Books Of 2018

Published on December 27, 2018

Categories: books , thoughts

1 year, 75 books, innumerable ideas

There’s one aspect of reading to make clear up front: I don’t think reading is an inherently better way to spend one’s time than any other activity. People who brag about how many books they read or say “I never watch tv” as if it makes them superior to people who do frustrate me because there is no reason to judge other people for how they choose to live their life.

Reading books is just another way to pass the time and you can waste time reading (see the books at the bottom of this rankings) just as you can watching television. For me, reading is how I spend my commute, get through exercise (listening to audiobooks), and the time right before I fall asleep, but, I don’t think this makes me better than people who watch movies or go out with friends instead. As a good rule, don’t judge people on how they spend their free time as long as they aren’t harming others.

I say this up front because I don’t want this article to sound like “here’s all the books I read which makes me really smart.” I try to write a few sentences about the books I read to process them, fitting them into my existing worldview, or updating my positions as needed (when the facts change, I change my opinions). While these are originally for myself, I’ve cleaned up my notes (you can access the raw version here) and made them public for anyone curious. This is more personal than my usual data science writing, but, comments, criticisms, and discussion is still encouraged here or on Twitter.

Grand Conclusions

The one grand sweeping generalization from the books I read in 2018 is this: the world has never been a better place to live and it continues to get better despite what people believe. This was echoed through books such as Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, and Factfulness by Hans Rosling. While may at first appear to be an overly optimistic view, it’s not naive, but, in fact, the inevitable conclusion once one escapes the negative media cycle and starts reading about the objective data.

The world really is improving, it’s only our perception of it that is getting darker. This is is due to a fear-based media that covers fewer and fewer bad events with louder pleas for attention while neglecting the incredible progress of humanity.

Another idea that resonated with me is: fulfillment is not derived from external sources — money, clothes, cars, useless items, praise from others — but internally, from pride in the work one does. We create meaning in life from our work, and therefore, we should focus not on the accumulation of material wealth, but on doing what we love — whether that be a job or a side project — to the utmost of our ability. This concept is expressed in the books Drive by Daniel Pink, The Road to Character by David Brooks, and Mastery by Robert Greene.

There are other important concepts I’ve learned (see here), but these are the two that have stuck with me. These ideas have changed the way I live and think for the better, showing, at least in my life, the positive value of books.

Nonfiction

With the deep thoughts out of the way, let’s get to the 75 books. I’ve ranked the nonfiction books I read based on three criteria (sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vlws3jhfbrak-HSSJAmQJU-kNvwPKAurBdvh7KsyfBE/edit?usp=sharing&source=post_page—————————))

Usefulness (40%): how much does this book matter to my life right now? (because a great book can change my life for the better)
Importance (40%): how much do the ideas in this book matter on a society-wide scale? (because books can change a society — gradually)
Engrossing (20%): how entertaining and well-written was the book? (because even nonfiction books should be interesting)

For each book, I’ve written a 2-bullet-point summary. I do this to limit my thoughts (you can see the extended notes — my immediate reactions with no structure here) and to try to capture the overarching takeaway.

Books are hundreds of pages, but without exception, can be summarized in two short sentences. If these sentences are not enough to make you want to read the book, then 200 pages of the same ideas won’t be useful to you!

I’ve grouped the books into tens because that’s what you do when making a list. Fiction follows at the end (scroll down) because I don’t think it should be measured by the same criteria — fiction serves a different purpose.

1–10: The Outstanding Works

Enlightenment Now: The Cast for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

In terms of health, wealth, crime, living standards, human rights, and environmental protection, we have never lived at a better time and evidence suggests we will continue to gradually improve
This is not only optimistic, but it’s also based on objective facts, and, by understanding the drivers — science, liberal democracy, commerce, rationality, communication — we can ensure the trend continues

2. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

We are systematically wrong in our perception of the world and this misjudgment skews in one direction: towards the negative; our misconceptions can be corrected by examining both large-scale data and individual stories of human progress
Progress is important to acknowledge because it means our efforts in poverty reduction, disease eradication, expansion of rights, and environmental protection are working and should be supported

3. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris

Ethics/morals are a product of evolution and were not invented by religion
As a natural phenomenon, we can study ethics/morals to make objective choices about what we should do to achieve the best outcomes

4. Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink

The most powerful motivators aren’t external — wealth, items, praise from others— but internal feelings of autonomy, mastery, and purpose which come from our work
Instead of seeking to maximize fulfillment through external factors, we should concentrate on doing meaningful work — either a career or personal project — to the utmost of our abilities

5. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t by Nate Silver

The people who are best at making predictions evaluate evidence from many varied sources (each of which has a different bias) and are open to changing their minds when the evidence changes: foxes, not hedgehogs
We are better at making estimates in situations that commonly occur with an opportunity for rapid feedback and not so great in novel circumstances where the evidence isn’t clear — this is when we need to gather more data

6. The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz

We have managed to create a society with unlimited choices, from the big (where to go to college) to the small (what cereal to buy), yet, instead of a utopia, this expansion of options has made us miserable
People who maximize, that is, try to make the optimal choice, end up spending more time making decisions and more time regretting decisions than satisficers, who are satisfied with a less-than-perfect option

7. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch

Problems are solvable: given enough time, anything not prohibited by the laws of physics will be achieved by humans
We stand poised on the beginning of infinity which will be a tremendous increase in our capabilities to shape the environment enabled by technological progress — humans may be meaningless on a cosmological scale at the moment, but eventually, we can alter the galaxy

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

To discover why someone carried out a particular action, we need to look at both macro — environment — and micro — genes, hormones, neurotransmitters — factors; the complex web of causes makes ascribing a single reason to any action impossible
Even with an imperfect understanding of why people act, we can use the findings of sociology, neuroscience, psychology, and biology to enact better policies and make decisions in our own lives — such as making irreversible plans ahead of time instead of deciding in the moment; morality consists of doing the right thing when it’s the harder thing to do

9. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

Capitalism — fueled by the division of labor and commerce between nations — is the single greatest anti-poverty device ever invented and has raised the living standards of billions of people over the last few decades
All things considered, limited capitalism (with proper government controls in areas such as the environment and worker rights) is the optimal way we’ve tested for how to run an economy and, surprisingly, has led to better health, more wealth, and more rights when it is adopted (see China)

10. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

Humans are not born equal (the “blank slate” idea) but rather with a host of advantages and disadvantages conferred on them by their genes
Assuming everyone starts on equal footing is harmful because it means we don’t address these genetic differences in our policies

11. — 20. Stellar Reads and Useful Ideas

11. The Road to Character by David Brooks

People are not born being great humans (great meaning devoting one’s life to helping others) but rather are made through their experiences
The ultimate good in life is being able to help one’s fellow humans, a pursuit that is also extremely rewarding

12. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock

There is no secret to making accurate predictions, just lots of practice, constant feedback, a willingness to self-criticize, openmindedness, examining data from many sources, and an ability to quantify uncertainty
Individuals who exceed at making estimates of the future — superforecasters — spend a lot of time making predictions, adjusting predictions when facts change, and assimilating information from different sources; moreover, their estimates tend to be less extreme meaning they don’t get news coverage but are correct more often than those who appear as “pundits” in the news

13. The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature by Timothy Ferris

Two intertwined forces have helped make western countries world power: science and liberal democracy, neither of which succeeds without the other
Where science and liberal democracy are allowed to flourish, humanity also flourishes meaning we should continue to promote rationality over orthodoxy and elections over dictators

14. How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use by Randy Paterson

There is indisputable evidence about what makes us miserable — not exercising, isolating ourselves with screens, sleep deprivation, focusing on ourselves— and so to be as miserable as possible (this is a parody self-help book) we should just keep doing these practices
Both external — our relationships to others, health, community membership — and internal — our attitude, reactions to events, sense of meaning — factors affect how much we enjoy our lives

15. The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule by Michael Shermer

Ethics, as a product of evolution (not one developed by religion), can be researched objectively, so we can figure out why people act for good or bad
Both absolute moral subjectivity and moral objectivity are not logical and, instead, we should adopt moral provincialism according to which we need to make decisions based on the evidence in each situation

16. Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Watching) by Christian Rudder

With access to OkCupid data (Rudder was one of the founders), we can see how people actually act, not how they respond to surveys; we discover people are more racist and hostile to outsiders than they admit, but these results are limited to the narrow domain of online dating
There is much we can learn from data generated through our online interactions, but we must realize behind every data point is a person and therefore data should be used to help people build better relationships

17. Lying by Sam Harris

Lying is indefensible under any circumstances and always leads to long-term negative outcomes
Telling the truth is painful in the moment, but over time will result in better relationships and a more fulfilling life

18. How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan

Once a topic of fervent research (in the 1960–1970s) but subsequently banned, psychedelics are again making a comeback due to promising — but preliminary — results in treating mental illnesses such as PTSD and depression, as well as enriching lives of people with good mental health
Pollan seems to have drawn his conclusion — psychedelics are positive — before writing the book (he does have to earn a living), but nonetheless, he makes a compelling case for, at the least, collecting more information through rigorous research before dismissing these substances as harmful

19. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert

Traditional reporting on climate change focuses on the long-term potential doom and gloom scenarios while Kolbert’s work looks at the effects of climate change on individuals right now; stories of real people are more convincing than reams of statistics
The picture is pretty bleak: there are already people suffering from climate change, which should show us the necessity of international action

20. The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl

Statistics currently does not even have words for expressing the idea of causation — why did something occur — despite the question’s paramount importance to fields such as medicine and sociology
Bayesian reasoning — in particular, Bayesian belief networks — hold the most promise for developing a theory of probabilistic causality that will let us move from correlation to causation

21. — 30. Great and Valuable, but Maybe Not for Everyone

21. Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

For those without a belief in formal religion, it can feel as if we have no sense of meaning — a quintessential part of being human; however, all is not lost because there are methods, backed by science and data, for even secular humanists to find a deeper purpose to our existence
Meditation is one of the primary means humans have sought meaning for millennia (it’s older than contemporary religions) and the practice is supported by evidence that meditators are better able to deal with the stresses of everyday life and have a greater sense of life fulfillment

22. Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould

Science is our best tool for understanding the universe, but we don’t need to treat it as lifeless and bland, as the late science communicator and evolutionist Gould makes clear through stories that bring important scientific ideas to life in a way no school science class ever could
The field of science advances through self-criticism and self-correction as Gould demonstrates in essays on topics from probability to evolution

23. Fundamentals of Data Visualization by Claus Wilke

Accurately portraying data is crucial for achieving the goal of data science — better decisions through data — and there are basic rules for achieving this as demonstrated in this useful textbook describing and showing the principles of making effective figures (using the R programming language)
Simple choices, such as making your chart labels large enough and minimizing the amount of unnecessary ink, vastly improve the usefulness of a graph by ensuring focus is on the data

24. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly

Predicting the future is tough, but Kelly has intriguing ideas about how our relationship to and use of technology will change, from the obvious such as increased sharing and more tracking of behaviors to the utopian (or dystopian) such as building a system spanning the planet connecting all people and machines or widely available artificial intelligence
It’s both instructive and entertaining to read knowledgeable predictions for the future because it gives you an idea of what’s possible

25. Deep Learning Cookbook: Practical Recipes to Get Started Quickly by Douwe Osinga

The best technical books teach by example, and this book follows that pattern with numerous exercises to build actual deep learning systems
Deep learning is not an art available to a select few, but a basic system of operations that anyone with a little coding experience can quickly learn to create “smart” machines — or at least ones that can classify pictures and generate semi-sensible text

26. Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension by Samuel Arbesman

Systems built by humans — such as the electrical grid — are now too complicated for any single person to entirely understand
Generalists — people who can quickly learn the basics of technology — may become increasingly relevant as a go-between for different fields to help them understand how disparate technologies can be complementary

27. Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown by Michael Shermer

Even scientists can occasionally be fooled — or fool themselves — and science is at its best when practitioners are willing to criticize themselves and question the work of even top “experts” in a field
While science is how we understand the universe, it’s also used to support pseudoscientific ideas such as extrasensory perception or homeopathy and skepticism is crucial to avoid falling for harmful fictions

28. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Writing is one of the most rewarding activities a human can engage in but it also can be exceedingly difficult at times, which led Lamott to write this short book with practical tips for building a writing habit
Among the more relevant ideas are you should write every single day, even bad writing is better than no writing, don’t aim for perfection, show your writing to many people for feedback, and set realistic expectations

29. Mastery by Robert Greene

No matter what job you are currently doing (even if it’s not what you want), you need to strive for mastery — doing the best possible work —because this will affect how you approach every aspect of your life
Self-help books are generally bunk, but this work takes a no-nonsense approach: you need to suck it up and work as hard as possible

30. 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help that Actually Works — A True Story by Dan Harris

Meditation is difficult, requires intense focus/concentration, and can only be improved through deliberate practice, nonetheless, it’s a worthwhile exercise because of the proven benefits for practitioners
The practice of meditation is not the answer to all problems but is useful for better dealing with daily stress and feeling a little better — which in turn will make you more effective at work and a slightly nicer person

31. — 40. Worthwhile but Only if You Have the Time

31. Hitch-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens

A wonderfully engrossing (and self-critical) autobiography of the late journalist and skeptic Christopher Hitchens that takes the reader through many captivating life experiences
Hitchens emphasizes how it’s important to be willing to change your mind when the facts on the ground shift and provides plenty of examples where his ability to question his beliefs led him to self-correct

32. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

The Internet is not inherently detrimental to our brains yet it is changing daily life by compressing our thoughts, writing, and personal interactions
We should not adopt new technology without first asking whether it will actually improve our life or just complicate it

33. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

The world in the 21st century will divide into two classes: those who control the machines and artificial intelligence that take human jobs and those who are left with no meaningful work to do; the ultimate result is unprecedented inequality
Harari is an intellectually engaging writer, and discusses many grand ideas such as “what will give our lives meaning in the future?” and “how can we create community in an increasingly connected world?”

34. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb

Due to the sheer number of events that happen every day, some exceedingly unlikely situations (natural disasters, unexpected election results) will inevitably occur with disastrous consequences
We underestimate what can happen based on what has happened in the past and although we can’t predict Black Swan Events, we can build robustness into our lives and systems to respond positively to unexpected events

35. The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holliday

There are three core ideas in our lives, perception: perceiving what happens in the world, action: how we respond to these events, and will: how we can make the right decision even in tough circumstances
We can take supposed negatives and turn them into positives, using the Stoic philosophy, a worldview based on accepting the present moment

36. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

Humans don’t think rationally (see Thinking, Fast and Slow), but this deviance from rational behavior occurs in predictable ways
Our deviance from rational choice theory is inevitable, but we can try to understand our unlogical behavior to correct it

37. The Mismeasurement of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

Although there are significant differences in IQ scores between ethnicities, this is not an indication of innate racial intelligence differences but rather is the product of unequal environments and the structure of the tests
Trying to develop a single test for intelligence is a fool’s errand and only helps social Darwinists and eugenicists who divide races, instead, we should work to enact policies — such as mandatory pre-kindergarten — that reverse the environments leading to different scores

38. But What if We’re Wrong?: Thinking about the Present as if it Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman

As with every generation, ours will be seen as utterly wrong 50 (or even 10) years from now and it’s an interesting exercise to think where we are incorrect and how the future will view us
Klosterman thinks we are most wrong in our conception of reality; we are living in a simulation and eventually will create our own simulated worlds

39. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

The best ideas — such as those leading to computers — are born not deep within one field, but rather at the intersection between fields where ideas can mix and inventions find novel applications
Contrary to most historians, Isaacson stresses the importance not of individuals, but collectives — like IBM — in developing technology

40. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb

The sequel to The Black Swan puts forth the idea of antifragility: instead of surviving surprise events, use them to our advantage; some systems, such as human beings, respond positively to the right amount of stress
Although Taleb can be overconfident in his rightness, he has some interesting ideas including antifragility (some stress is good), addition by subtraction (making one’s life better by removing instead of adding distractions), and iatragenics (a treatment causes more harm than benefit)

41. — 50. Potentially Helpful Ideas but not Compelling Execution

41. The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self by Thomas Metzinger

Our conscious experience is not a continuous stream, but a sequence of three second long experiences tied together by our brain into a single cohesive narrative — an internal story of ourselves
There is no such thing as a constant “I” from one moment to the next, which is both disorienting and freeing because it means we can completely change ourselves at any moment despite what we’ve been telling ourselves

42. Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book by Dan Harris

Meditation is difficult, but as with any practice, one can improve at it through deliberate consistent practice; maintaining an everyday meditation exercise is easier with some basic advice
As a practical application of the ideas in 10% Happier, there is not much new content here and it feels repetitive if one read the former work

43. The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf

Humboldt — an explorer, biologist, naturalist, and science communicator — captivated the public with his tales of travel and science, bringing science to the masses more effectively than any dry textbook could have
A useful reminder that if you want to get the public to care about science, you have to make it full of life and not just a collection of facts — people are inherently curious and science is about answering questions

44. Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth by Bill McKibben

McKibben’s previous work (The End of Nature) was very depressing and he wrote this as an exploration of societies where humans have high levels of happiness without destroying the environment — sustainable living
Primarily, these are societies that are content with less material wealth than in the West — they have stronger communities rather than more items

45. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman

The group Anonymous underwent a remarkable turn from pranksters (internet tomfoolery) to hacktivists that accomplished real-world change such as in the Arab Spring and efforts to thwart terrorists
Anonymous can’t be characterized under a single idea because of the diversity of its subgroups, but it demonstrates the power a few determined people connected by technology can now wield for bad or good

46. Everything is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us by Duncan Watts

Once we have seen the outcome of an event, the storyline seems obvious in retrospect — such as with the success of Facebook as a social network — even though the real cause is a combination of good ideas and a lot of luck
Our tendency to draw straight lines connecting past events is the narrative fallacy and it means we see intentional causes instead of random occurrences, and leads to circular reasoning such as the Mona Lisa is the most well-known painting because it is famous for being a good painting

47. Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow

A highly theory-driven look at the entire field of deep learning, including history, current breakthroughs, best practices, and future directions
The field of deep learning — neural networks — is moving so fast this book may be out of date in a few years despite the abundance of useful advice

48. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

Thanks to psychology research, products — such as smartphones and social networks — have hacked into people’s rewards systems to keep them addicted and wasting time on meaningless applications
On the plus side, we can use the same techniques that get people addicted to mobile games to adopt good habits — such as reading or exercising; once we understand how we are taken advantage of, it becomes easier to avoid these products or at least use them in moderation

49. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

Almost all of what happens in our brain goes on without our conscious awareness meaning the notion that we choose our actions is false
Despite this lack of free choice, we are still responsible for our actions and over time can alter our default tendencies; we don’t have mental freedom but can change our thinking patterns with practice

50. A Gentle Introduction to Effective Computing in Quantitative Research: What Every Research Assistant Should Know by Henry Paarsch and Konstantin Golyaev

It will soon be impossible to do any meaningful research without at least basic data analysis and this work covers many topics in computing for research at a shallow level with a few practical exercises
The techniques in this book will likely be out of date very quickly and you are better off learning best practices through online up-to-date resources

51. — 60 Not Necessarily Bad, but Don’t Get My Recommendation

51. Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakeur

Pat Tillman’s story is a tragedy, not because he gave up a pro football career to join the US Army — this was his choice — but because he was killed by friendly fire and then the United States — all the way to the president — took advantage of his death by lying to win war support
Another reminder (we really don’t need any more) of the utter stupidity of war and a look at the falsities used to sell war to the American public

52. Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Scheier

Large corporations and governments are now harnessing all our data and subsequently will be able to know even the most personal things about us
Despite the dire warnings, there were no examples of a government or corporation actually harming individuals through the collection of personal data and therefore the message currently lacks validity

53. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman by Richard Feynman

The best scientists are driven not be a desire for wealth or fame but for the more powerful want to figure out how nature works
Feynman makes his passion for science clear in this charming collection that illustrates the importance of encouraging our natural human curiosity

54. Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips

It’s hard to draw any takeaways from this work of collected essays, other than that different cultures — even within a single country (the US) — can vary significantly and we should try to experience many cultures
Although there are some interesting stories — concerning the Iditarod sled dog race or the strangeness of the American southwest — the lack of a unifying theme means there is no relevant conclusion

55. Junk Raft: An Ocean Voyage and a Rising Tide of Activism to Fight Plastic Pollution by Marcus Eriksen

Major plastics and chemical corporations are ruthless in their lobbying for the right to continue to pollute the ocean and pass responsibility on to consumers as highlighted by Eriksen as he builds a raft out of plastic bottles to sail to Hawaii to highlight these offenses
The boat journey serves as the backdrop for reporting on the nefarious practices of corporations and the influence of lobbyists that prevent even the most common-sense environmental protection laws from being passed

56. The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick

New modes of communication always increase in speed and availability and generally are beneficial for civilization because they reduce barriers
The overall idea is clearly observable in our modern society: the amount and velocity of information created by humans has been increasing since the beginning of written history and is accelerating

57. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

It’s impossible to know what it’s like to grow up as anybody other than yourself, a point is driven home with great effect in this letter to the author’s son of what it’s like to grow up a black man in America
A critical read for anyone who believes the myth that America has achieved race-blindness or that conditions are not that bad for minorities

58. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

Moby Dick was written about an actual event, a whaling ship sunk by a whale, as is told in this entertaining historical work
The ends to which the men who survived were driven is exceptional but proof that at their core, humans are survival machines willing to give up their own humanity for a few more days of existence

59. Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time by Michael Downing

There is no single reason we have Dayling Saving Time (no, it was not invented by Benjamin Franklin or advocated by the farmers) but rather a patchwork of causes including multiple lobbying groups, cities, and individuals some of whom took both sides of the debate at different times
Contrary to most history books, this one does show a straight line through events, because there is no single connection that can tie together the circumstances that led to the current Daylight Savings Time situation

61. + The Stragglers

60. Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Another collection (in addition to Freakonomics) of seemingly contradictory stories supported by — in my opinion — too little evidence
The issue with the Freakonomics authors is they are too sure of their own conclusions leading them to dismiss contrary evidence (the confirmation bias), never a good idea when claiming to be scientific and objective

61. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

A bewildering tale of mathematics, art, music, artificial intelligence, recursion, and the human brain that seems as if was written just to prove the author is smarter than you
While there may be profound conclusions about consciousness (which is self-recursive loops) contained in these pages, more likely readers will be confused by the endless stories within stories and repetition

62. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

Salt, the simple condiment, has played an outsized role in shaping our modern world from driving trade to allowing meat to be kept longer
There is often a lot of history to tell by fully exploring the story of a single object because the world is so interconnected and history is basically a story of people first expanding and then coming back together; even a basic commodity touches almost every aspect of societal development

63. Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality by Max Tegmark

The universe, or rather the infinitude of universes known as the multiverse, is fundamentally mathematical which means reality is a mathematical structure; this has consequences for research in physics and mathematics, although probably not for everyday life
Reading about large, interesting, potentially true ideas is usually fun, but I found this a too technical to be anything more than a slog

64. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

This memoir, written by a doctor as he was dying of cancer, is considered as profound, yet, I found it mundane, leading to the question “If someone writes a book while dying, does that mean it has to be profound?”
The basic idea, that what matters in the end is family and a desire to fulfill one’s duties did not seem like anything new and I was left wondering if what people found inspiring was the premise more than the content

65. America’s Obsessives by Jonah Lehrer

Many of America’s most successful individuals, from Estee Lauder to Thomas Jefferson, likely suffered from compulsive personality disorders which counterintuitively contributed to their success
I vehemently dislike books that post-diagnose historical figures with any ailment and this book was overly frustrating because of this practice

66. Fermat’s Last Theorem by Simon Singh

Andrew Wiles was able to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem (no number n satisfies a^n + b^n = c^n for n > 2) after hundreds of years of effort by the math community and decades of personal work from Wiles in what is considered a stunning mathematical result of great importance
Despite the supposed import of this proof, the book made no argument as to why this is actually important for anyone outside the math community

67. Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City’s Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation by Brad Ricca

A story of a female detective working one hundred years ago who solved crimes and helped those who couldn’t speak for themselves
History books lose me when they become an endless recitation of names and dates and this one quickly exceeded my patience for past details

Fiction

In my mind, it’s not fair to judge fiction against non-fiction because they have different purposes: non-fiction is meant to inform and fiction to entertain. Fiction can also teach us a lot — just about ourselves and relationships, not objective knowledge. That being said, I’ve fallen away from reading fiction because I find it uninteresting compared to the real world.

While I used to be an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy (Asimov, Heinlein, GRR Martin, Tolkien, Sanderson, Pauloni), I haven’t gotten into a fiction series for a couple years. That changed this year with the Three-Body Problem series (technically called Remembrance of Earth’s Past) from Liu Cixin although I was tired of it by the final book. All in all, I was again disappointed by the fiction I read this year and don’t see it making a major comeback into my life. Reality is simply too interesting to dwell in the make-believe.

Fiction was rated based on two criteria (sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vlws3jhfbrak-HSSJAmQJU-kNvwPKAurBdvh7KsyfBE/edit?usp=sharing&source=post_page—————————)):

Captivating (50%): How engrossing was the book? (because fiction is designed primarily to entertain)
Thoughtfulness (50%): How much did this book make me think? (because even when I read fiction, I want to be given something to think about)

I’ve tried to make these bullet points not just summaries of the book, but be forewarned there may be spoilers. It’s hard to capture the ideas of fiction books without discussing the plot.

The Three-Body Problem (1 / 3) by Liu Cixin

Humanity, if left to its own devices, is doomed and we require outside interference — either friendly or hostile — to unite us so we can survive and eventually expand to the stars
Outside interference, when it does arrive, will not be benevolent and humanity is such an insignificant species that a more advanced civilization would have no use for us; furthermore, the earth, as a habitable planet in a hospitable solar system, is an attractive second home for a civilization trying to escape their own stellar system

2. The Dark Forest (2 / 3) by Liu Cixin

If given a dire enough threat, humans can be convinced to give up their differences and work together towards a common cause, moreover, when it’s necessary for survival, we will make extremely rapid progress
Ultimately, the universe is a dark forest with civilizations as the silent hunters: no civilization dares to shine a light to contact others (thus solving the Fermi Paradox) because there is no guarantee they will be friendly; this leads to a silent universe where only those who haven’t learned the rules — such as humans — expose themselves at great peril

3. Neuromancer by William Gibson

A washed-up computer hacker who was prevented from hacking after stealing from his employer is given another job for a shadowy entity in this novel that spawned the cyper-punk genre
Often I found myself thinking I had already seen the devices used by this book, only to realize it’s because I’d read science-fiction that came after and heavily borrowed from elements established by Gibson in this story

4. Regeneration by Pat Barker

A surprisingly captivating World War One story about a hero sent to a mental hospital to be “reprogrammed” for battle after becoming a pacifist and publicly renouncing the war
A searing portrait of the insanity of war, the horrors young men are forced to endure, the extent to which the government will go to hide the reality of battle and the lies told to the public to win war support

5. World’s End by Liu Cixin

The culmination of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, ending in increasingly implausible escalations and travel through both time and space (it wouldn’t be a science fiction novel without these elements)
A slightly confusing and ambiguous conclusion to the series, but, this was the first fiction series in years where I’ve wanted to read the sequels and it was thought-provoking at times

6. Calvin and Hobbes: Book One of Eleven by Bill Waterson

A book of cartoons with a boy and his pet tiger which is surprisingly accurate in its portrayal of life; overall, a nice book to use as an escape from technical work and classes
While I don’t anticipate reading many more cartoons, they can be valuable and if the author is clever enough, they often do a great job of expressing ideas about what it means to be human or problems with society

7. The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

A collection of short stories I found to be uninteresting and incomprehensible; this was disappointing after hearing of Borges reputation for being a master of the art
Interestingly, part of why I did not enjoy this work is I wanted the stories to be longer — they were too short to get me into the story or care about any of the characters (so much for shortened attention spans)

8. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

An utterly baffling mystery story involving talking cats, animated cartoon characters, and too many ephemeral details
The world created in this story is similar to our own but with some strange supernatural elements — designed to mess with your idea of reality

As always, I welcome feedback, constructive criticism, and reading about what books you’ve read. I can be reached on Twitter @koehrsen_will.