Book Reviews

These reviews help you decide if you are likely to enjoy a book by:

saying what kind of reader I expect would like the book;
explaining why I chose to read the book, so you can decide if my reasons are like yours;
giving a short, spoiler-free, description of my experience of reading the book.

I try not to just say whether I liked the book. Most books I would recommend to somebody but not everybody so I try to be clear about conditional recommendations. The books I have reviewed most recently are on top, so if you are returning after an absence you can find new recommendations.

I mix of paper, e-books, and audiobooks. Mostly I don’t think this matters. If something is only available in audio format, or if the audio presentation is particularly good, I mention it.

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The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)

Fiction. Categories: crime drama
Recommendation: I would recommend this to people who enjoy crime fiction set in a university context or involving the psychology of the choice to murder someone.
Why I read it: I read this because several friends have recommended it to me.
Note: I found this book mostly enjoyable, with an interesting narrator and page turney pace. It is mostly a story about desperation and the psychology of murder. Perhaps for that reason, the fact that all the characters seemed so weird felt like an issue for me. I think it was trying to evoke a kind of olde worldey classical undergraduate culture that might well exist but that I haven’t encountered, so perhaps the characters are plausible, just not in my kind of sphere.

Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human and Brought us to the Brink by Richard Currier (2015)

Non-fiction. Categories: history history-technology progress
Recommendation: I would tentatively recommend this to people interested in the development of humanity from a more anthropological lens, but I can’t really vouch for the contents.
Why I read it: I read this because I wanted to keep going on reading about technology and civilization after enjoying Smil’s book so much, but I was slightly picking books at random.
Note: I got the impression from the presentation of this work by the author that not everything he discusses is generally representative of consensus in his field. I don’t know if this is true (sometimes authors like to seem edgy and controversial) but if it is true I don’t have a way of judging if it improves on the consensus. The book takes a broad view of ‘technology’ and includes things like symbolic language, which is reasonable. But this gives the book a broad scope focused mostly on anthropological issues that the author is more familiar with.

Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil (2017)

Non-fiction. Categories: history history-technology progress
Recommendation: I would recommend this for anyone interested in an in-depth exploration of the topic, though the detail and quantitative exposition may put off some readers.
Why I read it: I read this because I’ve been circling the topics of energy and civilization for a few books now and thought I would try Smil, who is generally more detail-oriented than other writers on the topic.
Note: Here we go. Finally found the book I was after. The book covers a lot of ground, because energy is a topic that is pretty central in the study of civilization which is itself quite a broad topic. So inevitably some of what matters was left out, but forgivably. A few things did not quite land for me. He discusses an ‘energy hypothesis’ about the centrality of energy production in understanding civilizational progress, but at the same time some of the most interesting parts of the book for me where discussions of energy efficiency rather than productive capacity (for example, in converting fuel into heat). I would have liked more discussion of this issue, especially in the context of dematerialization. I also enjoyed both the main body of the work and the author’s more opinionated discussion at the end, which is in some ways a separate work. This will be unpleasant reading for people who do not like numbers and equations in their reading (though it is not as extreme as some Smil) and the level of detail can be intense (for example, how many grams per square meter of skin per hour a horse can sweat-100-compared to a human-500). I liked this book so much that I got a paper copy to reread.

Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1990)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction adventure
Recommendation: I basically wouldn’t recommend this book.
Why I read it: I read this because I had enjoyed Hyperion on the whole and wanted to get some resolution.
Note: My main complaint about Hyperion had been that it ended abruptly without being properly resolved. So I assumed that reading the sequel would help. Once again, the writing was enjoyable and any one little arc felt good. But the book became wild. It seems the entire exercise was an extended meditation on John Keats and a bizarre elaboration of the poem Hyperion mixed with obscure Christian allegory. Finishing was a chore because I came to realise about two-thirds of the way through that there would be no satisfactory resolution and indeed my expectations were met.

On Writers and Writing by Margaret Atwood (2014)

Non-fiction. Categories: philosophy memoir
Recommendation: I would recommend this to people who think a lot about creative writing.
Why I read it: I read this because I love almost everything by Margaret Atwood.
Note: I really enjoyed this. Atwood’s writing always has clever little asides but she, politely, prioritises the story over her own wittiness. But because this book is a set of adapted lectures on the subject of writing she doesn’t feel any obligation to hold back. Don’t read this expecting practical advice on how to write (though there is, for example, some interesting practical reflection on motivations for writing and to what extent to expect them to be satisfied). Instead, think of this as a set of reflections by a skilled practitioner on her trade.

Ancilliary Mercy by Anne Leckie (2015)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction adventure
Recommendation: I would tentatively recommend this to someone who likes their space-opera heavy on moralising and light on action.
Why I read it: I read this because I had read the first two books in this trilogy a few years ago and thought I would round off the set.
Note: I remember really liking the previous two books in the series but this one did not do it for me. The overwhelming impression was that large sections of the dialogue had been lifted from training materials for school guidance counsellors. The main character seemed to have been created by imagining someone for whom the answer to the interview question ‘What are your greatest weaknesses?’ genuinely was ‘I am a perfectionist who tries too hard.’. I don’t remember if the previous books were also like this and I just didn’t mind back then or if this is different.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996)

Fiction. Categories: historical-fiction mystery
Recommendation: Perhaps people who enjoy true-ish crime and don’t find stories that depend on people having multiple personalities annoying would like this?
Why I read it: I read this because I have really enjoyed almost everything by Margaret Atwood I’ve ever read.
Note: This book surprised me by being the first Margaret Atwood I didn’t like. It is well written and observed and I never felt tired of reading it. But the central conceit felt implausible for reasons that are hard to discuss without spoilers. Ultimately, this is probably actually a better book than many that I’m less critical of, but I have come to have such high expectations of the author that it disappointed them.

Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo (2014)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy adventure romance light-reading
Recommendation: I wouldn’t really recommend this unless you really enjoyed the previous two books and feel invested in the trilogy.
Why I read it: I read this because I forgot how much I didn’t really enjoy Siege and Storm and thought I would finish the trilogy.
Note: It’s a good thing this was a trilogy because by about halfway through I vowed I would certainly not read another book from the series. The main character mostly develops in the direction of becoming more annoying and self-pitying. I did not find the resolution particularly satisfying.

Energy: A Human History by Richard Rhodes (2018)

Non-fiction. Categories: history-technology history-economic history progress
Recommendation: I would tentatively recommend it to people with a particular interest in the history of energy who want something fairly short (with Vaclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization being better for more detail).
Why I read it: I read this because I am interested in civilizational progress and histories of technology and the author wrote a highly regarded book on the Manhattan project.
Note: This book was shorter than I had expected given the heft of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and felt a little light on detail. There were clearly parts that the author had quite in-depth research for (including atomic energy!) but much of the rest did not go that far beyond what one might have picked up in general reading on energy issues and relevant history. It’s probably good as a moderately introductory book though. I think I preferred it to Lewis Dartnells’ Origins and definitely preferred it to Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed.

The Silent Blade/Paths of Darkness/Sea of Swords by R A Salvatore (1998)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy light-reading adventure
Recommendation: I would recommend the author generally for people who are invested in the Forgotten Realms fantasy world, but not particularly otherwise.
Why I read it: I mostly read these for nostalgia reasons and because they are nice background listening while doing chores.
Note: Similar to previous books by the author. But this is about as far as I got when reading these as a child (because the later books hadn’t been published yet!) so I don’t expect to read much further in the series.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (1989)

Fiction. Categories: historical-fiction adventure
Recommendation: I would recommend this to enjoyers of historical fiction and sweeping dramas.
Why I read it: I read this because I enjoyed The Evening and the Morning and this is Ken Follet’s best-known work.
Note: The storytelling devices in this book are pretty blunt. You immediately know who the hero is because he almost immediately puts himself in danger to protect his team from a villain. You immediately know the villain because he’s an absolute bastard. The plot is mostly episodic with a fairly satisfying arc tying everything together (despite a slightly weird historical cameo at the end). Truthfully, many of the characters felt a bit thin, especially given the space they had to develop. A fun (if slightly brutal) drama but not something that will stand out in my memory.

Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell (2018)

Non-fiction. Categories: history history-technology progress
Recommendation: I would recommend this to someone who wanted a fairly short history of technological/social civilizational progress pitched at a moderately introductory level.
Why I read it: I read this because I’m interested in technological and social histories of civilization and I previously enjoyed The Knowledge.
Note: I found Origins much more readable than Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed (which I didn’t finish), but also it didn’t contain much that I hadn’t seen before. I think it made the same structural mistake as The Earth Transformed, to start with a geological history and discussion of very early humanity, which means that the opening sections are very abstract and unrelatable. But because it is so much shorter, you get along to the good stuff tolerably quickly. Some details intrigued me, such as the discussion of shipping times and logistics costs within the Mediterranean’s wibbly-wobbly coastline and the implications for early civilization. But on the whole much of the discussion remained surface-level. For a deeper dive I would recommend Vaclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization.

The Legacy/Starless Night/Siege of Darkness/Passage to Dawn by R A Salvatore (1992)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy light-reading adventure
Recommendation: I would recommend the author generally for people who are invested in the Forgotten Realms fantasy world, but not particularly otherwise.
Why I read it: I mostly read these for nostalgia reasons and because they are nice background listening while doing chores.
Note: These books are all part of a series of adventure stories with roughly the same characters. Each book is fun and simple. The characters are a bit thin and the plot doesn’t require much attention. But you could do worse for a light fantasty adventure.

Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo (2013)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy light-reading romance adventure
Recommendation: I would mostly recommend this to people who have already read and enjoyed Shadow and Bone, though I did not think it was as good.
Why I read it: I read this because I had mostly enjoyed Shadow and Bone, the previous book in the series.
Note: I felt like the strongest part of Shadow and Bone was the injection of some eastern European and Russian folklore into the Western fantasy tradition (something that other authors like Naomi Novik do better, in my opinion) and some evocative magic and storytelling. This book mostly keeps that, but didn’t substantially build on it. I also started to increasingly find the main character quite… annoying. She gets all of her tremendous power from a sort of divine gift, but isn’t particularly virtuous or heroic in any other way and is often just a bit whiny and impulsive.

The Evening and The Morning by Ken Follett (2020)

Fiction. Categories: historical-fiction adventure
Recommendation: I would recommend this to people who enjoy ‘thrillery’ historical fiction.
Why I read it: I read this because I had heard of the author’s Pillars of the Earth and the book was on sale. Not a great reason, sorry.
Note: Ken Follet doesn’t pull punches when it comes to setting up the story. You’ll know damn well who the hero is and who is the villain in every scene, and many of the tropes and storytelling tools are as old as the sun. But he did it pretty well. The book follows an interconnected set of heroes and villians in medieval England (and France) as they jostle for power, safety, justice, and self-determination. I enjoyed the book and found myself wanting to keep reading, which is particularly impressive because it’s a very long book and I don’t often read historical fiction.

Artemis by Andy Weir (2017)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction action mystery
Recommendation: I would recommend this to people who like tounge-in-cheek near-sci-fi adventure stories.
Why I read it: I read this because I had previously enjoyed The Martian, had mixed feelings about Project Hail Mary, but thought I would give the author another try.
Note: I mostly enjoyed this book, which is a kind of heist story set on a not-too-futuristic moon colony. It is fun and very readable. But I didn’t love it. It felt like the author was trying too hard to write a badass-genius-sexy-superwoman-hero character who felt a bit thin as a result. The plot itself, like everything I’ve read from Andy Weir, had many moments that felt politically or relationally implausible, which I think is just not his strong point.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019)

Fiction. Categories: speculative-fiction adventure
Recommendation: Strongly recommended if you have already read and enjoyed THe Handmaid’s Tale. If you haven’t read it I would read that first, although it isn’t strictly necessary. If you didn’t enjoy it, I think you’re likely not to enjoy this.
Why I read it: I read this because I had previously enjoyed The Handmaid’s Tale and other books by Margaret Atwood and this had won a Booker award.
Note: This story is set in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, but some years later. The world is similarly evocative, and has several intriguing and entertaining characters, though not always fully likeable. It’s hard to know, but I think that if I had read this without having read The Handmaid’s Tale first, I would not have found the world as comprehensible/plausible. There’s something about the more restrictive scope of that previous book that makes the world come more alive. This story is a little less contemplative and more actioney, in a way that doesn’t entirely land for me, especialy near the end, where the ambiguity of The Handmaid’s Tale seemed, to me, a better way to tell the story. As before, the little academic framing scene at the end was hilarious to me as a parody of researchers.

The Book Your Dog Wishes You Would Read by Louise Glazebrook (2021)

Non-fiction. Categories: advice
Recommendation: I would tentatively recommend this especially for prospective dog owners.
Why I read it: I read this because I have a dog and wish I was better at dog training, also it was on sale and looked vaguely plausible and I have no idea how to choose dog training books.
Note: I personally found this book useful even though a lot of the advice is not really aimed at me. The author spends a great deal of time on decisions I have irrevocably made, like whether you should get a dog at all and how you should get one. This prioritisation makes sense, but if you took the title at face value these decisions would be pretty much out of your hands now. The book helped me better understand my relationship with my dog, for example better understanding what my dog’s barking means or how he is understanding fetch-like game play. But overall the book is a bit quick over some of the details of dog ownership, more of a manifesto than a manual.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1989)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction adventure
Recommendation: I would recommend this book to people who enjoy science fiction and storytelling as a process but don’t mind a lack of resolution.
Why I read it: This book was recommended to my by several friends.
Note: This book is often described as being a sort of science-fiction Canterbury Tales. This sort of captures something: the book happens in multiple parts, each of which is a story told by one of the characters to the others while they travel together on a kind of pilgrimage. Each of the stories told by the characters is quite different in tone and topic ranging from stories with gothic-horror taste through film-noir. I broadly enjoyed each story. But where the book felt disappointing is that the stories are set up to be part of a broader plot. That broader plot feels a bit weird, but in addition it doesn’t properly resolve and just abruptly

Power and Progress by Simon Johnson and Daron Acemoglu (2023)

Non-fiction. Categories: history technology progress
Recommendation: Recommended for people who are interested in the history of technology and the interaction between social progress and technological adaptations, but with reservation.
Why I read it: This is a topic that interests me greatly.
Note: There were parts of this book I really liked. Some really interesting detail of past technological progress, especially pre-Renaissance, which I was not familiar with. I think part of the basic message is really solid: that technological tools are adopted in the context of social forces at the time and that one musn’t take a deterministic view about what will happen because one of the things that causes what will happen is how different groups with different incentives negotiate the future. But there were parts I did not love. The authors assert a lot that the US made bad policy choices about innovation and that other countries made better choices, but they then seem to argue that the US’s bad choices infected the other countries. This seems like maybe the choices might not have mattered so much? They also assert a lot that new technologies can be deployed in was that are good for workers, rather than replacing them, but were light on detailed proposals for how one might specifically do this. Last, I think they were speaking to people who were a bit out of date on AI as many of their points were obsolete even at the time the book was no doubt sent to the publishers.

Watchers by Dean Koontz (1987)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction action
Recommendation: Recommended for people who love science fiction, action packed books, and dogs. For people who only enjoy one or two of the three this might not do it for you.
Why I read it: I skimmed down a list of someone’s top 100 science fiction novels and read the first one I hadn’t read before (without a good reason for having chosen not to read it).
Note: I’m not sure why this was ranked so highly as a sci-fi book. The most likely explanation to me is that is was historically influential at its time and became part of the sci-fi cannon. It’s not terrible. I enjoyed the relationship between the humans and the dog who is at the centre of the story. The underlying sci-fi part was probably more creative at the time it was written, but doesn’t stand out now. There are several subplots that are weirdly and aggressively violent in a sexually loaded way that didn’t really seem like they were actually part of the story and seemed just to be there for kicks. It is always interesting though to read science fiction that is both very futuristic but is embedded in a technological and social era that now feels antiquated.

The Story of China by Michael Wood (2020)

Non-fiction. Categories: history china
Recommendation: I would tend to recommend The Fall and Rise of China over this, but this covers pre-1800 China in much more detail, which some readers might prefer.
Why I read it: I wanted to read at least one more large history of China as a reference to compare The Fall and Rise of China to. This came out recently and seemed substantial.
Note: I found this book ok, but it wasn’t right for me. It covers the history of China from its earliest beginnings to the modern day. The trouble is, that’s an extremely long time. As a result, I found the twists and turns a bit hard to follow. There isn’t much contextualisation of the events with respect to other world events outside China (the history is fairly inward-looking) or the technological level of the time. As a result, each dynasty feels an awful lot like the last. My own ignorance doesn’t help this: I had few existing reference points to attach things to and struggled to remember many of the names which are not familiar to me. But as a result I didn’t feel like I remembered nearly as much as I would have liked. And on the material I was more familiar with (post 1900-ish) it seemed much too quick and to leave out so many important details that it made me wonder how much was left out of the earlier bits. As a result, I felt like this book’s scope was so huge that it didn’t really do justice to the material.

The Fall and Rise of China by Richard Baum (2010)

Non-fiction. Categories: history china
Recommendation: Recommended for people who want to learn about modern Chinese history.
Why I read it: I have a relative blind-spot on Chinese history and have found lecture series by The Great Courses to be relatively good.
Note: Compared to some other histories of China, this one focuses relatively more on the more modern period of the 19th and 20th centuries. What makes this stand out is the many personal anecdotes that the lecturer is able to give about his own experiences as a Western academic in China over many decades. He seems to have led quite an exciting life! The discussion of 21st century China doesn’t hold up to the benefit of hindsight, but (having been published in 2010) that is the risk over covering very modern history.

Gauntlgrym by R. A. Salvatore (2010)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy adventure light-reading
Recommendation: Recommended for people who want a zippy adventure story set in the Forgotten Realms.
Why I read it: I read this because it was on sale on Audible and I was feeling nostalgic, having loved Salvatore as a kid.
Note: This one was published well after I went through my R. A. Salvatore phase, so it was new to me. I didn’t like it as much. Maybe that’s just because it had less of the nostalgia factor going for me, with barely any of my favourite characters. But I think partly it also collapsed into itself over the decades. Every character has millions of super-powerful magic items. Every villain represents an even eviler cult of devil-worshippers than the last. Every plot arc has even more world-ending stakes than before. I still enjoyed it, and my expectations aren’t super high, but it wasn’t quite as good for me.

The Crystal Shard/Streams of Silver/The Halfling's Gem by R. A. Salvatore (1988)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy adventure light-reading
Recommendation: Recommended for people who want a zippy adventure story set in the Forgotten Realms.
Why I read it: I read this because it was on sale on Audible and I was feeling nostalgic, having loved these books when I was a kid.
Note: There’s nothing fancy about Salvatore’s Drizzt series. The plot is simple and fun, the bad-guys are badder than bad, the good guys have hearts of gold, and Salvatore knows how to make sure you never hit a sentence you have to read twice. Sometimes it feels dated. The plot structure is pretty episodic, there’s not a lot you need to remember for the next bit to be meaningful. It’s perfect listening for doing house chores.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy apocalypse
Recommendation: Recommended if you like books that are massive downers.
Why I read it: I read this because it has tons of awards and was recommended by a friend, who, to be fair, loves massive downers.
Note: I did not finish this book. Also, I found it beautiful, touching, heartrending. Many of the passages read almost like koans, demand rereading and contemplation. I often just sat there holding the book and thinking about an exchange between the man and the boy be gripped by feelings of love and longing and loss. Also, about two thirds of the way through, I realised this book was not taking me where I wanted to go and I stopped reading it. But for a different person, or just a different time, this book would be exceptional.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto (2023)

Fiction. Categories: mystery light-reading
Recommendation: Recommended for people who enjoy irreverent and jokey murder mysteries.
Why I read it: I read this because it was recommended by a friend and I do like a nice murder mystery now and then.
Note: I like Vera as a character tremendously. Is she a massive caricature, yes, certainly. But I can also hear her voice precisely in my head and she’s rendered in such a touching way that it just kinda works. To be honest, I found most of the other characters a bit wet and the mystery itself slightly paint-by-numbers, but Vera carries this.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (2020)

Fiction. Categories: mystery light-reading
Recommendation: This book is extremely popular but I just don’t see it.
Why I read it: I read this because a friend recommended it and the first three books in this series are absolute bestsellers in the UK and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Also Richard Osman seems nice off the telly.
Note: I didn’t get this book, but it’s hard to explain exactly what I found so frustrating about this without giving spoilers. It’s at its best when it’s being a silly book, and Osman has some nice turns of phrase. But I found some of the characters downright annoying, and all of them are wildly one-dimensional. The resolution left me exasperated.

Black and British by David Olusoga (2016)

Non-fiction. Categories: history abolitionism
Recommendation: Recommended for anyone interested in any of British history, the history of empire, 19th and 20th century global history, or Black history.
Why I read it: I read this because a friend recommended it to me and I’ve liked some of David Olusoga’s documentaries.
Note: Because the transatlantic slave trade and the flow of ideas around race and slavery were so international, the book tells a history that is much more international than its title suggests. I was fascinated by the discussion of waxing and waning fashions for abolitionism in the UK and the ways in which being ‘better than the US’ became an excuse for relative inaction on Britain’s own problems. The book also set these developments in a historical context relative to other international events (e.g., the American revolutionary war and Napoleonic wars) in a way that I had previously missed. Olusoga’s coverage of events in the late 20th century for Black British people was also a badly-needed corrective for some of the gaps in current news coverage and school-history syllabuses.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (2021)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction light-reading
Recommendation: Recommended for people who like their science fiction heavy on back-of-the-envelope math. If you liked The Martian you might like this, but it isn’t a sure thing, or vice versa.
Why I read it: I read this because I like The Martian and I thought I’d take a chance, although I had heard it wasn’t as good.
Note: Because this book revolves around an unreliable narrator with partial recall, avoiding spoilers makes giving a good sense of this book hard. It features a lot of the kind of back-of-the-envelope math and reasoning that made Andy Weir’s last book fun, but for me it felt like there was both less of this and it wasn’t as good. Partly that’s because the plot revolves less around simple mechanical engineering and more around… other things. Partly maybe The Martian was just lightning in a bottle? There are many more characters in this one, and the story is more centred around communication. On the plus side, although this book also featured some social/political dynamics that I think would never happen in a million years, I felt that less strongly than I did with The Martian.

Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik (2006)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy adventure light-reading
Recommendation: Recommended if you enjoyed Temeraire. If you didn’t, you won’t enjoy this. If you haven’t read it, you should read that first.
Why I read it: I read this because it is the sequel to Temeraire which I liked.
Note: This story continues the sweet relationship between Temeraire and Laurence. The narrative is more convoluted than the first book, involving a long sea journey and eventually a visit to China. This book is less martial than the first. Some of the secondary characters felt quite thin this time, though I’m not sure they were thinner than in the first book. I didn’t finish this book desperate to read the next, but I couldn’t tell you why.

Dawn by Octavia Butler (1987)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction speculative-fiction
Recommendation: I’m honestly not totally sure whom I’d recommend it to, but not because it’s bad, but it was quite… weird and creepy.
Why I read it: A friend recommended Octavia Butler and I picked one of her books from skimming the blurbs.
Note: This book is mostly the story of a human who has been abducted by an alien species coming to terms with her captivity, coming to understand the culture of her captors and building relationships with them. To me, it felt creepy. There is a lot of inter-species sex that has quite a rapey undertone. The protagonist’s acceptance of her role as an assistant to the aliens in acting as a go-between to the humans, backed by the aliens’ force and technology, seems dark in a way that felt ignored. A lot of the story is focused on using humans, and especially women, as unwilling vessels for children. I basically assume that all of this is on purpose and is intended as an exploration of themes around slavery, sex, and gender. But if it was, it was subtler than I’m used to. Maybe I just read too much very didactic fiction? Or maybe it is just a weird and creepy story? I don’t know.

Temeraire by Naomi Novik (2006)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy adventure light-reading
Recommendation: Recommended for people who like historical-fiction fantasy with nice likeable characters.
Why I read it: I have previously enjoyed books by Naomi Novik and wanted to read more by her.
Note: This book won me over with the simple joy of the relationship between the protagonist and his dog, er, sorry, dragon. The book begins with the feeling of an English Napoleonic naval historical fiction novel and fairly swiftly veers into an alternate reality where intelligent dragons work alongside humans in the armed forces. For me, the world-building and fantasy were totally adequate but unexceptional, but I fell completely in love with the characters who are not complex and no less delightful for that. Maybe hints of the Dragonriders of Pern to this story, but more Napoleonic war adventure.

The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes (2022)

Non-fiction. Categories: history russia
Recommendation: Recommended for people who want to learn about Russian history, and especially to understand modern Russian geopolitics given that history. I preferred this to both A History of Russia and The Rise of Communism: From Marx to Lenin.
Why I read it: A friend recommended Orlando Figes as a history writer on Russia.
Note: This book starts with a compelling pitch: that the stories nations tell themselves about their past matter to how they approach the future and that Russia’s story to itself is particularly fascinating. The book covers a broad sweep of history, from pre-Russian principalities and kingdoms developing in reaction to Eastern khanates all the way through the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Like many other histories, Russia’s difficult relationship with its Europeanness over the last couple centuries gets attention, but its relationship with the East is discussed more than the others I’ve read so far, reminding me of Frankopan’s The Silk Roads. He makes observations about Russia’s history of modernisation (generally driven from the centre by a modernising Tsar who must consolidate power in order to force through reforms, rather than driven by middle-class demands), about the relationship between the Tsar and elites (who receive their power direct from the Tsar, without a longstanding familial connection to a piece of land with an incentive to develop it), and about the recurring myths of a divine, powerful, and benevolent Tsar whose selfish and incompetent advisors let him down. The book then picks out the ways in which these patterns recur across very different political systems over the centuries, including the present one. Although this history was a bit fast about, for example, the foundations of the communist revolution, I appreciated some of the context it provided about, for example, Stalin’s wife’s suicide, which seemed important and neglected in other histories.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (167)

Non-fiction. Categories: advice philosophy
Recommendation: Recommended for people who like books about living a good life. It is probably fine to read quickly, but more useful if it is considered carefully.
Why I read it: It had been recommended several times. I also think that things which stay popular for such a long time probably have something of value in them.
Note: This book provides a startling sense of connection to lives long before us. Although in many ways we know more now than was known in 2nd century Rome, there has been surprisingly little progress in basic wisdom about how life ought to be lived. Many of its ideas feel modern and timely. (I felt similarly when reading Lao Tse’s Way of Life.) Partly, I think this is because wisdom is surprisingly hard to convey and to outsource, and we each rediscover a lot individually within or own lives, making it hard for humanity to accumulate wisdom as much as it accumulates technological knowledge. I don’t really understand the way this book is structured, it seems to weave back and forth between repeated themes. The themes themselves resonated with me. Marcus Aurelius was clearly preoccupied with death, and much of his advice is grounded in an awareness of the shortness of life and the uniqueness of the present. His thinking centres on acting wisely given the circumstances you are in and making the most of the opportunities you have, while letting go of things you cannot change. Many of these insights, which are echoed in modern mindfulness and self help, seem durable even if they are hard to cultivate. In contrast, a lot of his worldview is encoded in a sense of human nature that was probably clear-to-him but harder to understand outside his culture. He wants you to live in accordance with your nature: which he sees as being grounded in the use of reason and the service of humanity, and not in personal happiness, power, fame, or wealth. How credible this is, coming from a man who was literally emperor of the most powerful civilization in his known world, is unclear.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (2016)

Fiction. Categories: drama
Recommendation: If you like Margaret Atwood and Shakespeare, you’ll probably like this. If you like just one of the two, it’s a dicier bet.
Why I read it: I read this because I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Margaret Atwood so far and I thought I’d take a chance on it.
Note: This is really not my kind of book. It is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in which the characters stage The Tempest while talking a lot with each other about the play. Given that I hate plays-within-plays, navel-gazing stories about stories, and am pretty lukewarm about Shakespeare, this was always going to be an uphill struggle. Despite that, I loved this. Atwood often has a clever line, but this book bristled with them. Her Mr. Duke is outstandingly good as a character. I found the goblins slightly implausible characters and there were some points where the original play was so ridiculous it made me wish that Atwood had left Shakespeare a little further behind and done her own thing a bit more. But I suppose I can’t begrudge her choices given the brief and that many people do like Shakespeare even when he has people falling in love and getting married for, as far as I can tell, reasons of symmetry.

The Path to Power: the Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (1982)

Non-fiction. Categories: history political
Recommendation: This is a remarkable book, and there is lots in it which could be of interest. But it is also a huge book, requiring serious investment. I’m not sure how to tell who would like it. In particular, I could imagine loving a couple hundred pages of it and hating another couple hundred pages.
Why I read it: I read this because it was recommended on Nick Beckstead’s audiobook recommendations, and I haven’t particularly been that into biography generally and have been told this was an outstanding example of the genre with an insane amount of research going into it.
Note: This is a weird book. When I say there was an insane amount of research going into this book, I mean that borderline literally. The author appears to have spent nearly a decade on this book, and then spent more or less 40 years so far on subsequent Johnson biographies. In some ways, this is phenomenal. The detail is remarkable. Robert Caro clearly uncovered many things that nobody else possibly would have, and if, for example, you care specifically about learning about LBJ, then that might matter to you. But if you don’t, there are some very weird asides. The first few chapters are mostly a history of the settlement of the Texas Hill Country from 1850-1900. There are nearly book-length asides about the biograph of Sam Rayburn and I know more about Lyndon’s political donor Herman Brown than I do about most UK prime ministers. But there are few details that aren’t in some way relevant to understanding what is going on. This biography is eye-opening, both about LBJ personally (what a knob), his complete lack of interest in policy except as a mechanism for generating power, his strategies for seeking power (somehow very effective despite almost everyone who knew him well thinking he was a no-good snake), the widespread corruption of politics at the time, and the development of industrial-scale campaign finance. One thing I did find puzzling is that although Caro clearly wasn’t worried about being concise, and often gives examples of Lyndon aggressively and vindicitively dominating men, there is very little mention of his treatment of the women in his life (which I understand from other sources to have been appalling). I’m also not sure how much I trust Caro’s read of everything. He paints some characters, including Sam Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, and Sam Rayburn, in an almost caricaturish way. He also seems so fascinated by abusive power as a topic that I wonder about his objectivity in describing it.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (2022)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy light-reading
Recommendation: If you enjoyed the first two books of this series, and if you want more of that world and those characters, I recommend reading this one. Otherwise, I would definitely start with the first. And if you don’t feel hungry for more from that story then I wouldn’t prioritize reading this.
Why I read it: I read this because I enjoyed the first two books of the series wanted a fun and light read.
Note: This is an above average light fantasy read, but I also liked it much less than the other two in the series. The action was pacy and there were some very imaginative locations. Overall, I find the world of this series less compelling than the place of Scholomance. The text felt repetitive with El going over very much the same ideas in her head a lot both within single paragraphs and between chapters. And while a narrative choice that Novik made more-or-less removed much of the interest from one of the characters, I didn’t feel invested enough in the rest of the core cast to really make up for it (partly because El doesn’t seem that into half of them, and the others don’t get enough time). Honestly, this book feels a bit like it was written with a Netflix adaptation in mind, and would probably have made a better screenplay.

Ryria Revelations (series) by Michael Sullivan (2011)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy light-reading
Recommendation: Not really recommended. If you want light and un-serious young adult fantasy you can do a lot better, e.g., Lies of Locke Lamora or pretty much anything by Naomi Novik.
Why I read it: I was tired of reading books that were dark and gritty. I’d hit the same chapter in The Making of the Atomic Bomb several times and wanted a break. I wanted a fantasy novel that was fun. I found this post on Reddit where someone asked for exactly that, and the top-upvoted comment was this series. So I figured I’d give it a go.
Note: I did actually read the entire series of six books, and it didn’t take that long. It was often pretty fun, but never very fun. It felt a little bit like if someone wrote up their notes from a D&D campaign as a story and polished it a bit. But only a bit. The writing is not great. Often, characters will be described as feeling one way and then in the very next paragraph act the literal opposite way. Although the author is clearly trying to have strong female characters, it feels very male-gazey. Large parts of one of the books build heavily on uncomfortably racist tropes. I guess the books are fun in the sense of feeling un-serious, which maybe is what I needed in that moment. But I wouldn’t recommend, in general.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)

Fiction. Categories: speculative-fiction political
Recommendation: Strongly recommended for people who enjoy speculative fiction that explores dark aspects of our own society through heightened distortions of it. Pretty dark and unpleasant though.
Why I read it: I read this because I’ve been really impressed by everything I’ve read by Margaret Atwood and this is supposed to be one of her most influential books.
Note: I found everything I’ve previously read by Margaret Atwood deeply engaging, but this book was phenomenal. This felt like so much more than a story; it succeeds in transporting you into mental states that you (or at least I) couldn’t normally reach but which are deeply mentally expanding. And you end up feeling like you so strongly know so many characters that only get the barest mention. This book is largely about gender, childbearing, power, social oppression, and sex. These issues are fundamental enough that probably most people would find something interesting in there. The one caveat I would give is that parts of the story can be pretty upsetting, and so it might be a painful experience for some people.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2018)

Fiction. Categories: historical-fiction
Recommendation: Recommended for people who like historical fiction with a small cast of characters focused on relationships but fairly slow-moving and restrained.
Why I read it: I read this because it was recommended by a friend and because I was impressed by the author on EconTalk.
Note: I mostly liked this book, despite the fact that I really disliked the beginning. I found the main character pretty obnoxious and self-regarding, and I didn’t really understand what his deal was for quite some time. A lot of this is that I basically think hereditary nobility is a bad thing and he represented that very strongly. But gradually I came to at least tolerate him and quite like some of the other characters. One real strength of this book is the characterization of his relationship to the two daughter-figures in his life, which I found very touching.

A History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachev by Mark Steinberg (2013)

Non-fiction. Categories: history audio-only russia
Recommendation: Recommended for people who want to listen to a lecture course about the history of Russia.
Why I read it: I listened to this because I had liked the course on the rise of communism but wanted to understand its role in Russia specifically within a longer historical context.
Note: I think this covers the content well, and I think I was right to want to start a little earlier and end a little later than the previous course had done. In many ways, for me, the period maybe 1870 to 1980 is the most interesting period of Russian history, but going a little past those periods was nice. If you’re only going to listen to one of the two, I’d probably prefer this one (although it is considerably longer).

Diaspora by Greg Egan (1997)

Fiction. Categories: speculative-fiction science-fiction
Recommendation: Recommended for people who like sprawling and mind-bending science fiction exploring themes around consciousness and personal identity. Also, if you like your science-fiction to feature long and detailed speculation of alternative science.
Why I read it: I read this because I enjoyed Permutation City by Greg Egan.
Note: This novel is a sequence of connected short stories whose characters have a lot in common. How much they have in common is one of the interesting questions the book raises. Greg Egan clearly has a fantastic and very weird brain, and if you enjoy his other work you’re likely to enjoy this. I’ve never seen another author as confidently launch into inventing alternative theories of physics and exploring the consequences of those theories in so much detail. Similarly, his conceptual grasp of the ways in which conscious experience doesn’t depend on specific substrates is second to none.

Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by Bradford DeLong (2022)

Non-fiction. Categories: history history-economic history-technology history-social
Recommendation: Recommended for people who want a popular economic history of the long twentieth century. Some elements were under-evidenced and I was left with the sneaking suspicion that lots was ‘too neat’.
Why I read it: I read this because I’m fascinated by economic history and the post-industrial revolution technological economy.
Note: This book was fun. There are many historical tidbits that made me think “Huh, I’ve always thought that X was just crazy, or profoundly destructive, but now I see why it made sense in the context.” Unfortunately, I suspect that some of these are oversimplifications and the reality makes less sense. The book often feels too tidy. At the same time there was quite a lot of repetition of key themes (for example, that the long twentieth century was built on the industrial research lab, the modern corporation, and globalisation). In many cases, such as that one, I didn’t really feel like this was properly evidence. I guess it makes sense that those three things were important. But key? How key? What is the long-list, and why didn’t they make the cut? There was some discussion, but this seems like a pretty big issue for me. And although there was a lot of discussion of the relative pros and cons of different systems for allocating scarce resources I felt like somebody with a different worldview might have described the same events very differently (especially in the second half of the twentieth century). Overall, though, this was one of the more thought-provoking historical books I’ve read recently. Its description of free markets as being an efficient way to satisfy the preference of owners of valuable capital is one that has stuck with me and changed how I think about a number of things.

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (2021)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy horror
Recommendation: I strongly recommend this to people who like creepy and unsettling speculative fiction short stories.
Why I read it: I read this because I saw it on a friend’s bookshelf and had previously enjoyed Lena by qntm.
Note: The premise is great. Memes are concepts that spread themselves. Antimemes are concepts that block themselves from being spread. And sometimes some things might be able to use antimemes to protect themselves. I can’t really say anything about the book that wouldn’t make it worse, because the author reveals information so masterfully. Just read it, it’s not even that long. I even found this stimulating for some of my research, but this is unlikely to be true for most people. A friend pointed out that the characters in this book are a bit thin, and that’s true, but it didn’t bother me.

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood (2013)

Fiction. Categories: speculative-fiction apocalypse
Recommendation: I really liked this, my favourite in the MaddAddam trilogy. Unfortunately I don’t think you can really enjoy this properly without having read the other two first. If you like grim and dystopian speculative fiction this series may well be worth the investment.
Why I read it: I read this because I previously read and enjoyed Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood in the same series.
Note: This book offers vignettes that serve as both prequel and sequel to the others in the series. I loved it. The prequels filled in some of the gaps and confusions I had about the earlier books and made them seem much more plausible to me. The continuation of the story was gripping and I ended up liking Toby as a character and person.

What We Owe the Future by Will MacAskill (2022)

Non-fiction. Categories: longtermism philosophy
Recommendation: Recommended if you have an interest in longtermism or effective altruism, though for a focus on existential risk I would recommend The Precipice by Toby Ord.
Why I read it: I read this because I like Will’s writing and find the topic interesting and important.
Note: Longtermism is a pretty important idea and this is a reasonable exposition of the main thoughts behind it. It’s easy to read. I personally tend to be much more worried about existential risks than stagnation, but this helped me understand the mindset of some people who seem to me to be negligent about x-risks because they worry much more than I do about stagnation (I don’t think that’s Will’s position, the book just helped me understand the view). I really like the attempts to commission large and substantial pieces of research to support the arguments. There are some things I didn’t find very persuasive, in particular although I basically agree with longtermism as an idea I didn’t find the thought experiments or arguments in this book that motivating for that. It is also a slightly awkward time for a book about longtermism insofar as I think there’s a growing consensus among those working on the area that dramatically greater action on existential risks is plausibly motivated just by short term considerations.

The Dark Forest by Cixin Li (2008)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction apocalypse
Recommendation: Not recommended by me. Many people like this series. I genuinely do not understand why.
Why I read it: I read this because I had borderline enjoyed The Three Body Problem (previous book in the series) and a friend had recommended I finish the series.
Note: I didn’t like this book and don’t intend to finish the series. I find the basic setting somewhat interesting (humanity attempting to deal with a possibly existential threat). But I found a lot of the actions weirdly implausible. It seemed like people kept doing obviously stupid shit, having everyone around them act like it seemed normal, and then finding out shortly that they had done stupid shit. I think the author also just has very different beliefs from me about how people and institutions react to stress, and I update slightly from reading this that I may be wrong about these things for all cultures and slightly more that I might not understand Chinese institutions well at all (something I somewhat believe anyhow). In addition, the ‘big twist’ seemed really obviously telegraphed from more or less the beginning. Maybe there are some translation issues? Lastly, I found the romantic subplot incredibly unpersuasive and very creepy.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction action
Recommendation: Recommended if you like sci-fi thrillers, especially with a grungy early-internet vibe.
Why I read it: I read this because I have enjoyed some books by Neal Stephenson and I heard that this had introduced the concept of meta-verse, so it seemed conceptually influential in a way that might be interesting.
Note: Overall, I thought this was a well-paced action sci-fi novel with some interesting concepts about alternative realities and memetic propagation. Much like similarly influential books (e.g., Neuromancer) some of the tropes which were introduced now feel a little under-developed or played out, because they have been refined and redeveloped over many iterations since then. But, for what it is, this was a fun read. Parts of the book did make me uncomfortable, including because there are some strongly racist or sexist interactions between characters.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson (2011)

Fiction. Categories: action thriller
Recommendation: I think there are better books by this author, and better authors for this genre.
Why I read it: I read this because I previously enjoyed Anathem by Neal Stephenson and because it was recommended by Noah Smith.
Note: This is a long book. It very quickly accelerates into an action-packed thriller. I assumed that there would be some variation in the pacing at some point, maybe things would dip down and step back a bit before ramping up again. But no, it was basically a non-stop high-octane action sequence for a very long read. Compared to other writing by this author, there wasn’t much of conceptual interest. For a while I was half expecting the ridiculousness of the action and the surprising coincidences that continually escalated things to be part of some sophisticated meta-plot about constructed realities, but in the end I thought this was probably just a clunky and overly long action thriller. It was described as science-fiction, but I think it basically isn’t.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (2009)

Fiction. Categories: speculative-fiction apocalypse
Recommendation: A good book for people who enjoy a dystopian semi-thriller. I think this one probably is slightly better than Oryx and Crake below, but similar content warning applies.
Why I read it: I read this because I liked Oryx and Crake.
Note: Like Oryx and Crake, this book was darkly captivating and mostly disgusting. In contrast, however, I found myself liking several of the characters and rooting for them, which made it slightly more fun, if that can possibly be the right word for this book.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811)

Fiction. Categories: romance
Recommendation: I guess lots of people like Jane Austen’s books. You probably already know if you like this sort of thing, and it’s a decent version of it.
Why I read it: I read this because lots of people I know think Jane Austen is very good, and I’d previously only read Pride and Prejudice, which I thought was only ok, so I wanted to give this a try.
Note: I thought this book was ok. From a historical perspective, some parts were fascinating. For example, the intense earnestness with which the women are contemplating marriage reminds me a lot of start-up founders contemplating their Series A, and I think the reason is basically that this is exactly what marriage was. There’s also this dance of both feeling that marrying for wealth is slightly vulgar but also obviously the main thing. I also found it intriguing that in a book that talks a lot about the good and bad qualities of people, being a diligent and ambitious person who tries hard never comes up as a virtue. On the negative side, it seemed that many characters existed mainly as a caricature of some bad personality type (e.g., gossips too much, too unserious, too self-absorbed) while the main character is just incredibly judgmental in a way that seemed unexamined. Lastly, I was annoyed by who got together at the end.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003)

Fiction. Categories: speculative-fiction apocalypse
Recommendation: Recommended for people who enjoy a dystopian semi-thriller. Not suited for some moods though: it has very dark moments, brutality, callous disregard for gigadeath, sexual violence.
Why I read it: I read this because it was the prequel to a book recommended by Noah Smith’s list of sci-fi and I don’t like skipping to the middle.
Note: I found this book gripping and fascinating, but also repulsive and grotesque. I’m not sure if there is a single really likeable character in the entire thing. Parts of the world are pretty charicaturish extreme capitalism, which I didn’t find that plausible. This was only a problem because Noah Smith recommended it in the context of economically-interesting novels. But it definitely is a page-turner. Some readers might find the jumpy narrative structure a bit off-putting.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin (1974)

Fiction. Categories: speculative-fiction societal-exploration political
Recommendation: Recommended for people who like stories that explore alternative social models and don’t mind a slightly jumpy narrative.
Why I read it: I read this because it was recommended by Noah Smith’s list of sci-fi with good economics, and because I have previously enjoyed other books by Ursula K. LeGuin especially The Left Hand of Darkness.
Note: I really liked this book. It felt like it gave a somewhat plausible account of a radically different way of organizing, and did a good job of motivating the ways in which the concepts of people living under different systems of government clash with each other. I enjoyed the story. The book also did a good job of making sure that each of the systems it considered is presented with both up- and down-sides explored. None of them felt perfectly good nor perfectly bad.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (2019)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy adventure
Recommendation: I thought this book was ok, and clearly some people love it, but I’m not sure what characteristics would make me recommend this book to someone.
Why I read it: I read this because it was recommended by some friends.
Note: Parts of this book were beautifully written, and I enjoyed some of the story-telling asides, but overall I didn’t enjoy this very much. I think one aspect is that I find creative works that are about other creative works or the creative process a bit navel-gazing, and this is very much a story about storytelling. I found some of the plot quite confusing in the sense that the book was ‘making up the rules’ of the fantasy as it went along. I also found the characterization of the main characters a bit thin, and I wasn’t really able to say why, but which was especially striking because the characters in the vignettes were quite intense.

Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World by Leah Broad (2023)

Non-fiction. Categories: history biography history-social
Recommendation: I am supremely biased because this was written by my wife. Nevertheless, this is a great book. I’d recommend it to people who are interested in how successive generations of women responded to and worked within their changing environments to achieve their goals. Also people who like music/cultural history.
Why I read it: I read this book because my wife wrote it!
Note: Quartet follows the lives of four women composers. It begins with Ethel Smyth, born in the 1850s, and ends very nearly in the modern day. One thing that’s striking about studying these women’s lives in detail is that extent to which it reveals that feminism and rights for women is not a constantly upwards trajectory, but that hard-won accomplishments are both undone or recontextualised in new eras. Ethel unambiguously had to fight to get any recognition at all for her work, but as she handed over to the next generation including both Rebecca Clarke and Dorothy Howell (also central to this book) they had access to many things Ethel had not had. But over the course of their lives, it seems like quite a lot of the progress in getting women’s compositions taken seriously was undone, despite the general impression that, for example, the world wars were constructive for women’s rights. So much so that by the 50s and 60s in many ways a lot of what had been possible in the 20s was gone. This is maybe part of the reason why although the composers this book follows were among Britain’s most famous composers in their lifetimes, almost nobody has heard their work today. This book does a great job of introducing you to them, their music, and the world in which they were working. Also, I genuinely cried at the end, which is not a typical reaction I have to non-fiction.

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel (2020)

Non-fiction. Categories: history history-technology history-economic progress
Recommendation: Strongly recommend if you enjoy histories of technology/civilization/economies. Or really just histories.
Why I read it: I read this because I enjoyed her interview on EconTalk.
Note: I was blown away by this book and haven’t stopped harassing my near and dear with facts I learned from this book for the entire time I’ve been reading it. I think a huge realization for me was just how important textiles have been historically (which is especially fascinating given how little of my current attention goes to securing textiles and their products for my own needs). This offers a mind-expanding perspective on economic and technological change and the ways in which resources/techniques/opportunities shape social structures over millennia. You will not look at clothes the same way ever again.

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik (2021)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy light-reading
Recommendation: Strongly recommend if you enjoy light young-adult fantasy.
Why I read it: I read this because I liked A Deadly Education and other books by Naomi Novik.
Note: If anything, I think this was better than the previous book. Like the other, it’s fun, conversational, and easy to get hooked. But it deals with the world and its characters’ relationships to it in a more interesting way, and because we already know the characters a bit the book is able to cover more ground with them. My fear that this was off-brand Harry Potter is firmly forgotten. I will read the next one when it comes out.

The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan (2018)

Non-fiction. Categories: history
Recommendation: Not recommended.
Why I read it: I read this book because I enjoyed The Silk Roads and felt quite ignorant of Central Asian politics.
Note: I thought this book was ok, but basically dated itself too quickly because of its focus on the very recent history (mostly 2005-2015). The author is good at capturing sweeping history over millennia, but with things that are just unfolding I think it’s basically too hard to figure out what’s important and a lot of the observations have already shifted either into commonplaces or into views that no longer hold up. When it was written, it probably represented a pretty good impression, but it didn’t keep well. I did learn something about geopolitics in the region though I’m not sure how much I remember.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan (2015)

Non-fiction. Categories: history
Recommendation: Recommended if you like sweeping global history books. It is both very long and much too short to do justice to everything it covers, so you need to be ok with both of those things. I’m not in a position to evaluate its accuracy or completeness.
Why I read it: I found this a very interesting and wide-ranging history.
Note: The breadth of the scope of this book is both a strength and weakness - you do start to sense some of the connections between issues at a century-scale that wouldn’t appear in a more narrow book. At the same time, discussion of certain periods feels like it probably leaves out important dynamics that are happening slightly out-of-scope (for example, there wasn’t a lot of discussion of the Reformation and Enlightenment). I found the history of post-war Middle Eastern politics especially eye-opening, as well as the history of the Middle East during the European dark and middle ages. I liked the centring on the Silk-roads regions, though at points it felt a little forced. For example, during the chapters on European colonialism of the Americas and India, the Silk Roads somewhat fell out of the picture of this book (while Africa and South America were surprisingly un-mentioned for large parts of the book). This was also true of most of the discussion of the second world war (which, in general, seemed more British-local than, for example, the more dispassionate discussion of the first world war).

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple (2019)

Non-fiction. Categories: history history-empire
Recommendation: Recommended if you are interested in specifically the military history of the East India Company.
Why I read it: I read this because he’s a popular historian I’ve heard of and I was interested in the EIC.
Note: I mostly liked this, and learned a lot about what made it possible for EIC to conquer India, as well as better understanding how this coincided with events in the US/UK/France in the period 1750-1800. But this is basically a history of the conquest, and not really an organizational or economic history. I actually wanted to know about how the EIC was run and structured, and how it was able to outcompete local organizational structures economically, and how the domestic UK politics was involved. I also wanted to have some sense of what living under EIC-controlled land was like for ordinary people, and how this contrasted with other regions. None of this was covered in much detail.

1632 by Eric Flint (2000)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy alternate-history history-technology
Recommendation: Not recommended.
Why I read it: I read this because it was recommended as a book exploring how to use modern technological ideas without an established industrial base to jump-start modernity.
Note: I only read about half of this book. The small amount on the theme I was really interested in was out-weighed by the irritation I felt at the clunky writing and dated attitudes and views. Large parts of the exploration of the alternate history part seemed implausible and sloppy, especially the interaction of concepts/ideologies of characters from different time-points. It seemed like the author didn’t try that hard to really understand how much 17th century people would feel or think about future people and their cultural imports.

Science in the Twentieth Century: A Social-Intellectual Survey by Steven Goldman (2004)

Non-fiction. Categories: history history-science audio-only
Recommendation: Recommended, if you are interested in the history of science, but think of it more as “Science 1900-1950”.
Why I read it: I listened to this because it was recommended by Nick Beckstead in his audiobook list.
Note: A high level survey structured like a lecture course covering the big advances in 20th century science. It focuses quite a lot on physics, which makes sense given the way the 20th century worked, but can be a bit quick on some of the parts of 20th century science that ‘turned out’ to be really important in the start of the 21st century. I think the main issue is that it’s mostly a history of science 1900-1950, and it was basically made too soon after the end of the 20th for it to incorporate the last few decades of work. That’s pretty forgivable, but it means there might now be a better source (not sure, haven’t seen it). Some interesting discussion also of the organizational structure and development of scientific institutions and how that interacts with the practice of science.

Accelerando by Charles Stross (2005)

Fiction. Categories: science-fiction singularity
Recommendation: Tentatively recommend to people who like exploratory science fiction and are interested in visions of accelerating technological progress, especially for the first three or so stories.
Why I read it: I read this because it was recommended by Noah Smith in his sci-fi for economists post.
Note: Series of stories following a family through a few generations of technological acceleration near the singularity. In the near-term bits it gave me the strong sense of disorienting future-shock that I think it was going for. In the later bits (post-singularity) it felt increasingly implausible to me and in some ways felt less future-shocky because the remaining plot disengaged from the singularity enough that in some ways things went back more towards the present than they had been.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy mystery
Recommendation: Strongly recommend for people who enjoy some mystery in their fantasy and don’t mind beginning a book very confused and gradually coming to understand what is happening.
Why I read it: I read this because it was recommended by a friend and I have previously enjoyed Strange & Norrell and The Ladies of Grace Adieu by the same author. This book wasn’t remotely like those, and in retrospect I’m not sure that liking them is a reason to read this, but I enjoyed it a lot anyhow.
Note: This book is tentatively a fantasy book, but mostly the fantasy serves to establish one premise and then the book runs with that. The flawed narrator gradually reveals his world and you come to understand what’s going on. I enjoyed this a lot.

The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef (2021)

Non-fiction. Categories: rationality advice
Recommendation: Strongly recommend if you have an interest in knowing or doing things. More seriously, I think this is good for people who like to be reflective about how they think and act.
Why I read it: I read this book because I felt obligated to read such a widely discussed book about a topic that matters a lot to me.
Note: I avoided reading this book for a while because I assumed that my exposure to the rationalist community would mean there wasn’t much new for me. I ended up deciding it was worth finding out if I was wrong about that, and I really was. The book beautifully assembles a decade or so of thought about pragmatic rationalism. I especially appreciated the way it challenged some of my assumptions about the instrumental value of self-delusion. Also, Julia Galef is an excellent writer and doesn’t come across as incredibly arrogant, which can be tricky when you’re writing a book about how to think better.

The Next 50 Things that Made the Modern Economy by Tim Harford (2020)

Non-fiction. Categories: history progress history-technology
Recommendation: You might enjoy this if you enjoyed his previous 50 things, but it felt like we were getting down the list of things a bit. If you haven’t read 50 Things that Made the Modern Economy and you like progress studies or industrial/economic history, I’d read that instead.
Why I read it: I read this because I liked his previous 50 things, and enjoy a lot of his work.
Note: Like the previous, a book based on the podcast (which is maybe a better format for this) giving little stories about a range of inventions/technologies which have shaped the world. This one felt less tied to the ‘modern economy’ idea (e.g., “bricks”) and a number of the chapters felt like they didn’t really talk about the thing they claimed to be about (e.g., “Cassava”). Most chapters are basically summaries of a book or two about the topic (which isn’t a problem), but in the handful of cases where I knew quite a lot about the topic I felt like they left out some important aspects. Still, a fun read that covers a lot of ground and has good storytelling, like all of Tim Harford’s work.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (2020)

Fiction. Categories: fantasy light-reading
Recommendation: Recommended if you like ‘young-adulty’ fantasy fiction.
Why I read it: I read this because I previously enjoyed Spinning Silver and Rooted by the same author.
Note: This book is basically just fun and a nice light read. I was initially off-put by the chatty first-person writing style and the very young-adulty teen romance vibes, but I quickly became interested in the creativity of the story and world. When I saw the general ‘school for magicians’ packaging I was expecting an off-brand Harry Potter, but this is definitely not that. I plan to read the sequel.

Letters to a Young Scientist by E. O. Wilson (2013)

Non-fiction. Categories: advice research
Recommendation: Not recommended, there are better books on this theme (such as Medawar’s Advice to a Young Scientist).
Why I read it: I read this because I am generally interested in reflections by scientists about how to do science, and this was widely recommended.
Note: There are lots of good ways to do science, but they have very different cultures. Wilson is basically a systematizer/collector, which is a perfect fit for entomology in the second half of the 20th century (his career). I’m much less interested in this sort of science. Beyond that, it felt like it was mostly anecdotes about his own life, rather than very useful/reliable/generalizable observations.

I was inspired to write these by Nick Beckstead’s outstanding audiobook recommendations. I’ve also liked recommendations from Matt Clifford and Noah Smith.