41–50 of 156 posts
I finally read Nabokov's Pale Fire. It is far and away the best book I have ever read. I think about it multiple times a week unprompted and I'm sad because I am certain that I will never find another book like it.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell Not as amazing as I thought it would be but memorable nonetheless.
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent Something nice about this book. Not for everyone. What is?
I generally read between 30-50 books a year (mix of fiction and non-fiction). But this year I knew my focus was going to be more on research, reading papers, writing code, etc. so I set my reading goal lower than normal (I usually set it to like 75, knowing that that's a bit aspirational). This year? I set it to like, 30. And I won't come close to hitting that. Right now I'm at 7 books for the year. So I don't have a big sample set to choose from. :-(
That said...
Of what I did read, a couple were pretty good:
Non-fiction:
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks- Scott J. Shapiro
Readings in Agents - Huhns, Singh (eds)
Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason - Bordini, Hubner, & Wooldridge
Fiction:
In Too Deep (Jack Reacher, #29) - Lee Child
Read a lot this year — a lot more than most years. A few highlights: The making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes was probably the best of the bunch. I read it because I see some parallels between the discovery of atomic power and the search for AGI, and wanted an insight on the ethics and decision making of the time. It didn't disappoint. The dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow was a solid read…
Will I like The Dawn of Everything if I didn't like Harari's Sapiens? (I loved Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are 5 Bobiverse books, all of which are marvelously read by Ray Porter on audiobook if you listen in the car on long, long drives like I do. The 5th book is an "audiobook only" release until January 2025 (I think) called, "NOT TILL WE ARE LOST". And the Bobiverse series has recently been optioned to Universal! http://dennisetaylor.org/status-of-things/
The last one was a bit off.
- Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar (an examination of the Dyatlov Expedition).
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (fantasy).
- Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden.
Hopefully the other responses here give me something good to read for Christmas break. :-)
This is how you lose the time war -- took me a long time to start this book, and then I couldn't put it down.
Non fiction, I really enjoyed Slouching Towards Utopia. I'm a sucker for narrative history like that, and I got a few useful concepts from the book. I also really liked The Prince of Peace, a biography of Keynes.
Greg Egan, Diaspora (7/10)
Dan Simmons, Hyperion 1-4 (9/10)
James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes (6/10)
Scott Alexander, Unsong (7/10)
Qtmn, Ra (7/10)
Qtmn, Fine Structure (6/10)
Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary (6/10)
Wildbow, Worm (8/10)
The Divine Reality - Hamza Andreas Tzortzis