2018 Reading List

My goal for 2018 is to get back to my cadence of roughly one book per week. I have a backlog of books by Vaclav Smil and Carlotta Perez that I've been ignoring from 2015. After that, I want to read more history and less fiction. I'm looking forward to reading more of Peter Brown's work: the period of late antiquity is just so damn interesting.

Currently Reading:

Last read in high school. This edition has a great intro by Margeret Atwood.

Upcoming:

Finished:

A good dose of insight-porn to start the year.

2017 Reading List

My reading list for 2017 is spartan in comparison to 2016, and looks downright cheap and nasty compared to David Auerbach's. Auerbach is the reader we should all aspire to be.

Both the quality and quantity of my reading dipped in 2017 as work took precedence over everything else. For whatever reason, I was also more ruthless about abandoning books that didn't click. A good example of an abandoned book is The Son by Philipp Meyer, for which I got 15% through before I moved on to something else. I guess I abandoned 20-30 books this year in a similar fashion, not counting Kindle samples.

Peter Brown's "Through the Eye of a Needle" was the undisputed highlight of 2017 for me. However, I think I might be done with science fiction -- for now. I was a latecomer to the genre several years ago, but I really feel like I've read all of the genre's "greatest hits" by now. I don't follow SF fandoms so I'm not up to date with newer authors.

An excellent read in spite of the translation.

The first poetry I've read in a long time.

One of the most extraordinary books I've read about this period of late antiquity.

I can't find a link to the actual edition, but it was mostly analysis of the poem. The poem itself you can read in less than an hour.

This was the first Culture novel I ever read. Technically a re-read.

I think I'm done with Hyperion now.

Conclusion of the Witcher series.

I didn't mean to start re-reading Hyperion again, but the Priest's Tale just sucked me right in to the story again. Comfort food.

First time reading this. It lived up to expectations to entertain, but I don't feel inclined to read the other books in the series.

2016 Reading List

Requires a re-read to fully appreciate.

Quite simply one of the funniest books I've ever read.

I didn't read this cover-to-cover exactly.

Doesn't appear to be available on Amazon any more.

Made a lot of recipes from this book. I just think Ramsay is a cut above the rest.

Good winter recipes, but the eBook was ruined by extremely poor formatting.

One of the best recipe books out there.

Very simple recipes that often blow people away.

2018 Reading List

Currently Reading:

1. Presuasion by Robert Cialdini

2. Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler

3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Upcoming:

1. Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology by Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili

2. The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 3rd Edition by Peter Brown

Finished:

1. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles

2. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

3. Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss et al

2017 Reading List

1. The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem

2. Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age by W. Bernard Carlson

3. Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts by Ryan Holiday

4. Adults In The Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment by Yanis Varoufakis

5. Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot

6. Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

7. Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Audiobook) by Peter Brown

8. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M Sapolsky

9. Fifty Orwell Essays by George Orwell

10. Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations by Kurt Vonnegut

11. The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks

12. Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

13. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

14. Foundation by Isaac Asimov

15. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

16. Inversions by Iain M. Banks

17. Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks

18. The Origins of Political Order (Audiobook) by Francis Fukuyama

19. Deep Work by Cal Newport

20. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

21. (REREAD) Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

22. The Lady of The Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski

23. The Tower of the Swallow by Andrzej Sapkowski

24. Baptism of Fire by Andrzej Sapkowski

25. (REREAD) Hyperion by Dan Simmons

26. Time of Contempt by Andrzej Sapkowski

27. Dune by Frank Herbert

28. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

29. Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski

30. Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski

31. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

2016 Reading List

1. The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review (Author), Philip Gourevitch (Introduction)

2. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich

3. The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three Novellas by Gene Wolfe

4. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller

5. The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by Stanislaw Lem

6. Mortal Engines by Stansilaw Lem

7. Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem

8. On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

9. The New Typography (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism) by Jan Tschichold

10. Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (Great Discoveries) by Rebecca Goldstein

11. This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works (Edge Question Series) by John Brockman (Edited)

12. Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning series) by Kevin P. Murphy

13. Physically Based Rendering, Second Edition: From Theory To Implementation by Matt Pharr

14. The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics by Nicholas J. Higham and Mark R. Dennis

15. 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development, 2nd Edition by Fletcher Dunn

16. Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics) by Christopher Bishop

17. (REREAD) Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

18. A Canticle For Leibowitz (S.F. MASTERWORKS) by Walter M. Miller Jr

19. The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is? by Nick Lane

20. The Lathe Of Heaven (S.F. MASTERWORKS) by Ursula Le Guin

21. No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton by Christopher Hitchens

22. The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens

23. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

24. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu

25. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

26. The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey

27. That Sugar Book: This Book Will Change the Way You Think About 'Healthy' Food by Damon Gameau

28. Three Moments of An Explosion by China Mieville

29. Beyond the Aquila Rift by Alastair Reynolds

30. (REREAD) Hyperion by Dan Simmons

31. (REREAD) The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

32. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

33. Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F. Hamilton

34. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

35. The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly