Friday, December 31, 2021

The 2021 Book List

The 2021 Book List

Been a crazy year, marked with some health problems. Oddly enough, spending so much of the year bedridden and immobile has seemed to have a negative impact on my ability to focus on reading. My intake of audiobooks has drastically dropped off, as I've been listening a lot more to podcasts over the last couple of years. 
  1. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (finished from 2020)
  2. No Country for Old Gnomes by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne (finished from 2020)
  3. Dark Convergence by Dave Gross
  4. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker
  5. The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez
  6. The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
  7. The Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstein
  8. Think Like a Game Designer by Justin Gary
  9. The White Box Essays by Jeremy Holcomb
  10. Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
  11. You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place by Janelle Shane
  12. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (reread)
  13. The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal
Breakdown

Format:
  • Audiobooks: 5
  • Electronic: 2
    • Kindle: 2
  • Dead tree books: 6
Subjects:
  • Total Fiction: 4
    • Science Fiction: 2
    • Fantasy: 2
    • Non-Fiction: 9
      • Science: 4 
        • Physics: 1
        • Psychology: 2
        • Biology: 1
        • Technology: 1
      • History: 6
      • Education: 1
      • Game Design: 2

    Podcasts

    In addition to listening to audiobooks, my intake of thinking consists enough of podcasts that it seems worth including them as a category. Here are the podcasts that I have listened to in 2021 on a fairly regular basis:
    • You Are Not So Smart
    • Making Sense with Sam Harris
    • The Glenn Loury Show
    • Talk Nerdy with Cara Santa Maria
    • Very Bad Wizards
    • Advisory Opinions
    • The Lawfare Podcast
    • Rational Security
    • The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg
    • Left, Right, and Center
    • Today, Explained
    • The Weeds
    The History

    And for anyone who is interested in looking into the past to see some of my previous book lists...
    Prior to 2008, I didn't keep a precise running record of the books that I read.
    Spewed forth from the mind of azjauthor at 12:30 PM 0 comments
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    Friday, January 01, 2021

    The 2020 Book List

    The 2020 Book List

    Well, that's a crazy year in the record books ... and, speaking of books, here's the list of books I read this year. Ironically, everyone being locked at home meant that generally I did less reading than normal. Fewer audiobooks because there was no commuting, for example, but also even just in terms of having free time to read, I found I had less, because so many activities were cancelled, there was a lot more family together time and less time where I had blocks to just sit down and read without someone else coming along to interrupt.
    1. Exhalation by Ted Chiang
    2. God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World -- and Why Their Differences Matter by Stephen Prothero
    3. For the Killing of Kings by Howard Andrew Jones
    4. Upon the Flight of the Queen by Howard Andrew Jones
    5. Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim
    6. Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
    7. An Economic History of the World since 1400 by Donald J. Harreld (Great Courses)
    8. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revoluion by Francis Fukuyama
    9. Law School for Everyone by Molly Bishop Shadel (Great Courses)
    10. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins
    11. Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes by Roshani Chokshi
    12. A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II by Simon Parkin
    13. The New Testament by Bart Ehrman (Great Courses)
    14. Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi
    15. The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
    16. Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova
    17. Making Sense: Conversations on Consciousness, Morality, and the Future of Humanity by Sam Harris & others
    18. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
    19. Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
    20. The ABCs of Educational Testing: Demystifying the Tools That Shape Our Schools by W. James Popham
    21. Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
    22. Unravel the Dusk by Elizabeth Lim
    23. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
    24. A Promised Land by Barack Obama
    25. The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman
    26. The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths by Mariana Mazzucato
    27. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (unfinished)
    28. No Country for Old Gnomes by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne (unfinished)
    Breakdown

    Format:
    • Audiobooks: 13
    • Electronic: 3
      • Kindle: 3
    • Dead tree books: 12
    Subjects:
    • Total Fiction: 13
      • Science Fiction: 3
      • Fantasy: 10
      • Non-Fiction: 15
        • Science: 2
          • Physics: 2
          • Psychology: 2
          • Technology: 1
        • Religion: 2
        • History: 5
        • Politics/Law: 4
        • Business/Economics: 4
        • Education: 1
        • Philosophy: 1
      These numbers don't quite match up, because some books cover multiple areas, and so I've included them in all relevant categories. So, for example, a book on free will would fall in both Psychology and Philosophy (and possibly even Religion) categories. And a book on Politics might drift enough into the realm of Philosophy (or vice versa) that I count them as both, or both might explore enough historical groundwork that I feel the need to include it as a History book.

      I've also included The Great Courses audios that I listen to through Audible.com. Though not actually books, I figure that a 10+ hour course on a subject contains about the same informational content, if not presented structurally in quite the same way as it would take in a written book.

      Podcasts

      In addition to listening to audiobooks, my intake of thinking consists enough of podcasts that it seems worth including them as a category. Here are the podcasts that I have listened to in 2018 on a fairly regular basis:
      • You Are Not So Smart
      • Making Sense with Sam Harris
      • The Glenn Show
      • Talk Nerdy with Cara Santa Maria
      • Very Bad Wizards
      • What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law
      • The Lawfare Podcast
      • Rational Security
      • The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg
      • Advisory Opinions
      • Left, Right, and Center
      • All the President's Lawyers
      • Today, Explained
      • The Weeds
      • Stuff to Blow Your Mind
      The History

      And for anyone who is interested in looking into the past to see some of my previous book lists...
      Prior to 2008, I didn't keep a precise running record of the books that I read.
      Spewed forth from the mind of azjauthor at 5:12 AM 0 comments
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