Here’s a list of some of the books I’ve read recently. I’ve starred the ones that I especially liked or that were otherwise special.
2020
- Maus by Art Spiegelman. A comic about survining the Holocaust.
- Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami. Once again, see the Murakami bingo card.
- Excavation by Wendy C. Ortiz. A memoir of a Los Angeles teenage girl having a relationship with her teacher. Troubling.
- Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. Okay, so this is where the word ansible comes from. I never read the books as a teenager. This review is spot on.
- ⭐ The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. A dialogue on Adlerian individual psychology.
- A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly. Poems and prose about the human shadow as in the Jungian concept.
- Unf*ck Your Habitat by Rachel Hoffman. A self-help book on cleaning your home. The basic idea is to use the Pomodoro technique.
- How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. Thoughtful on standing apart from the attention economy. Good bird-observing.
- ⭐ This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. A story about time agents writing letters to each other. Delightful.
- Outline by Rachel Cusk. A story about the stories authors tell about themselves.
- ⭐ Monimuotoisuus by Juha Kauppinen. Stories about nature in Finland and information about the decline of biodiversity.
- Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott. I was surprised that Scott is an anarchist, but I guess Seeing Like a State is not exactly praise for states.
- When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön. Existentialist.
- Keskustan valtakunta by Jyri Hänninen and Jarno Liski. About how Nuorisosäätiö lost their money, how Juha Sipilä made his money, and what’s up with Esko Aho’s Russian connections.
- Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. A journalistic story about Theranos and the magic of Silicon Valley.
- Domain-Driven Design Quickly by Floyd Marinescu. The ideas in DDD are probably good, but this book feels dated.
- ⭐ Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann. A through look at processing and storing data. Recommended for any software engineers working with databases.
- Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. A story about seeking everlasting life. Reminded me of Thomas Pynchon.
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. A story about getting old.
All-time favorite fiction
I rarely re-read books, but there are some books I keep thinking about.
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
- Historias de cronopios y famas by Julio Cortázar.
- The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.
- The Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
I look at this list and I realize I must have incredibly ordinary taste. Still, they’re good books.
In April 2020, I filled a social-media bingo card about my favorite books. I’m not sure if they’re my eternal favorites, but they felt like good books at the time. Ask me again in the future.
Lists of books read by other people
I’ve found the following lists especially interesting:
- Alvaro Videla’s Some Books For You Consideration
- Venkatesh Rao’s Now Reading page
- David R. MacIver’s three-book sets
- Further reading for Meaningness