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My kid Isabel loved this book as a teenager, although I’m not sure they ever really told me. We did watch the film together at the time, on Isabel’s recommendation. But it didn’t resonate with me much. (I think this has as much to do with my hangup on Emma Watson’s acting in general as anything else, but I digress…) Recently we had dinner together, and they told me how much this book meant to them at the time. I honestly felt a little sorry that I hadn’t picked up on this, so we could have shared that experience together. I’m not sure if I was being a dolt, or if Isabel was keeping this one close to their heart.

At any rate they recently asked me if I would read it and I of course said yes.

I can see why this book resonated. It is very good. I …

I talked to my Aunt about The Road once several years ago. She said she loves McCarthy, but she didn’t like this book. I remember her saying she couldn’t enjoy a book that is “so hopeless”. I understand where she’s coming from. The world portrayed here is unimaginably bleak, peopled with unimaginable cruelty. But to me this book is the opposite of hopeless. Into that bleak and cruel world, he gives us a man and a boy against all odds.

We’re going to be okay, arent we Papa?
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That’s right.
Because we’re carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire.

But— there is no maudlin here. As in everything McCarthy writes, he seems to be grappling with the incomprehensible. In this case, his inability to square the beauty of humanity with the ugliness of humans. This …

I listened to this in audio and loved it so much I had to immediately read it in print as well. It’s a wonderful book. You might imagine a book about geometry would be boring. (I would never imagine that, but I’m led to believe I’m an outlier here…) But Berlinski is such a masterful writer, that his words are as pleasurable to read as they are interesting. I suspect only a small percentage of the world is particularly interested in how Euclid fits in to the history of mathematics. And a smaller percentage still has the mathematical expertise to write so deeply about it. But I would not have guessed anyone on earth who ticked both those boxes would also write with such style. Take, for instance:

“What is, is,” Parmenides says, and as for what is not, “it is not.”

It is difficult to imagine an objection …

Alan Turing was a remarkable and accomplished man who was cruelly used by society, and I appreciated learning more details about his life. That said, for my tastes this biogrophy is a little over-long and dry. When it finally did open up in the last chapter and began to have an opinion, I found it unconvincing.

This is more than a Biography (although it is a good one of those). It is an engrossing investigation into the state of and process of modern science in what was arguably its earliest days. This quote from John Maynard Keynes near the end of the book struck me:

Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.

Gleick is a master of this kind of writing. Isaac Newton is unsurprisingly excellent.

This autobiography is co-authored by Gina Smith, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m sure Smith did major work to make this into a cohesive story. But she also left Wozniak’s distinctive voice entirely intact. Every page reads like Wozniak talks, and if you’ve ever heard him interviewed you know what this means: childlike wonder and a total lack of pretension, shot through with delightful dorkiness. It makes iWoz a breeze and a joy to read.

So much better than I expected. Fancy Bear Goes Phishing certainly is an interesting breakdown of some big and important hacks, and a clearly written primer on “cyber” security. But it is also by far the most level-headed, convincingly argued, thoughtful take on digital security policy I’ve ever seen.

I’m not a security expert. But I regularly take the advice of people who are, and I’ve been building software systems on the open internet for almost 30 years, so I have a pretty solid grounding in the fundamentals here. In Fancy Bear, Shapiro reshaped my thinking on policy topics. And he did it through five stories of hacking, by weaving much more fundamental ideas into the narrative so convincingly that the conclusions feel inevitable. An extraordinary read.

(Aside: I wish I had read this one in print. Alas, the audiobook performance has more little inflection errors than I can …

This is a beautifully imagined, wholly original love letter to Lagos, Nigeria in the form of a science fiction alien invasion story. But not the kind of alien invasion you’re probably imagining. Lagoon asks more questions that it answer (in a good way!) and it is shot through with pride and hope for Okorafor’s Nigerian home-away-from-home.

What is that sweet taste I feel with my feet? It is patriotism, loyalty. Not to the country of Nigeria but to the city of Lagos. Finally. Maybe it will flow and spread like a flood of clean water. What a story that would be.

I think what I liked best is the heavy dose of Nigerian culture coursing through the book. Not only do we get glimpses of places, foods, names, and myths, but Okorafor sets loads of dialog in the Naijá language, also known as Nigerian Pidgin. This can be confusing for …

I have an affinity for stories like this. Before there was some huge multi-billion dollar industry operated out of boardrooms with massive glitzy ad campaigns and fortune 500 branding deals, there were a few wild, passionate, brilliant people in a dingy room somewhere doing the seemingly impossible. I’m a big fan, for instance, of folklore.org, a website that tells the stories behind the creation of the Macintosh computer.

Masters of Doom is folklore.org for the PC gaming universe. I had a vague sense of the broad strokes here, but as someone who was never a gamer (and was a Mac user during the time this all unfolded) I didn’t know any of the details. Of course I know John Carmack. Even back in the early 2000s I read his .plan file like almost everybody else. And I’ve always had respect for his brilliance and deep hacker ethic. So it …

I’ve of course read this before. Like most people I read it in school. And then at least twice again since then. Most recently I listened to the audiobook. It was read beautifully by Selma Blair.

I don’t think I need to explain why this book is worth reading. Every human being should read it more than once. Anne has such a clear, authentic voice, and her story is devastatingly sad in that it is so full of hope and promise cut short by something so crass as political hatred.

When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all my thoughts, …

I feel like this line captures the vibe of this whole book:

I barely knew how to receive the sweetness of it.

This is a plainly written, funny, self-aware, and relatable book that looks askance at every good thing in a world that seems increasingly overrun by Very Bad Things.

This book hit my sweet spot. It taught me many things I did not know, deepened my understanding of many things I sort-of-vaguely-knew, and refuted some things I thought I knew to be true. I think every teacher, parent, or soon-to-be-parent would find important and actionable information here.

This book looked right down my alley and I really enjoyed it. There’s a lot of speculation here (and lots I’m not educated enough on the subject to judge). But the idea of an Icelandic woman as carver of such an iconic piece of art is really exciting.

I think what I liked best about this book is that it was my first introduction to Icelandic history and literature. It strikes me that Iceland seems to be in this magical place in history: not so new like colonial American history that all the facts are laid bare, but not so old that the origins are entirely unknowable. I really love the teasing apart of history and legend. It’s almost like these legends are thiiiiis close to verifiable. I’ll definitely be reading some Icelandic Sagas soon.

I’ve been a fan of Maggie Smith’s poetry—like so many people—since I first discovered her when her poem Good Bones went “viral”. I love the straight forward imagery of her poetry and I especially love that she writes so beautifully about motherhood.

I also have a very special memory of taking my poet-child Isabel to Maggie’s reading at Arizona State University several years ago. Isabel saw in her an inspiring and positive role model. I only wish all my kids role models could be this pure.

So I was not surprised that I loved this book. Fair warning, it is sad. But also redemptive and self-actualizing. “My work was not the problem. My work was the solution. I kept us here with words.”. And it speaks eloquently and honestly about the sacrifices that are worth it:

I’ve loved them without having to try at all, because I’m their mother, and …

When I read this excerpt in The Atlantic I knew I had to read this book. It was wonderful. Part science, part philosophy, part love-letter to humanity. As an added bonus Green discusses several science fiction books I’ve never read and that went straight on my list. But what I liked best was that the author clearly loves this stuff, and it shows on every page.

The stars cannot be counted, but each one can be named.