31–40 of 206 posts
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).
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.
Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine by Klara Hveberg
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?
Maybe that doesn't make an interesting book?
Comment and then question. - 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?
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.
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.
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).
In the process of reading:
Parable of a Sower’s Daughter by Octavia Butler
Read this year:
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
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.
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
Biography - John Adams by David McCullough