Books I’ve read in 2009

This is the last list I’ll be posting on stuff from 2009, I promise. After this it’s all about looking forward. I’ve been tracking my reading on aNobii for some time. Here’s a list of the books I’ve found particularly worthwhile, ordered chronologically. My three absolute favorites are marked in bold.

  • Faith in Fakes, Umberto Eco
  • Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
  • Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
  • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
  • Black Dogs, Ian McEwan
  • Out of Control, Kevin Kelly
  • Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
  • Game Design Workshop (2nd edition), Tracy Fullerton
  • The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster
  • Fight Club, Chuck Paluhniuk
  • A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
  • The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch
  • Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
  • Underworld, Don DeLillo
  • Rum Punch, Elmore Leonard
  • Digital Ground, Malcolm McCullough
  • The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

Common themes: cities, complexity, society & the individual, inner & outer space, design.

I’ve been quite picky with what I read last year and will probably continue to do so this year. Many of these have heaps of dog ears and margin notes and its a wonderful feeling to have them sitting in my studio bookshelf, ready to be picked up and used when required.

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Kars Alfrink

Designer turned design researcher. Postdoc at TU Delft. Exploring contestable AI.