If I had limited space for sending my past self a list of authors to pay attention to, these would make the cut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Bola%C3%B1o
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2666
A twisty maze of interlocking stories told well, with a dreamlike atmosphere
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Savage_Detectives
Memorable and distinctive content and structure. My head hurts from keeping track of all the characters.
B007RT1REA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skating_Rink
Eh, just fine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Coupland
B004W2YZ0I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs
Far out. For some reason, I had formed an internal classification of this book as typical empty nerdstuff. "We generate stories for you because you don't save the ones that are yours." Recommended by mpnolan.
031205436X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Accelerated_Culture
Pretty slick, though I was less able to identify with the characters than for Microserfs
B002TJLEWS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_A
Something completely different; clever narrative devices, though the plot wasn't quite my flavor
B002UM5C04
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jpod
Entertaining enough, but it felt like too many gimmicks with too little form or substance
B002STNASA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Nostradamus
There were a lot of loose ends. I didn't really get into it, but it was interesting and mostly well-told.
B000FC1JC6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Wyoming_(novel)
A fun combination of the feels of other Coupland, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Delillo
0140085688
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_Zone_%28novel%29
Another very good book from this author. Doubly impressive for being centrally about football and still being enjoyable for me.
B0023SDQI0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libra_%28novel%29
Very good.
B007M2ADCO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Names
I really enjoyed this one. It was a little slow starting up, but I ended up appreciating it more in the way I would appreciate a poem than the way I would usually appreciate a novel.
B0016P7SHG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underworld_%28DeLillo_novel%29
Again, it grew on me as I read it. The idea of moving backwards in time as the book progressed was very effective.
B001R11CAI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Noise_%28novel%29
:-) Good recommendation by dwb.
0030554268
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons_(novel)
Really well put together, like an extended poem
B014PUR0OO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_K_(novel)
I think I figured out the central quality of the DeLillo books that I like the most: they follow a particular sort of dream logic. The characters all seem to be speaking with essentially the same voice, and much of the dialogue is delivered monologue-style, with the receptive narrator as perhaps the only listener who's really following. Everyone is less concerned with day-to-day earthly matters than they would be in the real world.
B0052A6FR0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Angel_Esmeralda
Some nice concentrated doses of Essence of DeLillo. That characteristic ambiguity, with unresolved practical details, is an especially good fit for short stories.
B00D29CCMU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Jones_Street_%28novel%29
This one ended up being pretty enjoyable. I think it got significantly better somewhere near its middle. OK, time to stop reading DeLillo before I overdose or something.
B003DXPTQ6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Omega
Short and surreal.
B000QJLQWQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Man_(novel)
At first I wasn't very optimistic; 9/11 is a pretty heavy subject for DeLillo. However, he wound up pulling it off very well. The usual surreal elements crept in eventually.
B00D29BZPK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americana_%28novel%29
Y'know, I really liked a lot of it, but it spent a lot of time dragging in Part 3. I also found a pathetically prolix style that DeLillo seemed to abandon immediately after this one.
B007GZKQF6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Players_%28novel%29
This was short but reasonably enjoyable.
B001ROAKHG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_II
Eh. Eh.
B000FBJHEO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolis
Pretty good
B000FBJGFE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Artist
Short and sweet. Neither great nor horrible.
B089T77W63
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silence_(novel)
I like to think it would have been easy to pick this one out of a lineup as written by DeLillo. It's an extremely concentrated dose of the kind of people talking past each other that we're used to from him.
B007M2A0M2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratner%27s_Star
Sometimes interesting, but not particularly satisfying. It reminded me more of Kafka's The Castle than the previous DeLillo books that I've liked. Instead of putting strange characters in believable situations, DeLillo puts strange characters in absurd situations for the entire book.
B007M2ABFS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_Dog
The streak is spoiled. This one is very different from his two books that I read previously. Somewhat enjoyable, but too action oriented. Not enough improbable conversation. Too real.
was much less intellectual than the above and much more "plot-centered"/"pulpy". It was still "good," but not really my style. I think this book and Ratner's Star show DeLillo going too far to opposite extremes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_DeWitt
0786866683
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Samurai_%28novel%29
This was so frenetic and nutty, in a way I've never seen before.
B076HXD9HJ
It's interesting to try to piece together what is the common theme through these stories. I felt like the biggest one is people in a variety of different "scenes" getting carried away with signaling to each other and acting ingenuinely. While I was able to hold on and enjoy the stories in scenes I'm familiar with (computing, math), the others largely left me feeling like I'd fallen off the bus. A handful still felt broadly accessible and funny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens
B004GHNIQQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copperfield_%28novel%29
Great, but perhaps a bit longer than I would have liked.
B00GA8DLTI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Expectations
Top-notch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoyevsky
B000FCKCBA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idiot_%28novel%29
B00848YAH4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Possessed_%28novel%29
B004ZM10OE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brothers_Karamazov
B000QCS8V0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_and_Punishment
B000XUDFU4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raw_Youth
B0082YWLVW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gambler_%28novella%29
B002RI99GE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova_%28novel%29
B00433T3QC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_of_Stepanchikovo
B001FWYYOK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Dead_%28novel%29
B0082Z4YIY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_from_Underground
B008C80XA4
B00A62Y9AY
is horrible. Anything else is worth reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Double:_A_Petersburg_Poem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco
B003WUYPI8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum_%28book%29
B005LVQZQ6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prague_Cemetery
A cross between the subject matter and style of Foucault's Pendulum and Baudolino; tons of fun!
B003PDMMYQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudolino
B003WUYPTC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Rose
0151011400
Off-and-on gripping. Definitely unique and imaginative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Flame_of_Queen_Loana
B00TD0U7L0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numero_Zero
Clever, frenetic, and over quickly, with something of the feeling of a friend telling you a far-fetched story in one sitting
B004H1U2NI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Day_Before
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Ellison
B003WUYR9K
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man_%28novel%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman
B000FC10MU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods
1401233325
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(Vertigo)
Edited by Leslie S. Klinger. A much quicker on-and-off-again coffee-table read than the other annotated Klinger books I've tried. Very promising so far!
1401235662
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(Vertigo)
Still going strong
1401241026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(Vertigo)
Keep 'em coming!
B000FCKENQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi_Boys
It took a while to get started, but it ended up being reasonably good. It can't compare with American Gods, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe
B000FC261Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther
B0084BVQ7I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%27s_Faust
B00ARI2G5C
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust_Part_Two
B002RI9HWK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_Affinities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Haddon
B000FC1MCS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curious_Incident_of_the_Dog_in_the_Night-time
Totally identified with the protagonist....
B000UZNRG4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Spot_of_Bother
Contrasting my expectations with the first quarter or so of the book, at first I was thinking, did I buy the wrong book by accident? Eventually we got to the main plot points, and I have to say it all comes across as a pretty effective cautionary tale about paying attention to signs of mental illness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Heller
B0048WQDIE
This is really something!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22
B005IQZ894
Interesting and worth reading. Do/did most middle-class Americans really live like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Happened
B0047O2XI2
Kinda nifty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closing_Time_%28novel%29
0684868199
Just my luck; I picked up another nontraditional sort of deal. I enjoyed it all the same. It almost makes me angry that I've had no exposure to "Classics" in my formal education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_This_%28novel%29
B004478AOI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_and_Then_%28Joseph_Heller_book%29
I picked this one at random from the library shelves because the title sounded good, not realizing that it was an autobiography. It was pretty good, as autobiographies go. The writing was amazingly good. This man past age 70 had an amazing knack for writing pleasing English. So, I'm on to reading some of his fiction!
0743202015
Not bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_an_Artist%2C_as_an_Old_Man
0684841258
I gave up without finishing it. It was too loose and purposeless for me. Maybe I would have liked it if I had grown up with this biblical stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Knows
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse
B00AQUTONI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppenwolf_%28novel%29
B00A73J0DI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demian
B00AQUTOZG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_and_Goldmund
B00AQUTPAA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrud_%28novel%29
B00AQUTOVK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_the_Wheel
B00AQUTPXC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Camenzind
B00AQUTPJG
B00ANI9G0O
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game
0553208845
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_%28novel%29
B00AQUTPCS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_East
0374510180
As I would expect from a book alternately entitled "Fairy Tales," this one wasn't really my style. I hadn't realized that these short stories were written shortly before Hesse got into psychodrama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_News_from_Another_Star
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Irving
034541795X
Wow. This book is amazing. Need I say more?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hotel_New_Hampshire
B006VE6TCW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Prayer_for_Owen_Meany
Another excellent book
B008K556BK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cider_House_Rules
Great
B002PYFVZ8
http://ourworld.cs.com/irvingpage/circus.htm
Really good. Very different from his previous books, and yet very similar at the same time.
B000QCS9LO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Widow_for_One_Year
Super duper as usual.
034541800X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water-Method_Man
A grade-A good time.
034536676X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_According_to_Garp
It didn't quite have the life of Irving's later novels, but it had a less intense version of their quality.
B000FCK8YG
http://ourworld.cs.com/irvingpage/garpbook.htm
Good, but not his best.
0345417968
http://ourworld.cs.com/irvingpage/garpbook.htm
Another good one, though a bit more erotic than expected!
0345417984
http://ourworld.cs.com/irvingpage/bear.htm
This book was quite good, though the quality was inconsistent in places. I got the impression that this book was one of those attempts to merge several story ideas into one book. You'll see what I mean if you read it.
B003V4BP2O
Pretty good.
B002MUAFYC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Night_in_Twisted_River
Unexceptional Irving material.
B00GQFBQMO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trying_to_Save_Piggy_Sneed_%28collection%29
Not bad.
0345458265
Not bad.
B00UDCNMRS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_of_Mysteries
Good but not great, in a way that leaves me wondering if the author changed over the years or I did
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King
B018ER7K5I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_(novel)
What an intricate production, with almost-Moby-Dick-level interludes on so many topics and situations, despite maintaining both a mythos and a character-heavy storyline over decades!
0452257743
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachman_Books
It must be one heck of an author who publishes books like these as rejects under a pseudonym! I felt like The Long Walk was (ironically) too long, though it was a worthwhile, eerie experience. The other three were well worth every page.
B0019LV31E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Salem%27s_Lot
Not too fancy, well put-together, fun retro feel. The "monsters come to small-town New England" idea is tons of fun.
B018ER7L5W
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_(novel)
Way more heart, artistry, and originality than I expected from my stereotypes of horror movies. Of the King books I've read so far, this one has the strongest element of "life is a bummer" at its core.
B018ER7LCU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cujo
Strangely resistant to coming across as dated, the way many of King's books might to someone who has experienced a few decades of King-influenced books, movies, and TV. In fact, even upon finishing the book, it wasn't quite clear to me what kind of story I had read, what the book was really about. It was an entirely unique experience, which I decided meant this book was really something special. Actually, maybe what we have here is an existentialist novel trying to fly under the radar as mainstream horror.
B018ER7L3Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Different_Seasons
And now for something completely different. The middle two stories were my favorites.
B018ER7LLQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_(novel)
Through the magic of low expectations, I was impressed! Who would have thought a haunted car could be the center of such a satisfying story?
B00K3NEE56
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Sematary
I can see why the author writes, in a preface, that this is his book that scares him the most!
B018ER7JUY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeleton_Crew
Freaky shit works well in small packages!
B018ER7IRI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_II:_The_Drawing_of_the_Three
Huh, I really was not expecting that after the first volume!
B018ER7K76
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misery_(novel)
Yup, it deserves to be as well-known as it is.
B018ER7JQ8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tommyknockers
If this is what a book that the author doesn't like anymore reads like, then I can't wait to see what's next!
B001BANK32
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_%28novel%29
Very atmospheric and well-executed, with a kind of depth of detail and context that the movie version couldn't muster
B018ER7L7U
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Half
Creepy, captivating, and a fun wink at the author's own biography
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_%28novel%29
Pretty darned good for a first novel!
B001BANK2S
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Shift_%28book%29
Well-done as usual
B001C4NXKM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand
Well-done as always. I was surprised at how much it reminded me of the television show Lost, including my feeling, near the end, that the author hadn't planned out the story very carefully, with a variety of plot elements being thrown under the bus haphazardly, never paying off like I had expected them to.
B018ER7KK8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestarter_%28novel%29
The basic story seemed very familiar, but then I remembered that King likely (co-?)invented this trope of "government experiment gives average people superpowers, then they get chased down by Uncle Sam"! Pretty good stuff.
B004INH9YK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre_(book)
There are at least a few good book recommendations in here, but mostly I enjoyed it for the author's discursive style, like I would a conversation with an off-the-wall and well-traveled uncle.
B018ER7JRC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower:_The_Gunslinger
A promising start to a series! Introduces plenty of dots to be connected later.
B07MK3R4QV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_the_Werewolf
A nice, comfortable, travel-sized container of King
B018ER7KNK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Dragon
King's take on a very conventional fairy tale. I wonder what inspired him to write it.
B018ER7JVS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinner_(novel)
The whole thing took a very unpredictable course for me. I wonder which aspect of this style King didn't want to put out under his own name originally.
B018ER7KLM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Past_Midnight
Thoroughly satisfying, despite some gonzo premises
B018ER7IR8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_III:_The_Waste_Lands
Yet another wildly different, and very fun, experience, compared to prior installments
B018ER7JZ4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needful_Things
Fun and novel premise, with an improbable and rushed ending
B018ER7KPS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald%27s_Game
Well, that was harrowing! At first I was worried that it would be dull, but there were twists aplenty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Cixin
B00IQO403K
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem
An intricate interwoven ball of speculative science and plot. Brings out some of the same themes that I enjoyed in Zones of Thought. Interestingly, I've heard that the English translation may be a better read than the Chinese original, even for native speakers of Chinese!
B00R13OYU6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest
Again like Zones of Thought, this second book in the series is built on rather different fundamental conceits than in the first book, while maintaining the same vibe. Definitely feels like it was written by an engineer who's decently far out on the autistic spectrum.
B00WDVKZY0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End
Continues the pattern of going somewhere completely unexpected, while playing within the same storyline begun in earlier books. The trilogy together paints a cautionary picture that might just deserve to be taken seriously, as we ponder our place in the universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft
0871404532
Edited by Leslie S. Klinger. A nice thick coffee-table book, which I read over the course of about a year. Though the last Lovecraft collection I read (in the 20th century) turned me off to this body of work, I'm glad I gave it a second chance. It absolutely deserves its place in popular culture. The part I liked least was At the Mountains of Madness, ironically the centerpiece of the collection I tried before.
1631492632
Edited by Leslie S. Klinger. Overall not as hard-hitting as the original, which makes sense, following up on a collection meant to grab the most influential stories. However, there were still quite a few gems, and it was interesting to watch some of Lovecraft's evolution in style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller
B008UX8KJC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexus_%28The_Rosy_Crucifixion%29
They don't make 'em like this anymore, no sir. There sure was a lot of sex!
B00501642M
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plexus_%28The_Rosy_Crucifixion%29
Now here's a ball of energy for you.
B001C6H6DU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_%28The_Rosy_Crucifixion%29
I wasn't disappointed.
B005012GA6
Very nice writing style, when he wasn't off in the Purple Prose Nebula. Definitely promising enough to warrant trying some of his better known books.
B001OWEE6O
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_of_Capricorn_%28novel%29
Too many spells of free association, but I forgive him. Final verdict: Rosy Crucifixion beats the Tropic originals, hands down.
B00CYYK3W0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_of_Cancer_%28novel%29
I see the germ of the endearing qualities of Rosy Crucifixion.
B003YJEXM0
Very lively
B00E4G6DPC
What a weird mishmash of different content styles: travelogue and then stream-of-consciousness essays on art and politics and then back again. The travelogue content was pretty good, while the rest generally got on my nerves.
B008UX8WEK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Spring_(short_stories)
Henry Miller and David Lynch have a lot in common, in creating works of fiction intermixed with LSD trips and free association. When it works, the trippier parts are the spice that makes the whole experience worthwhile. Within this recipe, though, it's easy to go too far away from comprehensible fiction, which, unfortunately, is what this book does for me. I did really like the chapter about the tailor shop.
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
1401265561
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen
Edited by Leslie S. Klinger. It definitely stands the test of time, and the appendices to the chapters are fun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami
B004LROUW2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Q84
The reviews that describe it as dreamlike are spot-on. Kudos to the English translators for making such good use of idiomatic expressions. And one of the Little People said "Ho ho."
B003XT603Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Wood_%28novel%29
Haunting and memorable. An interesting similarity in mood to 1Q84 without the magical realism.
B000FC2ROU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafka_on_the_Shore
Despite the fact that it followed such a similar formula to 1Q84, I was still totally drawn in!
B00RKO3THA
Short and sweet! Smells a lot like Norwegian Wood, with the first hints of a leaning toward improbable material.
B0041D8UKE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wild_Sheep_Chase
OK, the transition to improbable material is complete. It kinds of phases in, even within the structure of the book.
B004AP9W1O
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard-Boiled_Wonderland_and_the_End_of_the_World
This seems to be where the recipe of Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84 originated!
B003XT602M
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_the_Border,_West_of_the_Sun
Very similar vibe to Norwegian Wood
B003XT605Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind-Up_Bird_Chronicle
Wow, so reminiscent of Twin Peaks! They appeared at about the same time, and I wonder about the constellation of common influences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon
B005CRQ35W
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_%26_Dixon
Very enjoyable. The 90's Pynchon is much more organized than the 70's Pynchon. The sudden songs were kept to a minimum.
B005CRQ3MA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity%27s_Rainbow
Interesting book. Very 70's. If all your life you've longed for a novel full of spontaneous singing, then Gravity's Rainbow may be your deliverance.
B005CRQ2DU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland
My appreciation for this guy just grows and grows. This book is both more down-to-earth and weirded than his previous.
B005CRQ2V2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V.
Overall positive opinion, though I often felt like it lacked organization and coherence. There really wasn't any clear connection between the two parallel stories that got about equal time and merged senselessly near the end.
B00C5R78JM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Edge
Well, that's a relief; Pynchon seems to be back on track! Stylistically, this one sits somewhere in between Inherent Vice and Gravity's Rainbow. There was a surprising amount of computing inside-joke humor; I don't know how the average reader will react (Tyler Cowen couldn't stand the book; maybe this is why?). The retro 2001 milieu was lots of fun for me.
B005CRQ2Y4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_of_Lot_49
Worth reading, if only for another masterful treatment of paranoia. A few times I wondered if Pynchon had written a paragraph just to be confusing.
B005CRQ4H4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner
Not bad. I agreed with the author's comments in the introduction, which said that the last story, "The Secret Integration," was significantly better than the others.
B005CRQ34S
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Day
Plenty of good stuff here, but not quite enough to justify the length
B005CRQ3H0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inherent_Vice
Different but fun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Roth
B003JFJHP2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain
This was really good.
B003JFJHQG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Married_a_Communist
I like.
B003WUYR8Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portnoy%27s_Complaint
Soopah doopah pizzazz.
B00BFYC986
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Shylock
This was quite good. I had to laugh when I finished reading it; the whole thing came together so well. I'm now nominating Philip Roth for Patron Saint of Paranoiacs. (Thomas Pynchon is the other main contender, as I see it.)
1598530119
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuckerman_Bound
More good stuff.
B00D0KWGLI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ghost_Writer
Every journey has a beginning. (I liked it.)
B003K15INU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Pastoral
Hey, pretty good.
B00D0KGOOI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Counterlife
More mind-blowing recursive fiction!
B003WJQ6SG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath%27s_Theater
Another raunchy ride from Roth
B003WJQ6RC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plot_Against_America
Interestin'
B003JFJHUW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_Ghost
The End
B00D0L3NM8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_American_Novel_%28Roth%29
OKish and enjoyable at times. This one was entirely comic without the authentic feel that so endeared the latest Zuckerman trilogy to me.
B003JFJHPW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyman_(novel)
I went into this one not realizing that the focus would be aging, illness, and death. Doesn't sound so enjoyable, right? It turned out to be a fun read.
B00D0KQE84
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facts:_A_Novelist%27s_Autobiography
He couldn't avoid sticking in more of this self-referential stuff, eh? :-)
B000GWKTXU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye%2C_Columbus
Decent
B004EBT6VA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letting_Go_%28novel%29
Kind of overdramatic
B00BFYC95E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_(novel)
Interesting format, and the metatextual element was fun, but overall it didn't stand out for me.
B004EBT6L0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_She_Was_Good
Overwrought melodrama and not much hint of the author's voice that I'm used to in later books
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie
B004KABDMA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses
Reminds me of Thomas Pynchon without the geek factor.
B003WUYQCS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight's_Children
Entertaining enough. Too long and too much foreshadowing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.D._Salinger
0316769487
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye
Seal of approval granted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sartre
0679740783
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reprieve
0679738959
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason_%28Sartre%29
B007PKRJBQ
(American collection of short stories)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_%28Book%29
0811217000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea_%28Book%29
0679740791
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Sleep
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
B000SEFDP0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus%21_Trilogy
B002SXIF1I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_Cat_trilogy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson
B000FC11A6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
It's the computer-geek version of Gravity's Rainbow! I also enjoyed the Wired article included with the edition I read.
B000FBJCJE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
It's the cyberpunk Infinite Jest!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy
B005JSZJVS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace
B008476UXW
was rather disappointing. It was full of absurd Christian conversions and pointless and detailed descriptions of social activities, without the redeeming qualities of War and Peace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updike
B003WUYRJA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Is_Rich
This was top-notch and a significant improvement over the first two Rabbit books.
B003WUYRAY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Redux
I liked it better than the first book in this series. Definitely some good stuff here.
B003WUYR5E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit%2C_Run
It didn't always hold my interest, but in the end I liked it.
B003WUYQKA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_At_Rest
So that's that.
B000XUACWS
John Updike doesn't disappoint.
B007357A58
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bech
Some of the raw materials here were headed toward a potential "great" rating, but then the overwrought writing style faded in. I think the author was even lampooning his own past writing choices in the preface.
B006L7ROUU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witches_of_Eastwick
Over-the-top flowery language, interesting though underexplained central conceit, and a bit of fun retro feel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
B000FBJAGO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep
A pretty amazing contrast between my impressions 20 pages in and at the end. Started slowly and wound up being extremely inventive and well-executed.
B002H8ORKM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
It's amazing how close the basic formula here is to A Fire Upon The Deep while keeping the particulars different enough that it's no less of a page turner!
B003E74BSS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peace_War
I expect I'm going to be using "bobbling" as a nice obscure metaphor for years to come.
B004YD5JIW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_the_Sky
Enjoyable enough, but it abandoned the basic format of the previous two books and wasn't nearly as much fun.
B004M8SR2O
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
A good read in absolute terms, but not up to the standard of A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Mediocre sci-fi has story elements that feel like afterthoughts on top of tours of worlds that the authors have been so darned clever as to invent. Zones of Thought did a great job of avoiding that syndrome entirely, but Rainbows End leans noticeably in that direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace
B000S1M9LY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest
Awesome. That footnote business required some out-of-the-ordinary place-saving apparatus for efficient reading.
B0047Y0EWY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pale_King
Even unfinished, it blew me away. Often more of the feel of a short-story collection than a novel, but that's a form that's worked well before for the author. The IRS has never been more fun.
B000SEPJ7M
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_Interviews_with_Hideous_Men
I don't usually like books of short stories or things of similar form, but this one was super. With such great power to think of twisted ideas comes great responsibility.
B000FC1RGE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblivion:_Stories
Wild stuff.
B004F5UWTK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_Curious_Hair
More of the same, with more of a popular culture focus than the DFW stuff I read earlier
B002UZ5JQ8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Supposedly_Fun_Thing_I%27ll_Never_Do_Again
Heh heh heh.
B000S1LVHW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_the_Lobster
And I thought he couldn't push this footnote stuff any further....
B00E9P9FN0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_and_More
I'm left wondering how much of this is intended satirically.
B002YURMUK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broom_of_the_System
I can see the germ of the good stuff yet to come, but this one just didn't hang together in the satisfying way of Wallace's later work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wolfe
B003GYEGNO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonfire_of_the_Vanities
That was pretty swell. It reminded me of DeLillo and Heller in particular. Who knows who influenced whom!
B004TNHAXY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_in_Full
Quite good, though suspiciously similar to Bonfire
B000O76NPU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Charlotte_Simmons
Agreeable enough, though it didn't have that special oomph.
B0076DCLVU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_Blood
Decent. Not very intellectual-feeling.
These authors are all worth reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams
B000XUBC2C
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_%28book%29
B001ODEQCU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the_End_of_the_Universe
B001ODEQ7A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life%2C_the_Universe_and_Everything
B001OF5F1E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Long%2C_and_Thanks_for_All_the_Fish
B002SME1J4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostly_Harmless
0345453743
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Zaphod_Plays_it_Safe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood
B003JFJHTS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid's_Tale
A memorable little world, with almost-relatable characters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks
B0013TX6FI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas
A promising start to a series! So far, less mind-bending and more space-operatic than Zones of Thought, despite a similar central conceit.
B002WM3HC2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games
Some nice far-out premises
B0015DWLTE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_Weapons
Very rapid whipsawing between familiar human experiences and cosmic weirdness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.c._boyle
B00AFXM5AA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_End_%28novel%29
It had its gripping stretches, but in the end it wasn't all that satisfying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chabon
B0070O5F4U
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Adventures_of_Kavalier_%26_Clay
Fun for someone like me who grew up with comic books as the kind of cultural context that I'm sure used to be provided by proper mythologies, a thousand years ago. And plenty of high-quality storytelling even independently of that gimmick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Chambers
B08LQV71KH
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow
Like a "stapler dissertation" combining the origin of weird fiction with a few episodes of 19th-century Friends! The latter was OK, but the former was very pleasantly ominous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanna_Clarke
B003RRXXMA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Strange_%26_Mr_Norrell
An interesting mix of conventional and surprising, comfortably far off from "great" for me, but still a right good time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick
B005LVR6ZA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik
Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepers!
0679781374
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth
Pretty good. My kind of paranoid trip. I see more PKD in my future.
B006R8PDRE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Crap_Artist
Much less about the narrator than I was expecting. Not quite sure what to think of it.
B005MZN2B2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle
There was some interesting stuff in here. It had a weird feeling of having been hastily written, like ol' PKD was under a tight deadline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._L._Doctorow
B004CFAWC0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bathgate
Mm, history-y.
B004AM5QXA
An all right book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Ferrante
B008H7KGFC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_Novels
Very effective at pulling me into the world of the characters and their personal dramas
B00ETSEZDC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_Novels
More of the same from the last book, not quite as novel any more, but getting interesting at the end with the protagonists' first forays into creative careers
B00IOE4JQK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_Novels
The details of the protagonists' careers make me want to root for them more. I'm surprised that they're still so young, 3/4 through the series.
B00XIYG8WE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_Novels
Much as I expected from the previous books, with characters making plenty of decisions that seem to call for stern talkings-to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald
B00EINTDEE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender_Is_the_Night
0743273567
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby
Not stupendous, but surprisingly good for something so often assigned in high school English classes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Goldstein
0140172459
Interesting and worth reading. At first I was put off by the seemingly forced and unnatural style of the writing, but it stopped bothering me.
0374184062
Interesting but uneven. I do wonder if the author is satirizing philosophers with some of the sections or if she really thinks that stuff is the bee's knees.
0299181243
This one ended up being a wild ride. The first few chapters seemed very promising, but the bulk of the book just didn't interest me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene
0142437301
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_and_the_Glory
Not bad. Not awesome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Grossman
B002AU7MJU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magicians_(Grossman_novel)
Chosen while poking around the very beginning of my to-read list; this one went in about 2009, and I don't remember where the idea came from. I was worried at first that it would seem too blandly young-adult-fictional, but I ended very satisfied with the mixing of Harry-Potter-esque tropes with what is apparently a common mindset today, of stressing about finding one's place in the meritocracy. There were also layers of weird that were hard to predict.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne
B0084BL4NY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter
B0082XOCEM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blithedale_Romance
B0083ZR2KU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Seven_Gables_%28novel%29
B005WSNOE4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marble_Faun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert
B00B7NPRY8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29
B0011UGNDG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_Messiah
B0015DTW50
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Dune
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Houellebecq
B00VE732VM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submission_(novel)
A very different kind of ambiance and voice than I've experienced elsewhere. It was often hard to tell which parts were meant to be satire and which parts dead serious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka
B003HD2L0Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_%28Book%29
B00267SZI4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial
0486290301
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac
B002IPZFYQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Road
Mildly interesting, but nothing too great. I guess I've been spoiled by all of the post-modern stuff that came later.
Stephen King and Peter Straub
B007SNYL66
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talisman_(King_and_Straub_novel)
A very inventive fantasy/horror setting (sort of reminds me of The City & The City), with 80s nostalgia for good measure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem
B00Q21MVAI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)
I really liked the mix of a desolate, eerie atmosphere and the psychodrama connected to weird phenomena.
B0848VB2TH
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible
From the short description I read beforehand, I was expecting something much more formulaic, but the experience gradually grew on me and turned out to be really unique. It's like Lovecraftian horror with robots!
Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger
B07ZHNKH5P
Uneven (understandably enough, for a collection of short stories) but fun. Favorites: "Nut Bush Farm," "The Wind in the Rose-Bush," "In the Closed Room," "The Third Drug," "Jordan's End."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis
045121658X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here
All right-ish. I liked the feisty 1920's charm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Liu
B01E3PFTXK
Some definite gems among this collection.
B07C75GLGK
Quite a lot of variation among the stories included, and my interest is piqued to read more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London
B00CRS0UAS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barleycorn_%28novel%29
Pretty swell.
B00B7QKUUQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea-Wolf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann_Martel
B0070Y46UY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi
It was pretty good, but uneven. Anyone who needed to wait for this one to "make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction" has been living in a paper bag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy
B001L4Z6YO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Pretty_Horses
Interestingly compelling, though I'm sure the double-quotes industry had a fit when they saw this one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville
B001NLKYQ0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City
Wow. What an original concept, and it worked well with the crime-noir tropes.
B000FBFO8C
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdido_Street_Station
It had an awfully slow start, and I was wincing at the nonsensical "science" elements... but boy did it develop as a completely unique and fun world! I'm hooked enough to try the next book in the trilogy eventually.
B000FBFM70
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scar_(novel)
Somehow this one managed to be quite different than the previous book in the trilogy while keeping some of the best elements, certainly adding in a new kind of bonkers pseudoscience.
B008VK1LG8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Rat_(Mi%C3%A9ville_novel)
In a sense, it's a rather straightforward story, with the feel of a fairy tale despite the profanity and so forth. The ominousness and the idea of a hidden world within a city are logical precursors to The City & The City.
B000FC1TH6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Council
Quite a lot of weird conceits melded together; on the edge of being great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mitchell_(author)
B0012SMGOC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number9dream
I'm on the fence between rating this one "good" and "great"! It's definitely worth reading more from the author. I'm a sucker for comic magical realism set in Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov
B004KABECO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defense
B004KABEQU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnin
B004KABDSY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Fire
B004KABDU2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_a_Beheading
B003WUYRB8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita
0385191170
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabokov%27s_Dozen
Mixed feelings. I liked the story about the crazy kid. :-)
B004KABEOM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Life_of_Sebastian_Knight
Bleh. Some brief periods when it held my interest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_O%27Nolan
B0BS9KDJGF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Swim-Two-Birds
I'd usually roll my eyes, hearing a description of a "difficult" book, an intricate clockwork that is just so very impressive, but I think this one is the real deal in that category.
156478214X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Policeman
This reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. I checked it out because the Lost writers cite it as an influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell
B003K16PAU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London
Reminds me of Henry Miller! Orwell has quite a way with words.
0451524934
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
B003WJQ6RW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Days
0156468999
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_the_Aspidistra_Flying
A curious book. I think Orwell was trying to get across a social message, but it was generally unclear which of his characters and their views he agreed with.
B003K16PFU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia
is really journalism and not an attempt at fiction, so don't expect otherwise!
0451526341
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Palahniuk
B000U0O9FM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club
B004SOBLIE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_%28novel%29
B004SO5SD8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Monsters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pirsig
B0026772N8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance:_An_Inquiry_into_Values
B00FUZPRNU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila:_An_Inquiry_into_Morals
Some parts were very interesting. The "story" parts were pretty poorly executed. Altogether uneven and disorganized.
Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth
1250000157
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants
Quite well-written stylistically, and plenty of 1950's charm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Quinn
B000SEFH6A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_%28novel%29
Interesting
B00338075Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_B
Some thoughts worth thinking
B002PXFYHY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Ishmael
More interestin' stuff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley
0871409496
Edited by Leslie S. Klinger. As with the last two annotated Klinger books, read in fits and starts over a few months. And it delivered basically what I expect by now from that series. I hadn't read the source material before, and the biggest surprise was that the monster is much more like the one from Penny Dreadful (articulate and revenge-obsessed, but still sometimes relatable) than the one from the classic Universal Pictures movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg
B002LA0ARK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Inside
Really something unique and compelling. It's also short enough that there isn't much to lose by giving it a try!
B00J90BVGO
Similar sort of sweep to Foundation and engrossing enough, but not special like Dying Inside
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon
B01DSTTV18
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men
Totally ahead of its time in taking the long view on history; I can see the (transitive?) influence on Vinge and others. This book was published shortly before digital computers became a thing, and it shows that the author hasn't considered at all the possibilities they offer (including replacing humanity). It seems crazy to read of advanced civilizations unable to respond to existential-threat crises with thousands of years of warning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker
0393064506
Edited by Leslie S. Klinger. Wow; what a different story than I had inferred from Dracula in popular culture! A flawed story that was still a fun time, especially with a good tour guide. As with The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, I enjoyed reading it in bits and pieces over a few months.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Straub
B015DHB3VE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Story_(Straub_novel)
A solidly eerie experience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut
B005IHWBSY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_You%2C_Mr._Rosewater
I liked this one a lot. Very good weaving of social commentary into an engaging story.
B005IHWB5C
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Night
B003XREM5G
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_of_Titan
For a book with one serious downer of a message about free will, this was a fun ride. Recommended for fans of paranoid fiction.
B003XVYLDU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five
Fairly good. I find Vonnegut's repetition of phrases and overfrequent references to his other books annoying, though.
B003XRELEI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_of_Champions
An interesting story, very reminiscent of Timequake, though I read them in the reverse order to that in which they were written decades apart.
B005IHWCLA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hocus_Pocus_%28novel%29
Slightly above average quality. I think the non-linear narrative was too non-linear.
B003XRELGQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle
I thought it was mediocre. There weren't really any sympathetic characters for me in it, and the plot came across as somewhat disorganized.
B005IQKF8S
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timequake
I picked this one out expecting a novel. It turned out to be some weird unstructured autobiographical thing. Nonetheless, I ended up enjoying it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Williams
B003K15IF8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)
Believe it or not, this one came to my attention when it appeared a few years ago in the list of books people bought after following the referral links here! What I enjoyed most about it was the old-fashioned, almost simplistic worldview, combined with very spare but artful language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson
B00BCA7NJS
Full of life, fun, and poetic, like Adrift in Soho but moreso
B00C4KKG9Y
My reaction is essentially the same as to Ritual in the Dark; it makes for a good sequel.
B009613MUY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrift_in_Soho
It's a bit like Rosy Crucifixion in London!
Some others that are above average
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_Anderson
B0083ZIH2W
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winesburg,_Ohio_(novel)
I read this because Henry Miller seemed to be a fan. It was all right, but somehow didn't quite do it for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
B000FC1PWA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(Asimov_novel)
It definitely felt dated, but it was a quick enough way to pick up some culture on the early days of sci-fi. It's funny to be reading about space fleets with blinds on their windows and not a computer in sight!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiver
B0036S4A9K
Clever but not exceptional; a bit pulpy, too. Might return to this series eventually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Bronte
B004UJAOLM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuthering_Heights
Recommended by opet in #haskell. I ended up enjoying it. It didn't rock my world, but that's OK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler
B000FA64VO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Sleep
I read this on recommendation from Andrew Clausen, and I was pleasantly surprised. Seeing as how it's a detective story, I was expecting something much, much more pulpy than I got. The plot and behavior of characters were close to what I expected, but it was very intelligently written.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gaddis
0141182229
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter%27s_Gothic
My first impression was rage at the unconventional grammatical organization, where it's not clear what's a spoken quotation and what isn't. It got better further in, but not enough to make up for the confusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Kundera
0061148520
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being
Kind of rambly and weird, but weird is good
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_LaValle
B002JRQM5E
Reminds me of Pynchon or Murakami!
B000XU8DDI
I was pulled in by the Lovecraft connection (the author wrote an introduction to a Klinger collection), though this one didn't turn out to be a "weird fiction horror" book. It was plenty weird, though, and I do plan to check out his next book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Jin_Lee
B01GZY28JA
A quick lesson in Korean and Japanese history and culture. The narrative was reasonably compelling but somehow didn't grab me fully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Loos
0871401703
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentlemen_Prefer_Blondes_(book)
Nothing to write home about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Martone
0253208513
One or two of the stories were enjoyable; the rest didn't work for me. I read this because David Foster Wallace mentioned it in "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Niven
0345333926
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld
0345334302
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ringworld_Engineers
0345412966
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ringworld_Throne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Pasternak
B004BLK7JI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_%28novel%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke
B002RI92BQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Notebooks_of_Malte_Laurids_Brigge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Robbins
B000FCKC42
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Incognito
This one leaves me with the impression that Tom Robbins may be "Thomas Pynchon for Dummies."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Turgenev
B004UJ21LI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_and_Sons
0192833332
Pretty unremarkable stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Wister
B000FC1D9A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virginian_(novel)
I hear this is the book that introduced the first tropes of the fictional American West. It was enjoyable enough but not a stand-out, for someone who grew up with 'em.
Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson
B07MCRLV2K
I have to admit, I started out skeptical that a book this long could be filled with compelling discussion around a common model of state development, but it developed in a very convincing and satisfying way.
B0058Z4NR8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail
A simple theory that is hard to argue with, presented pretty well
Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi
B0037BVKJO
Interesting, though I'm not sure I got much out of it
B00DXIB9QU
A well-executed look into the lives of a segment of the college-going population that I've had minimal interaction with. It's hard for me not to wonder if everyone in scope for this study, namely students who wind up at universities that are nonelite but moderately selective, is doomed anyway, with automation taking over most of the desirable jobs they had shots at.
B003P9XD3O
Lots of really interesting stuff in here, but the special education angle didn't appeal to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Axelrod
0465005640
I've seen the executive summary of this material so many times in other books that it's hard to evaluate the worth of the full version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safi_Bahcall
B07D2BKVQR
A pretty compelling recipe: identify a persistent challenge for innovation-dependent organizations, lead the reader through some case studies, and generate a unifying theory and a set of advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Digby_Baltzell
B074CFBSQC
An enjoyable mix of historical color, amidst a contest between two cultures where I can't decide who to root for. Should we hope for an uptick in the prominence of family dynasties? My position had been "heck no," but this book makes me wonder.
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
B007CI81IQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Economics
A number of interesting conclusions drawn about behavioral patterns in developing countries
B00BDVD2F0
Fascinating history of an agency which I now feel like I was experiencing like the proverbial blind men touching the different parts of an elephant. I am such a sucker for the earnest formal writing style popular in the 70s. The repetitive structure of the chapters ("hey, what happened to the missile-defense program under this director's leadership?") was also unreasonably satisfying for my obsessive-compulsion. [Why did I read a dusty report that is barely possible to find, in smudged form, online? It's recommended reading for new DARPA ISAT members.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barrett_%28philosopher%29
B004HFRJO4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_Man:_A_Study_in_Existential_Philosophy
This was quite clearly written, and I feel like I understand the basics of existentialism much better now than before I read this.
David T. Beito, Peter Gordon, and Alexander Tabarrok
0472088378
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Voluntary_City
It didn't always have me on the edge of my seat, but there was still plenty of thought-provoking stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bishop_(author)
B0077FAYES
It started out slow, but by the middle we were seeing example after example of how one underlying phenomenon explained so many of the troubling recent changes in American culture.
0674006917
A very interesting perspective on the roots of political behavior
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
1608461319
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schooling_in_Capitalist_America:_Educational_Reform_and_the_Contradictions_of_Economic_Life
A well-written presentation of an interesting perspective. I got a good chuckle out of the socialist elements, which stayed manageable until the last part of the book, which is entirely skippable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Brennan
B071RNKSXC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy
A very interesting perspective presented pretty well, though I think the book was much longer than it needed to be. I just don't see the appeal of logical arguments that aren't fully mathematically rigorous, so why not cover the bases in a more compact way? Still, more Americans should be thinking about nonincremental tweaks to our institutions, especially given all the new possibilities of information technology -- and, more broadly, all the ways the world is different than it was in 1776.
B009INECOA
Structured as a series of questions with answers, grouped by topic. I probably would have liked a more traditional (and opinion-full) narrative better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(journalist)
B000FC1Q2Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Paradise_Drive:_How_We_Live_Now_%28And_Always_Have%29_in_the_Future_Tense
Hard to characterize and not entirely what I expected, but very well-presented and engrossing.
B003L77UNO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobos_in_Paradise
A fun exposition of a nifty insight
B004IK8PFK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Animal:_The_Hidden_Sources_of_Love,_Character,_and_Achievement
The first third or so was great. There's a very meta aspect to the later parts of the book, which was clever at first, but which I started to feel was being abused. I won't spoil the details of what I'm talking about. ;-)
B00LYXV61Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Character
As much as the central theme came to feel like so much emotional nonsense, the tour through some biographies was engaging enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks
0201835959
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
For a light read, I enjoyed this well enough, more for the retro appeal than for the presence of much advice that seems relevant today.
B003DKG5H6
It's hard for me to tell how much I got out of reading it. The highlights were (1) accounts of some 1960's computer hardware/software projects and (2) some parts on design in house-building.
B08BYCQBZN
Now I'm itching to try out some of these techniques!
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
B00D97HPQI
I'm so used to this narrative already that I'm not sure what that's new I took away from reading it, but it's probably a good introduction to this line of thought.
B077NRB36N
There was a fair amount of repetition of the core message, but I think it's helpful to have it laid out so clearly.
B002QUYVIO
Some good perspectives on employment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Cain
B004J4WNL2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet:_The_Power_of_Introverts_in_a_World_That_Can%27t_Stop_Talking
One of those books that takes the "obvious" facts of everyday life and explains them through a satisfying (and accessible) scientific framework
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Colin_Campbell
B01LYGP469
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study
I see why this book has been recommended, as a straightforward provider of the most convincing scientific evidence!
B00FJG87IC
In buying it, I hadn't realized that it was basically magazine-article length. It leaves me with some good questions to ask advocates of Atkins-type diets, but the scientific case wasn't very complete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Caplan
B076ZY8S8J
It sure does look like a case of out-of-control signaling.
B004OA64Q6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish_Reasons_to_Have_More_Kids
I'm convinced!
1250316960
A fun presentation of a compelling set of arguments
B0BD3C8KJM
I didn't go into it realizing it was a collection of blog posts, but it made for a good short session of cheerleading for properly rational takes on hot-button issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritjof_Capra
B00BBXJHCW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Physics
0553345729
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turning_Point_%28Book%29
I remember liking this book Way Back in the Day, but I can't stand it now. The author repeats the same hippie-targeted phrases over and over, with very prolix sentences that nonetheless fail to convey useful information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie
B003WEAI4E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People
It's unclear how useful this will be, but it was very entertaining. I'm glad I followed Paul Graham's advice and got my hands on an early edition, complete with content that doesn't follow today's rules for political correctness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
1567510329
0887845193
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions
B004J4X74Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_over_People:_Neoliberalism_and_Global_Order
Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending
B0042FZRPC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_10,000_Year_Explosion
A pretty good case that serious evolutionary forces have been active for humans more recently than most folks think
B01H97OQY2
I read this one as a candidate go-to book to recommend to other people who are bewildered at how to accumulate wealth. I was not disappointed. It covers the mechanics of investing, including emotional aspects. It emphasizes the importance of avoiding debt and minimizing expenses, though without going into much detail. That last omission is probably helpful to make the advice seem less intimidating to newcomers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Colvin
B00OZ0TLBK
Ironically, I really enjoyed this book while disagreeing strongly with the top-level point of the title! The book begins with two axioms, one of which is that humans will remain at the center of the economy indefinitely. I don't buy it, but I had no trouble appreciating the rest of the book as a study into how to organize human-based systems efficiently. I was surprised at how many "obvious-in-retrospect" good human-modeling ideas popped up here that I don't remember from past reading.
B00KR9S1DC
An enjoyable tour through an important aspect of American history, though without a strong synthesis into a new perspective or strategy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Cowen
B00C1N5WOI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_is_Over
A fun unified projection of what we have coming. It seems pretty plausible that the trends predicted here will be extremely important while simultaneously being appreciated by very few people today. A bit too much time spent on a computer-chess metaphor, for my tastes.
B004H0M8QS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Stagnation
An interesting perspective that I'd gotten plenty of from the blogosphere before reading this
B005GSYYQ2
A fun read, with a mix of high-minded theorizing and practical advice
067400809X
There were some interesting spans of idea-sharing, but, in the end, I didn't really get what the point of the book was. Reading it kind of felt like standing in the way of a firehose.
B01JGMCCCQ
I need more time to digest the sweeping argument of this one. I do feel like there's plenty of complacency to go around, but I had assumed that it was just part of the human condition. Part of the phenomenon seems to be an iterative system approaching a fixed point, which needn't be a bad thing.
B07G9DFC8W
We get a quick summary of the author's axioms and then a qualitative analysis of their consequences. The axioms didn't happen to be mine, so I wasn't super compelled by what followed, but I agreed with tantalizingly enough of the premises to make it a bit interesting. Like the author, I'm in favor of more planning with the distant future in mind, but I don't take it as self-evident that we should measure success based only on consequences for people.
B07D2B8MLT
Pretty compelling. Re: Other People's Money, I noticed that Cowen argues for the importance of equity markets without taking a position on the "trading culture" that Kay argues against. So maybe the American finance sector really is out of control, despite important roles for the more traditional core of the sector.
Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross
B08R2KNYVX
An enjoyable read with a medium density of promising-sounding insights, though I'm not sure what concrete changes I should be making inspired by the book
B00FECBRV0
A solid piece of popular-science writing about our immune systems and the funny interactions they have with other parts of our biology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins
B000SEHIG2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
061861916X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancestor%27s_Tale
Yay for evolution. The parallels between better ways of enabling evolution and better ways of building computer systems are interesting... and squirrels are cool.
B003JTHWJQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
Going in, I was feeling kind of guilty, since this kind of "preaching to the choir" subject matter is so popular among hapless fanboys. Nonetheless, there were some interesting arguments in here, and it's always fun to read Dawkins's prose. Makes me want to read more science-y books, in fact.
B0042JSMVY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Devil%27s_Chaplain
Some decent material. I don't really like Dawkins's over-flowery writing style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Day
1476785651
An enjoyable ride through neurosis and triumph
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett
B000PDYVT8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_the_Spell:_Religion_as_a_Natural_Phenomenon
Well-written; I'm not sure exactly what I took away from it, but I enjoyed the ride.
B00KU4PWPY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Dangerous_Idea
Good stuff, largely hard to disagree with, written well. It would have made a bigger impact on me if I had read it before all those other books on evolutionary psychology.
B01N807LD2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained
Mostly satisfying and illuminating material, but too long-winded and flowery for my taste. I probably would have preferred a book that could assume computer-science background; a lot of the extended explanations here supported points that I already took as obvious.
B075RS2R4Z
For me this book is solidly in the "preaching to the choir" mode, but it seems like it could be a good brief introduction to the subject for newcomers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond
B000VDUWMC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
Interesting without really being riveting
B0BL8H6Y9S
Pretty darn compelling (and entertaining, at the same time)!
B08HLQGW9C
A quick and enjoyable-enough read, though I'm left without a clear idea of how to apply the advice to the sorts of products I'm likely to be involved with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Dutton
B007NKN9U8
An engaging and informative description of one of the main "polymorphic variants" of human personality, with a sense for why it evolved and where it pays off today
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Eagleman
B004J4WK9W
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incognito:_The_Secret_Lives_of_the_Brain
At first this one was falling into the trap of recapitulating too many nuggets that I've been reading about for years in other books, capping my enthusiasm level. However, the chapter on reforming aspects of criminal justice was a unique enough perspective to put me over the top.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco
B00UMIT5J2
Enjoyed as a glimpse both into another time and into the strange world of research in the humanities, in addition, of course, to the author's peerless style
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Ehrenreich
B001BAJ25W
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed
Engagingly written, though I'm not sure what to take away from it, other than "people low on the socioeconomic spectrum often have a lot on their minds," which I feel like I already appreciated at some level. I'm tempted to shrug it off by pushing universal basic income as the answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_England
B083HZWLQZ
An interesting message that feels more appropriate for a long-form magazine article than a book; it took way too many pages to get around to the (genuinely surprising) punchline. The Bible connection was super-awkward and nearly nonsensical, almost like its paragraphs were written by a deep neural network starting from main chapter content as seed.
B006UHII4C
The content was fascinating, though the form was a little weird (e.g., several quotes were repeated multiple times, with no acknowledgment of said repetition). I appreciated both learning more about the history of programming and getting some perspective on how easy it is to take technological systems for granted. One example is the idea of high-level programming languages (introduced in the second half of the 1950s) as a scheme by management to take "good, middle-class jobs" away from low-level coders. The whole experience provides some emotional ammunition for people working on new programming technologies that most folks "just don't get," not to mention other kinds of more "out-there" technological progress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Epstein
B002SR2Q9G
Pretty neutral overall feeling, after finishing this book. I was expecting more of a sociological survey of what nonreligious people believe, but it was more of an explanation of certain philosophical and ethical foundations, without any quantitative backing. Perhaps it's most useful to me as a window into what religious folks object to, measured indirectly via what explanation strategies the author has found to work well with them. I'm not sold on putting humans at the center of an ethical system -- that doesn't follow as the only option when we eliminate supernatural forces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Epstein
0674808207
Not always engrossing, but I feel more law-y already
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_Esselstyn
B001S7HUIO
Another very relatable introduction to this food philosophy
B0BYV2Y3XT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Go_Up
Entertaining, with perhaps just the right drumbeat of reminders that compelling uses for blockchains have not been demonstrated
B004EHZDE8
Quite well-written, and short enough that I don't feel bad about not thinking too hard about what I got out of it.
Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
B07WSYKG7N
Too soon to tell how helpful this advice may be, but promising
B01H4G2J1U
Certainly jibes with my experiences in this realm so far, and these tips should help fine-tune my technique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Florida
B008164JUW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Your_City%3F
I can't necessarily justify my high rating, but it was just the kind of content that I eat right up.
B00G1SD8CW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Creative_Class
An enjoyable read and a compelling theory, though I have to resist the temptation to nod along with a theory that puts my line of work in such an honored place, and in general with an author who promotes so many of my pet causes.
B01K3WN4TI
Another interesting romp through data. It's peculiar to see universal basic income and higher minimum wages pushed at the same time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Ford_%28author%29
B00PWX7RPG
Very well-written; effectively makes many points that I agree with whole-heartedly. I felt like I'd heard most of it before, but this could be a hard-hitting book for someone who is new to this perspective.
B0013TRQD6
An enjoyable read, but it's hard to come away with any serious conclusions. Is the author just picking and choosing the most entertaining examples of conspicuous consumption, or is there a real, socially important trend here? I enjoyed smirking periodically, considering that the book was published just before the 2008 financial collapse, and probably a good fraction of the characters wound up in dire straits shortly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
B0083Z40N2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Benjamin_Franklin
It's hard to imagine a book written today being so explicit about a search for "moral perfection," but I found the approach really attractive. I wonder how thoroughly the author followed through with it.
Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman
B004MYFLBS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_to_Choose
I forgot to log this book until some weeks after finishing it, so I don't remember details, but it was probably pretty good. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Friedman
B002F0X0LY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree
A really interesting synthesis of different aspects of globalization into a Unifying Theory
0374292884
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat
Reading this, I get a sense of what religious folk might feel readin' scripture.
B000SBTWMS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Beirut_to_Jerusalem
It grew on me while reading. In the end, I appreciated the vivid introduction to one of those world political situations that I've been hearing about my whole life but never really looked into in detail before.
B002VOGQQU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot,_Flat,_and_Crowded
A message that's hard to argue with, conveyed pretty well, but in too many words. I think a shorter account would have been more effective, focusing on the big take-aways.
B018QQD0M4
This was an illuminating look into a program whose early stages I experienced personally as an undergrad. I liked the refusal to take purported gender differences as the basis for designing a support program. Some fairly thorough evaluation was done to measure progress toward attracting a more diverse student body, seeing them through to graduation, and helping them come to feel that they fit in. What was really telling, though, was the almost complete lack of evaluation of educational effectiveness. A top program like CMU's CS major should be leading students towards (excuse the overblown-sounding phrasing, but I think it fits) mastery of a discipline and leadership in the field. My own anecdotal experience leads me to conclude that, concurrently with the start of the programs the book describes (there may not be a causal relationship), CMU has slipped significantly in the real intellectual measures of success. I have a feeling it has to do with the party line about diversity of interests, stigmatizing single-minded focus in a way that no one would consider doing for fields like biology or math.
William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins
080704718X
99% estate tax or bust!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto
0945700040
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Underground_History_Of_American_Education
An extremely illuminating book; highly recommended
B0097DE6XI
OK, but I didn't get much out of it that I hadn't already gotten out of Gatto's past writings
B005GSZIWG
An inspiring look at the research process and the foundations of information and communication technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Gibney
B01HZFB7GI
I learned a few things, but the tone was so bombastic and far from objective-feeling that it was hard for me to become too convinced of anything. A more compact argument, focusing on data analysis, would have worked better on me.
B07H7GPMC4
The tone from A Generation of Sociopaths was less off-putting when combined with the author's firsthand knowledge of the domain and extensive research. I appreciated learning these sordid details of so many parts of the American legal ecosystem. What improvements were proposed didn't seem to combine into a simple, actionable recipe.
B07DRPGGQ7
An admirably compact and matter-of-fact reference manual for a complex domain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell
B001ANYDAO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
Very well-written, with several fascinating case studies. Following reviews I've read, I'm not sure I'm convinced that the evidence really supports the hypothesis on the relative importance of context and relative unimportance of, say, genes. Stories about individuals (potentially cherry-picked) make for a compelling narrative but not such a convincing social-science case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Glaeser
B0049U4HTW
Fun to read, though perhaps a bit of preaching to the choir, in my case
B003D3MFZ4
I seesawed between liking and not liking it. The not liking came from feeling that it was a "one thing after another" kind of history book without a broader message (and also from some poor copyediting and laugh-out-loud bad phrasing). The liking probably had most to do with the consistent anti-urban-renewal focus.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
B002LHRM2O
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)
Who ever heard of a business novel, anyway? It was surprisingly fun to read, and I will have to wait and see if the ideas pay off in my life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gorton
B004UA4D4U
It assumed a bit more economics background than I have, so I got lost following most of the details. However, the short version of the central theory makes sense, and, conveniently, it dovetails with my feeling of confusion in reading the book, in suggesting that some popular investment products have just gotten too darn hard to understand!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould
B007Q6XN2S
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
I'm glad I spent the time reading this book to pick up a bit of cultural literacy, but it was a frustrating experience, with most of the space spent on history irrelevant to scientific questions of how heritable and immutable human intelligence is. Three main choices in framing made the book unconvincing to me: (1) a focus on history, trying to show that certain ideas must be wrong because they were associated with particular goofball scientists; (2) an argument against the "logical error" of "reifying" general intelligence "as a thing," without explaining rigorously what "reification" really means here, apparently denying that it makes sense to introduce empirically backed measurements solely because of their predictive power; and (3) too frequently arguing that some scientific question must be resolved in a certain way because the alternative offends the author's political sensibilities. Almost no space was spent on critiques, beyond those of the 3 kinds I listed, of relatively recent studies, like The Bell Curve, even though two essays are devoted to criticism of that book, as appendices.
B0B9657N8R
An enjoyable update on The High Cost of Free Parking, though seemingly mostly retreading the same territory with some new sources of anecdotes
B001UE78PA
This seems like a pretty darned good proposal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan
B000UZJRIG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Turbulence
Got a little boring 'round the end, but interesting nonetheless
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger
B00Y7USB14
A very thorough and convincing analysis of best practices for healthy diets. I'm inspired to make some serious changes to what I eat.
B09NJV5VCM
I really enjoyed digging into the nitty-gritty of health and how to promote it. I have to say, though, I was a little surprised that the Anti-Aging Eight turned out to be something other than an easily understood checklist for life, like the Daily Dozen are. This book is harder to reduce to practice than How Not to Die is, because of less summarization in top priorities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt
B0052FF7YM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind
This one gets added to my shortlist of must-reads in evolutionary pyschology; another piece of the owner's manual for human brains!
B003E749TE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Hypothesis
Another amazingly effective book that I appreciate for the same reasons as The Righteous Mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Storrs_Hall
B09H478XG4
Interesting, but I am on-board with the reviews I'd read years ago, about the book going surprisingly much into engineering detail. I was expecting more on the sociopolitical side of the equation, to explain why important technological directions have been blocked.
B000FC0WVU
I was pleasantly surprised at how hard-headed the argumentation was, despite the inherently wishy-washy subject matter; and at how admirably the author held back on getting all religious, despite his background and the context behind the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hanson
B01FHNFAVS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em
An interesting treatment of one scenario within an important space of likely future developments. The funny thing is that the author admits that technology trends would likely give this style of civilization only a few years of life, before it replaces itself with one driven by much less recognizably human actors. I think the author underestimates the chance that those less human actors are technologically feasible before the human emulations he focuses on; it seems hard to argue that, cognitively speaking, we can't do much better than the human architecture by exploring very different designs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari
B01BBQ33VE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Deus:_A_Brief_History_of_Tomorrow
Though the ending seemed a little too tethered to the very human exceptionalism that the book tries to shake readers free from, I really enjoyed the insights into value systems that we take for granted, especially the idea of how humanism is likely to cannibalize its own motivation.
B00ICN066A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind
A very well-thought-out broad perspective on history I'm used to taking for granted
B079WM7KLS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_Lessons_for_the_21st_Century
It made a mixed impression. On the one hand, I appreciated how it seemed to do a good job of avoiding communication as signaling (in the economics sense), where people either speculate about "sci-fi" topics to seem smart, or they make demands about current political issues to let you know their tribal affiliations. The author mixed both subjects in a very credible show of thinking things through rationally and not discounting near-future possibilities just because they're so different from what we grew up with -- and I almost never read any analysis so committed to this standard. The book's biggest weaknesses were sometime incoherence across chapters and sometimes not going far enough in reconsidering popular assumptions -- e.g., apparently concluding that it is obviously unethical to run a computer simulation that includes people who suffer realistically, since otherwise we'd be forced to discount suffering in the real world. I would expect less-obvious changes to how we think about ethics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Harford
B01MXV2YGI
I really enjoyed the bite-sized chapters that I could drop into most any free time that I found myself with, and it didn't hurt that I could fill some gaps in my knowledge of consequential inventions.
B000SK53X6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Life
Plenty of thought-provoking examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hawken
B01KGZVNT0
Accessible presentation of a very thorough study on our best options to control greenhouse-gas accumulation
B06XFTVQFK
A pretty thorough explanation of an attitude I've puzzled at in people about 10 years younger than I am. A little too much assumption of mainstream liberal political orientation, for my taste, but still useful and well-written.
B01MRLFFQ7
There's a serious "trust-me" feel to this book, in terms of the justification for the streamlined framework to think about company strategy. The algebraic formulas to quantify different strategy advantages especially stuck out as seemingly pulled from the air and then subjected to rigorous analysis in excess of the precision implied by the original formulas. However... I understand it's hard to justify the whole system in a book for a general audience, and I'm intrigued by these guidelines for brainstorming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henrich
B00WY4OXAS
Over and over again, I felt like I was being reminded of something I already knew but that I had never thought of before. This is a really illuminating overview of the human social brain.
Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray
B003L77VY2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_bell_curve
A contentious analysis of some important issues, which I'd say is worth reading for its unusual perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Ho
B00EHNU5R4
An interesting example of a social system imitating its own org chart!
Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh
B00JTJ84EW
Much more practically oriented than my usual reading material, but could come in handy.
Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
B0791239V7
I like the concreteness of generalizing from the stories of successful companies, into relatively short lists of ingredients that promote rapid scaling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz
B00DQ845EA
Based on Tyler Cowen's review, I went into the book expecting more applicability to the life of a tenure-track professor. Most of the content, though, is quite specific to the enterprise-software industry. That's not such a big downside, since I'm expecting to devote more of my attention to that industry in the future, but for now my mind has not been blown.
B07NVN4QCM
I appreciate the specific rules of thumb, and I'll look forward to trying them out soon.
B07J4RSKYZ
Hey, these people who don't know how to code have it pretty hard! More seriously, this one seems like a good guide for thinking about how to nudge a startup company toward a good cultural path.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Jackson_(computer_scientist)
B09DTR6F22
I'm still digesting the consequences for my own software development, but I like the systematic approach to usability design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs
067974195X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities
Interesting ideas that I need to ponder more. It didn't always hold my interest in the particulars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garett_Jones
B015PS7DBK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_Mind_(book)
Nice and short, with great density of "huh, why didn't I think of that?"-inspiring remarks about the effects of intelligence on economies
B07ZTN8LRJ
A very interesting tour through practical suggestions following a neglected theme. I also want to commend the writing style for very nice mixing of appealing folksiness and rhetorical rigor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman
B00555X8OA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
Not to be hyperbolic, but this book should be required reading for pretty much everyone.
061877355X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chosen_(Jerome_Karabel)
Some very illuminating information in here. The book was too long, but for some reason I followed through to the end anyway. There was good stuff appearing pretty frequently; there was just too much padding, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Kaufmann
B07N1NCNV8
A pretty compelling explanation for much of the crazy political stuff going on lately, in terms of society-scale unwillingness to acknowledge that people tend to want to promote stability of their cultures and demographic groups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kay_(economist)
B012271QA6
I've been puzzled by the purpose of today's world financial system, and this book makes a good case that many parts of that system actually don't have very strong justification. Also, the writing style was so much fun, a perfect match of my stereotype of the worldly, sarcastic Oxford professor. Let's reform that financial system to clean up most of the complexity and put most traders out of work!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Kearney
B0BYPLXNN6
A pretty compelling, data-driven case for a claim that's a weird mix of popular and unpopular
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Kelton
B07RM72BT7
I have to admit, I started out skeptical, just knowing the author had worked for Bernie Sanders, who I don't generally agree with. However, a very compelling case was quickly made for a perspective that can't help but feel obviously correct, and the presentation was excellent. I don't agree with some of the specific policy directions pushed near the end, but the framework for comparing policies seems very valuable.
B000SFK2C8
An interesting read. I couldn't help noticing how little creativity seemed to be involved in the hoops that these kids were jumping through to earn their special status.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Klein
B07TRNVTZQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized
A very careful and well-told journey through a variety of unexpected aspects of an important problem, bringing it all together into a compelling theory of why
Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz
B005GX1O4C
Not bad, not great; for me, more like a cheerleading exercise than anything else.
0195372883
You might not guess that a book about working memory would be much fun, but this was fairly informative and enjoyable. Contrary to my expectations, it really is almost entirely about working memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Krug
B00HJUBRPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think
I'm looking forward to trying out the usability-testing techniques, in particular, though at the moment it's hard for me to estimate how much value I'll get out of the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil
B002CIY8JW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines
Reading futurism books 25 years after publication is a good recipe for satisfaction!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kushner
B000FBFNL0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom
Not very literary, but for me a fun walk down memory lane. Even though I was never that serious of a gamer, the events described here were part of the context during some of the most fun years of my life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Lachman
B0191X35MQ
It's interesting how much I can buy into the spirit of Wilson's work and still find so many of his later topics facepalm-worthy! This is a well-written book, in any case, and it was jarring for me to experience that competent style telling the reader that, e.g., obviously we should all consider life after death well-supported by evidence.
0465037712
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Mathematics_Comes_From
1556152116
Good stuff. The earlier interviews (which were with the older programmers) I liked substantially more than the later ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Landsburg
B002T0I02Y
Short and sweet, but with high enjoyment value per page
B000Q9J0KG
Style and content/argumentation come together into catnip for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Lane
B006QV7ZGO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Sex,_Suicide
Interesting and well-written, in that plucky British style
B00OD8Z4JW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vital_Question
There was a moderately high density of thought-provoking segments, though overall I felt my knowledge of biology did not prepare me to appreciate most of the explanation, at least when reading the book in my "popular-science" mode, where I don't spend time carefully studying each section before moving on like I would have as a student in class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier
B079DTVVG8
An interesting mix of the tones associated with mainstream blog posts and scholarly popular social-science books! I was expecting the former factor to turn me off, but actually I was pretty on-board for almost all of the ride, only parting ways in the chapter on religion and spirituality. Beside the element of preaching to the choir (I agreed with the basic argument already), I felt like I took away a few good nuggets, like a theory on why LinkedIn is so much less degenerate than Facebook.
B07SZ9W3LX
A really satisfying treatment of a topic usually associated with one-upsmanship, self-promotion, and obfuscation, instead presented more in the style of a scientific study, with the bonus feature of spanning impressively many levels of "the full stack of society"
Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
B002VL1CLW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics
Short and sweet. Not as much fun as some economics-inspired books that aren't aimed so much at the general public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_R._Lewis
B005E7AMIE
Plenty of thought-provoking stuff in here. My biggest point of disagreement had to do with the downsides of large-scale spectator-oriented athletics, regardless of if that kind of activity is "natural." I also don't feel encumbered by tradition in designing future educational institutions, so conclusions based on assumptions like the continued use of lectures aren't that interesting to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brink_Lindsey
B00CMU8G48
Very high value per page count, considering what seems like a central social problem of our time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lipsky
B0036S4DYM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Although_of_Course_You_End_Up_Becoming_Yourself
What's not to like about sort of crawling inside David Foster Wallace's head?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Livingston
B009IXMK4O
This was really fun and seems like a great extended pep talk for people considering doing the startup thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Lowrey
B077LMK6XT
I was surprised that the bulk of the book was spent introducing us to people around the world in various precarious economic situations -- trying to pull the heartstrings in demonstrating how many deserving recipients there would be for more effective economic aid. Very little technocratic detail made it in, though there was frequent citing of research on the superior effectiveness of unconditional cash payments vs. more traditional programs. All in all, I largely support the policies argued for here, though the book format wasn't ideal for answering the logistical questions that brought me to it.
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
B076NVFT5P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coddling_of_the_American_Mind
I'm a pretty predictable mark for preaching to the choir on this one, but I appreciated the systematic approach to understanding why support for free speech has been flagging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay
B002LARWGC
A really enjoyable and informative read. There's definitely something to be said for the signature British writing style. [available free online]
John Mackey, Alona Pulde, and Matthew Lederman
B06X6LPQH9
A more broadly accessible, less extreme version of How Not to Die, still sticking to a pretty solid scientific style, without much fluffy hippie perspective
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Mallaby
B0942SZJ8H`
Engaging and useful to fill in bits of history I was missing
B003SNJZ3Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God
Maybe I'm a little less dismissive now of hedge funds as net drags on society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Mander
B00DTTEDPC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimination_of_Television
Interesting, though not especially well focused
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Manzi_%28political_commentator%29
B007V2VEQO
I'm not sure what to make of this book. I feel like it used way too many words to get across a not-especially-complex message. The author is a very good wordsmith; it was hard to find complaints with any individual paragraphs. Yet the whole thing was unsatisfying, considering the length. It felt somewhat like a stream-of-consciousness brain dump, albeit by a talented writer, supporting a worthwhile message.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Markoff
B000OCXFYM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said
Interesting historical context in a well-written form, though I didn't feel an especially strong case was made for a fundamental link between computing and counterculture
B09JVG323B
A very interesting deconstruction of an underpinning of modern life that I take for granted. I was on the edge of marking it "great," but somehow it didn't wind up being quite analytical enough, or another way of putting it is that the writing style seemed too oriented toward building status for the author!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday_Martin
B00P4348G0
Very well-written. This little corner of our society showcases some horrible incentives miscalibration, with all the diversion of resources to goofy ends.
Tucker Max and Geoffrey Miller
B00RTY0FKK
I appreciated this book for both its near and far content (see term explanations). It was pretty novel to see evolutionary psychology occassionally explained with humor apparently designed explicitly to offend a general audience. I would have preferred a tone closer to what's usual in popular-science books, but really it was just fine as-is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_McArdle
B00DMCV4GM
Reads like a set of well-written essays (longish blog posts?) on the general subject of failure and bouncing back therefrom.
Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman
B0B8F2TJ67
Very entertaining, though I have to admit, not much space is spent on making the case that blockchain technology is fundamentally mismatched with compelling use cases, rather than drawing attention to particular frauds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._McWilliams
B002L4EXM4
Important information presented very well. This is close to what I've been looking for: a summary of the facts in favor of some unconventional choices, justified in terms of environmental impact. The part that frustrates me is the inconsistency in, on the one hand, quotes about the importance of minimizing intake of animal products, and, on the other hand, details of how fish ought to be raised for food. Does the author believe this aquaculture isn't substantially worse environmentally than veganism, or does he just think it's politically impossible to eliminate meat consumption?
Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows
B007EDYJDA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_growth
Some interesting insights with solid experimental results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Mears
B0824B49LS
I had no idea this world existed, and indeed the first pages were hard to understand. By the end, we have a satisfying explanation of a system allowing rich clients to pay indirectly for commodities that would be indecorous to buy directly.
B0059445LC
Another fascinating and thorough look into the real mechanisms behind a world where people claim to navigate based on gut feelings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_(evolutionary_psychologist)
B006F2182G
Some good information about what seems to be a really useful theory
B07Y29NV9P
The ideas about using the Americans with Disabilities Act to protect bewildered autistic-spectrum folks were interesting.
B00SI02AWK
An interesting tour through a number of cases of teleoperated and semi-autonomous systems, though I had a hard time extracting a clear thesis. Is the author saying that we will never achieve "full" autonomy, or does the advice to focus more on human factors apply only in the short term? It's hard to believe that we'll never build flight-control systems that exceed human performance uniformly.
B07KKJYG31
Honestly, I was leaning toward a negative rating through the first half of the book. It follows a philosophical approach of reverse-engineering consequences of human intuitions, which just doesn't appeal to me, vs. analyzing fundamental efficiency of social arrangements. The later content seemed strangely disconnected from what come before, but I did enjoy the treatments of some familiar issues, though they came across as essays rather than a coherent total argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Montgomery_(writer)
B009LRWHPY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_City
Advocating for cities designed less around motor vehicles, with a good mix of first-principles scientific results and anecdotes of interventions that have been tried
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Moore
B00DB3D81G
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
I don't know how I managed to delay reading this one for so long, after so many recommendations from people who know this world. I think I expected it would be gross high-level generalizations like so many entrepreneurship books. Instead, I loved the mix of specific actionable advice (not too much of it, with a clear hierarchical decomposition across different principles) and a precise but engaging style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Morris_%28historian%29
B00Q0MNEDM
A very well-written presentation of an idea that I was already pretty familiar with. It may very well have crossed the line into "great" if I read it 5 years ago.
B00MMO2UDC
A satisfyingly thorough account of an aspect of my ambient culture that I took for granted
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_%28political_scientist%29
B00540PAXS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Apart_(book)
Well-written, but I'm not sure what to make of the conclusions.
B00GL3PZ0K
The first half or so was satisfying in the same way as standing around the water cooler complaining about the boss. Ended on a low note with the unqualified disapproval of atheism, absent any kind of convincing argument in favor of religion, for folks who don't already buy into supernatural thinking.
B001RIY84S
It all sounds very plausible and appealing for its simplicity.
B00N6PBGM2
An interesting idea that I haven't finished mulling over yet
B07Y82KNS1
I really enjoyed the romp through the data, though the author seemed to be pulling punches in drawing clear conclusions in some cases, probably still smarting from the reaction to The Bell Curve.
B007NL147W
This book doesn't seem to have much to say about education in highly technical fields. Thus, while I agree with the book's criticisms, I'm not sure the proposed solutions are generally applicable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Niose
B007RN09C2
I have mixed feelings about this book. I felt like most of it was "preaching to the choir," repeating standard complaints about abuse of church-state separation and so on. I was really after detailed information on the history of recent secular movements. There was some of that, and it was good enough to make me think about getting involved in related activism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nisbett
B001P7GGSM
An interesting overview. I was most bothered by ignoring the extremes of intelligence.
B00EJJ30W8
A pretty convincing argument for an intuitively appealing theory of why big-box religion developed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt
B087C2YZ8Y
I was expecting a larger fraction of the text to be about less-obvious harms like cancer, but it's still good to read the fuller picture (obvious parts and all) told here.
B00AVZ1XY6
This was an aggravating book. On the first page, I noticed a typo, a horrifying font/spacing convention, and the clumsy, patronizing, and preachy prose style. However, the core of information in the book seems very worth knowing. The way it is presented leaves me wondering how much I can trust in its accuracy, but I haven't yet seen a reason to doubt it. It would be nice to find a better, less emotional presentation of the same essential facts about the costs of animal-based food production and consumption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Pahlka
B0B8644ZGY
Quite a tour de force of strategic thinking across layers of a complex ecosystem, with great style and balancing of anecdotes vs. generalization into grand theories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_E._Page
B07JDTSZVR
A good starting point for considering the case that hiring diverse teams aligns well with profit motives. The first part of the book feels like an extended effort to establish terminology for aspects of common sense, or at least ideas that seem "obvious" when you read them. The second part goes into more empirical evidence connecting what the book calls identity diversity and cognitive diversity, and here I was feeling that, even though the text acknowledges the challenge of going beyond correlation to establish causation, there wasn't a very convincing argument. Still, I'm inspired to change how I think about admissions and hiring, to focus more on team composition rather than just applying a monolithic metric of quality to individuals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_G._Palmer
B004XMT1MO
Some insightful stuff, but also a few chapters that are too much about arguing against particular works; not enough convincing rational argument in general
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
B0017I1IYQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution:_A_Manifesto
Largely agreeable, though not very novel
Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie
B075CR9QBJ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Why
It was something of an ongoing puzzle to try to extract a rigorous mathematical framework out of a presentation meant for a general audience, but I think I roughly got it pieced together by the end. I need to think more about how this all relates to my prior ideas about how I might formalize causality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Perry
B0B1TBS69S
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_the_Sexual_Revolution
I agreed with a healthy majority of the points being made, and it was thought-provoking throughout, in any case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker
B000QCTNIM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate
No shortage of interestin' stuff
B0052REUW0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature
Could probably have been quite a bit shorter without losing value, but still I found it very thought-provoking (apparently enough to keep me reading to the end!).
B073TJBYTB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now
A compelling and well-written case for a claim I already believed, though some of the particular statistical trends were news to me and increased my optimism
B00INIYG74
I feel emboldened to ignore some of the grammatical "rules" I've learned over the years.
B000UZPIRA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stuff_of_Thought
As usual, an enjoyable read, though it was often hard to figure out what exactly I had learned from each chapter.
0061336467
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct
Not quite what I was expecting; too much focus on nitty-gritty details. The last chapter leaves me realizing that I was more interested in something like The Blank Slate, so on I go to that!
B08WK3JNLT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality_(book)
Well-written as always, but fuzzier than I would have liked, without clear recommendations for worthwhile projects to undertake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Pinker
B0015DWLR6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sexual_Paradox
Even though I've probably been spoiled by reading some of the same results in more-recent books, I thought this was a great introduction to an important (if controversial) topic, striking the right balance between scientific rigor and the human touch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Posner
B005M143U0
Clear-headed and thought-provoking, though not earth-shaking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Poundstone
B000SBTWNC
At no point was it especially clear what the "theme" of this book was, but it was enjoyable anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Prum
B01KE61LPW
More than just a recapitulation of the concept of sexual selection, it presented a number of new (for me) perspectives on familiar topics. I will say that the author clearly came at all this from a 1970s countercultural perspective, where we might worry that the scientific conclusions were filtered to match social causes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam
0743203046
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
Definitely got me thinking, though the focus on particular archaic-feeling forms of social involvement seemed undermotivated.
B00LD1OQLY
Engaging but somehow not entirely convincing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Ratajkowski
B08X3DMN6W
With the timing of this book's release, I couldn't resist picking it up as an adjunct to Pricing Beauty. It was a well-written series of much more personal takes on that kind of life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Rauch
B00WNCUMEW
Short enough to be worth giving a try. I understand the main message like this: coordinating many people to implement political policies requires complex control mechanisms that idealists often disdain. Best practices for those mechanisms wind up looking a lot like what gets labeled "corruption" by today's mainstream media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reeves_(British_author)
B0BL54JQ4D
This one had a really high ratio of "wow, how was I not aware of that already?" to total content. I also appreciated how thoroughly the author avoided a clear bias for either of the mainstream liberal or conservative tribes in America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Restak
B09JPFXHD8
Short and to the point, styled as a bit more of a how-to guide than I was looking for
Al Ries and Jack Trout
B006B7LQ90
I feel like the book is self-referential in repeating a simple message over and over again!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Ries
B004J4XGN6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lean_Startup
Nice and simple and actionable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Riesman
B00BQZ1UFW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_Crowd
Thought-provoking, though it was often hard for me to get past the dated elements of the book. The last few chapters were especially unsatisfying, partly for that reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_J._Ritchie
B00RTY0LPO
A good summary of the area, but I came in hoping for more: detail on recent findings about the biological mechanisms behind intelligence and what IQ really "is" operationally. Maybe science doesn't actually have that level of understanding yet, though somehow I'd gotten my hopes up, based on where I saw the book referenced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Ripley
1451654421
A very well-written consideration of which factors really matter in developing higher-order thinking skills in schoolchildren, coming to a pretty simple conclusion
B00RKMZZRE
Informative, but not as interesting to me as I would have liked, since it only studied consulting, investment banking, and law, businesses that I don't consider to be terribly important
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robbins_(author)
B07YHJ49ZW
After seeing it recommended in The China Study, I had high hopes for this one, as finally providing that comprehensive case for the environmental costs of animal foods. It quickly became clear that there would be a lot of the "flower-child" voice that tends to turn me off, but I decided to stick with it (and the density of citations was a countervailing positive sign, though too many of them were to the same popular book throughout a section). In fact, this is a comprehensive treatment of all the downsides of animal products, adding for good measure an attack on genetically modified foods and praise for organic farming (where I'm not sure I even agree with the main arguments). The few chapters on environmental costs were decently compelling, but not stand-out enough to push this one onto my list of standard recommended books.
B006LSZ82U
Very well-written and pretty engaging, though I was left doubting the objective justification for the author's dietary choices, given some of the hippie-style stuff that showed up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling
B0756J1LLV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factfulness:_Ten_Reasons_We%27re_Wrong_About_the_World--and_Why_Things_Are_Better_Than_You_Think
Another good "human brain owner's manual," for thinking about big problems that aren't right in front of us
B00IA7DQQK
Good message, though I think the book could have stood to be quite a bit shorter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Roughgarden
B00B55HV0Q
Some interesting stuff, though I kept getting hung up on what exactly was the definition of "truth" of an evolutionary theory that this book was oriented around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Rudder
B00J1IQUX8
Some fascinating conclusions, though sometimes the writing style seemed too bombastic.
B007679QTG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_at_Dawn
Very well-written and thought-provoking. Now to read Sex at Dusk and see the counterarguments....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan
B004W0I00Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
I wasn't expecting so much to be spent on debunking pseudoscience. Good rah-rah kind of pep-talk material for true believers, but nothing that struck me as truly distinctive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elyn_Saks
B000WHVRZS
Kind of harrowing, but a real page-turner
Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr.
B008RZRLHA
Here's a very compelling case that the median U.S. university admissions policy is doing a lot of harm, where one of the biggest barriers to improvement is taboos against discussing the issues openly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Sanger
B076Z29HG7
Unsurprisingly, there was minimal technical detail, including on how conceptually straightforward it would be to close most of the security vulnerabilities that these attacks depend on. Still, it was fascinating to learn some of the historical context, and I appreciated the strong recommendation to invest in defense, even without any hints on specifics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sasse
B079YL56S3
A really compelling and wide-ranging treatment of some of the biggest issues facing America today. I really hope to see the author running for president in 2024! It's so anomalous to have a former college president in the U.S. Senate and still writing pretty scholarly books (which are accessible to a broad audience). [I do have to say that the last two main chapters or so were out-of-line with most of the others, presenting little in the way of persuasive argument or data, instead going for emotional triggers that should work for people who already agree with the main points.]
1477697284
Thought-provoking stuff. Now I can see why Amazon reviewers described it as "dry." The writing and argument style isn't as "pop" as in Sex at Dawn, but it sure does sound like the authors of said book cut some serious corners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schlosser
B003G83UI2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation
Interesting, but not a page-turner
B006RM2KBW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coders_at_work
An extremely entertaining read! The focus on folks who had been around longer worked out well, I think. The discussions here got me to thinking about how formal verification really should be an effective replacement for the laborious debugging sessions that interviewees relate here.
B012ODBR7A
A nice little gem that summarizes how young people should be reorienting their education and career plans. I might start recommending this to the undergrads I advise! My one (pretty big) disagreement: the implied advice to avoid doing real stuff and exploring career paths before age 18.
B07Z43V2RY
A comprehensive and engaging overview of a subject that's been bubbling all around me for a while but that I never dug into. Gets me thinking even more that I shouldn't overgeneralize from conclusions about choosing PhD schools, to say that it's nearly as important to fine-tune a choice of undergraduate school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Shiller
B00P6ZJ6HC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_Exuberance_(book)
A convincing enough sketch of an argument that psychological factors explain much of variation in stocks and other market-traded assets. I'd have to read some of the academic papers to appreciate the objective, mathematical case, and I'm not feeling motivated enough to do that. Therefore, I leave with the message, "it's complicated" when it comes to global financial markets!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky
B0013TTKQC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody
I might need more time to digest this one, to figure out if it crosses the border into "great," by providing a new and useful way of thinking. I did enjoy the retro feel of its snapshot of the world e.g. when MySpace was big and obviously deserving of more discussion than Facebook.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Shoup
193236496X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
This was a long one, but it was a lot of fun to read.
B07CGSBWT5
The updates on particular pilot programs in specific cities were interesting, but overall I didn't feel I'd learned too much. It was strange to build the book out of such short articles that are nonetheless written as standalones, so that each one spends a page or so reintroducing the same shared context of the book.
Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
B077GZT9Q1
Another of those books that I might have rated "great" if I'd read it 10 years ago. One of the really noteworthy elements for me was the very different style than I'm used to from Hanson's blog, presumably because of Simler taking more of a lead in crafting the prose. There were also a lot of footnotes, giving the impression of almost a paranoia for giving credit where it's due. I can see the book being a handy quick overview of some of the most widely applicable hidden motives, as a shortcut to reading quite a few books in evolutionary psychology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Simmons
B002IPZG72
A useful characterization of a persistent social failing [found via Jean's technical privilege reading list]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaclav_Smil
B09CDB69WT
A handy, quantitatively grounded overview of some important topics. Throughout, the author leans a bit too much on condescending tone as a substitute for water-tight argument, and I was unconvinced to change my mind about a few of my favorite causes (surprise, surprise!).
Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
B00CLT31D6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door
I really like the fast-paced, direct writing style. It made me feel like I was having a conversation with a member of a generation that achieved a level of earnestness that we're not likely to see again anytime soon. The message of the book seems like a good one, but I'm surprised that I found more to quibble with than Mr. Money Mustache's review prepared me for. Basically, the book doesn't go far enough, suggesting a still-too-high level of spending and risky investing. Especially egregious was implying that successful investing involves all sorts of manual stock-picking instead of just buying broad index funds; and it was amazing that, in discussing car expenses, the option of not driving a car wasn't even considered!
B07X8D3D9X
A very thorough and no-nonsense treatment of what we know, accessible even to life-sciences-illiterate rubes like me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Storr
B08H7Y414K
A thorough presentation of what we've come to understand on a topic at the heart of the human experience, with a good mix of systematic and anecdote-based style
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein
B07PQ9XG68
Given the title, I expected different subject matter, but there was still a healthy amount of interesting content here. It really seems to be a sort of survey on compensating for irrational biases in designing good policy.
B08PYB9XN4
An admirably succinct description of what seems to be one of the most important problems of our time, though somehow it felt short on actionable recommendations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Strogatz
B07FKF9DVJ
I was surprised how little of the math content felt unfamiliar, despite my dogged refusal to use any of that stuff in my life after undergrad. I enjoyed the long historical perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Tabarrok
B006C1HX24
I agree with what he's saying and somehow didn't learn too much; but I can't complain about such a short essay.
Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
B00A5DCALY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)
Generally hard to argue with!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Thompson_(journalist)
B07DBRNN1Z
The narrative moved slowly from the people to the usual headline-grabbing trends and social consequences, and I mostly enjoyed it, though in the end it didn't feel focused enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
B0083ZBUXU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden
B07CV1ZVCF
I appreciated the very efficient presentation of a fairly straightforward way of thinking about what a startup company should be about, at different phases in its life.
B07VD9FGJ9
Here's hoping I have the chance to try out these ideas over the next few years!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville
0140447601
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America
Interesting, though the value per page didn't seem quite high enough. Still, it stands the test of time pretty well.
Michael Tougias and John S. Burk
1934028479
Impulse buy in the Harvard Coop, read interleaved with other books over several months. Well put-together, above the standard I assumed for a regional press. Makes me seriously consider getting into hiking around here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Turkle
B004DL0KW0
Fairly thought-provoking stuff. The first part of the book, about social robots, is full of nearly metaphysical assertions, like that "clearly robots could never feel," without any sort of objective justification. The author seems to be having a hard time letting go of folk-psychology ideas about the essence of thinking beings. The second part of the book, about how social networking & co. have led to attention spread too thin and other woes, I had an easier time agreeing with.
B00BRUPJO4
A pretty good addition to this important field. My two main reservations: (1) while most of the book is written in an objective, scientific style, the author's liberal leanings occassionally show through, in gratuitous mockery of conservative celebrities; (2) the book didn't quite help me sum everything up in one actionable theory that's easy to remember.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
B01GUFYZD6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_the_Mississippi
Entertaining enough, providing some historical education. Would you believe that I started maintaining my books-to-read list in 2006, and this one had been languishing near the head of the list since then?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Twenge
B01N6ACK3B
Like Kids These Days but without the subjective parts that dampened my enthusiasm! A data-backed tour through the systematic ways that folks born from 1995 to nowabouts are differing (on average) from those who came before. We can blame it on smartphones, a tighter economy, and who knows what else.
B0B3Y9RSFP
A really interesting tour that managed to unify differences behind just a few big trends
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Vance
B0166ISAS8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy
A bit of extra anecdotal information on a segment of the country that I haven't interacted with very much
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._Vollmann
B002ENBM1C
Long enough that I often wondered whether it was worth finishing. Overall an enjoyable experience, raising interesting issues about how large populations of people can organize themselves in a modern setting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Wade
B00G3L7VFM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Troublesome_Inheritance
A good case against taboos on studying genetic causes of social behavior, without a strong argument that particular, interesting differences exist between the populations that the book focuses on
B01GONJFZ2
I was intrigued by the idea of a culture better fitting my natural mellowness than does the one I was born into. I'm not sure I walk away from the book having learned much or come to any important conclusions, except maybe that hygge is all about candles and eating unhealthy food! (Just kidding... right?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson
0874772060
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsider_%28Colin_Wilson%29
0575012587
0394465555
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Occult:_A_History
0809245248
with Damon Wilson
B0030DFGGM
B0000CKD1W
This started out interesting but devolved into seemingly random mentions of different authors and their works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson
B00AR3551Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_to_a_Young_Scientist
Some nice pep-talk material for careers in scientific research. It is short and sweet enough that the maximum downside of investing in reading it isn't very high! I was heartened by the advice to run away from popular research areas, though, really, which famous scientist isn't going to counsel like that after-the-fact? The content seems to generalize moderately well to research in engineering rather than science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_S._Wood
B004HFRJT4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Radicalism_of_the_American_Revolution
A fascinating look at the development of the social structure that we take for granted in America today. Some parts felt a bit slow-going, but overall seems like essential reading for anyone interested in pondering ways the social order could be reengineered. A good andidote to the lazy claim that nothing ever changes politically!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Woodard
B0052RDIZA
I feel like I've come away with a much better understanding of cultural differences in America, and the history was fascinating in any case.
B01071RD56
It was an interesting enough tour through a slice of American history, but I didn't feel like the author was making any kind of evidence-based point. He seemed to assume that the audience already agreed with him on a "moderate liberal" position, so that it sufficed to mention "outrages that we all already agree are terrible."
B0818XHV9M
Not what I was expecting heading into it (narrative of individual lives vs. grand analysis), but it turned out to be a pretty interesting tour of North vs. South elements in Amercan history. There was something of a surprise secret origin story for American Nations in there!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wright_(journalist)
B000Q9IRBY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonzero
Very thought-provoking
B00486U8N6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Animal
More fascinating stuff, though falling off in interestingness near the end
B002AKPEHW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_God
Compared to my expectations, this was a lot more about politics and a lot less about evolutionary psychology. Near the end, though, the author brings in a really interesting message about the origins of morality in social evolution.
B01MPZNG63
I appreciated this one most for its explanation of the role of emotion in the thought processes that we take for granted. Another entry on the list for "owner's manuals for human brains."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Yang_(entrepreneur)
B08XB374CH
I'm not quite agreeing with every policy idea, but I sure do like the sober-minded approach.
B075CRY4TZ
The first 75% or so is a really great introduction to the motivation behind making big changes to the way income works in our country, plus one compelling solution, universal basic income. The remaining content spells out a pretty wide variety of programs under the heading "human capitalism," and on average I wasn't too convinced by the (short) cases made for them, though I nodded along with a few points made about problems in different sectors (like health care and education). That last list of suggestions makes it pretty clear the author doesn't follow a philosophy of trying to minimize the responsibilities assigned to government!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky
B00ULP6EW2
I didn't walk away feeling like I'd learned a new coherent and relevant way of thought; the content was a mix of "I think I already knew that" (though I should probably trust my impressions less!) and reviews/introductions of ideas in probability theory or physics that don't seem immediately applicable to problems I think about. Still, I was happy enough to cheer plenty of the talking points, and it's good to have this skeleton key for the memes of a community adjacent to mine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Yglesias
B0078XGJXO
Persuasive arguments, but not too much I hadn't already seen elsewhere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Zegart
B099MFGRVB
A nice overview of this topic that I mostly didn't know about in any detail. It felt more like a series of articles than a structured presentation supporting one or two big thesis points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zeihan
B07RB1HMRM
A really interesting take on the world today and in the near future. I have to hold back on rating it too positively because I don't feel qualified to vet the reasoning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn
B00338QF46
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States
B0043D2DDW
0060921080
Crash was not my kind of book. I felt all shock value and nothing poetic.
The Master and Margarita really underwhelmed me. It read like a children's story, except less organized than you'd expect. The introduction with the edition I read revealed that it was the attempted combination of two different stories after they'd both been under development for a while. There was practically no characterization; just weird happenings.
Seeing some of my favorites, you might expect I'd like this guy, but I've found the three novels of his that I've read to be very dull.
I really didn't like Dead Souls.
I gave For Whom the Bell Tolls a try recently, and the macho stuff turned me off, despite some of the nice non-shallow content.
I've only read Brave New World, but it struck me as being very unsatisfying, with all the characters being very flat. Maybe this is the effect Huxley wanted, but that's not something I like in fiction.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man didn't resonate with me much. Maybe I'll try another of his books some day.
I read all of her novels in high school and became obsessed with Objectivism. However, like most such people, I grew out of it, and now I have a rather low opinion of her fiction and her philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme
0142437816
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Stories
Abandoned because I don't like the format.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell
1577315936
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_With_a_Thousand_Faces
I stopped reading this after the first of two parts. There were some interesting ideas, though somehow I feel like I would have gotten just as much out of a short article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg
0932633420
I don't think I've really taken too much away from this book, especially given that most of what it talks about is based on the outdated computing conventions of the early 1970's. However, I have to say that Gerald Weinberg is one of the best nonfiction authors I have ever read. He has a very lucid writing style that keeps the reader interested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad
B0084AOB9O
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Outcast_of_the_Islands
I gave it a chance, but it just couldn't hold my interest, so I gave up. The writing was waaay too verbose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobias_Wolff
B000FC28A8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_School_%28novel%29
Eh, mediocre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Goncharov
B004N62H9O
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblomov
Not very remarkable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
B000S1LE6U
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray
I wanted to give this well-known story a try, and I was hoping the Wilde-ishness I'd read before wouldn't be involved too much. It was, and the interspersing of serious stuff with wit-wars didn't work very well. I didn't have the stomach to stay for the three stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Selby%2C_Jr.
B006D23D12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Exit_to_Brooklyn
The combination of the subject matter and the "experimental" disregard for English grammar and layout drove me away from this before I got very far into it.
0780311361
Like with the last one, I'm not sure if I got much out of reading this. In contrast, the prose here seemed overly preachy/condescending and generally didn't leave me with warm feelings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell
B01D95D6TO
Occasionally thought-provoking but hard to extract a definitive message from. The closest I can find are pitches to (1) devolve more power to smaller, more local governments and other organizations and (2) focus more on human happiness in designing societies. I feel like the coming wave of automation challenges some of the key premises of the arguments, as spelled out in Harari's nifty recent article in the Atlantic.
B0098IWI28
After reading the first few essays in the book, I asked myself what I was getting out of the experience. Failing to find an answer, I set out for greener pastures. (I picked up the book because Everything and More cited it, and the title sounded interesting; that should teach me to live on the edge!)
Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner
B000QUEHPS
I think I've been spoiled by books that analyze topics and synthesize new hypotheses or recommendations. I couldn't stand to finish this book, which is a mishmash of quoted stories grouped by topic, with minimal connecting text. From reading the description, I got the impression that most of the big elements of "quarterlife crises" weren't occurring for me, and that seems mostly accurate, based on what I read. I should make a note to, in the future, avoid reading books based on that kind of curiosity when the books were featured on Oprah.
Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt
B005FA24EK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Superstition
I didn't feel like I learned much from this book. The authors attacked particular quotations from a hand-picking of authors, so it's hard to tell which points are valid against the whole body of literature that they're dissecting. I don't know how it would be possible to do better, but that doesn't mean that this book is very helpful. The prose was also a little too purple for me.
0230201822
There was some interesting information and speculation in here, but too much of the book came across as moralizing. The copy-editing was also notably poor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hinde
B002RGMJTA
I had to bail on this one early on. It was clumsy stylistically and didn't seem to be painting any kind of big picture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Pirenne
0691007608
This was enjoyable enough, but still on the low end of "good."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Archer_(scientist)
B004EYT8FG
A reasonable description of how little we know about climate changes and our effect on them
B0057Q0A4I
A big old pile of meta-discussion about who said what about whom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Schmidt,_author
B008GRDKPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplined_Minds
Somewhat thought provoking, but mostly unsatisfying. Most all of the author's complaints about PhD programs don't seem to apply to top computer science programs; I don't know how accurate they are elsewhere. I was surprised by this book's tone when I started reading it; somehow, when I first added it to my "to read" list, I hadn't realized that the book is targeted to "radicals" and "activists." The author doesn't spend any space trying to explain why the reader might want to become such a thing, so that was another serious turn-off for me.
B003PJ7JXY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lierre_Keith
I haven't yet finished looking into the factual content, but the style is extremely off-putting, with frequent tone transfusions of both Stoned Hippie and Angry Oppressed Person. One chapter spends many too many words arguing against a crazy version of ethical vegetarianism where killing anything is wrong, which I don't think is very common, and which I've never come close to subscribing to. There are calls for a feminist, anti-corporatist revolution sprinkled throughout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hayes_%28journalist%29
B006OI2BMC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_of_the_Elites
Many sections were enjoyable enough to read, but in the end I don't really get what is the central argument of the book. The author takes up economic equality as an "obvious" goal, but I'm not convinced, and so I didn't see the point of most of the proposals near the end.
B00AIEYQZI
This might be very good economics scholarship, but I found it extremely dull, mostly a parade of data and statistical results. I gave up halfway through.
B00A07G6Y2
Interesting enough, but just not what I was looking for. Sociology is weird, and the idea of "conservative" vs. "liberal" in the U.S. is crazy.
B00C7MEV8G
The core thesis is interesting, but the style of the book was just not my cup of tea. It seemed intentionally obfuscated like I expect to see in a caricature of the humanities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter
B00AWO0CYI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism,_Socialism_and_Democracy
I hesitated between tagging this one as "bad" or "good." I learned of the book, in the first place, as the one that introduced the concept of creative destruction in free markets, and, sure enough, that's in here. There's also quite a bit else which was mostly dull. I was surprised that the book, cited for its contribution of one of the main popular arguments for capitalism, is fundamentally arguing for the inevitability of socialism! It's done in a relatively defensible way, but I'm not convinced, and I didn't have too much fun reading until the end.
B014A3QIYE
My overall rating of this book is a tough call. In the end, I decided that, while reading it, I was too eager for it to end. Not knowing the geography of Los Angeles probably left me unprepared to appreciate it, and I have to say that the book didn't increase my enthusiasm for spending more time there! The prose style was also too overwrought for my taste.
B0052SPE3S
Largely washed over me quickly without making an impression.
Melissa Hartwig and Dallas Hartwig
B008C20TDG
Recommended by Jimmy Koppel, as an introduction to the practices and rationale behind paleo diets. I'd like to understand more how, in principle, the same medical-research literature is being cited here to justify such different conclusions than in, e.g., How Not to Die. One thing I noticed in this book is a focus on "feeling your best," with minimal argument about long-term health consequences of the diet.
B0046LU7H0
Felt like a surprise conversation with an Aspberger's-leaning engineer at a conference, who just doesn't get why his audience wouldn't find his insights fascinating. I often appreciate that communication style, but it didn't work for me here. The conceptual complexity felt way overblown for the subject matter, and the overall level of mathematical rigor didn't strike me as high enough to label the book as "formalizing ideas we take for granted, so that we are better able to make decisions." Also, the level of frugality the book argues for seems unnecessary for anyone with an upper-middle-class income, e.g. the dictum that rent should never be more than a few hundred dollars per month per resident. People who already buy into early retirement through frugality won't find much new here of value, and people who don't buy in will likely be scared away by the philosophical complexity of the presentation.
1119576326
Executive summary: Salesforce is a relational database management system with an integrated and tweakable UI, plus a particular schema oriented towards sales/marketing/support, but relatively little true code customization to support that schema. It's interesting how verbose the authors have to be to try to hide the general abstractions behind it all, for an audience presumed to understand concrete ideas only!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Stevens
B07ZY73FTN
I came to this book expecting an argument about the mass of people who identify with the Republican party, but it seemed to be mostly about the elite within the party, not taking the time to engage with the positions or priorities that bind voters to this brand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson
B01FPGY5T0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Rules_for_Life
The foreword was a bad omen, trying as it did to let us know how great the main author is at parties. The initial chapters gave me some hope that we'd at least see cliched moral advice justified scientifically, but, no, most of the book came off as a manic attempt to name-drop as many sources in literature and religion as possible, without any kind of argument that could be convincing across cultures. There were a handful of segments that I appreciated for deconstructing certain sacred cows from at least halfway scientific perspectives, and some of the personal stories especially were engaging, but overall the book was an incoherent mess, where it wasn't even clear what the items of advice really meant, let alone why the reader should be convinced to follow them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Barber
B00FOR56YY
I might even like the actual operational advice this book pushes, but the presentation just didn't work for me. I found myself thinking repeatedly "what is this book about?" as it jumped from topic to topic and eventually spent what felt like just a few pages on the marquee idea for a "mayors parliament." It felt more like a party conversation where someone is trying to impress the other guests, rather than a careful study of the evidence supporting a suggestion of how to make the world a better place.
Karen Berman and Joe Knight
B005DI8XV2
On the one hand, this was a well-executed and readable introduction to standard accounting ideas. On the other hand, to someone like me whose perspective is a combination of the software engineer's and logician's, it was very frustrating to see all advice presented as "just the way things are done" without any consideration of what the underlying objectives of financial planning are, with "derivations" showing why we should use methods being presented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
B001DF63IO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus
Recommended by someone who had just listened to one of my talks on formal verification. I can see how this book seems to bring order to the chaos of logical argumentation, to someone who doesn't have experience with formal logic as we understand it today, but the book doesn't seem valuable anymore. It just comes across as muddled and inefficient. Clearly the right way to explain logical reasoning is via algorithms, but the author didn't have that tool and so needed to use all sorts of long-winded prose. Then, all sorts of philosophical puzzles, like around the difference between symbols and their meanings, need to be solved to get anything done with rigorous logical reasoning for engineering purposes, so anyone in that line of work is going to work all this out independently, more effectively than by reading it in a book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghan_O%27Gieblyn
B08P45CY86
I had trouble extracting anything coherent. To an extent that's justifiable, if this is mostly a collection of essays. In general, though, I felt like I was hearing repeated recital of applause lines, for ideas that self-declared progressives agreed were important and theories that they agreed were credible. It was hard to identify any clear objective claims being made, let alone evidence in support of them. In general, it felt like the kind of muddled thinking I'd expect from someone without serious experience in software development.
1119289742
Read for Nectry market research, it did its job as a quick overview of how to watch out for bad side effects of drugs, even if it's hard for me to say what specific info I learned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaji_Srinivasan
B09VPKZR3G
This book feels like a speech at a rally for people who already agree with its main claims. It was a firehose of citations and allusions, but I didn't manage to extract a core outline of claims and evidence.
B00FF7IG0Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mazes