- Babel by R. F. Kuang. Couldn’t finish. Yet another teen magical academy story, not the worst of them, but I just don’t care anymore.
- All the Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer. The US torched its relationship with Iran in 1953 and we have been paying for it for 73 years. It is sad to see us double down now and create an entire new generation of hatred for the USA.
- Independent People by Halldór Laxness. Not for me – dry, slow, plodding.
- The Challenge of Modernizing Islam: Reformers Speak Out and the Obstacles They Face by Christine Douglass-Williams. A collection of essays by various Muslim reformers about the challenges they face in trying to modernize Islam. A strange book, it clearly has an agenda, and is not forthright about it. Living in the US, I find that my life and freedoms are more threatened by the Christian right.
- We’ve Got You Covered by Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein. Short and simple argument for universal basic coverage plus paid supplemental insurance. Seems straightforward and obvious.
- The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist. Gruesome history of slavery in the US. Very hard to finish, the institution was cruel and pervasive throughout the economy.
- Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder. Corruption and murder in Russia, and the fight against it leading to the Magnitsky act. Excellent.
- The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Explores the delicate balance between state and society that is necessary for liberty to flourish. I would love to recommend it but it just takes so long to get to the point. I finally gave up
- An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green. Fun romp through technology, social networks, and aliens run amok, and humanity saving itself.
- The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver. Formulaic. Didn’t bother to finish. I’ve liked a prior Deaver but the well is dry.
- What’s Our Problem? by Tim Urban. Couldn’t finish. His breezy pedantic style is grating, treating the reader like a second grader. And lord he is wordy. Perhaps there is something good in here, but I am not going to spend the time. Go read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind instead.
- Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution–And Why America Might Miss It by Susan Crawford. Dated, completely misses LEO solutions. There might be some good points in here but it illustrates the folly of overfocusing policy on a particular technology.
- Storming Las Vegas: How a Cuban-Born, Soviet-Trained Commando Took Down the Strip to the Tune of Five World-Class Hotels, Three Armored Cars, and $3 Million by John Huddy. The story behind a wave of violent robberies in Las Vegas in the 1990s. The perpetrator makes for a fascinating case study.
- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. Lots of ways to look at this book, I see it as an allegory about all of humanity, adrift in the universe apparently alone, with no clear explanation for why, and we have to find meaning.
- Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby. This is a stupid story, and Goodreads warned me it was, but I was looking for light entertainment. But too much stupid in here.
- She’s Under Here by Karen Palmer. True story of a woman who went on the run from her violent ex-husband, changing identity, building a new life. I saw the author speak about the book, and her story is compelling.
- An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi. Great walkthrough of African history that was never taught in school.
- 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin. A very humanized telling of the crash, with focus on the people involved.
- Money, Lies, and God by Katherine Stewart. I just couldn’t get into this; I’ve read too much about the perversion of the religiout right and I just can’t stomach more of it.
- A Will to Kill by R. V. Raman. A modern Agatha Christie knockoff – a country manor, a landslide trapping everyone there for a weekend, secrets and murders. I would just go back and read Agatha Christie instead.
- Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World by Tim Bouverie. The story of all the various Allied power relationships during World War II. It is kind of remarkable the alliance held together as long as it did.
- Is a River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane. Poetic and lyrical. And the main central argument is that rivers and other natural features should have legal personhood. It is an interesting idea and no more absurd than corporations having legal personhood.
- Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. A noirish mystery with a unique protagonist who has Tourette’s syndrome. Great character, great setting.
- A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik. I like Novik’s writing and this trilogy has some good stuff, but I just don’t think yet another angsty teenage magical academy series is what the world needs.
- Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places by Paul Collier. I was excited about this book,and there are many excellent examples and ideas, but midway he gets caught up in philosophizing that just derails the book. Worth reading for the examples and case studies, but don’t read the whole thing.
- The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More by Jefferson Fisher. Great book about how to listen and have better conversations.
- This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Highly rated but didn’t work for me.
- I See You’ve Called In Dead by John Kenney. Another highly rated book that didn’t work for me. I just didn’t care enought about the character to make it through the setup.
- LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay by Warren Kozak. A detailed biography of LeMay – his amazing contributions and his flaws. I knew a little bit about WWII contributions and SAC, but didn’t know about RAND and didn’t remember the Wallace campaign. Makes our leaders of today seem even more feckless.
- Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria. Excellent history of liberalism, revolutions, and the modern world.
- Excession by Iain M. Banks. I hadn’t read a Culture novel in a while, and this one stands up well. Interesting to observe the interaction of the AIs and humans and think about the emerging “AI” in our society.
- The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar. Interesting premise about a man who sees seconds into the future, and kind of processes all the possible futures in a quantum computing way. Turns out to be a curse, not a gift.
- The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future by Stephen Marche. Slop. Needed an editor. A mishmash of musings, occasionally some facts, a lot of outrage mongering. Not worth the time. Contrast with Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War book, which is well researched and well structured.
- Full Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest by Sandi Doughton. Not as definitive as I had hoped, but I guess that is the state of the science. I’m left wanting to do more earthquake prep but not really clear on what the chances are.
- Raising Hare:A Memoir by Chloe Dalton. Lovely tale about becoming an accidental caretaker and companion to a wild hare. Much to learn in here about love, patience, giving.
- Capitalism and its Critics by John Cassidy. Initially this book was compelling. The structure sucked me in — rather than criticizing capitalism, the author is simply presenting what people have said. It is a clever way to open the reader’s mind to criticism. But the book broke me with overwhelming detail on the critic’s lives. Do I need to know that Marx had carbuncles to understand his criticism?
- The Giver by Lois Lowry. Yawn. I’m too old.
- Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron. It is probably not a good sign that I find myself too impatient with this book to really enjoy it.
- The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley. Eh, pretty trite SF stuff
- Never Flinch by Stephen King. Solid mystery, not as good as his horror work.
- The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. Fantastic mystery set in a fantasy world. Great characters for the lead investigator and assistant. I will absolutely read more in the series.
- Nuts and Bolts by Roma Agrawal. Wanted to love this but it was just a bit boring. Maybe I was too familiar with the material.
- Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart. A little “Harriet the Spy”-ish, in a near future slightly dystopic America. Kind of predictable but still touching.
- Some Desparate Glory by Emily Tesh. Couldn’t finish, pretty routine “gifted teens in a special academy have to grow up fast” story.
- Rose/House by Arkady Martine. A cautionary tale about AI, kind of weird.
- Somebody’s Fool by Richard Russo. Imagine a maypole dance, with a lot of people who are slightly tipsy and have never done a maypole dance before. That is this story. By the end, everyone’s life is smashed together and intertwined. Very enjoyable.
- Phantom Orbit by David Ignatius. Supposedly a thriller, but pretty light on the thrills.
- The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown. Oof. Humans are reliably nuts. They had so many chances to stop, to turn around, to live. But were so committed to the idea of getting to California.
- Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Kind of like The Martian but with a way more hostile environment.
- 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Time travel story centered around the JFK assassination. About 30% more pages than I would have liked, but I knew that going in.
- American Psychosis by David Corn. OK this book annoyed me. 1) It is a bit of a screed; no one who doesn’t already agree with the author is going to be swayed. 2) He puts all the blame for the Republican Party behaviour on some of the politicians in the party – but not on the voters who put them in office. 3) There is no recognition of the part the Democratic Party has played; voters have opted for some bad Republican choices because they are angry at Democratic choices and Democratic party behaviour. Not a helpful book.
- The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. Entertaining, Game of Thrones-light. All the drama and intrigue in one fast-paced story.
- Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer. An interesting political setup, ruined by all kinds of literary and romantic overhead. I am sad I read the whole book.
- The Big Book of Secret Hiding Places by Jack Luger. Not that big, but has some creative ideas.
- The AI Con by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna. I gave up 20 pages in. The authors are so bent against technology and innovation, I simply didn’t trust anything they said. I’d be interested in more rational critiques of AI.
- Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. 75% of this book is great. Allowing oursleves to get into flow state, making the changes in our how we spend our time, helping our kids to grow these skills and have better lives – all great stuff, and all researched well. Then he spends the last chapter on a degrowth rant for which he has done no research, and applied no critical thinking.
- What is the What by Dave Eggers. A novelized biography of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee who came to the US. Amazing story of survival and perseverance.
- Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy by Jonathan Rauch. A thoughtful look at the failure of American Christianity to live up to its democratic ideals, and how it can do better.
- Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds by John Fugelsang. A sharper and more pointed look at the same topic as Rauch. Good info on how to counter bad biblical interpretations, but a little snarky.
- Philosophical Devices by David Papineau. I probably would have loved this at a younger age, but a little too “angels on the head of a pin” for me now.
- The Lyrics by Paul McCartney. We may never get an autobiography from him, but this is pretty dang close. Stories about the songs and where he was in his life when he wrote them.
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. A classic, and a must-read for anyone who has ever struggled with the meaning of life. I am motivated to read more on logotherapy.
- The Cult of Creativity by Samuel Weil Franklin. Interesting history on how recently the idea of creativity has entered our thinking, and what a strong corporate background it has. Kind of ran out of steam, and but worth a quick read.
- I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger. Great tale of loss, adventure, and reawakening. I also love anything set in the Great Lakes region.
- Safecracker by Jesse DeRoy. A solid thriller about a safecracker who gets sucked into a spiraling series of events.
- Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Wow, what an upbringing. How Noah managed to climb from these beginnings is an amazing story. And somehow still maintains his humor and positivity.
- Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod. A travelogue, observations on the changes in a beautiful part of Japan, and a reflection on a long lost friend. Interesting juxtaposition – admirable.
- The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides. The tale of Captain Cook’s final voyage. Entertaining, and a good look at life on a ship in the 1700s.
- Small Mercies] by Dennis Lehane. A gritty, hard-boiled detective story set in Boston in the 1970s. Lehane has gotten even better over time, this is an excellent read.
- Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott. Brilliant advice from a writer to writers. One of the best books on working I have ever read, this is not just about writing. Progress in anything requires daily attention, willingness to try and fail, constant iteration, and an openness to input and criticism.
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. You know the sort of book – young person goes to a school for magic, much intrigue follows. More sex than Harry Potter. Nothing particularly new.
- Cecil Rhodes: Flawed Colossus by Brian Roberts. I did not like this biography. It treats Rhodes and his contemporaries as almost cartoon characters, with almost comical or farcical behaviour. I do not believe this is fair or interesting. Human nature and human IQ has not fundamentally changed over the past 150 years.
- Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee. Excellemt book about Apple’s corporate history. You will be mad at someone after reading this book. It might be China, it might be Apple, it might be the US government. Or maybe all 3!
- Diary of a Very Bad Year by Keith Gessen. A series of interviews with a hedge fund manager during the 2008 financial crisis. A great reminder to self, the financial operators in the market are about 1000x smarter than I am about the market.
- The Long Game by Rush Doshi. I wanted to like this book, but so pedantic and long-winded. I gave up. There is a nice magazine article in here somewhere.
- Death In The Spires by K.J. Charles. Solid mystery set in early 1900s – a college friend is killed, his friends all scatter, but find themselves drawn back in 10 years later.
- Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott. States try some pretty typical and consistent patterns to improve their societies (and to serve the state), and they usually come to ruin. A little long.
- The Loom of Time by Robert D. Kaplan. Excellent walkthrough of the history of the major countries in the Greater Middle East. We tend to blend all these together, but there is complexity and richness here.
- Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Wow. You can’t read this book and not be disgusted with Facebook.
- The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority by Martin Gurri. Outstanding assessment of the impact of the democratization of information and how it has eroded the legitimacy of authority. And how the elites in traditional positions of authority (government, party, academia, corporate) are fighting to hang on to their power. We still have a ways to go before we get to a new stable state in society.
- King Dollar by Paul Blustein. A useful read on the dollar and its role; I would have enjoyed a little more analytical depth.
- Abundance By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. I am clearly an abundance faction supporter. We need leaders who embrace this view.
- The Will Of The Many by James Islington. Fun kickoff to a fantasy series. Pretty typical fantasy elements, but mostly well written and fun.
- I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin. A thriller about a possible domestic terror threat which goes sideways. Moments of fun but ultimately a little wearing.
- The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder. A good look at the state of lithium and rare earth mining in the US, and the tough balance we face between environmental concerns and the need for these materials. We probably can’t continue to blindly outsource this issue to the rest of the world.
- Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell. Wow, I new very little about Pamela Harriman’s life. Simply amazing.
- Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age by Eric Berger. Great book about SpaceX history and the development of the Falcon rockets and the rest of the SpaceX lineup. I wish we had more of the Elon in this book and less of the Twitter/political Elon.
- The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian. Some interesting information about how bankers and lawyers move money around the world, but just kind of drags on.
- Pilgrim Machines by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne. Very fun romp through the galaxy as humanity expands towards the galactic center.
- The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership by Clyde Prestowitz. Ends on a strong note with strong policy recommendations for the US. Along the way, it was sometimes a little too strident, but overall a worthy read.
- The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. Would have been a nice blog post. Not a book.
- Nobody’s Hero by M. W. Craven. Kind of a standard potboiler/thriller. Not much innovation here.
- Chip War by Chris Miller. This was ok, a lot of history I already knew. A good summary if you want to catxh up with the industry.
- Morning After the Revolution by Nellie Bowles. Hilarious and sad, Bowles rips apart the worst excesses of the progressive movement.
- A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. What a strange book – who is this book for? The authors are trying for cute I guess, but come across as condescending. There is a good list here of hard issues around space travel. And it is certainly going to take a long time to figure out all these issues. But these authors write like we shouldn’t even try. I couldn’t finish it.
- Zero Days by Ruth Ware. I needed a thriller, this one was dumb. I get annoyed when clearly smart characters act repeatedly in dumb ways to advance the plot. I don’t know why I finished it.
- Biography of X by Catherine Lacey. Finishing the year on a strange one. A widow digs into the multiple identities of her deceased wife, and it is never quite clear who her wife really was or who the widow is.
- Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II by Sean McMeekin. An interesting new perspective on the war for me. If you accept the book, Stalin played the rest of the Allies like a fiddle to achieve his goals, and there is some truth to that. I didn’t realize just how generous the US was with lend-lease shipments to the USSR. That said, I suspect the US was happy to have the USSR bear the brunt of casualties in the war at the expense of some material goods.
- James by Percivil Everett. A fantastic retelling of Huck Finn. Makes me want to reread the original.
- Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen. Oof. In case you are feeling a little too light and happy this week, pick this up. Super depressing and even if unlikely, all too likely.
- The Snowball by Alice Schroeder. A biography of Warren Buffet, incredibly boring. Couldn’t be bothered to finish it. If you want interesting stuff about Warren Buffet, just read his shareholder letters.
- Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish. Would have been a great long magazine article. Not really book length material, but a useful framework for thinking more clearly and avoiding common cognitive biases.
- The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich. This book gets great reviews, and the premise is compelling, but I gave up 30% of the way in. I just didn’t care about any of the characters beyond the protagonist, and that wasn’t enough for me.
- Butler to the World: The Book the Oligarchs Don’t Want You to Read - How Britain Helps the World’s Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything by Oliver Bullough. I didn’t realize how lax the UK was on money laundering relative to the US.
- Dungeon Crawler Carl byMatt Dinniman. What a stupidly fun book. Ridiculous, fast-paced, fun. The whole series is a hoot.
- All The Worst Humans by Phil Elwood. What a great look behidn the scenes of the PR industry. I know some people don’t like the fact that the author participated all those years in supporting some bad actors, and only now tries to make amends, but it is a great look inside. Very hard to trust any media!
- Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. An interesting journey into identify and the many ways we see ourselves and others see us. There were some intriguing parts but needed an editor.
- Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam by Vivek Ramaswamy. I kind of had to ignore the author name as I read this book. It is better written and argued than I expected. However, there are 3 fundamental issues with the book. First, the author complete conflates human venality and corruption with being “woke”. Humanity has abused power forever, humans are venal and petty and self-interested and will grasp at tools to expand and abuse their power. That has been going on forever, there is nothing new about it. Of course in the current world, some will grab the levers of “woke” and use that to their advantage, but it would be some other lever if not that. So I too get enraged about abuse and corruption, but I don’t lay it on the doorstep of “woke”. Secondly, the author confuses “woke” and “a\(hole". There are plenty of a\)holes in the world, and some of them will be for and against some elements of social justice. It is not an indictment of social justice concepts that there are a\(holes involved with part of it, nor is it a refutation of social justice if anti-"woke" a\)hole faces some consequences. Finally, he is very critical of corporations having political views, and critical of money in politcs, but never touches the Citizens United ruling and its implications. I too might wish that corporations had no politcal voice and that money did not equal speech but that is not the system we have created. You can’t demand that one behaviour stop while ignoring the root cause.
- Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. Yet again a Booker prize nominee that I don’t like. Perhaps it is cleverly and uniquely written, but it is just dull.
- How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin. A very very high level introduction to cosmology and topology. And a nice introspective tale of the author’s life and growth. Very enjoyable.
- NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman. A very interesting look at the history of autism and the many ways it has been treated and understood. We have come a logn way from treating autistics as mentally ill.
- Roman Blood by Steven Saylor. A historical mystery set in ancient Rome. Quite the page turner. Apparently a lot of true history in here.
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Very well regarded, but I may not be Russian enough, and I do not like farce. Hard to get into.
- Moonbound by Robin Sloan. There are a few books that let you peek into a vast strange world and have a fun adventure, and hint at much much more. The Hobbit was one of those books for me. This is another. A fascinating world, a classic hero’s tale, just a lot of fun.
- On Desperate Ground by Hampton Sides. The story of the Chosin Reservoir campaign in the Korean War. A brutal story, a brutal war. War sucks, and hubris and incompetence make it suck more.
- Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts. I am on the fence here. I did finish the book, but I never really felt like I found Dorothy. There is a story in here somewhere about how Dorothy is a representation of the women in Baum’s life, but it never quite clicked for me.
- Advanced Portfolio Management: A Quant’s Guide for Fundamental Investors by Giuseppe Paleologo. Solid and short explanation of the mathematical basics of portfolio management. The math is not intimidating at all, a good read.
- Steel Fear by Brandon Webb and John David Mann. Super fun thriller, reminds me a little of the Alistair MacLean books I loved as a kid, only more modern and better depth.
- Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes. So I enjoyed this as escapist fare, but it is annoying that every chapter seems to feature an even more fearsome enemy, and the hero discovers a power every chapter that just happens to top that enemy.
- A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys. An interesting exploration of a eco friendly future, but WAAAAY too long. Too much description, not enough story.
- The Holocaust: An Unfinished History by Dan Stone. Not a happy book at all! A re-examination of the Holocaust, how widespread the perpetrators were, and how it there are still echoes in our societies today.
- North Woods by Daniel Mason. I love a carefully constructed novel. This is great, the tale over the centuries of all the people who have inhabitated a single house, with nicely interwoven stories.
- The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson. What a train wreck of hubris. Ego-driven rush into conflict without any consideration of the consequences.
- Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. What a tragic national and personal story. Lincoln was unique and the country was fortunate to have him, during a time of incredible tragedy and personal tragedy.
- Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway. A pretty classic noir tale, rendered by a good author.
- Translation State by Ann Leckie. Fun exploration of a very messy political situation.
- Money: The Unauthorized Biography by Felix Martin. An OK walk thru the history of money. If you haven’t thought about what money is, this is a fine start. His prescriptions are a little thin.
- Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. Quite a romp, aliens and demons and gender/sexuality issues. Fun read.
- How to Know a Person by David Brooks. Very provoking for me. I have not always been good at understanding people, there are skills in here I have not begun to understand and master.
- Dark Wire by Joseph Cox. True story of how the FBI and other agencies duped the criminal world into using a phone system operated by the FBI. A little light but still engaging.
