It’s been half a decade since I updated my personal reading list. Seems like as good a time as any to create another little time capsule.
I want to read
I’m trying to keep this list shorter. Hopefully I’ll revisit this document with a new version in 2026.
- House of Leaves, Danielewski
- The Buddha before Buddhism, Fronsdal
- The Body Keeps the Score, van der Kolk
- Gideon the Ninth, Muir
- How to Invent Everything, North
Also, Goodreads. It’s kind of a mess, though.
I am reading
- Nexus, Harari
I have read
In no particular order. I’m missing a bunch, but these are recent books that were either good enough, bad enough, or frustrating enough to remember.
- The Founder’s Dilemmas, Wasserman: 1 star. This could have been an A4.
- A Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Alexander: Stop applying these to software and just read them in their own right. They are so good. (Re-read.)
- Exhalation, Chiang: Excellent.
- Reinventing Organizations, Laloux: If he ever does a new edition where he drops Sounds True, Inc. from the list of case studies, this book is probably worthy of 5 stars. I love the thesis, and as someone who also loves Capital-C Co-operatives, I also love that he challenges my prior beliefs, since there isn’t a single co-op in the book.
- Poor Economics, Banerjee: Lord love a duck, what a frustrating book. There are lots of interesting nuggets in here. (Did you know a human being can get all required nutrients from just eggs and bananas?) But there’s also a lot of flawed logic.
- Journey of Insight Meditation: A Personal Experience of the Buddha’s Way, Lerner: This is a pretty darn good first-hand account of someone’s earnest attempt to learn meditation. Probably the only book of its kind but it won’t be for everyone.
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon: EXCELLENT. I find I rarely enjoy fiction these days, but this was a delight in every single sentence.
- Prophet Song, Lynch: 2 stars, do not recommend
- Lesons in Chemistry, Garmus: 1 star. Rape your main character on page 15, get zero respect from me. Designed to be a TV show. Surprise! It’s on Apple TV.
- Butter Honey Pig Bread, Ekwuyasi: Entire chunks of the storyline didn’t line up. The writing is amateur. I didn’t enjoy this.
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Zevin: 4 stars, pokes my every nostalgia button. Also excellent writing. A great read after Hackers.
- Hackers, Levy: Every developer should read this.
- The Employees, Ravn: ??? stars, I didn’t know this was an abstract art piece when I read it. Wups.
- S. N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight, Stuart: 1 star, the author knows some things. The author is a collosal pain in the ass who assumes he knows much more than he actually knows, both about Goenka and about Indian culture in general. White people who haven’t lived in India probably just shouldn’t write these kinds of books? I dunno. Or just keep your thinly-veiled criticism on your blog.
- The Birth of Insight, Braun: Ledi Sayadaw was a remarkable and influential figure, no doubt, but Braun can be a little fawning at times. Still, he at least cites all his sources, unlike Stuart (above) whose citations mostly amount to “a guy at my yoga studio said he heard that….”
- Greenwood, Christie: 3 or 4 stars… a fun multi-generational bite-sized epic. Do not believe the reviews that say this book is about climate change; it’s not.
- Freedom from the Known, Krishnamurti: 4 stars, always a blessing.
- The Three-Body Problem, Liu/Cixin: 5 stars.
- The Paper Menagerie, Liu: 1 star. I do not enjoy Liu’s writing, just his translation.
- Clear and Simple As the Truth, Turner/Thomas: 4 stars, this is some arrogant hand-waving but these fellows are incredibly talented hand-wavers. Gets very repetitive about 60% of the way through.
- Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, Eghbal: 0 stars. I fear if Eghbal ever reads my review, it will make her sad. I don’t want to do that. But no book has ever made me quite so angry as this one. It is very poorly researched and very badly written.
- On Writing Well, Zinsser: Meh.
- Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book, Ingram: 0 stars, I was forced to re-read this for research purposes
- Conversations Regarding the Fatalistic Outlook of the Common Man, Manickavel: 4 stars, you should read Kuzhali if you can find her books.
- Ada, or Ardor, Nabokov: 4 stars, extremely pretentious but maybe Nabokov’s writing deserves it. Revisited, not re-read.