My 2021 New Year's resolution is to read every night before bed.
The goal of this is to:
Check out the books I've read so far this year below!
Guards! Guards! is another hilarious Discworld book, centering on the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork. According to Pratchett, the city watch in fantasy usually has a single purpose: "in about Chapter Three to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered". This book provides a great alternative to that convention, full of colorful characters, depth and nuance. It blends cop movies, fantasy satire, and comedy into something wholly unique.
Guards! Guards! is another hilarious Discworld book, centering on the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork. According to Pratchett, the city watch in fantasy usually has a single purpose: "in about Chapter Three to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered". This book provides a great alternative to that convention, full of colorful characters, depth and nuance. It blends cop movies, fantasy satire, and comedy into something wholly unique.
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage is a true story about tracking down a hacker in the early days of the internet. What begins with small money imbalances leads to an increasingly complex web of intrigue and mystery. It's also really interesting to see the internet in its infancy, before security or cryptographic standards were set.
The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win is the true story of how Maria Konnikova became a successful professional poker player. Along with poker strategy and exciting anecdotes from that journey, a big focus of the book is on how to psychologically deal with high stakes situations. She also makes insightful comments about the role of chance in our lives, and the ways in which emotions can cloud judgement.
Exhalation: Stories, the second collection of scifi short stories by Ted Chiang, continues to delve into some really interesting ideas. My favorite is The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, which considers the conflict between determinism and free will in a world with time travel. Another great one is What's Expected of Us, which explores the effects of a device that gives humans a perfect memory.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game explains the statistics-based approach that allowed the Oakland A's to succeed on a much lower budget than other teams. Informative and entertaining, it emphasizes the importance of keeping an open mind for new approaches, challenging traditions, and the need to constantly seek out improvements.
Small Gods is part of Discworld series, best described as the equivalent of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for fantasy; it's funny, witty, and satirizes the stereotypes of the genre. The story follows the god Om, who returns to the world but loses his powers. While funny, it also manages to make some really interesting points about philosophy, politics and religious institution.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen is a book about the Tarahumara, a tribe in Mexico that is extremely talented at ultramarathon running. The book is a great mix of running/training tips, crazy stories about ultramarathon races, and glimpses into the fascinating culture of the Tarahumara. Central to all of it is the inspiring idea that humans evolved to excel at long distance running.
Stories of Your Life and Others is a collection of science fiction short stories. Since the author has a computer science background, they involve a lot of cool ideas from math and computer science. My favorite of them is Story of Your Life, about a linguist whose brain is altered by learning an alien language. Another great one is Divison by Zero, about a mathematician who makes a startling discovery about the nature of pure math.
How to Win Friends and Influence People describes strategies for working more effectively with others. Some of the strategies were totally new to me, others were common sense but still good to see reiterated because of their importance. Carnegie persuasively argues for the effectivess of these tactics, backing them up with psychological explanations and examples of them in action.
The Code Book is a history of cryptography, with some explanations of the mathematics of cryptography. The historical anecdotes are really interesting, especially the section on the codes and codebreaking efforts of World War 2. It also does a great job of explaining the huge influence that cryptography has had and the ways that it will shape our world in the future.
Seveneves is a scifi book about humanity attempting to leave earth to escape an extinction event, and the descendents of the survivors returning to repopulate the Earth thousands of years later. I loved the worldbuilding of this book, as well as the realistic challenges it brought up, such as differing strategies for avoiding asteroids, and how to ensure genetic diversity for future generations.