2020

I posted on Instagram my favorite books for each month.

Click the fleuron ❧ to read the full review.

• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. A wizard Bildungsroman. I appreciate the sailing. I read this as a teenager but turns out I had forgotten everything about it. All the events I remembered actually happen in the later books. (reread)
• Bring Me the Rhinoceros by John Tarrant. A book about Zen koans. If you’re curious about working with koans, check it out.
• ⭐ Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. A comic about comics and about visual art. Insightful.
• ⭐ Jatkosota-extra by Jaakko Yli-Juonikas. An experimental novel. A satire about Finnish politics and The Finns Party.
• Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. A business book about how to change behavior of groups of people.
• The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder. A collection of essays about relating to the place and to the wilderness.
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. A story about a woman who does not know how to act “normal”.
• Veden varaan by Jussi Marttila. A detective story set in Turku.
• The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. A memoir, or a personal essay, on motherhood and queerness.
• The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. A story about small gods.
• Maus by Art Spiegelman. A comic about survining the Holocaust.
• Tanssi tanssi tanssi by Haruki Murakami, translated by Antti Valkama (English title: Dance Dance Dance). 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.