• Sharpe’s Rifles by Bernard Cornwell. Enjoyable historical novel set during the Napoleonic Wars, a part of a series detailing Sharpe’s rise. Good character, good pacing.
• Business Adventures by John Brooks. An insouciant (and I never get to use that word, so damn it, I am pulling it out of the vault when it fits) walk thru business stories of the 50s and 60s. Lyrical, notes of Faulkner, not your traditional business book. And the time machine back into business operations of 60 years ago is fascinating.
• The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda. Eh, just couldn’t find a reason to continue.
• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is the worst good book I have ever read. Too long. A mishmash of wholly different stories which doesn’t work. Too much yelling at the reader instead of delivering a message through story and character. And yet, I read the whole thing, No book has really illustrated how horrible climate change can become as does this book in a few places. I can’t recommend this book, but it may be worth reading.

We have been moving houses this week so not as much time as I would like to dig into some things but still a few nuggets.

The information passed between the retina and visual cortex is sparse. Most of what we think we are seeing is a construct in the brain.  Fascinating. I am sure this is common knowledge to a lot of people.

Lidar is getting ever cheaper and smaller — Moore’s law is cranking away.  When Lidar is basically free, what all will we do with, what apps will it enable?  I love how our Roborock vacuum uses lidar to create its map.  How else will we use in the home?  How will it affect home security apps?  What games will we create?

Good news, the yellow mealworm is now approved for human consumption. Unless you have prawn or dust mite allergies. Purportedly clear economic and environmental benefits. What will we be commonly eating in 50 years that was previously unthinkable?

Rivers Cuomo is thinking about learning flutter/dart.  I wonder what programming environments the Beatles or Prince or other artists would have chosen.

Audio watermarks – I didn’t realize these existed in Zoom.  I expect there to be a tool in about 30 seconds to strip them or to modify them.

• Your strategy is what you ship.  I didn’t learn this so much as I relearned it.  The story of the Edsel in Business Adventures is instructive. The Ford team dreamed of an innovative, breakthrough vehicle that would wow customers and capture a new market segment.  But what they delivered was an undifferentiated high-priced low-quality car, and we all know the results.  35 years ago in my first real job, the late Tom Jones told me “Your strategy is what you ship” and I have learned this a dozen times in my career.
• I know nothing about the modern gaming economy.  I have not played video games actively for about 6 years as I’ve been busy with a day job, and I do not understand the modern gaming economy at all, but I am fascinated by — https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/11/22225416/thegrefg-record-fortnite-viewers-icon-skin-reveal-eu-heretics?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
• Videoscribe. We use powerpoint decks for live presentations and for leave-behind reading.  They kind of suck for leave-behind reading; I experimented with Videoscribe to make a more dynamic leave-behind that better captures the story, pacing, flow, etc.   I like it a lot and will keep exploring this.  
• Eleemosynary is the word of the week, totally new to me.  And on first look, I couldn’t even make a reasonable guess about meaning.  
• Best practices from around the world. Noah Smith makes a good point this week – “America needs to humble itself and start copying best practice from countries that have things figured out more than we do, instead of imagining that we can reinvent the wheel”. So true, and particularly so in healthcare, where we spend more money and achieve worse results than nearly every other modern democracy.

I aspire to be a lifelong learner. I do read a lot – books and online – and I find increasingly that if I don’t take a few moments to write down and reflect on what I learned, then I don’t really learn it. So am starting a new attempt to document interesting things I learned each week. Inspired in part by Tom Whitwell, referred to by Mark Frauenfelder.

• Warsaw uses clams to monitor its water supply. We would need a vast array of sensors and AI machinery to do the same with computers, and we probably don’t know what all things to sense or what models to build. Instead, we just rely on some clams to be clams. Fascinating collaboration with nature and thought-provoking, can we collaborate similarly in other areas?
• There are cultures that do not discriminate between the colors blue and green, including Japan historically. I’ve read other pieces on the history of color perception, very interesting that this is somewhat variable across human cultures, it seems so foundational. What else is not as foundational as we think?
• There is a large tuned mass damper inside the Taipei 101 building and other large skyscrapers. Which makes sense and at some level I probably knew this, but interesting to see in action.
• Sea urchins have 5-fold symmetry. I am still trying to parse the explanation for why this evolved, it doesn’t seem obvious.
• Lizards have 2 penises. I guess this is no more unnatural than having two arms, legs, eyes, ears, kidneys, etc. Bilateral symmetry is easier to understand in animals than 5-fold symmetry.

Oh, and how fragile our democracy is, and how inspiring it is to see a large cross section of our society rise and start to defend it.

• The End of Everything by Katie Mack. In the midst of all our current political and social turmoil, you can read this book and either a) have even more to worry about, because the Universe is going to end and it could be tomorrow, or b) have even less to worry about because the Universe is going to end and nothing we do now matters.
• The 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars, Kurt Kohlstedt. Shines a light on all those little design and structure features that most of us ignore every day. A good book to read a little bit out of every day.
• Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. Very introspective look at his career and how it developed. Great insights about being intentional and thoughtful about your life.

• The Adventure Zone by the McElroy family, Carey Pietsch illustrator. Gets great reviews but pretty thin gruel for me. I probably would have thought it hilarious when I was young. From a well regarded podcast tho I never listen to podcasts.
• Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre. Good telling of the story of a female Soviet spy during WWII and the Cold War. Amazingly gutsy spy, hard to imagine living this kind of double life.

And those are the last of my 2020 reads.

This year I read or attempted to read 75 books.  There were some dogs but also some great ones.  I tried to come up with the “best book of the year” but that is pointless, they are all so different.  So I will highlight a number of different books that excelled in different ways. 

Best Mystery:  The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley.  A solid hard-bitten detective tale, everything you want in a private eye.  

Best Adventure: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.  If you like more fantastical adventures, this is a great tale and really ought to be a movie or TV series.

Best Historical Novel:  Washington Black by Esi Edugyan.  If you like your adventures a little more grounded in historical reality, this is for you.  Would also be fantastic on screen.

Best History: Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio by Derf Backderf.  If you like actual history, this is a great telling of the events at Kent State, and exposes the dangers of involving armed military in civil protests.  Almost chose this for best graphic novel, but for…

Best Graphic Novel: Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh.  Irreverent, at times hilarious, at times moving.  Well done.  

Best Irreverent: Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christoper Moore. Irreverent, some may even view as offensive, but I found it respectful and uplifting in a humanist way.

Best Current Events:  Getting back to our current situation and lives, there are 3 books that I enjoyed and gave me some insight on myself or the world.  

• One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias.  You might object to his solution but this book clearly focuses on a challenge we face, and it is hard to imagine solutions that don’t involve growth.  
• The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric Beinhocker.  A worthy effort to reexamine economics from first principles.
• Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.  There are many books you can read on discrimination and racism in our society, this was the best for me.

Best Math/Science.  Digging a little deeper, these were the math/science books that I enjoyed the most this year.  

• Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray by Sabine Hossenfelder.  A criticism of current thinking in physics.  I don’t follow physics closely enough to know if this is all warranted.
• Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner.  We all forecast in our lives, and we are probably all not that great at it, as this book will make you realize.
• But What If We’re Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman.  Challenges your thinking about what you know and believe, which is always good.  

Would love to hear your thoughts on books you read this year.

• Slow Horses by Mick Herron. Great tale of intrigue inside MI5. Started a little choppy but then the story took off and the characters rose to the fore.
• Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett. I really thought I would like this, but too much “angels on the head of a pin” for me.
• The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. What an awesome tale of a gang of thieves ensnared in conspiracy on top of conspiracy. Really fun read.
• Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh. At times funny, at times deeply sad, always very human. Some of the insights into dogs and pet owners are hilarious.

• The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry. Would have been a good graphic novel – evil albino twins, gene-engineered monsters (scorpion-dogs!), Nazis, a plot to end the world. Just a so-so book.
• Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino. Agatha Christie style story, fun, I would happily read more of these.
• The North Water by Ian McGuire. Baffin Island always sounded cool as a kid. This book puts the kibosh on that, it is a murderous place. Good tale.
• Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil. When the author sticks to anecdotes and data, and allows the reader to form their own opinions, this book works. But the author spends too much time telling the reader how to think, versus leading the reader.

• Collapse of an Empire by Yegor Gaidar. Good look at the unraveling of the USSR, it’s inherent fragility, and the human costs of the unraveling. Recommended by my Russian friends.
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alex Harrow. Love stories wrapped up in a tale of many worlds. More touching than expected.
• The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday. Might have been more meaningful earlier in life. At my advanced age, you’ve probably learned most of these lessons.

• The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin. A book about a terrible storm written by a Russian author? I expected some serious gloom, but this story was trippy and strange. Memorable but weird.
• Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad. A challenging book, but I certainly need to be challenged on these issues. Very worth the time.
• One Billion Americans by Matthew Yglesias. An interesting premise and some very good ideas. Needs a more thorough and detailed discussion and analysis but thought-provoking.

• Kent State by Derf Backderf. The Kent State shootings stand tall in my memory, but I don’t think I ever knew all the details of the events. This is an excellent telling of the story. Calling out the National Guard is almost never a good idea.
• Eternal Life by Dara Horn. Explores that the idea that a very long life renders meaningless most life events.
• The Native Star by M. K. Hobson. Fun adventure thru an 1800s America where magic is a normal thing. Perhaps not very differentiated ground but a fun tale nevertheless. Makes me want to read more in the series.
• The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe. Inside the illegal immigration trade for a period of the 90s. A rough trade, amazing what people will go through for a chance to better their lives and their family’s lives.

• An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal. An anecdote-driven walk through the dysfunctional health care industry. Some enraging anecdotes, and some useful how-to’s at the end. Would have liked even more data but overall a very useful read.
• The Origin of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker. An excellent book, re-establishing the basis of economics and wealth from first principles, overturning a lot of the traditional economics I learned once upon a time. Very satisfying to see economics built up as emergent behaviors from the actions of individuals, and to see the incorporation of uncertainty, imperfect information, and iteration. Not a complete story but excellent.

• The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. This didn’t really float my boat, I suspect the difficulty of translating from Chinese is significant, it is not just the straight translation but all the cultural references that are hard to carry over.
• Dune by Frank Herbert. Read ~45 years ago (BTW: I am old), upcoming movie motivated me to reread (Chalamet was born for this role). The book is still good but not perfect. Herbert’s imagined world is fascinating. He rushes thru the story – in today’s world, “Dune” alone would expand into 7 books à la Game of Thrones. Some very topical themes. The last scene is just goofy and off, let’s hope that gets a better treatment in the movie. But overall still a very interesting book.
• The Escape Room by Megan Goldin. Eh. Too much deus ex machina.
• The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis. Fun tale of alternate history with clockwork robots. Very different set of guiding principles than Asimov’s.

• Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Pretty damning. If you still somehow believe that America is the perfect embodiment of the “shining city upon a hill”, this book will but that notion to bed. We have a lot of work to do.
• Pew by Catherine Lacey. I really liked the tone of this book, and the ambiguity of the ending has a certain appeal, but I think I would have preferred a bit more resolution.
• Team of Vipers by Cliff Sims. Ugh. Why did I buy this. Another Trump insider claiming “yes he is horrible, but I did my best to rein him in, and now I can tell you the truth in a salacious book that you can buy”. A venal coward. Sorry I gave him a dime.