I’m looking over a bookshelf that I haven’t looked at in a while and there are some books I really fondly remember there. (And also a lot of books I have no memory of.) I am reflecting on how I really want to spend my time reading — I want to read more of these impactful books, and probably read fewer of the ones that are basically junk food.

Some of the great titles that caught my eye:

• The Sparrow by Mary Doris Russell. What a great book exploring morals and culture and misunderstanding.
• The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March. I am not deep into poetry but this is nothing but fun. I’ve read this several times.
• The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. Probably needs some updating but an unvarnished look at one aspect of the British empire.
• The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould. Everything by Gould is excellent, this may be among the most important.
• The Strange Death of Liberal England by George Dangerfield. A fascinating and literary history tale. The title alone makes this book 100x more interesting than most history books.
• Titan by Ron Chernow. Learned so much about the growth of Standard Oil, and all the good and bad along the way.
• On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Powers has written some powerfully entertaining stories, and never got the renown he deserved.
• Godël, Escher, Bach by Douglas R Hofstadter. I’d recommend this to everyone. Definitely a desert island read. UPDATE: a reader suggests this one has not aged well, I may crack it open again.
• The Education of a Speculator by Victor Niederhoffer. Gets mixed reviews but I think that is because people expect to learn investment secrets in here, which is not what this book is about. It is more about the human side of his life.
• The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. Whether you are a Christian or not, this is incredibly insightful and engaging. I’ve read many times.
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I am sure this has aged horribly and I should probably be embarrassed about this one. But as a kid, this was a great rollicking adventure.
• The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. This hit me hard when I first read it, very introspective look at finding meaning and place in life.

I’d love to hear about books others have rediscovered…

• Upheaval by Jared Diamond. Not as breakthrough as his earlier work, but an engaging look at crises and how nations react to them. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Finland because I was so ignorant of Finnish history.
• Lamb by Christopher Moore. An irreverent modern gospel, fun to read and still very true to the story and meaning of Christ. Will not be everyone’s cup of tea but I loved it.
• Radical Markets by Eric Posner and E. Glen Weyl. It promises radical ideas to improve the functioning of our markets and society. The first chapter was a little slow. In the second chapter they introduce their ideas for voting, and then offhandedly state that they have patented all this and have software you can buy. And I realize “Damn, this is a whitepaper for their business, and I paid for it.” Didn’t finish.

• The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel H. Wilson. Fun story about automatons who have been hiding within human society for eons, and their struggle to understand their own morality and purpose. I’m not sure it is a 4.5 star read but I was entertained.
• Radical Uncertainty by John Kay and Mervyn King. A little academic but I still loved it. Our mania for models and planning is all for naught in a world swept by health care crises, climate crises, social crises, financial crises. We need to continually focus on what is going on underneath the numbers, and invest in resiliency to make it through the shifts and shocks. Good read.
• Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit Bannerjee and Esther Duflo. Interesting discussions but not as foundational as Radical Uncertainty.

• wow, no thank you. by Samantha Irby. The title is exactly the reaction I had, couldn’t finish. Just didn’t relate to anything in here, I may not be the target audience. It does have a cute bunny on the cover.
• Sunburst and Luminary by Don Eyles. Fascinating story inside the Apollo program, great depth on the software and compute environment. Most people will find this book a little too in the software weeds but I enjoyed it.
• The World of Tomorrow by Brendan Mathews. Great story of three brothers in New York in the years before WWII, all working their schemes. Great characters.
• Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. I wanted to like this book but it felt soulless. Ultimately I gave up, it didn’t seem to teach me anything I wanted to learn about human relations.

Cleaning up the bookshelf during the pandemic – a little eclectic.

• What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian by Martin Thielen. I was raised Presbyterian but it didn’t really take. I still tho got a lot of value out of this book, particularly the first half which debunks some of the worst behaviours of some “Christians”. Recommended for believers and non-believers both.
• The Wicked + The Divine by Gillen, McKelvie, Wilson, Cowles. I try a graphic novel every so often and this got good reviews. Didn’t really catch my attention, jumped in midstream to the characters and I didn’t ever bond to any of them.
• Super Forecasting by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner. Great book about forecasting and leadership. The basic rules resonate across so many fields – be tangible; measure performance; iterate. Really nice work.

Cleaning up the bookshelves while we are shut in…

• Planet of Adventure by Jack Vance. If you like Burrough’s Mars books, then you will like this. I read the Burroughs books when I was very young, and they have not held up well, but I loved them as a kid. And I kind of love this tho again has not aged well.
• Introduction to Econometrics by James H. Stock, Mark W. Watson. On my shelves for 16 years, not sure why. An average intro to regression analysis.
• A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor. Much better than I anticipated, a very readable and visual walk thru the entire span of human history.

• Range by David Epstein. Strong argument that creativity, invention, excellence are driven by breadth of knowledge, not depth. Important to read, learn, use tools outside your focus area.
• Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder.  Great book about biases in modern physics.  I am no physicist but the lessons apply to every other field.  
• Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.  A sprawling tale of the life of a man searching for redemption in middle ages Russia.  Something in here for everyone.

• Narconomics by Tom Wainwright. They may be criminals, but they have all the same economics and behaviours of commercial enterprises. Good insight into why attempting to eradicate narcotics at the source is such a waste of time.
• Brown Dog by Jim Harrison.  Great character, great writing.  How has this never been turned in a tv series?  Fargo-style stories in the Upper Peninsula.
• Recursion by Blake Crouch.  Nice time-travel romp, well reviewed.  I am not sure it quite lives up to the reviews but still a solid tale.
• Himself by Jess Kidd.  An orphan returns to his home town to uncover the truth around his parents, with a healthy assist from townspeople and ghosts.

• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.  A woman murders her husband and is found insane, and a therapist digs in to get the truth.  Very twisty and fun.
• Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters.  A suspense story set in a world where the Civil War never happened and slavery continues to this day.  Tough topic, disturbing at times, good tale.
• Quicksand by Malin Perrson Giolito. Well reviewed but I couldn’t make it through, might be due to a weak translation.
• But What If We’re Wrong by Chuck Klosterman.  Very thoughtful discussion of our conventional wisdom about culture, science, and other topics.  We are certainly wrong about many things we believe – how are we probably wrong, where is truth likely to be found, and does it matter?

• Circe by Madeline Miller. Excellent retelling of the story of Circe, making her the central and most human part of so much of Greek myth. Very good.
• The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz. Eh, just didn’t care enough to see where this was going.  Great reviews tho so your mileage may vary.
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan.  Great novel of a slave born in the Caribbean plantations, slowly escaping and building a free life, helped and hindered by fallible people and society around him.  A page turner.  Deserves all the recognition.
• The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley.  Excellent hard-boiled detective tale.  The hero is a drunk, deeply-flawed, yet still honorable, and finds himself pulled into a pit of snakes.  Great read

• The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I am ambivalent. Certainly the story is creative, and much work was done to plot it out. But I am not really convinced the story went anywhere. I was compelled to finish but I don’t know I will remember much.
• What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forche. Brutal look at El Salvador during the Civil War in the 80s and 90s. Horrible. We have done so little in the US for our Central American neighbors, and actually have been behind so many terrible people.
• Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I would not normally seek out a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick but this was a great tale of rock and roll, drugs, sex, love, betrayal, forgiveness, redemption, consequences, responsibility. Tore through it.
• Deep State by Chris Hauty. Embarrassed to say I read this – shoddy characters, shoddy dialog. But enthralling, couldn’t put it down, nice twists.
• Sunnyside by Glen David Gold. No idea why I bought this years ago. I like weird and this was too weird to finish.

• Red Mountain by Boo Walker. Outside my normal interest range and for good reason, this is horrible. A Hallmark movie. Cloying, ridiculous.
• The Wanderers by Chuck Wendig. Post apocalypse, zombies, nano-machines, AI, pandemic, white nationalists, climate change, conspiracies, this has it all. Long but I enjoyed it.
• Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith. Very readable walk through the basic arguments for immigration. Might be a little simplistic but everyone should at least be informed on these arguments.

• Noumenon and Noumenon Infinity by Marina Lostetter. A space exploration trip returns to Earth after centuries away and can barely relate to the evolved human culture. And so on. Fun.
• The Institute by Stephen King. Very average Stephen King. So still highly entertaining but not amazing.
• The Midnight Line by Lee Child. Another Jack Reacher book, a very good one, dealing with a missing veteran who may be a criminal or a hero or both.
• Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown. A fascist nationalist leader arises in the US in the 1980s. Years later we follow along as young rebels try to undo the damage. Very entertaining.
• When Paris Went Dark by Ronald Rosbottom. Paris during the WWII occupation – what happened to the city and the citizens. Some dark times.

Three articles worth reading:

• The Tesla Model 3 Invaded My Neighborhood — But It’s Bigger Than That (GM President Mark Reuss Take Note)
• GM president: Electric cars won’t go mainstream until we fix these problems
• German car industry faces ‘day of reckoning’

Owning a good EV is a transformational experience. Is my Tesla as good in all respects as a traditional car? No. But it is so dramatically better in a few regards that I will never go back to an internal combustion engine vehicle. And I don’t think this is discernible in focus groups or other traditional market research vehicles.

I am reminded of 1988 when I joined Microsoft. I sat in meetings with senior leaders from DEC who regularly pooh-poohed the PC. And they were “right”, the PC was primitive and incomplete. And in 10 years DEC was gone as an independent entity, despite their amazing technical and business strengths, despite being “right” in their judgement about the PC.

When the tide comes in, you don’t want to be trying to fight it.

• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. Whew what a tough read. We have been so fortunate to always have access to housing and family in our lives. Life for people at the bottom of the housing ladder is horrific. inhuman, even in our “modern” society. Good chapter at end on what kind of remedies we should support, we clearly need to do more.