Reviews

Starred items are highly recommended. “Dropped” items weren’t worth finishing. Unlinked items should be avoided.

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Year-end notes

*

Books

2014

The Passage. Justin Cronin; novel
A deeply bad book. Vampire/zombie apocalypse with religious and pro-death themes (the protagonist destroys a cure for aging as part of a “happy” ending). Glacially paced because the author doesn’t know how to worldbuild efficiently (or well — the plot hinges on chemical batteries failing after 100 years, but scavenged gas and bullets work). I didn’t drop it because I was sleepless and stupid on a trans-Atlantic flight.
* So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Cal Newport; non-fiction
A criticism of “follow your passion” and path to mastery and meaningful work. A little repetitive (the “tell them three times” style), but engaging, well-researched, and valuable.
In The Land of Invented Languages. Rachel Andrew; non-fiction
A delightful romp through the history and modern experience of conlangs, with Esperanto, Tolkein’s works, and Klingon featured.
The Sports Gene. David Epstein; non-fiction
A thoroughly researched investigation of the nature/nurture debate in sports. Doesn’t bog down in anecdote as it illustrates its points with compelling stories of elite athletes.
Fine Structure. Sam Hughes; fiction
I thought this was a series of short stories until they converged into a non-linear novel. Heavier on ideas than plot or characters, but enjoyable SF. A bit unpolished, but the author addresses loose odds and ends in a follow-up Q&A.
What Technology Wants. Kevin Kelly; non-fiction
Long think piece on the growth of technology and human interaction with it. A few fun ideas.
Metaprogramming Ruby. Paolo Perrotta; technical
A lovely introduction to what makes Ruby special. Useful for beginners and intermediates, but experienced Ruby devs need read only the appendices.
Ruby Under a Microscope. Pat Shaughnessy; technical
Excellent, in-depth tour through the implementation of Ruby.
Tribal Leadership. Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright; business
Fluffy book about how much of a culture and purpose a business has.
Aurora: CV-01. Ryk Brown; sci-fi
A poorly-written, thinly-veiled fanfiction mashup of Battlestar Galactica and the various Star Treks. Every scene prompted a “oh, yeah, I remember that episode” memory. And characters angst about an evil empire but fail to recognize they have invented a weapon that could break planets in half because it never appeared in Trek.
Ghost in the Wires. Kevin Mitnick; memoir
His account of his hacking career and life as a fugitive. Nice alternative to John Markoff’s NYT and book fictionalizations.
The Accidental Creative. Todd Henry; self-help
Nice read about creating a reliable process for creative work.
Die Empty. Todd Henry; self-help
Not useful like the previous, except perhaps to someone burning out on creative work.
Radiance. Carter Scholz; fiction
Unhappy people talk past each other for 400 pages.
* Homicide. David Simon; true crime
Stunning, engaging writing shadowing Baltimore’s homicide detectives for a year. See the sausage get made.
* The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Dan Ariely; science
Excellent science writing, similar to his previous book Predictably Irrational. Useful for community planners.
Passages in the Void. Roger Williams; sci-fi
Nice series of stories in a universe where life is rare and fragile, though they are in declining order of quality.
Bitter Seeds,
The Coldest War,
Necessary Evil. Ian Tregillis; sci-fi
The creepy short story What Doctor Gottleib Saw led me to this trilogy. English warlocks struggle against Nazi superpowers. First two books are a long way to go for the payoff in the third.
Liespotting. Pamela Meyer; science
Exploring how to recognize lies using Ekman’s work and standard law enforcement interrogation technique. Skip chapter 9, it’s a complete non-sequiter about creating mastermind groups.
Kushiel’s Dart. Jaqueline Carey; fantasy
A masochistic courtesan-in-training becomes a spy-in-training in a world of tedious intrigue. I dropped it in the paragraph where fantasy Sherlock explains the fantasy term for safe words.
The Shining; Doctor Sleep. Stephen King; horror
Reread The Shining after I finally watched the Kubrick movie. They’re rather different but both excellently creepy horror. Got curious about the sequel Doctor Sleep: psychic vampire motor homers tepidly chase the far-more-powerful protagonists and nothing unpredictable or interesting happens.
* The Leprechauns of Software Engineering. Laurent Bossavit; science
Excellent investigation of how research becomes common knowledge, and how some big cherished software myths (cone of uncertainty, the origin of waterfall, exponentially increasing cost of bugs/change, 10x developers) are false.
Game Theory at Work. James Miller; economics
Nice explanation of basic game theory, but the complete absence of human biases like loss aversion means this is probably only useful to game designers or aspiring sociopaths.
The Atrocity Archives,
The Jennifer Morgue,
The Fuller Memorandum,
Apocalypse Codex. Charles Stross; horror
Lighthearted IT support/office politics mashed up with serious, horrifying Lovecraft mythos in a surprisingly successful way, though they always start with Bob’s superiors dispatching him in an unjustifiable state of ignorance. Includes some deep cut nerd humor (eg. the protagonist’s middle initials).
tmux. Brian P. Hogan; technical
Best way to get started with tmux. I used it to move on from GNU Screen.
I Kill Giants. Joe Kelly, J. M. Ken Nimura; fiction
A moving story of a girl’s retreat into fantasy. Best read in one sitting
Worm. Wildbow; superhero
A cohesive ~7,000(!) page story that puts DC and Marvel to shame. A high school girl who can control bugs sets out to be a superhero and is mistaken for a villain. Pacing is occasionally a little off, but a great world, arc, and ending as she grows to deal with ever-increasing threats.
You Can Be Right (Or You Can Be Married). Dana Adam Shapiro; self-help
Anecdote and confabulation.
The Disaster Diaries. Sam Sheridan; non-fiction
A very manly man prepares for wildly improbable disasters. Not a practical guide and not compellingly written.
Understanding the Four Rules of Simple Design. Corey Haines; technical
A lovely read that revels in experimentation and rewards rereading.
* Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby. Sandi Metz; technical
4th read. A very polished and insightful book. When I first read it I constantly thought “Yep, that’s how I’d implement that/make that change” and then Metz constantly pointed out the problems that I would struggle to articulate.
The Memory Palace. Mila Bartok; memoir
Disjointed and sad book about growing up with a schizophrenic parent and recovering from a traumatic brain injury. Dropped in chapter 6.
Logicomix. Various; biography
A very self-satisfied biography of Bertrand Russell... that smugly mentioned it was editing historical facts for a convenient narrative. Dropped there.
Echo. Terry Moore; sci-fi
Apparently a vaguely-nuclear jetpack-flying lightning-throwing cancer-curing deafness-correcting age-reversing form-fitting suit works by repeatedly declothing the woman wearing it. And it gets stupider. I won’t read another book by this author.
Exceptional Ruby. Avdi Grim; technical
Front-half is a minutia-filled look at Ruby’s implementation of exceptions, the second half is a nice exploration of best practices.
Nudge. Richard Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein; economics
“Let’s take a horrible libertarian system and make small changes to make it less awful. Isn’t that wonderful?” No.
How Buildings Learn. Stewart Brand; architecture
A wonderful exploration of how buildings change over years, decades, and centuries.
To Save Everything, Click Here. Evgeny Morozov; politics
A contrarian response to simple technological solutions to wicked problems. Nice read, and good companion to Seeing Like a State (below).
Queen and Country. Greg Rucka and various artists; spy thriller
British spies shoot a lot of guns. Heavily based on the excellent TV series The Sandbaggers, which is the life-and-death office politics of British spies. Dropped Q&C when I realized it couldn’t compare to Sandbaggers.
Practical Vim. Drew Neil; technical
A very nice walk through the best text editor. Worth reading one chapter per week so you can form habits without getting overwhelmed.
Alone Together. Sherry Turkle; anthropology
How humans relate to emotional robots, and then how we relate to each other via and in the presence of unemotional machines.
Killing is Harmless. Brendan Keogh; literary criticism
2nd read. An excellent exploration of Spec Ops: The Line, a subversive game about player agency in violent video games (and a rare success at both ambiguous storytelling and breaking the fourth wall). I only wish he’d done original interviews to nail down the many “was this intentional?” questions.
Mating in Captivity. Esther Perel; sexuality
Explores the often-inverse relationship between intimacy and sexuality in long-term relationships. Very good.
Crucial Conversations, 2nd ed. Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler; self-help
How to have difficult conversations well. Excellent if a bit buzzword heavy. Oddly missing any discussion of how to recognize and deal with bad actors.
Ancillary Justice. Ann Leckie; sci-fi
Author tries to disguise poor pacing with nonlinear storytelling and a narrator who never thinks ahead about their goal. It might have a plot about space romans and embodied AIs, but nothing much actually happens. I dropped it in Chapter 12 when it starts introducing a new set of characters and I realized I didn’t care about any of the existing ones. There’s a constantly-referenced never-explained grouping for AIs and starships, four characters whose names begin with S, and the AI narrator uses pronouns haphazardly so none of the rest feel like they have a stable identity.
Confident Ruby. Avdi Grimm; technical
Really nice guide to writing idiomatic, bug-free Ruby. Would make a lovely, slightly lower-level companion to Metz’s POODR. If curious, watch Grimm’s earlier talk.
100 Bullets. Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso; thriller
Unlikeable and improbably lethal assassins feud incoherently with a ridiculous globe-dominating conspiracy.
Going Clear. Lawrence Wright; history
Scientology is pretty messed up, let’s study how the trainwreck unfolded.
Seeing Like a State. James C. Scott; history
How governments simplify and organize people and complex systems for their convenience. A stunning, powerful perspective to understand government action.
The Inner Game of Tennis. W. Timothy Gallwey; psychology
How to turn off conscious supervision of physical action for peak performance. Complements Zen and the Art of Archery. Puts words to how I’ve long thought about playing sports.
Microinteractions. Dan Saffer; technical
An exploration of tiny features that make products shine, but poorly organized and overwhelmed by a random selection of examples.
* Trust Me, I’m Lying. Ryan Holiday; culture
A two part book: first an exploration of how blogs make money by churning reader outrage and marketers manipulate them, then a darkly humorous mea culpa with the author whining about this broken system turning against the him, while shedding the requisite crocodile tears for society at large. He’s thoroughly reprehensible (so hit the library rather than buy a copy), but the understanding of how mass media now works is vital.
The Quantum Thief. Hanni Rajaniemi; sci-fi
A transhumanist adventure in the ultimate dictatorship. Hopelessly muddled because it rarely explains the setting or neologisms that allude to Russian literature and French, Japanese, and Hebrew vocabulary. Many of these are vital to the plot, so pass on this book unless you have read ridiculously broadly or keep Google handy.
Guyland. Michael Kimmel; ethnography
Extended adolescence combines with masculinity as a hybrid of the Milgram and Asch conformity experiments.
Incandescence. Greg Egan; sci-fi
Puzzle sci-fi involving a derivation of some principles of general relativity. Nice if you know the physics already, but otherwise a few diagrams short of enjoyable.
It’s Complicated. Danah Boyd; ethnography
Teens have poor mental models of new communications media, and adults have a worse mental model of that.
Shadowrun novels. Various, sci-fi
To feed my sweet tooth for pulp sci-fi I’m reading the novels based on the Shadowrun RPG.
  1. Never Deal With A Dragon: Salaryman Sam falls into mercenary underground and is aided by a surprising number of rogues with hearts of gold
  2. Choose Your Enemies Carefully: Sam survives and disrupts (then forgets about) an evil plot, often thanks to ridiculous coincidence
  3. Find Your Own Truth: Trilogy lurches its way to a Sam’s showdown with entirely different evil forces, again aided by a crew of inexplicably helpful criminals
  4. 2XS: Private dick meets femme fatale and is pulled into a larger conspiracy. Delightfully to genre.
  5. Changeling: Troll kid finds his place in the world. Pretty good.
  6. Never Trust an Elf: Idiot mercenaries trust shady figures, violence ensues, repeat ~8x.
  7. Into the Shadows: Solid anthology.
  8. Streets of Blood: Riff on Jack the Ripper, surprisingly good ending.
  9. Shadowplay: Almost-retired grizzled veteran and naive kid with potential chase McGuffin.
  10. Night’s Pawn: Retired merc does one last job featuring three new sourcebooks now available at finer retailers near you.
  11. Striper Assassin: Were-tiger assassin seeks same for long walks on the beach, murder-for-hire.
The Discovery of France. Graham Robb; history
A fun historical ramble through how incredibly diverse France was until the Great War.
Becoming Functional. Joshua Backfield; technical
A quick, basic intro to functional programming concepts (immutability, recursion, lazy evaluation, etc). The first three chapters are darkly humorous for their depictions of these concepts in Java. Nice little intro if you’re a Java coder, otherwise not too useful.
Swarmwise. Rick Falkvinge; politics
The history of Sweden’s Pirate Party as a how-to manual. Not especially useful, but a fun read.
Secrets of Power Negotiating. Roger Dawson; business
2nd read. Excellent, non-slimy introduction to making deals.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. John M. Gottman; self-help
Current best research into marital dynamics and outcomes, along with personal surveys and tips.
Entrepreneurial DNA. Joe Abraham; business
Fluffy read dividing entrepreneurs into tour personality types. I don’t quite buy it, but there was a bit of food for thought.
Seven Steps to Sales Scripts for B2B Appointment Setting. Scott Channell; business
A useful, experienced guide to cold calling for sales appointments (though it needed an editor for typos and occasional poor phrasing).
Full Dark, No Stars. Stephen King; fiction
Three novellas about gruesome violence and a short story with no point. “A Good Marriage” is the only one worth reading.
Drive. Daniel Pink; science
A nice read about motivation science, though padded for length.
* The Mom Test. Rob Fitzpatrick; business
How to effectively interview potential customers to evaluate a business idea. Must-read for entrepreneurs.
* What If?. Randall Munroe; science
Dryly hilarious answers to ridiculous physical scenarios.
* The Martian. Andy Weir; sci-fi
Astronaut accidentally abandoned alone on Mars struggles for survival. Good humor and good science.
Authority. Nathan Barry; business
How to write and sell an ebook. Nice overview.
Traction. Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares; business
Strategies for marketing young startups. Wonderfully broad. Skip the interview transcripts; the only interesting thing in them is how thoroughly Alexis Ohanion has written Aaron Swartz out of Reddit’s early history.
Superintelligence. Nick Bostrom; science
Painfully dry speculation on the risks AI poses to humanity. Feels a bit like speculating about powered flight before the Wright brothers: it’s clear there’s some big changes in store, but most of the guesses are probably nonsense.
Design For How People Learn. Julie Dirksen; education
How to educate effectively. Reading this was one long series of “Oh, so that’s where I screwed up that class/presentation/email” realizations.
Desert Solitaire. Edward Abbey; memoir
Stories from a rural park ranger. Wonderfully earnest.
The Senior Software Engineer. David Bryan Copeland; programming
How to be a professional developer. I disagree completely with the “don’t respond until you’ve done something” advice, but otherwise it’s solid.
Passages. Gail Sheehy; anthropology
A classic, but hard to relate to given today’s prolonged adolescence and economic recession.
Dataclysm. Christian Runnder, popular science
Datacandy. A few hundred pages of cute trends in OKCupid’s data followed by one chapter on the deep social problems caused by invasive tracking.
Making Learning Whole. David Perkins, education
How to structure education for effective learning.
What Makes Love Last?. John Gottman, Nan Silver, self-help
A little prone to coining jargon, but otherwise a good guide to diagnosing and healing relationship issues.
Quantum Computing Since Democritus. Scott Aaronson, science
I heard this described as teaching quantum computing from the first principle of “what if, instead of the probabilities summing to one, the square root of the sum of the squares was one?” A great idea, but this is not that book, and I don’t have the deep math knowledge to do more than cling on for the first few pages of each chapter.
Ra. Stephen Hughes, sci-fi
Magic as science thoroughly explored. Needs an edit pass, but a good read.
* Anathem. Neal Stephenson, sci-fi
10th read, my favorite sci-fi novel of the last decade. Nerd teens investigate a mystery growing to loom over their sheltered existences.
How Not To Be Wrong. Jordan Ellenberg, pop sci
Really nice exploration of what math means as a practical matter.
This One Summer. Mariko Tamaki, Jillian Tamaki, fiction
Coming-of-age story at a summer cottage. Beautiful art and storytelling.
The Profitable Side Project Handbook. Rachel Andrew, business
Only informed by one project. “Start Small, Stay Small” is still a much better read on the same topic.

2015

The Peripheral. William Gibson; sci-fi
A dystopian near-future is overwhelmed by a far-future dispute. Wonderful writing, excellent sci-fi.
Information Doesn’t Want to be Free. Cory Doctorow; politics
The last hundred years of copyright policy, how it has intersected terribly with the Internet, and what laws should be. Comprehensive and well-argued.
Professional Software Development. Steve McConnell; programming
How to deal with the decades-long gold rush in programming.
* Code Complete, 2nd ed. Steve McConnell; programming
I didn’t realize how much I learned from the first edition 20 years ago until reading this again now. There’s plenty to quibble with (style choices, some undersupported research) but the book has overwhelming value.
Smartcuts. Shane Snow; business
Rah-rah VC startup culture nonsense.
Clear and Simple as the Truth 2nd ed. Francis-Noel Thomas, Mark Turner; rhetoric
How to write authoritatively.
* Working Effectively With Unit Tests. Jay Fields; programming
An excellent exploration of unit tests. The concept of cascading updates is vital. I quibble that his “solitary” tests are unit tests and “sociable” tests are integration tests. I’d like to make the time to port all the examples to Ruby.
Software Estimation. Steve McConnell; programming
How to estimate better when software will complete; valuable even in the age of anti-BDUF agile. Part III is probably only useful if you work on large projects.
The Alloy of Law. Brandon Sanderson; fantasy
Start of a sequel trilogy to the Mistborn trilogy (a friend wrongly told me it was a standalone novel). Nice blend of fantasy and western.
Bad Data Handbook. Ethan McCallum; programming
Get, process, and view the info. After I did this a few dozen times at the Washington Post I can say this book’s advice is spot-on.
I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me. Jerold J. Kreisman, Hal Straus; psychology
The pathology and treatment of borderline personality disorder.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Eliezer Yudkowsky; fanfic
Starts as a wacky culture clash of modern science in Rowling’s magical setting. After a few dozen chapters it turns into a grim grind of characters plotting against each other endlessly. Dropped when the author posted the setup of the climax and said the story would have a “shorter and sadder ending” unless readers guessed the ending and posted a review of the story (which the fan fiction site counts as endorsements). I mentioned last year I avoid in-progress works, here’s a novel, weirdly extortionate why.
Using Structured Design. Wayne J. Stevens; programming
An excellent 1981 book on composing and organizing programs.
Low-Tech Hacking. Jack Wiles; security
Basic physical security: social engineering, locks, and lots of miscellany.
Maybe Haskell. Pat Brisbin; programming
Long-form monad tutorial. With a few exercises it could be perfect.
Just Listen. Mark Goulston; self-help
Great book on effective personal communication. I read it, thought about it a few weeks, caught myself using some of the techniques, and read it again.
The Knowledge. Lewis Dartnell; pop science
Too high-level to be practible, but still a nice read on bootstrapping technology once you get past the first two chapters’ lurid fantasizing about the collapse of civilization.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Marie Kondo; self-help
A moderately twee book about decluttering one’s home.
The Power of Habit. Charles Duhigg; pop science
A bunch of stories I don’t quite believe that illustrate the lessons of uncited research papers on habits.
* How to Win Friends and Influence People. Dale Carnegie; self-help
A practical guide to being kind and generous. The “revised editions” lose character and coherence, pass on them.
Daemon. Daniel Suarez; thriller
Insipid Dan Brown wannabe with magic scary computers.
* Debugging. David J. Agans; programming
2nd read. A valuable, practical guide.
The Mongoliad, Book Two; Book Three. multiple; fantasy
Compelling low fantasy set against the 13th century Mongol invasion of Europe. The “go kill the Khan” plot is great and the “wander around the occupation” storyline is decent, but I recommend you entirely skip every chapter of the book 2 + 3 storyline about Father Rodrigo and Rome: it’s slow, predictable, revolves around a character who is crazy whenever convenient for the plot, and only once connects to the established plot in an estatic vision. I’m done with this series/world, but if anyone can spoil the banner/twig subplot please email me.
Invasion of Privacy. Michael Weber; privacy
A vital topic written about in an insipidly breathless style. I was hoping for a guide I could recommend popularly but dropped it in the second chapter.
The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate. Eliezer Yudkowsky, Robert Hanson; essays
The didactic arguing the uninformed. Old content repackaged like Jell-O salad.
A Deepness in the Sky. Vernor Vinge; sci-fi
2nd read. I described the great couple pages of exposition about the role of future programmers and had to reread it.
* Badass. Kathy Sierra; business
A must-read for anyone who makes something with users. Read twice this year; referenced often.
We Learn Nothing. Tim Kreider; essays
Human, insightful essays.
Authority. Nathan Barry; business
2nd read. How to write and sell ebooks. Decent.
Wireless. Charlie Stross; sci-fi
Nice anthology, though I skipped the Wooster/Jeeves setup with an unlikeable narrator.
* The Mom Test. Rob Fitzpatrick; business
2nd read. How to interview potential customers without accidentally misleading yourself.
Clean Ruby. Jim Gay; programming
If Ruby had namespaces or you already had DDD bounded contexts DCI could be brilliant, but without those it is almost completely insane. But it has a really sharp analysis of common Ruby problems and is good brain-stretching practice.
CLOSURE. _why the lucky stuff; programming
2nd read. The culture of programming.
Dark Pools. Scott Patterson; history
The rise of algorithmic and high-frequency trading.
Bitcoin for the Befuddled. Conrad Barski, Chris Wilmer; technology
Lurches between how-to, handwaving cartoons, and serious math, all sprinkled with delusional boosterism.
The Magicians,
The Magician King,
The Magician’s Land. Lev Grossman; fantasy
Well-written deconstruction of the narcissist magical masquerade/portal fantasy tropes. I laughed out loud at some of the clever writing.
Seveneves. Neal Stephenson; sci-fi
A story of the end of the world. Mostly exposition by volume. Part 3 would’ve been better as a sequel.
Handbook of Self-Determination Research. Edward L. Deci, Richard M. Ryan; academic
An academic anthology of papers related to self-determination theory.
Floornight. nostalgabraist; sci-fi
Science can measure and divide the soul but then alternate dimensions and half the cast is secretly from other worlds and random stupid nonsense happened until I dropped it.
* Anathem. Neal Stephenson; sci-fi
11th read; still awesome.
* Close to the Machine. Ellen Ullman, literature
My favorite book on the culture of software development that has grown to drive general culture over decades.
Red Dragon. Thomas Harris; thriller
Great, creepy read.
* The Silence of the Lambs. Thomas Harris; thriller
The perfect thriller novel.
Hannibal. Thomas Harris; thriller
An decent sequel ruined by a batshit ending.
Hannibal Rising. Thomas Harris; thriller
WTF, a Mary Sue prequel!?
Supergods. Grant Morrison; history, autobiography
An insightful wander through the history of superhero comics and culture.
The End of Absence. Michael Harris; literature
What does it mean to always be connected? Skip part 2, it’s shallow interviews and desultory self-experimentation.
The Surgeon of Crowthorne. Simon Winchester; history
Fun, weird story of a major contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Thinking Functionally with Haskell. Richard Bird; programming
A very academic introduction to Haskell.
Object Design. Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Alan McKean; programming
One really insightful and valuable section about object role stereotypes; the rest is good but is now common wisdom or better-covered in Domain-Driven Design.
Toast. Charlie Stross; sci-fi
This anthology is full of fun ideas and most stories have are love-or-hate manic.
* Data and Goliath. Bruce Schneier; politics, security
A must-read on how and why privacy and security are vanishing in ways we’re barely aware of.
Mindset. Carol Dweck; self-help
Nice pop science cover of her fascinating research.
Design For How People Learn. Julie Dirksen; education
How to design useful education materials and usable products.
Holy Fire. Bruce Sterling; sci-fi
My 2nd read comes 20 years after my first and I see a whole new side to this deep, thoughtful novel of age and surveillance culture.
Confessions of a Public Speaker. Scott Berkun; business
Personal stories about public speaking. Fun read, though not a great how-to.
Winning Through Intimidation. Robert Ringer; business
How a middleman thrived despite cutthroat negotiation. Read after Dawson.
The Progress Principle. Teresa Amabile, Steven Kramer; business
Description of important research in motivation and collaboration as parable.
* Ratio. Michael Ruhlman; cooking
The cookbook I have wanted for twenty years: covers the fundamentals of cooking and baking to equip the reader to experiment and tweak successfully.
The Power of Habit. Charles Duhigg; psychology
Read the appendix first; late chapers on organizations are a bit of a stretch.
Rationality. Eliezer Yudkowsky; psychology, logic
Long collection of essays on what it means to be right and how to accomplish it. Under-cited, prone to coining jargon, and occasionally immature, but it’s irreplaceable for its breadth and clarity. It’s also much improved over its previous collection as “The Sequences” by organization, intros, and light editing.
A Manual for Creating Atheists. Peter Boghossian; rhetoric
An OK read hampered by not hitting the books on actual research into how people change their minds. Refreshingly, it has zero of the standard justifications for atheism or pussyfooting around religious worldviews.
What Shamu Taught Me. Amy Sutherland; psychology
Persuasion that actually works on humans; not over-long.
Misspent Youth: Peter F. Hamilton; sci-fi
Narcissist gets everything (and everyone) he ever wanted because he’s just so special. Read to the bitter end waiting for the denouement but the author had no idea what he story he was telling.
Pandora’s Star: Peter F. Hamilton; sci-fi
Humans cure aging and can travel to other planets as cheaply as a plane flight and this changes nothing about society. When a planet of billions was presented as less varied than my neighborhood I dropped this author.
Early Retirement Extreme. Jacob Lund Fisker, Zev Averbach, Ann Beaver; personal finance
A compelling alternative to the standard American life script.

2016

The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. Jonathan D. Spence; biography
Organized topically rather than chronologically, so I’m left wondering about basic events of his life and whether he felt like he accomplished anything. Also, everyone in the past was terrible.
Getting Past “No”. William Ury; sales
Nice advice for negotiation.
Library of Scott Alexandria. Scott Alexander; essays
Insightful food for thought on rationality, science, politics, and more.
Work The System: Sam Carpenter; self-help
“The E-Myth Revisited” reinvented by an unlikable blowhard.
* Haskell Programming from First Principles. Chris Allen, Julie Moronuki; programming
Far and away the best introduction to Haskell and the vital CS topics at work. Half my notes are “Huh, this reminds me of outside topics X and Y. *tinker* Ohhhh, that’s an interesting equivalence.” and that’s for a section introducing case statements. I maintain a repo of referenced resources.
The Vampire Chronicles. Anne Rice; fantasy
Cheesy thrillers about a narcissist become increasingly bizarre Christian fanfic.
80/20 Sales and Marketing. Perry Marshall; sales
Salesy take on pareto distribution.
Pitch Anything. Oren Klaff; sales
Smug and based on terrible pop science, but a decent framework.
The Secrets of Consulting. Gerald Weinberg; business
A rambly uncle tells fish stories about consulting.
Lost Souls; Drawing Blood. Poppy Z. Brite; horror
Revisiting an angsty pair of novels, and I have definitely aged out of the audience.
Significant Digits. Alexander D; fantasy
A fanfic off the HPMOR fanfic. OK, but the plot and resolution are based on a strange fan theory that’s never explained.
* Badass. Kathy Sierra, business
3rd read, still learning ways to do better.
Tap Dancing to Work. Carol Loomis; business
A collection of Forbes articles on Buffet. Decent intro, but way too friendly and familiar to feel substantive.
A Guide to the Good Life. William B. Irvine; philosophy
Excellent introduction to stoicism and its modern practice.
PACE. Jesse Mecham, business
A curiosity: an abandoned restatement of Mecham’s YNAB rules for business.
Echopraxia. Peter Watts; sci-fi
Unhappy loser gets dragged to space by assholes who also bring an attacker for no discernible reason, curse her sudden yet inevitable betrayal, wreck earth’s economy, then doom the planet. Relentlessly unhappy but, as with Watts’ other books, every dozen pages has more ideas than most novels.
* Deep Work. Cal Newport; self-help
How and why to do difficult work.
Are You My Mother. Alison Bechdel; memoir
Purportedly about her mom, but actually evenly split between her own therapy and the process of writing this memoir. An OK book, but it can’t compare to Fun Home.
Before Watchmen: Various; superhero
These authors didn’t understand anything about Watchmen.
* Age of Em. Robin Hanson, futurism
Guesses at what a future with digitized humans would look like. Incredibly dense, any given page would give enough setting to hang a decent sci-fi novel on. Skim the first couple chapters, they’re academic throat-clearing trying to preempt obvious criticism.
Letter to a CES Director. Jeremy Runnells; history
Short amateur survey of historical criticism of Mormonism, a novel focus to me.
Distress. Greg Egan; sci-fi
Nice setting, but the protagonist just stumbles around 400 pages.
Permutation City. Greg Egan; sci-fi
Introduces a mind-bendingly great question for materialism, decent plot.
Quarantine. Greg Egan; sci-fi
Causality muddled, hijinks ensue.
Draft Evidence. Dick Disabato, business
Its advertising claimed it’s “how to create a durable, sustainable solo design practice”, but it’s actually unedited reprints of narcissistic email newsletter articles. Dropped early.
When Coffee and Kale Compete. Alan Klement; business
Introduction to the “Jobs to Be Done” methodology for understanding customer needs.
Weapons of Math Destruction. Cathy O’Neil; pop science
A decent lay explanation of algorithms and their unintended consequences. Author later wrote a bad criticism of futurists where nearly everyone named just so happened to be Jewish, so I guess maybe she thinks caring about the future is some kind of global zionist conspiracy.
Unsong. Scott Alexander; fantasy
Fun fantasy based on the Kabbalah, wordplay, and stories.
The Procrastinator’s Digest. Timothy A. Pychyl
Useful quick read.
Tribes. Seth Godin; marketing
Small communities and local fame.
Your First 1,000 Copies. Tim Grahl; marketing
Does what it says on the tin.
Information Doesn’t Want to be Free. Cory Doctorow; culture
Good thoughts on what the world looks like when digital distribution is free.
Aurora. Kim Stanley Robinson; sci-fi
Rather bleak take on a generation ship.
Hourly Billing is Nuts. Jonathan Stark; consulting
A disconnected series of unedited blog posts mostly cribbing from Alan Weiss’s Value-Based Fees.
On Tyranny. Timoth Snyder; politics
How to mentally and physically survive tyranny, and begin to resist it.
The Long Walk. Stephen King; sci-fi
Maybe the ur-text of the modern crop of dystopian young adult novels.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Robert M. Pirsig; philosophy
Read first in college for the zen, again now for the maintenance.
Shaman’s Crossing, Renegade’s Magic, Forest Mage: Robin Hobb; fantasy
Everyone is terrible to the protagonist and then he saves the day by being magically special. Dropped about 25 pages into book two when it became a retread of the first.
Podcast Outreach. Kai Davis; business
How to guest on podcasts as content marketing.
The Little Book of Common-Sense Investing. John C. Bogle; personal finance
A nice brief guide to individual investing from the founder of Vanguard.
Million Dollar Consulting. Alan Weiss; consulting
The best book on how to work into and succeed at high-end consulting.
The Populist Explosion. John B. Judis; politics
A bit of false equivalence between political wings, but a decent exploration of populism.
Programming Beyond Practices. Gregory T. Brown; programming
Stories of development practices, though sometimes kinda pat.
They Thought They Were Free. Milton Mayer; history
Nazi Germany through the eyes of its working-class supporters.
Luminous,
The Eternal Flame,
The Arrows of Time. Greg Egan; sci-fi
Another mindminding take on fundamentally different laws of physics that’s mostly of interest to physics fans.
Getting Started in Consulting. Alan Weiss; consulting
About 85% the same as Weiss’s “Million-Dollar Consulting”, read that instead.
The Fall of Doc Future. A Muse; sci-fi
Overpowered superheros rescue themselves from themselves.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame vols 2A and 2B. Ben Bova; sci-fi
Great anthologies.
The Consulting Bible. Alan Weiss; consulting
About 85% the same as Weiss’s “Million-Dollar Consulting”, read that instead.
Shadows of the Limelight. Alexander Wales, superhero
What if superpowers were powered in proportion to how famous their wielder was? Great take on the narcissism of superheroes.

2017

A Deepness in the Sky. Verner Vinge; sci-fi
3rd read. Mentioned the future programmers at Recurse Center and had to reread. Also worth reading DRMacIver’s “Programmer at Large” that’s roughly a fanfic.
Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders. Warren Buffett; business
Skim ruthlessly if you want to read this, definitely skip any mention of out-of-date accounting law. Mostly interesting for what he leaves out of the myth-making, like when he lauded Rose Blumkin yearly and then didn’t mention her the year she left the company, then did again when he talked around how he acquired her next business.
The Pirate Book. Nicolas Maigret; Maria Roszkowska, culture
The history and art of various pirate communities.
The Ultimate Sales Machine. Chet Holmes; sales
A better-than-most sales anecdote book.
The Two Year Emperor. Eagle Jarl; fantasy
D&D munchkin crackfic.
The Traders’ War,
The Bloodline Fued,
The Revolution Trade. Charles Stross; sci-fi
A second Merchant Princes trilogy. Great worldbuilding and story, but the politics got overly grimdark for me given world events.
New York 2140. Kim Stanley Robinson; sci-fi
Dropped at the start of part six when I realized I didn’t believe in or care about the world or characters.
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible. Peter Pomerantsev; media
Personal stories of working in Russian propaganda.
Chrono Trigger. Michael P. Williams; games
Decent long read about the game, but not substantial enough without some help from nostalgia. Leaves me curious to read more Boss Fight books, though.
The Word Detective. Evan Morris; trivia
An interesting personal story, but I dropped it when I realized that was only prologue to 150 pages of language trivia.
House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski; horror
3rd read. A wonderfully creepy story with new discoveries every reread. Must be read in print.
* Close to the Machine. Ellen Ullman; programming
14th (?) read after seeing Ullman speak. Got me thinking about computing ethics 10 years earlier than I otherwise would’ve, still one of my favorite books about programming. Brian is totally into Bitcoin.
Life in Code. Ellen Ullman; programming
Essays, mostly downers, about programming.
Master & Commander,
Post Captain,
HMS Surprise,
Mauritius Command,
Desolation Island,
Fortune of War. Patrick O’Brian; historical
Started reading to have something light and non-technical while attending Recurse. Wonderfully dry, laconic series of period nautical adventures. Fingers crossed that Diana Villiers falls overboard sometime real soon now for toying with Maturin, who is precious to me.
Come as You Are. Emily Nagoski; pop science
Good read on women’s sexuality, but the inclusion of “healthy at any size” nonsense impeaches the rest of the science.
An Interview with BJ Fogg. Ramit Sethi; marketing
I haven’t included short pieces in this before, but Sethi’s blog post said “Treat it like something you spent $1,000 on”, so: this is an incredible rip-off. It’s disorganized, chatty, with enormous omissions of critical topics and facile treatments of what’s included. If Sethi thinks this is worth $1,000, none of his online courses are worth a dollar. (Read Cialdini’s Persuasion that this cribs from instead.)
* Impro. Jay Abraham; theater
2nd read after ~20 years. Personal recollections and notes on teaching improv theater, which is uninteresting to me, but the chapter on status is perhaps the most valuable 42 pages I’ve ever read for laying bare the workings of a social phenomenon.
Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got. Jay Abraham; marketing
A worse than most sales anecdote book.
Inadequate Equilibria. Eleizer Yudkowsy; culture
A smart person’s guide to coping with the insasity and inanity of the world. Unfortunately a big chunk of it is a dialogue, a rhetorical style that rightly died a couple hundred years back.
* Haskell Programming From First Principles. Chris Allen and Julie Moronuki; programming
Finished working through my favorite programming book of the last several years. Referenced resources.

2018

Surgeon’s Mate,
The Ionian Mission,
Treason’s Harbour.
The Far side of the World,
The Reverse of the Medal,
The Letter of Marque,
The Thirteen Gun Salute,
The Nutmeg of Consolation.
The Truelove,
The Wine-Dark Sea,
The Commodore,
The Yellow Admiral,
The Hundred Days,
Blue at the Mizzen. Patrick O’Brian; historical
More Napoleonic-era nautical adventures in period English. Wonderfully creative and thrilling.
Fire and Fury. Michael Wolff; politics
I look forward to the inevitable libel suits to see if there’s support for the unbelievable anecdotes in this book. Edit: of course there wouldn’t be suits, they don’t want discovery.
The Undoing Project. Michael Lewis; pop science
The personal history of the work of Kahneman and Tversky. Read Thinking, Fast and Slow instead.
* Time Management for System Administrators. Thomas A. Limoncelli; self-help
2nd read. I’ve been revising my personal workflow and revisited a favorite.
Babel-17. Samuel R. Delaney; sci-fi
Spiritual predecessor to Snow Crash.
Artemis. Andy Weir; sci-fi
An OK sci-fi adventure. The protagonist’s naivety makes other characters look annoyingly stupid for the first 2/3rds of the book, but only one of one of their actions (the posse guarding airlocks from the outside) is actually stupid.
Creative Interviewing. Ken Metzler; journalism
A nice overview of the topic for new journalists.
The Craft of Interviewing. John Brady; journalism
Mostly anecdotes.
Interviewing. Peter Laufer; journalism
The best of these three interviewing books, and quite good.
Replace Capitalism. Marshall Brain; economics
A specter is haunting the Internet — the specter of thoughtless ahistorical arguments for a command economy.
* The World According to Mr. Rogers. Fred Rogers; philosophy
A collection of quotes from his materials, worth reflecting at a rate of one quote per day.
* Corruption in America. Zephyr Teachout; history
A history of the ever-shrinking definition of corruption in American politics.
The State of Affairs. Esther Perel; self-help
Issues and perspectives presented as salacious anecdote instead of serious discussion, research, or models.
The Power. Naomi Alderman; sci-fi
Freely granting the premise (hey, it’s simpler than the X-Men), the book is painfully implausible. Dropped after the ridiculous eviction scene.
Anki Essentials. Alex Vermeer; manual
A better introduction to Anki than the official manual. Only minor bits of outdated info for Anki 2.1.
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. Mike Brown; pop science
Memoir of his astronomical research leading up to Pluto’s demotion. The attempted theft of a planet was a surprising turn.
Rome’s Last Citizen. Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni; biography
Compelling story of a tragically uncompromising politician during the death of the Roman Empire.
* The Dark Wizard of Donkerk. Alexander Wales; fantasy
The plot and setting are decent, but the way the protagonists think, plan, and decide is so rarely, wonderfully true to my experience that I read this in one sitting.
The Effective Engineer. Edmond Lau, programming
“The Profitable Engineer”. An extended YC News blog post on how to make the most money for the venture capitalist that owns you. Ignores high-leverage topics like choosing meaningful work, salary and contract negotiation, not working for people with horrifically misaligned interests, ethics, etc. etc.
The Freeze-Frame Revolution. Peter Watts, sci-fi
Interesting setting, but the narrator is mostly uninvolved with the plot, so it’s not particularly engaging. Wait for an omnibus that prints this novella between the short stories also set in the “Sunflowers” series.
The Unwritten: Mike Carey, fantasy
Great comic that builds a world and reaches towards a climax... and then instead has a crossover with some other comic, incomprehensibly lurching into its story with The Unwritten characters as minor side characters.
* Factfulness. Hans Rosling, pop science
Global trends in human well-being and rationality, interspersed with anecdotes of rural medicine, meeting Fidel Castro, and fighting ebola.
Profit First. Mike Michalowicz, business
YNAB/pay yourself first for the entrepreneur struggling with cash flow. A bit rah-rah, but decent rules of thumb.
Speed of Dark. Elizabeth Moon, sci-fi
Doesn’t work. Bad ending.
Lower Ed. Tressie McMillan Cottom, history
Chapter one explains that graduates of for-profit colleges get jobs on par with high school graduates, and then there’s another two hundred pages.
Out on the Wire. Jessica Abel, journalism
The differing production processes of famous NPR shows.
Spell on Wheels. Kate Leth, Megan Levens, Marissa Louise; fantasy
A group of witches road trip through challenges based on on structural injustices... to defend their genetic superiority from an inferior hoping to join them. An OK story, but thematically incoherent.
StoryCraft. Jack Hart: journalism
Structure and production of narrative non-fiction.
* The Mom Test. Rob Fitzpatrick; business
3rd read; for Anki cards. The best book on how to do customer development. I only wish there was a hardcover so I could get a satisfying “thunk” when I hit entrepreneurs with it.

2018

Comics

2014

Iron Man volumes 1-4. Various; superhero
I was curious to read Iron Man when the first movie came out, so I picked up the complete run. This entry marks the end of my slow and fitful read. Vol 1: starts pretty cheesy and awful (I skimmed/skipped a lot of these), but around issue #110 it picks up with some solid storytelling and occasionally great art until around #250. This is the core of Iron Man and the only part I’d recommend. Vol 2: unreadable, incoherent garbage. Vol 3: An OK run. Tony fights some villains and is an asshole to his girlfriend, ends poorly with him becoming the Secretary of Defense. Vol 4: generally quite good, though often marred by multi-title crossover arcs. I think the entire purpose of S.H.I.E.L.D is to build trapdoors for writers who have painted themselves into corners, and this volume has Tony becoming the Director (cough).
Petrograd. Philip Gelatt and Tyler Crook, historical fiction
What if the assassination of Rasputin was a plot by English intelligence services? Great comic.

2015

Daredevil: Guardian Devil. Kevin Smith, Joe Quesada; superhero
Daredevil is antagonized for no particular reason in a wordy, clunky story.
Ultra: Seven Days; superhero
A superhero story about their friendships rather than punching villains. The leering tabloids are a nice if-this-was-real touch, but the tasteless scene ending in a broken window near the end of the book had me rethinking whether that leer was just the authors’ all along.
Federal Bureau of Physics v1; sci-fi
Didn’t realize this was ongoing. Nice start, may turn out to be excellent worldbuilding or stupid mustache-twirling.
House of M
Decimation
Deadly Genesis
Endangered Species
Messiah Complex
Divided We Stand
Manifest Destiny
Messiah War
Utopia
Nation X
Necrosha
Second Coming
New X-Men
“The secret of Big Macs is that they’re not very good, but every one is not very good in exactly the same way. If you’re willing to live with not-very-goodness, you can have a Big Mac with absolutely no chance of being surprised in the slightest.”
The Boys. Garth Ennis, Darick Robertston; superhero parody
An over-the-top gross-out anti-superhero farce.
Death of the Family; superhero
The Joker has himself mutilated, then attacks Batman and his various sidekicks. Not really a coherent story.
Ex Machina: Brian K Vaughan, Tony Harris; superhero
Superhero turned politician does politics, has adventures, drops plot lines, suffers an author insert, and brings the plot to stumbling conclusion that implies everything he did was worthless (and not in a deep literary way).

Video Games

2015

* Shovel Knight. Yacht Club Games; platformer
An incredibly polished love letter to the NES era.
Hexcells; Hexcells Infinite. Matthew Brown Games; puzzle
Minesweeper with hexagons, more rules, and (infuriatingly) perfectly reversed controls. The sequel is just more levels, but fixes the controls.
A Good Snowman is Hard to Build. Alan Hazelden, Benjamin Davis, Ryan Roth; puzzle
A charming little riff on Sokoban. After solving the puzzles, nap on a bench for a harder set.
Mountain. David O’Reilly; sim
Ambient background game that feels a bit like teenage poetry: tosses out evocative ideas, but there’s no coherent point to it. A nicer idea than execution, so I hope to see more games explore this liminal space.
Fry Cry 4. Ubisoft; open world action
FC3 was the first open world game I’ve played; this was the second. I played it to pieces, 100% completion even though stealth-attacking bases is almost all of the fun. To increase difficulty, I had a lot of personal rules: must be unsuspected (not just zero alarms), only weapon kukri, no throwing knives/grenades/meat/stones, no mines/c4, and often no dragging bodies or moving fallen bodies.
FTL: Advanced Edition. Subset Games; sim
Star Trek as a time management game. Very polished update to the original, but no improvement to the ending.
A Druid’s Duel. Thoughtshelter Games; tactical
Really quite different grid-based tactical combat with short-lived units.
Hero Generations. Heart Shaped Games; puzzle
Clever roguelike. Fun, but the UI has a lot of low-hanging fruit waiting to get fixed
Yomi. Sirlin Games; card
The video game of one of my favorite card games, which simulates a video game. It’s Street Fighter 2 as a beautiful card game about outguessing your opponent. Unfortunately the price you see is only half the game; the other half of the characters are unlocked by an in-app purchase (currently USD $15).
* TIS-100. Zachtronics; programming
A captivating game for programmers about coding concurrent assembly using the actor model.
Hero Siege. Panic Arts Studios; action
Twin-stick shooter heavily inspired by Binding of Isaac. An almost totally bland grind, like a hot dog bun-eating contest, but sort of satisfying for it.
Nightmare Cooperative. Lucky Frame; puzzle
Turn-based tactical game with nice art and one big idea (group movement) that works quite well.
* Towerfall and Dark World DLC; platformer
My addiction after completing Spelunky; also a great party game. (AKA “That one game for the Ouya”.)
OlliOlli. action
Cute 2d skateboard tricking game that I dropped quick due to unclear, hyper-touchy controls.
Quest of Dungeons
Weak, unpolished roguelike wannabe.
Skullgirls. Autumn Games; fighting
Similar to Marvel vs. Capcom. Art is stripperiffic, but the gameplay is solid. Deeper than I wanted to get into without friends to play for endless summer high school days.
To The Moon. Freebird Games; adventure
Looks like an RPG, but plays like a point-and-click adventure. I don’t enjoy those, so I dropped this about twenty minutes in.
Orion Trail. Schell Games; puzzle
Affectionate Trek parody. Unfortunately thin on mechanics with a dominant strategy.
Xenonauts. Goldhawk Interactive; tactical
Fun, faithful X-Com remake with a better UI and a few great new mechanics. For polish and variety, add these mods: Raz’s NoHiddenTurn, Enhanced Crash Sites, Saracen Reborn, Instant Grenades, Random Map Pack - Farm Edition, Random Map Pack - Desert Style, Random Map Pack - Arctic Collection, Khall’s More Portraits, NamesOfTheWorld, Lore+.
Papers, Please. 3909; puzzle
Shuffle papers as a border control officer to a Soviet satellite. So well-themed it never occurred to me that you get performance-based pay — a friend told me when I confusedly complained it was impossible to get very far.
One Way Heroics. Smoking Wolf; RPG
Cute little game, though I was more satisfied by how well the central mechanic pokes fun at old-school RPG stories than the gameplay.
Dust. Humble Hearts; metroidvania
Pretty but tedious due to slow button-mash combat. Dropped about 2 hours in.
Steam Controller
A wonderful piece of hardware that’s different enough from every other controller that it takes 10-20h to really “click”. Unfortunately, as comfortable and powerful it is, the configuration software is very bad (often loses configurations, fails to load, stops working, or otherwise prevents use) and shows no signs of improvement after 3 months of regular updates. I hope this will be worth linking in 2016.

2016

Endless Legend. Amplitude Studios; 4X
Enjoyable grand strategy for people who thought Civ was a bit too short and simple. Missing and poor documentation, so be ready with Google to learn.
Tidalis. Arcen Games; puzzle
Unpolished but deep puzzle game.
The Talos Principle. Croteam; puzzle
Well-paced and highly polished first-person puzzle game.
* Crypt of the NecroDancer. Brace Yourself Games; roguelike
Rhythm-based roguelike. Really scratches my itch for a difficult but fairly mindless action game.
Celestian Tales: Old North. Ekuator Games; RPG
Thoroughly generic RPG. Bland presentation, tedious story, uninteresting battles; dropped an hour in.
The Novelist
Sad people choose-your-own adventure. Ignore the shoehorned stealth game mode. Dropped after one chapter.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon. 00-Evan; roguelike
Great little mobile roguelike.
Hero Generations: ReGen. Jon Shafer; roguelike
This refresh fixes enough of the UI issues that I was annoyed at gameplay instead. Probably a solid game, but it’s really hard to feel like I’m learning viable strategies as I play.
Dungeon of the Endless: Amplitude Studios; tower defense
I couldn’t tell if it was unplayable because of bugginess or bad design, but the millimeter-high font has me thinking the latter.
Conquest of Elysium 3. Illwinter; strategy
Basic stack of death turn-based strategy with a clunky UI, but the wonderfully weird factions make this a hidden gem.
* Invisible, Inc.. Klei; strategy
Wonderful turn-based tactical stealth with randomized levels, I’ve played 120+ hours. Has a few small UI quirks that UI Tweaks mostly fixes and No Dialogues is essential after two or three playthroughs. (Neither interferes with achievements.)

2017

* Crypt of the Necrodancer: Amplified. Brace Yourself Games; roguelike
Solid DLC for a personal favorite game. I’m up to 275h played and still having fun.
SpaceChem. Zachtronics; puzzle
Mechanical crypto-programming game.
Shenzen Solitaire. Zachtronics; puzzle
A nice solitaire that I enjoyed solving.
* Fez. Polytron; platformer
2nd playthrough of a gem.
Undertale. Toby Fox; RPG
Very affectionate parody of 80s/90s console RPGs.
Life Goes On. Infinite Monkeys; puzzle
A puzzle platformer where you have to leave bodies to build up solutions. Cute take on puzzle platformers, decent puzzles.
Ironclad Tactics. Zachtronics; tactical
Grindy tactical RTS/card game. OK, but didn’t really grab me.
Castle Story. Sauropod Studios; RTS
Cute castle-building RTS. Finally playable with the late-2017 UI update.
Oculus Rift: First Contact and Superhot
Fun to try VR, didn’t induce as much nausea in me as most all 3d games do. Great sense of presence and Superhot was a very strong action puzzler.

2018

Fantasy Strike. David Sirlin; fighter
Deep, accessible fighter; the first where I could recognize and enjoy the strategies of the different character matchups. Even figuring out how to counter “cheap” strategies is fun.
Tonight We Riot. Pixel Pushers Union 512; beat-em-up
A competent example of a genre I’m not interested in.
The Witness. Jonathan Blow; puzzle
Still in progress, but so far worth the motion sickness.
Star Realms. White Wizard Games; strategy
A deep game, though with very high variance (top players only win 60% of matches). The tablet-oriented UI needs keyboard shortcuts.
Out There: Ω Edition. Mi-Clos Studio; roguelike
Very nice setting, core game loop, and balance, but too shallow for more than a few hours of play. Bad controls and UI, even before the fact that they didn’t change when the game was ported from tablets.
Everspace. Rockfish Games; space sim
Fun space shooter with PCG. Tons of mandatory between-game level grinding (like Rogue Legacy) so I can’t call it a roguelike, and it makes the PCG quickly feel quite thin.
* King of Dragon Pass. A#; strategy
Colonize a new land while competing and cooperating with rival clans. Not Yet Another Strategy Wargame, frequent events that build on each other, trade, and diplomacy make this an enjoyable, novel take on the genre.
Convoy. Convoy Games; time management
Basically FTL with constant micromanagement of unit locations. The map is a nice addition but UI and writing are significantly worse.
Legend of Dungeon. Robot Loves Kitty; beat-em-up
Feels like a beta. Simple beat-em-up with mushy controls and random, possibly unplayable levels.
Acquaria: Bit Blot, dunno
Saw a ghost, found my home, never had a goal or could go more than two minutes in any direction away from the home. Looked everywhere, nothing to interact with and no gameplay.

Tabletop Games

2015

Power Grid. Rio Grand Games, 2-6 players for 120-150m
Expand territory and compete for limited resources via auction and market. Beautiful catch-up mechanics, but we repeatedly missed important rules (auction starters who don’t win can start new auctions, you can build through cities you can’t build in, etc.). I suspect we’ve missed more because a game has never gone long enough to enter “Step 3”.
Netrunner. Fantasy Flight Games, 2 players for 20-45m
Played a half-dozen games and barely avoided getting obsessed. Deeply engaging asymetrical game.
Discworld. Martin Wallace, 2-4 players for 30-60m
A slightly fiddly game of territorial control that ends abruptly due to secret goal conditions.
Resistance. Indie Boards and Cards, 5-10 players for 45m
A social deduction role game similar to mafia/werewolf. Uneven pacing, and I learned I find lying games to be mostly unfun stress.
* Yomi, 2nd ed: Sirlin Games; primarily 2 players for 20-30m, alternate modes for 3-4 players for 25-35m
Simulates Street Fighter as rock, paper, scissors with hit points and special edition; doubles the size of the 1st ed with 21 characters. Amazingly great game; I’ve played several hundred matchups and look forward to many, many more for years. High quality materials, mostly good art. Tragically not available as a complete box set to avoid sloppy reviewers making bad price comparisons.
* Flash Duel, 2nd Ed., Revised Printing: Sirlin Games; primarily 2 players for 5-10m, alternate modes for 3-5 players for 10-20m
Great update for a favorite: better endgame and materials, though box is still 2x oversized. Quick to learn and beautifully deep; I’ll be playing Flash Duel for decades.
Robot Turtles. 1 adult and 1-4 children for 15-20m
Teaches some programming skills around decomposing problems, planning ahead, and giving instructions. Includes variant rules for ages 3-8, and it was enjoyed by the kids I ran the game for a few times.

2016

* Pandemic Legacy. Z-Man Games; co-op
When I first heard of the “legacy” mechanic I thought it was a silly gimmick to sell more copies. This is actually a really clever game that got me re-interested in Pandemic and having fun with friends even though I’d run out of interest in the original Pandemic after three games.
* Star Realms. Robert Dougherty, Darwin Kastle; deckbuilding
Quick, lean take on the genre that I’ve really enjoyed with friends. Incoherent setting, but spaceships. The expansions are too small to have much effect, but Colony Wars is good. Tear up “Stealth needle”, grab a life counter smartphone app, and have a great time.
Twilight Struggle. GMT Games; strategy
Nice to play and great use of the setting, but really wants an experienced player to learn from.
Sushi Go. Phil Walker-Harding; drafting
Delightful all-ages game. Warning: play after dinner, not before, or you’re certain to be ordering sushi. The “party” edition adds big replayability for a couple bucks.
Kitty Paw. Aza Chen, party
Very cute dexterity/recognition game. Fun limited by wildly different player ability.
Smash-Up. AEG, rulebreaker
Clever and memetasic, but 4+ player games get a bit bogged down in reading lots of unfamiliar rule-tweaking cards.
Seafall. Plaid Hat Games, strategy
Pirate sorta-4X legacy game from the creator of Pandemic Legacy. 4-5 players a must, and at least one player must watch the Watch It Played intro. It’s a noticeable step up in complexity from Pandemic Legacy and turned out to be more complicated than my play group really enjoyed, so we dropped it after seven games. I hope to play through entirely with another group sometime.

2017

Splendor. Marc Andre; drafting
Very tight multiplayer economy game. After two plays I hope to pick up my own copy.
Twilight Struggle. GMT Games; strategy
Got to learn from an experienced player and history buff. Wonderfully novel game, though there’s a dozen or so cards you have to learn and keep track of because they’ll screw you over otherwise. Gameplay would be noticeably improved by a cheat sheet warning of their effects with boxes to tick off their appearance.
Through the Ages. Vlaada Chvátil; strategy
Very strong, deep drafting/economy game. I hope to play this a few more times with a full four players.
Citadels. Bruno Faidutti; role-guessing
Nice light role game about building sets.
Potion Explosion. Horrible Games; puzzle
Fun, kinetic game to play with kids.
Imperial Settlers. Ignacy Trzewiczek; strategy
Engine-building drafting game. One game was only enough to get the gist of it.
Tractor. Traditional; trick-taking
I think I played for three hours before I had any confidence in what I was doing.
Tichu. Urs Hostettler; trick-taking
Roughly a heavier version of Great Dalmuti for two pairs partners. It’s based on a classic chinese game, but the theme is slathered on so heavily it comes off as Orientalist.

2018

Pandemic Legacy: Season 2. Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock; strategy
Only played the prologue twice, but it feels like a nice balance of old and new mechanics. Really looking forwarding to playing through this.
Unearth. Jason Harner, Matthew Ransom; worker placement
Fun, quick strategy game with a nice amount of variance. Rules are a little unclear, seems like almost every action card has a corner case.
Underlings of Underwing. Kevin Ballestrini, Stephen Slota, Alisha Volkman; worker placement
A very cute resource management/worker placement game. I like the use of colors for crafting; much simpler and easier to learn than arbitrary resources would have been.
Armageddon Preppin. Darth Rimmer; hand management
Unclear rules, overwhelming variance, and an obvious dominant strategy.
* Captain Sonar. Roberto Fraga, Yohan Lemonnier; deduction
Real-time strategy game where two teams of four players eavesdrop on each other to have a submarine hunt duel.
Burgle Bros.. Tim Fowers; co-op heist
Teammates sneak through a random map to rob a bank. Really enjoyably difficult, lovely graphic design.
Mottainai. Carl Chudyk; drafting
A stunningly deep short game that I want to put a recommended star on, but the theme apparently drew its nouns and actions from a hat and it’s so incoherent and confusing that it’s not worth the time to learn. I’ve taught it to six people and all have been hopelessly confused for 2-3 games. (Fans made a nice solitaire ruleset, though.)
Unstable Unicorns. Ramy Badie; Munchkin
Basically Munchkin, but it plays much quicker so at least it’s over sooner.
Imhotep. Phil Walker-Harding; strategy
Has an incredible amount of zugzwang with two players. May be a fairly light game with three or four players, and I hope to try that.
Tiny Epic Galaxies. Scott Almes; strategy
Nice quick dice-rolling game with some ways of reusing your opponents’ actions so their turn is more than just waiting for yours.
Kodama. Daniel Solis; strategy
Arrange cards to grow a tree, very nice use of play space. Don’t miss that the max score per turn is 10 points or that cards can touch any trunk rather than just the obvious forks.
Not Alone. Ghislain Masson; bluffing
Clever asymmetrical bluffing game. Solid with two players and I’d love to play with a half-dozen.
Boss Monster. Johnny O’Neal, Chris O’Neal; bidding
Cute pixel art but winning is almost entirely lucky draws.
Dark Souls The Card Game. Steamforged Games; deckbuilding
Co-op monster-hunting. Feels shallow, there’s rarely more than one obvious right choice per turn. Some unclear rules.
* Gloomhaven. Isaac Childres; tactical
Wonderful legacy dungeon-crawler. Solid core mechanics, interesting design, great scenarios, stunning production values.

Video

2015

Citizenfour; documentary
A slice-of-life from the start of Snowden’s leaks. Interesting to see the stories get made.
Lucy; action
Even more lazy and stupid than I’d hoped.
House of Cards season 3; drama
“I want you to trust me, so I’ll tell you something that makes me vulnerable. (pause) Oh no, you used it against me!” - Every character in every scene
The Bible Unearthed; documentary
Turns out the Old Testament might not be an entirely reliable historical record.
* Escape From the Ivory Tower: The Haskell Journey, From 1990 to 2011. Simon Peyton-Jones
A warmhearted history of Haskell and stunning introduction to the value of purity and types. This talk got me interested in Haskell and probably changed the course of my professional career.
Rollerball; sci-fi
A slow-paced story about violence and the supporting culture. Occasionally hokey, but still one of my favorite movies.
Whip It; comedy
Cute coming-of-age story.
* Mad Max: Fury Road; action
Bang, bang, vroooom bang, vrooom bang bang bang vrooom.
Jurassic World; action
A generic monster movie that apes Jurassic Park without caring about filmmaking techniques like “continuity”.

Podcasts

2015

Rationalists in Tech. Joshua Fox
Friendly conversations with techies from the LessWrong community site. Very light discussion of topics only.
* The Bike Shed. Sean Griffin, Derek Prior
Very smart 30m tech conversations based on deep experience with their topics. This is the first podcast I regularly followed.
Bootstrapped With Kids. Brecht Palombo, Scott Yewell
Two entrepreneurs chat about life and businesses strategies in roughly equal amounts.
Functional Geekery
Conversations with very experienced functional programmers.
The Startup Chat
Marketing expert Hiten Shah and sales expert Steli Efti. I wandered off after a few episodes.
The Zachtronics Podcast
Indie game developers chat. I listened because I liked TIS-100 so much, but these chats didn’t grab me.
The Haskell Cast
Interviews with notable Haskell developers

2015

* Why Are Computers
Thoughtful, deep interviews.
HaskellCast
Abandoned, but nice interviews with Haskell community members.
This Developer’s Life
Striving vainly for profundity at a glacially slow pace. I skipped ahead to see if it got better, but dropped it after a few episodes.
Magic Read Along
The setup is two experienced devs giving hot takes on tech news, but it’s actually two bros giggling smugly about being unprepared. I have no idea why this was recorded. Dropped after a few.
The Bike Shed
Great chats wandering from day-to-day development work into the deeper underlying topics.
Stacking the Bricks
Getting started in entrepreneurship from two experts.
Sirlin
Game designer David Sirlin and playtesters talk through thorny issues in the design of competitive games.
Ruby Facets
A five-minute weekly podcast on Ruby news. The schedule is off to a shaky start, but fingers crossed it keeps running.
Rationally Writing
Two authors in a niche subgenre of hard sci-fi talk about the craft. Great preparation leads to great discussions.
More Perfect
A thoughtful miniseries about the history of the Supreme Court.
Podcast Method
How to produce a podcast. You can listen to almost any two episodes and have heard everything, though, the long gap between episodes meant it retrod the same ground.
Planet Money
Entertaining (and occasionally disturbing) investigations into the world of finance, broadly defined.
LambdaCast
A friendly introduction to functional programming concepts.
Functional Geekery
Interviews with functional programmers on their careers and work. I wish it had more depth, but it’s still good listening.
Hardcore History
Military history from a guy who gets really excited every time he quotes a primary source.
Criminal
I think it wants to be the Planet Money of crime, and it’s growing towards that level of quality.
Make Money Online
Kai Davis and a tediously smug narcissist chat about the business of consulting. Immediately drop any episode when a restaurant is mentioned.

2017

Legacy Music Hour
Two old friends ramble about old video game music. If you don’t like their commentary, each episode is rereleased as a “mixtape” episode with only the music.
Talent Show
Nice intro to podcasting. I listened to the 10-part crash course and a dozen random episodes and reached diminishing returns on how much info there was - not that the podcast is thin: it’s clear and actionable about how to do a straightforward thing.
ChooseFI Radio
Decent conversation and interviews about financial independence. Start tapping your “skip 30 seconds” button every time they say “this community”, “ChooseFI”, or “we” because they’re going to blow smoke up your ass for a minute, a tedious tick I hope they grow out of quickly.
Garbage
Only listened to the first few episodes, but nice to hear two experienced devs chatting about their work.
Future of Coding
Great research into the practice of programming.
GameMaker
Amateur interviews with devs using GameMaker Studio.
Planet Money
Fun exploration of economics-related topics.
Clockwork Game Design
I disagree with almost everything and enjoy doing it. Lots of great food for thought from an experienced dev.
More Perfect
The second season is a little shallower than the first, but it still hits a lot of very interesting topics.
Rationally Writing
Two niche sci-fi authors talk shop.
Revisionist History
Well-told stories.
Rework
Business chats. Dropped in the mailbag episodes. Nothing wrong, I understand the Basecamp take on business well enough that I wasn’t learning anything.

2018

The Daily. New York Times
A “20 minute” podcast with 25-35 minutes on Donald Trump and up to 60 seconds of news. Dropped Feb 6 when their story on FISA abuse elided how the NYT hid the story for a year.
Conversations and Seminars. The Long Now Foundation
No idea why it’s two podcasts instead of one, but generally interesting, thoughtful talks related to long-term thinking.
Future Strategist. James D. Miller
Retreads of Less Wrong blog posts and interviews with alt-right kooks. Dropped when the argument against free trade is that it might lead to miscegenation.
Megahaulin’
Star Realms strategy discussion. Worth it to start from the first episode, listen to an episode, play an hour or two, then repeat.
Economics Detective Radio. Garrett M. Petersen
Dropped on my first ep (minimum wage) when the host began by saying people only disagree because they’re naive and lazy, and then that getting evidence before theorizing is bad. Dismal way to understand the world.
Soft Skills Engineering. Dave Smith and Jamison Dance
Q&A about programming careers, decent advice.

Year-End Notes

2014

And now the year is over with a little over 100 books finished, depending on how the deliberately unfinished books and serial works are counted. And that count is indeed interesting to me: when I was a kid with no commitments I used to read 200-300 books per year, mostly light fiction. I knew I was down from that between reading email/blogs and having personal projects, but I had no intuition for how much.

This year I experimented with self-published fiction: Fine Structure, Ra, Worm, and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (likely will be on next year’s list as the final chapters are published). I don’t think I’ll continue to do so. While self-published non-fiction has regularly been some of the best books I’ve ever read, the fiction is generally lower-quality. Not in the “this is just dumb” sense (well, Aurora was head-deskingly bad), in the “this needed an editor and another draft” sense. There’s too much entertainment out there to waste time with low quality. I also continue to dislike waiting on in-progress serial works (Ra, HPMOR, most TV, most comics) because of declining quality and attention lost to the Zeigarnik Effect.

This was also the first year I had an ebook reader on my phone. For a few decades I’ve almost always had a book or ereader with me, which is occasionally inconvenient (mostly in summer, when I have no large jacket pockets). I loaded it with light fiction (like all those cheesy Shadowrun novels) because I thought of it as alternative to serious reading. But I look back and see much more light fiction than I wanted, so I’m going to load it similarly or identically to my ereader (which as a much nicer screen for reading). Except for dense technical works my reading time is very fungible.

Keeping this list has already been useful for me. I’ve referred back to it to find books I wanted to recommend. When I’m reading, there’s been a small part of me reading more critically as it considers how to summarize the book (so I’ve also dropped more books, which I consider very positive). And it makes me happy to turn consumption into production. I’m going to continue keping this list.

In fact, I’m going to expand it. When I reread this list I can see gaps where I got pulled into playing 2048 or Crusader Kings II for endless hours. I’d like to take note games, movies, and TV because I have no intuition for how much of that I’m consuming.

2015

My second year of tracking my reading done, I’m feeling quite good about the practice.

I’m glad I added tabletop and video games, I feel like those were worth recording and sharing. Movies and podcasts were a flop that almost dragged down the project. I had little to say, didn’t enjoy writing it, and doubt that people will get much value from them. They had me dragging my feet on my queue (and writing up books) knowing I had an unpleasant task that outweighed a small investment of time and attention. I did continue to enjoy the Bike Shed and Functional Geekery podcasts in place of music during video games. But unless I run into something exceptional I’m leaving those media out of future posts.

2016

Very belated finish, but happy to share. I didn’t plan to include podcasts, but they slipped in.

2017

I only read half the books I do most years, which is a combination of playing lots of Necrodancer and listening to a lot of podcasts, and no new books worth a star. I would’ve been sure of this six months earlier if I’d kept up this review list through the year, and 2018 is going to have more reading.

Looking back over the last four years, an increasing amount of my reading is self-published books. I mentioned in 2014 that it could pretty much all use a professional editor and that continues to the capsule review of almost all of it: stunningly original, brilliant ideas with glaring mistakes in rhetoric and pacing that any professional editor would’ve fixed. This dynamic is frustrating, but the good ideas are increasingly worth it. And it almost makes me wish that published books credited editors as prominently as authors, because they clearly have that level of influence on quality.

I realized that for the first time in 20+ years I read no superhero comics. Not that they’re usually very good, but they’re a kind of comfort food. I thought about this a while and realized it’s because of Worm and Shadows of the Limelight. Worm is a (very long) deconstruction of all the things violence means in superhero fiction. Shadows deconstructs the narcissism behind average schmos becoming superheroes and the inevitable power creep that shows up with multiple authors and commercial incentive to never end a story. These didn’t ruin the power fantasy for me, just... exposed the gears so thoroughly that I don’t feel like there’s much of anything interesting left to read in the genre. It’s not wrecked, it’s done. Maybe in a few years I’ll read some more, maybe not.

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022