got into a history binge after I finally got around to reading Caro's Master of the Senate this January. It was so good I'm already ready to read it again.
I used to be scared of tackling big books because I don't feel strongly committed. But with these I did audiobooks for the first time, while cleaning and driving and cooking and it has made reading big books merely a matter of time.
Other than Caro's books this year, I really liked the three-volume Churchill biography by William Manchester. And the first two volumes of the Teddy Roosevelt biography by Edmund Morris.
Another vote for Caro's magisterial biography of LBJ. I read all 4 volumes this year, and cannot praise them highly enough - not just a masterful biography, but an exposition of the country and how it changed, plus penetrating analysis of power and how it is gained and used. Let us hope that Mr Caro finishes the 5th volume in 2023!
I also read Don Quixote this year - Edith Grossman's translation is excellent, capturing the joy of the original, and laugh-out-loud funny in places.
It's a webnovel, litRPG, slice of life, rememeberable cast of characters, with most of the characters getting extensive character building. Has dragons, aliens, time travel, fae etc. Also has modern pop references. For e.g. "arrow to the knee"
Also it's massive. You can spend an year reading it to reach the current chapters.
I probably spent more time reading this then watching webseries.
Oh, that sounds interesting! I like to take a break from books with other things like drawing, puzzles, manga, graphic novels. But I think I haven't followed a webnovel like this (the HFY subreddit stories is probably the closest I've done). Will give it a try! Thanks!
This was a big reading year for myself, I got through 25 books. They are not technical books like most listed here. I focused on reading memoirs, literature, fiction stories, primarily women authors. I didn’t read any bad books in my opinion, I guess I picked well.
Standouts,
Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
Lakota Woman - Mary Crow Dog
Beautiful Country: A Memoir of An Undocumented Childhood - Qian Julie Wang
Gather Around in My Name - Maya Angelou
The entire autobiographical series by Maya is a must read imo, but this one is my favorite. Maybe also my favorite book I read this year.
Sociology:
- The Coddling of the American Mind
- The Tao of Pooh
- Guns, Germs, and Steel
- Weapons of the Weak
Religious:
- Guru Granth Sahib
- Bible (King James Version)
- Q’uran
- The Book of Mormon
- Tipitaka
Fantasy:
- Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw
- The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
- The Way of Kings series by Brandon Sanderson
- Mistborn also by Brandon Sanderson
- Red Rising by Pierce Brown
- The Licanius trilogy by James Islington
- Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series by Larry Correia
Good recommendations, but for other readers I'd strongly avoid the KJV Bible as the language isn't just archaic but on occasion even the meanings of words has changed in the intervening hundreds of years. At the very least go for the New King James (NKJV) if you like the language style, but otherwise something like the ESV or CEV will read better for the modern mind.
I've read and loved most of the fantasy you mentioned, except for saga of The forgotten warrior. This makes me an excellent target for that last recommendation, thank you!
1. The art of doing science and engineering by Richard Hamming. This might be the best engineering book I've ever read. Hamming's breadth and depth are fascinating. His back of the envelope calculations are crazy accurate and early accounts of computing hilarious(real programmers write machine code). There is a great account of his discovery of error correcting codes and a great account of his failure to discover FFT. All in all it's a wonderful book on how to think about things in science and engineering.
2. The open society and its enemies by Karl Popper. This is a great book on open society and liberal democracy. Broadly the book is a critic of historicist theories of Plato and Marx. There is also good philosophy on essentialism and the futility of getting closer to the truth by defining things more precisely.
3. Printing Press as an agent of change by Elizabeth Eisenstein. This account of the impact of the printing press on Europe is very long but worth it. The parts on the scientific revolution are particularly good.
I read Kurt Vonnegut's _Player_Piano_ and really enjoyed it. It's a story about a heavily computerized society, but the computers are vacuum tube based. "We ran the calculation, replaced all the tubes and ran it again, so we're confident in the result" sort of thing.
I also really enjoyed Andy Weir's _Project_Hail_Mary_, and _The_Martian_.
- Scattered (How Attention Deficit Disorder originates and what you can do about it) by Gabor Mate
Question: how do folks discover new books to read — Goodeads? Friend recommendations? Book Clubs? Any other sort of niche, online recommendation engine? Podcasts?
Goodreads recommendations are decent; I can often find at least one related book I’ll want to read from a book I’ve read. My problem is exactly the opposite as yours: I can’t read books as fast as my backlog grows! Most of my recommendations come from Goodreads, discussions on HN, or one or two reader friends who make recommendations I like.
Oftentimes the books I read cover only part of a very large topic, and this leads me to seek out books covering the rest; for instance, I do not expect my interests in political/societal structure and economics will ever stop yielding new books to read.
I use the shortlists lists from awards I like (Hugo, nebula, locus, also the booker and Pulitzer lists but I tend to enjoy those less ) as well as/especially those for new authors. This also generates a list of authors I like. That gives a sort of web of trust, I enjoy n.k. jemisin, so books she recommends and endorses and has a blurb on is one I'll at least take a look at. And that's true for lots of other authors as well.
I have a local bookstore and browse the new releases and staff recommendations they have, and all together that can usually keep me busy.
Our local library has a "new" section on their website that sorts everything by date acquired. A couple times a year we page through it and request the interesting-looking books!
1. News sites with book reviews. I read Vox's book critic reviews for a while, as well as my local paper's book review section. Definitely better for fiction or current events than other non-fiction.
2. Asking the people working at the bookstore. I'm consistently surprised by the breadth of book recommendations bookstore employees can give. Even asking for something incredibly specific (like "young adult fiction featuring a trans male protagonist" or "modern fantasy takes on mythologies other than Greek or Norse") usually yields a few interesting results. Again, better for fiction than technical non-fiction.
3. Friends, newsletters, and podcasts.
4. Wandering around bookstores, especially boutiques, and thumbing through the books on display. This still yields mostly new releases, but stretches me outside my comfort zone. I found both Paddling Your Own Canoe by Nick Offerman (entertaining) and Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines by Jaime Lowe (well-researched non-fiction) this way.
Ten Steps to Nanette, Hannah Gadsby - Autobiography of an Australian comedian I like. (If you like audiobooks, she reads it herself which is a treat.)
True Biz, Sara Nović - A year in the life of a boarding school for the deaf.
Upgrade, Blake Crouch
Blindsight: The (Mostly) Hidden Ways Marketing Reshapes Our Brains, Matt Johnson & Prince Ghuman - Interesting angle of examining neurology.
Treasure & Dirt, and The Tilt, Chris Hammer - Good Australian rural crime fiction.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Eliezer Yudkowsky - Alternate fan fic depiction of Harry Potter as a hyper-rationalist. My review linked below.
The book is the biography of Alfred Lee Loomis, a tycoon that played an important role in World War II and somehow did not received the deserved acknowledgement.
It is an interesting book for a technical audience, mainly for electronics engineers and physicist, because the main character was involved in lots of breakthroughs during his lifetime.
The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith), and its follow-up The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (Landis).
Having been written in 1778 it still stands prominent with regard to its descriptions of how markets work, and the importance of the division of labor.
The latter book, also describes common pitfalls, often unknown to those living in the northern hemispheres with regard to Civilization development in tropical regions, and why Africa and Latin America are not more developed, and by extension what we can expect as climate change drives those tropical climates north.
Fiction:
- Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli: mixes the personal and political so skillfully
- The Magician by Colm Tóibín: Thomas Mann, the German, author is the main character. Shows our own moment in history in relief.
Non-Fiction, work:
- The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition by David Thomas, Andrew Hunt: I’m not a programmer and still found this one of the most useful books I read this year.
- Working Backwards by Colin Bryar, Bill Carr: The Amazon/Bezos love choked me a couple of times but I’ve put in practice some of what learned in this book to good effect.
Non-Fiction, history:
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy D. Snyder: This is a hard book to read. Not slow hard. Terrifying and apocalyptic and true hard. Gives a lot of context to current events.
- The Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson: Pirates. The seafaring kind.
I read Light from Uncommon Stars this week. It was a little uneven in spots, but overall it was very well written and an awesome fusion of many genres and topics (sci-fi, demons, violins, transgender teens) that sounds crazy but works.
The style is a bit of Terry Pratchett, a bit of Douglas Adams, a bit of Christopher Moore, with some very unique items thrown in.
Warning: the transgender portion is brutal on the negative aspects of being a transgender teen in America.
The Shards, by Bret Easton Ellis, the author famous for American psycho and less than zero. The book was available as an unedited serialized podcast this year but the hardcover is coming out in January. Sort of a coming of age story that takes place in the shadow of a serial killer
Illuminations, by Alan Moore, the author famous for watchmen, v for vendetta, etc. A short story collection with some unique story structures and great settings
Two incredible general interest math books came out this year: The Big Bang of Numbers and The Joy or Abstraction. Both are brilliantly written and convey sophisticated math concepts for general intellectual development versus math specialists. The later book gave me a good foundation for some ideas in category theory I still hadn’t internalized on an intuitive level after reading more conventional academic works.
But what this book needed is a good editor. Most space of most chapters of the book is written like a preface.
This book also suffers from what many technical books suffers from- uneven assumption of background. While some easy, trivial part is explained with more space, more hand-holding, harder parts receive briefer, relatively unfriendlier treatment.
— Flow: The most fitting for the HN crowd. A fantastic read about the state of flow in work and leisure. Great framework for unlocking what drives the mind towards fulfillment and happiness. I liked the ideas around how "order of thought" relates to personal satisfaction. I wished it talked about the "how" not just the "what".
— Man's Search For Meaning: An absolute classic. A moving but most of all inspiring book about the experience of a man in the Nazi camps. Stoic optimism. It opened my eyes to the relationship between suffering and self-actualization.
— I Remember: A book by Joe Brainard to be found in the poetry section but written in a unique unconventional style. Accessible, playful and moving. It created a lot of noise with it came out because of its format.
— Never Say You Can't Survive: How To Get Through Hard Times By Making Up Stories: The book I needed to read to reconnect me to writing to cultivate the spirit.
— Carbon & Silicon: This last one is a comic book. The story is an intimate (yet grand) robot saga that expands over centuries. A battle between immortality and decay. A joy to read. It hit me hard.
For the past three years, I’ve set the goal to read one more book than the goal I set the prior year. I started with one a month, so this year my goal was 14 books. Some of my favorites, in the order I read them:
The Body Electric by Dr. Robert Becker and The Invisible Rainbow by Arthur Firstenberg - these books made me aware of the impact electricity may have on life - including us! Much of these two books would likely be dismissed as quackery to most, but the implication of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease as piezoelectric illnesses, the idea that limbs can be regrown, in part by electric signaling, and the massive ecological issues associated with widespread electromagnetic radiation all were things I’d never have considered. Since the latter book made me aware, I haven’t been able to stop noticing the constant tinnitus I experience.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau - this had been on my list for a while. I finally reached a mental state where this felt like the right book to read next; I felt that technology had gone too far, and a simple life would be a better life. If nothing else, gleaning the perspective of a man almost two hundred years ago and seeing both how different and how similar the issues regarding technology were, made me feel far less alone, and enlightened me toward ways I could make progress in feeling liberated from the ever-increasing grasp of technology on my life.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber - after spending four years working on defense systems that, in a best-case scenario, will never be used, I felt my job was useless. I saw jobs in the tech field that I thought were worse than useless - social media developers, advertisement company developers, etc. What I didn’t see, and this book discusses, is the vast swath of workers in all fields who feel, who know, that their job is worthless too. The book discusses the vast impact that this has on human mental health and societal direction. Highly recommend.
10% Human by Alanna Collen - I find myself referencing this book very frequently. It is all about the power of microbes in the human body (they make up 90% of us, by cell count!). That small imbalances can cause illnesses and influence our thought processes, habits, and behaviors is starting to become mainstream scientific knowledge. The implications this has for treatment of illness and prevention of illness (e.g. avoiding unnecessary bouts of antibiotics, fecal transplants, the value of breast feeding and natural birth) excite me due to the improvement they can cause in human health and quality of life.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber - Does one have to pay their debts? What does it mean to owe someone a debt? What implications does the widespread holding of debt cause for our society? Is it morally right? All these questions and more are answered in this excellent book. It changed how I saw macroeconomics, and the structure of our society.
The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul - This book, written in the 1960s, is astonishingly prescient about the state of humans in relation to “technique”. While the end of the book’s predictions for the 21st century are wrong (more progress was expected than was delivered), that does not diminish the rest of this book’s observations that technology can cause a great deal of issues in our society.
I hope at least one person can experience the joy I have from reading one of these books. I’m looking forward to what I’ll learn from your recommendations.
Graeber, as well as being a horrible human being wasn’t much cop as a scholar. Bullshit jobs was tested empirically and it’s bullshit[1]. If you’re going to read Debt at least do yourself a favour and read some negative reviews first so you can see where he tries to put one over on you. See critical reception on Wikipedia[2] or the seminar on Crooked Timber where the discussants do back flips trying to be kind but can’t bring themselves not to challenge it[3]. His last book “The Dawn of Everything” is similarly careful, with experts realising that where they know what ours taking about it’s horseshit but giving the benefit of the doubt elsewhere[4].
> Graeber, as well as being a horrible human being
Whenever I hear or see such descriptions, I start discounting the opinions of those who made them, because they're often hyperbolic. I'd put someone like Genghis Khan at the level of being a "horrible human being," not some random author, because it indeed is a very high insult to levy against someone. That, or the person is just engaging in semantic drift [0].
Anyway, why was he a "horrible human being?" I couldn't find any controversy regarding his views or actions that would classify him as "horrible," at least in my limited search.
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean is a really good modern fantasy about families of monsters (based mostly on vampires) that eat books. Probably my favorite book of the year.
Grinding it Out, it’s really Ray Kroc’s autobiography. Very interesting to hear about his life before “founding” McDonalds. Very clearly written and easy to understand.
I just visited a Getaway [0] and read the founders’ book “How to Get Away”. It is about how to balance technology in our lives, not necessarily remove it, but how to not forget how to be human, in a sense. Interesting read.
In a similar vein, I’m reading Walden now after having been to Walden Pond, seeing Thoreau’s cabin spot, and wondering if I could do the same, maybe to a lesser extreme.
Also interested in reading Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
Shame. I was drawn by the story after reading the summary, until the part where, she fell in love with a married man.
I don't know what people find romantic about this nonsense and I hate this stupid trend.
Why cannot romantic stories be nice and uncomplicated instead of always involving some stupid love triangle or people cheating on their partners?
I meant like past romantic novels, where the couple are in love and their love is "simple", but they both have to overcome some trouble together (poverty, family illness, migration, war, separation due to work, ...etc). That makes for a love story that I enjoy reading. I guess I'm too traditionally minded. I honestly think romance is dead, or at least so different from the past that it is unrecognizable to me. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong century.
It's certainly possible to have 'happier' complications though, I think GP has a point. As one might enjoy crime drama, but not gratuitous violence, say.
"I don't know what people find romantic about this nonsense"
It's fine to have different literary preferences than some other people. As you say, "one might enjoy crime drama, but not gratuitous violence". But to question the literary preferences of other people is an entirely different matter.
"I hate this stupid trend."
It's not a trend. Writers have been writing about love triangles and marital infidelity for literally centuries.
I think romance as a genre has changed though. Today's romance is multiple people being involved in some weird interplay between each other and that is the main focus of the story.
Whereas romance from a century ago is more about two people fighting against adversity to be together or to remain together.
This year I've put myself to the challenge to read at least one book per week which I primarily could complete by reading in the middle of the night while holding our sleeping baby in my arms. It has been an interesting challenge which gave me a lot of fulfilment and has certainly changed my mind on how I view the world. This comment became quite a long read, apologies for that.
Books I highly recommend:
Churchill by Andrew Roberts (p:1105)
A biography about one of the most interesting figures in politics and WWII. Roberts gives a very detailed description of the life of Churchill and manages to keep you interested the entire length of the book.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (p:374)
In The God Delusion Dawkins gives arguments why there is no God, why we do not need a God and why religion is damaging to our society. If you are religious it might not be the book for you unless you are open to hear his arguments and line of reasoning. Dawkins will challenge your worldview.
The Bomb by Fred Kaplan (p:384)
Kaplan describes the policy of different US presidents on the atomic bomb and war in general. And primarily on the inability of US presidents and policy-makers to tune down its military. A chilling read which makes you appreciate a nuclear holocaust did not happen (yet)....
Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo (p:320)
Banerjee and Duflo give a gripping portrait of how poor people live. They offer an insight in the choices and decisions people make surviving on less than 1 USD a day (corrected for purchasing power). It made me completely rethink my own view on poverty and development aid; stressing even more that in order to help one need to have a complete understanding of the individual's situation and the local boundary conditions.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (p:476)
This book triggered my science fiction reading. For some reason I never was interested in science fiction. Most likely triggered by reading Foundation by Asimov a few years back which apparently is not a book to my taste. But Andy Weir completely annihilated that wrong perspective on science fiction. Project Hail Mary is interesting, funny and gripping book.
Kindred by Octavia Butler (p:287)
This book.... From page one I was hooked and almost read it in one go. Butler is a wonderful author and Kindred is a must-read. The book is about a woman traveling back in time to end up on a slave plantation. It's a chilling account of slavery.
Other books I read this year, ask me anything about one of these books. I've added a + if I think its worth a recommendation
Biography:
Navalny by Dollbaum, Lallouet and Noble (p:280); The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya (p:354) +
Sociology; Politics; Economics; Business:
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove (p:224); The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (p:140); Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov (p:290); Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum (p:224) +; Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl (p:164) +; We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins (p:272); De Zeven Vinkjes by Joris Luyendijk (p:200); Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers by Rutger Bregman (p:104)
Comedy: The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams (p:336)
History:
Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (p:432); The Nuclear Jihadist by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins (p:413) +; The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre (p:384) +; De Heineken Ontvoering by Peter R. de Vries (p:347); Red Famine by Anne Apllebaum (p:384); Night by Elie Wiesel (p:115) +
Science, Technology, Mathematics:
Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh (p:315) +; A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy (p:153); The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (p:546); The Rise and Fall of the Dinousaurs by Stephen Brusatte (p:404) ++; The Double Helix by James Watson (p:144)
Sport:
Run or Die by Killian Jornet (p:208); The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton (p:290) +; The Rise of the Ultra Runners by (p:304); Tom Dumoulin by Patrick Bernhart (p:203)
Fiction:
Anthem by Ayn Rand (p:105); Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (p:704); The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (p:566); Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (p:466); Live and Let die by Ian Fleming (p:229)
Classics:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (p:104); The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (p:201); The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzergerald (p:180); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (p:139); Animal Farm by George Orwell (p:122) +; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (p:227) +; The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (p:118)
Science Fiction:
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (p:399); All Systems Red by Martha Wells (p:144) +; A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (p:462) +; A Psalm built for the Wild by Becky Chambers (p:160); Dune by Frank Herbert (p:658); Foundation by Isaac Asimov (p:244); The Martian by Andy Weir (p:384) +;
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (p:278)
Excellent list - Inspired and intrigued - thanks for sharing the list. I hardly get to do sit down and read, and became heavily reliant on airpod+audible after the baby - do you want to share a little more on your reading habit? Like did you get everything on kindle or paperbooks etc.
Thanks again ...
I love the feeling of an actual book in my hands. So during the daytime I read paperbooks. During the evenings/nights I read on my ereader as this requires less light so i dont wake up my spouse or the baby. I make sure I have both so I can read whatever I like.
Something which I discovered this year is reading multiple books in parallel. And start reading the book which you feel like reading, not the book which you think you should read. That way I always had the mindset to enjoy a particular book.
Are you retired, by chance? With work, I can only read perhaps a max of 50 paperback pages a night. I would love to read more, but am just stuck on the computer with work so much.
For sheer entertainment value: I've just finished KC Alexander's two "SINless" books - Necrotech and Nanoshock. Both were excellent reads. Nothing heavy, just some extremely filthy and brutal transhumanist SciFi with a hint of cyberpunk in there too (not enough to make it that genre). Fast, frantic, gritty.
Great writing by a young bi-polar feminist writer with a great future.
Also, the introduction and the first few chapters of "Letters from the Desert" by Carlo Carretto.
"A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear" is a surprisingly sympathetic recounting of the great New Hampshire takeover of a small town by libertarians from around the country. The best of intentions, passion and idealism - and yet "mistakes were made." The book is well researched and well written, funny yet also poignant.
Published in 2020, someone gave it to me for a Christmas present. I'm surprised how quickly I turned the pages....
Starting this year, instead of writing the list at the year-end, I have decided that I will just write as I read along. Besides the 5 odd I listed from a comment on this thread, here are others I have listed from other threads on Hackernews and Twitter. The URL is a pattern anyway, so it will be https://brajeshwar.com/2023/books/
I read "This changes everything: capitalism vs the climate" by Naomi Klein. I bought it several years back. By complete accident, I read it immediately after "Lame Deer Seeker of Visions". It was a nice one two punch. Those were my favorite reads of the year
I’ve listened to 130 audiobooks in 2022 so far. I think I’ll get one more in before the new year but it won’t make this list. Some stood out:
Greek Mythology series by Steven Fry. Not literary adaptations nor scholarly treatises; just accessible, fun reads with enough accuracy and attention to detail for a layman like me.
I’m working my way through Cormac McCarthy. This year I read Suttree and The Crossing, which are both excellent IMO.
I discovered these beautifully written character observations: Matrix (Lauren Groff), Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan), and The Crimson Petal and the White (Michael Farber).
Not exactly unknown in the fantasy genre, but Joe Abercrombie’s Age of Madness trilogy is great. I think Abercrombie is actually an awesome writer. For instance, he has this trick for composing his big action sequences almost entirely through POV vignettes from disposable characters, which I think is a remarkable idea that essentially fixes one of the commonest problems in fantasy (plot over characters).
On Writing (Stephen King). I read a few writing guides this year and was by far freshest.
Collected Fictions (Borges).
Darkness at Noon (Arthur Koestler) is a classic in the same vein as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Shadow Divers (Robert Kurson) is a true-life story about divers discovering and exploring a remarkable wreck. Read this by accident, turned out awesome.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (George Saunders) was one of those times where I knew little about a topic going in but got swept up by the author’s eloquence and enthusiasm.
I rediscovered Michael Moorcock’s Elric series thanks to new audiobook recordings. The Witcher but good.
Second Place (Rachel Cusk) was a batshit boilerroom melodrama. My first Cusk, will read more.
The first three books of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series are great, but particularly The Eyes of the Overworld, which I was surprised to find was hilarious.
I reread some classic Philip K Dick, including Flow My Tears and Stigmata, and More than Human (Theodore Sturgeon).
The first two books of The Dark Star trilogy by Marlon James are both huge things, but worth it for fans of super dark fantasy. The setting really works for me, as far too much of this genre is basically set in a hyper caricature of medieval Europe.
Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle might be the best fantasy series for me. Tenahu might be one of my favourite books of all time.
The first two books in Gene Wolfe’s Latro series are superb and perhaps just as good as his New Sun novels.
Gateways to Abomination by Matthew Bartlett is a gross, super dark, and fun little horror collection.
I read East of Eden for the first time.
Here are some books that were enjoyable but had some problems for me:
The Royal Game (Stephan Zweig) was a super interesting novella that just sort of stopped.
The Elementals (Michael McDowell) was an awesome horror novella with a mostly excellent cast of characters and plot, whicho was almost totally let down by an unsavory trope that’s unforgivable in something written in 2014.
The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Beuhlman) is the first novel in a new grimdark series with some interesting variations on familiar tropes, although the characters were somewhat flat overall.
Here are some books I read in previous years but have stuck in my head: Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Roadside Picnic, The Vegetarian, The House on Vesper Sands, My Name is Red, The Lathe or Heaven, The Gloaming, The Worst Journey in the World, The Fisherman, At Night All Blood is Black.
Things I read this year I wouldn’t recommend: Lord Foul’s Bane (offensive, poor writing), The Cement Garden (tries to be shocking but is quite boring), Lapvona (major disappointment), Them: Adventures with Extremists (superficial), The Wrack (feels trivial post COVID).
What happens when humankind on the verge of post-scarcity suffers its first alien contact -- truly alien contact. A team of engineered humans is sent to meet them.
What really stuck out to me is how the content of the book could be applied to a potential AGI -- an alien, intelligent entity that we can't really understand and still have to interact with. I can't go further without delving into spoilers. It's really good. But, also, very bleak.