Tag: lists

Goodreads tells me I’ve read 48 books in 2018. I set myself the goal of 36 so it looks like I beat it hand­i­ly. But includ­ed in that count are quite a few role­play­ing game books and comics. If I dis­card those I’m left with 28 titles. Still a decent amount but noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly remark­able. Below are a few lists and some notes to go with them.

Most of the non-fic­tion is some­where on the inter­sec­tion of design, tech­nol­o­gy and Left pol­i­tics. A lot of this read­ing was dri­ven by my desire to devel­op some kind of men­tal frame­work for the work we were doing with Tech Sol­i­dar­i­ty NL. More recently—since I start­ed my PhD—I’ve most­ly been read­ing text­books on research method­ol­o­gy. Hid­den from this list is the aca­d­e­m­ic papers I’ve start­ed con­sum­ing as part of this new job. I should fig­ure out a way of shar­ing some of that here or else­where as well.

• Design Research Through Prac­tice: From the Lab, Field, and Show­room by Ilpo Kosk­i­nen et al. 
• The Lean PhD: Rad­i­cal­ly Improve the Effi­cien­cy, Qual­i­ty and Impact of Your Research by Julian Kirchherr 
• Research­ing Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Com­put­ing by Briony J. Oates 
• Play Any­thing: The Plea­sure of Lim­its, the Uses of Bore­dom, and the Secret of Games by Ian Bogost 
• Democ­ra­cy at Work: A Cure for Cap­i­tal­ism by Richard D. Wolff 
• The Chapo Guide to Rev­o­lu­tion: A Man­i­festo Against Log­ic, Facts, and Rea­son by Chapo Trap House 
• Kill All Normies: Online Cul­ture Wars From 4Chan And Tum­blr To Trump And The Alt-Right by Angela Nagle 
• Sur­veil­lance Val­ley: The Secret Mil­i­tary His­to­ry of the Inter­net by Yasha Levine 
• Rad­i­cal Tech­nolo­gies: The Design of Every­day Life by Adam Greenfield 
• Four Futures: Life After Cap­i­tal­ism by Peter Frase 

I took a break from tech­nol­o­gy and indulged in a deep dive into the his­to­ry of the thir­ty year’s war with a mas­sive non-fic­tion treat­ment as well as a clas­sic picaresque set in the same time peri­od. While read­ing these I was tran­si­tion­ing into my new role as a father of twin boys. Some­what relat­ed was a brief his­to­ry of The Nether­lands, which I’ve start­ed rec­om­mend­ing to for­eign­ers who are strug­gling to under­stand our idio­syn­crat­ic lit­tle nation and go beyond superficialities. 

• Sim­pli­cis­simus by H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen 
• Europe’s Tragedy: A New His­to­ry of the Thir­ty Years War by Peter H. Wilson 
• Beknopte geschiede­nis van Ned­er­land by James C. Kennedy 

Then there’s the fic­tion, which in the begin­ning of the year con­sist­ed of high­brow weird and his­tor­i­cal nov­els but then ven­tured into clas­sic fan­ta­sy and (utopi­an) sci-fi ter­ri­to­ry. Again, most­ly because of a jus­ti­fi­able desire for some escapism in the sleep deprived evenings and nights.

• The Fifth Sea­son by N.K. Jemisin 
• Pacif­ic Edge by Kim Stan­ley Robinson 
• Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance 
• Sun­vault: Sto­ries of Solarpunk and Eco-Spec­u­la­tion by Phoebe Wag­n­er et al. 
• Anni­hi­la­tion by Jeff VanderMeer 
• Elric of Mel­ni­boné and Oth­er Sto­ries by Michael Moorcock 
• The Return of the Lloigor by Col­in Wilson 
• The Twen­ty Days of Turin by Gior­gio De Maria 
• Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard 
• Radio Lai­ka – Ver­halen uit de ruimte by Niels ’t Hooft 
• The Veg­e­tar­i­an by Kang Han 
• The Siege by Ismail Kadare 

Hav­ing men­tioned the arrival of our boys a few times it should come as no sur­prise that I also read a cou­ple of par­ent­ing books. These were more than enough for me and real­ly to be hon­est I think par­ent­ing is a thing best learned through prac­tice. Espe­cial­ly if you’re rais­ing two babies at once.

• 5 Days to a Per­fect Night’s Sleep for Your Child: The Secrets to Mak­ing Bed­time a Dream by Eduard Estivill 
• The Hap­pi­est Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Cry­ing and Help Your New­born Baby Sleep Longer by Har­vey Karp 

So that’s it. I’ve set myself the mod­est goal of 24 books for this year because I’m quite sure most of my read­ing will be papers and such. Here’s to a year of what I expect will be many more late night and ear­ly morn­ing read­ing ses­sions of escapist weird fiction.

Pre­vi­ous years: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2011, 2009.

Return­ing to what is some­thing of an annu­al tra­di­tion, these are the books I’ve read in 2017. I set myself the goal of get­ting to 36 and man­aged 38 in the end. They’re list­ed below with some com­men­tary on par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable or oth­er­wise note­wor­thy reads. To make things a bit more user friend­ly I’ve gone with four broad buck­ets although as you’ll see with­in each the picks range across gen­res and subjects.

Fiction

I always have one piece of fic­tion or nar­ra­tive non-fic­tion going. I have a long-stand­ing ‘project’ of read­ing cult clas­sics. I can’t set­tle on a top pick for the first cat­e­go­ry so it’s going to have to be a tie between Lowry’s alco­hol-drenched tale of lost love in pre-WWII Mex­i­co, and Salter’s unmatched lyri­cal prose treat­ment of a young couple’s liaisons as imag­ined by a lech­er­ous recluse in post-WWII France.

When I feel like some­thing lighter I tend to seek out sci-fi writ­ten from before I was born. (Con­tem­po­rary sci-fi more often than not dis­ap­points me with its lack of imag­i­na­tion, or worse, nos­tal­gia for futures past. I’m look­ing at you, Cline.) My top pick here would be the Stru­gatsky broth­ers, who blew me away with their weird tale of a world for­ev­er changed by the inex­plic­a­ble vis­it by some­thing tru­ly alien.

I’ve also con­tin­ued to seek out works by women, although I’ve been less strict with myself in this depart­ment than pre­vi­ous years. Here I’m ashamed to admit it took me this long to final­ly read any­thing by Woolf because Mrs Dal­loway is every bit as good as they say it is. I rec­om­mend seek­ing out the anno­tat­ed Pen­guin addi­tion for addi­tion­al insights into the many things she references.

I’ve also some­times picked up a new­er book because it popped up on my radar and I was just real­ly excit­ed about read­ing it. Most notably Dolan’s retelling of the Ili­ad in all its glo­ri­ous, sad and gory detail, updat­ed for today’s sensibilities.

• War with the Newts, Karel Čapek
• The War Nerd Ili­ad, John Dolan
• Solaris, Stanisław Lem
• Road­side Pic­nic, Arkady Stru­gatsky and Boris Strugatsky
• Ready Play­er One, Ernest Cline
• Bring Up the Bod­ies (Thomas Cromwell, #2), Hilary Mantel
• Mrs Dal­loway, Vir­ginia Woolf
• A Sport and a Pas­time, James Salter
• The Days of Aban­don­ment, Ele­na Ferrante
• The Wasp Fac­to­ry, Iain Banks
• True Names and the Open­ing of the Cyber­space Fron­tier, Ver­nor Vinge
• Under the Vol­cano, Mal­colm Lowry
• Tenth of Decem­ber, George Saunders
• Kin­dred, Octavia E. Butler
• High-Rise, J.G. Ballard
• The Handmaid’s Tale, Mar­garet Atwood
• Speed­boat, Rena­ta Adler

Literary non-fiction

Each time I read a nar­ra­tive treat­ment of his­to­ry or cur­rent affairs I feel like I should be doing more of it. All of these are rec­om­mend­ed but Kapuś­cińs­ki tow­ers over all with his heart-wrench­ing first-per­son account of the Iran­ian revolution.

• De verover­ing van Bali, Ewald Vanvugt
• The Life and Mur­der of Anna Logi­no­va, Mark Ames
• Shah of Shahs, Ryszard Kapuściński
• Het real­i­ty-essay, Dirk Vis
• Indone­sia, Etc.: Explor­ing the Improb­a­ble Nation, Eliz­a­beth Pisani

Non-fiction

A few books on design and tech­nol­o­gy here, although most of my ‘pro­fes­sion­al’ read­ing was con­fined to aca­d­e­m­ic papers this year. I find those to be a more effec­tive way of get­ting a han­dle on a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject. Books pub­lished on my méti­er are noto­ri­ous­ly fluffy. I’ll point out Löw­gren for a tough but reward­ing read on how to do inter­ac­tion design in a non-dog­mat­ic but reflec­tive way.

I got into left­ist pol­i­tics quite heav­i­ly this year and tried to edu­cate myself a bit on con­tem­po­rary anti-cap­i­tal­ist think­ing. Fisher’s book is a most inter­est­ing and also amus­ing diag­no­sis of the cur­rent polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic world sys­tem through a cul­tur­al lens. It’s a shame he’s no longer with us, I won­der what he would have made of recent events.

• Thought­ful Inter­ac­tion Design: A Design Per­spec­tive on Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, Jonas Löwgren
• Rebuild­ing the Left, Mar­ta Harnecker
• Cap­i­tal­ist Real­ism: Is there no alter­na­tive?, Mark Fisher
• The ABCs of Social­ism, Bhaskar Sunkara
• The Com­pan­ion Species Man­i­festo: Dogs, Peo­ple, and Sig­nif­i­cant Oth­er­ness, Don­na J.Haraway
• Against the Smart City, Adam Greenfield
• Super­in­tel­li­gence: Paths, Dan­gers, Strate­gies, Nick Bostrom
• The Lean Start­up: How Today’s Entre­pre­neurs Use Con­tin­u­ous Inno­va­tion to Cre­ate Rad­i­cal­ly Suc­cess­ful Busi­ness­es, Eric Ries
• Strate­gize: Prod­uct Strat­e­gy and Prod­uct Roadmap Prac­tices for the Dig­i­tal Age, Roman Pichler
• The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
• Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Design­ers, Poets & Philoso­phers, Leonard Koren

Game books

I decid­ed to work my way through a bunch of role­play­ing game books all ‘pow­ered by the apoc­a­lypse’ – a fam­i­ly of games which I have been aware of for quite a while but haven’t had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play myself. I like read­ing these because I find them odd­ly inspi­ra­tional for pro­fes­sion­al pur­pos­es. But I will point to the orig­i­nal Apoc­a­lypse World as the one must-read as Bak­er remains one of the design­ers I am absolute­ly in awe of for the ways in which he man­ages to com­bine sys­tem and fic­tion in tru­ly inven­tive ways.

• The Per­ilous Wilds, Jason Lutes
• Urban Shad­ows: Polit­i­cal Urban Fan­ta­sy Pow­ered by the Apoc­a­lypse, Andrew Medeiros
• Dun­geon World, Sage LaTorra
• Apoc­a­lypse World, D. Vin­cent Baker

Poetry

I don’t usu­al­ly read poet­ry for rea­sons sim­i­lar to how I basi­cal­ly stopped read­ing comics ear­li­er: I can’t seem to find a good way of dis­cov­er­ing worth­while things to read. The col­lec­tion below was a gift, and a delight­ful one.

• Lunch Poems, Frank O’Hara

As always, I wel­come sug­ges­tions for what to read next. I’m shoot­ing for 36 again this year and plan to pro­ceed rough­ly as I’ve been doing lately—just mean­der from book to book with a bias towards works that are non-anglo, at least as old as I am, and prefer­ably weird or inventive. 

Pre­vi­ous years: 2016, 2015, 2011, 2009.

On this final day of the year let’s do some more look­ing back. The last time I post­ed books read was in 2011. But that doesn’t mean I stopped read­ing. On the contrary. 

Goodreads tells me I read 36 books in 2015, which was the goal I set myself for this year. I will admit not all of these are big reads. Some are short pam­phlets and there is also a com­ic or two thrown in. 

I think I am going to stick with this tar­get for next year and I will also stick with read­ing wide­ly. A few books were read because of a project at Hub­bub for which I felt the need to delve more deeply in the sub­ject mat­ter. This is a good way to stretch intel­lec­tu­al­ly. I also start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with ask­ing peo­ple who know me per­son­al­ly what nov­el I should read next which has led to some delight­ful dis­cov­er­ies. So I will con­tin­ue to do that too.

Any­way, here they are in order of date read. Par­tic­u­lar favourites are marked with a ❤️. I’ve writ­ten short reviews for most of these so I’ve pro­vid­ed links to those too.

• Blue Mars, Kim Stan­ley Robinson
• Sci­ence, Strat­e­gy and War: The Strate­gic The­o­ry of John Boyd, Frans Osin­ga ❤️
• Play Mat­ters, Miguel Sicart ❤️
• The Vul­ture, Gil Scott-Herron
• You Need A Bud­get, Jesse Mecham ❤️
• The Hunters, James Salter ❤️
• Arn­hem 1944: The Air­borne Bat­tle, Mar­tin Middlebrook
• Gen­er­a­tion X, Dou­glas Coupland
• The Turn of the Screw, Hen­ry James
• The Organ­i­sa­tion Man, William Whyte
• The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
• The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, Mark Twain
• On Lib­er­ty, John Stu­art Mill
• The Man Who Was Thurs­day: A Night­mare, G.K. Chesterton
• The Rid­dle of the Sands, Ersk­ine Childers
• Mutu­al Aid, Pyotr Kropotkin
• The Life-Chang­ing Mag­ic of Tidy­ing Up, Marie Kon­do ❤️
• Dublin­ers, James Joyce
• Ado­les­cent Men­tal Health: Pre­ven­tion and Inter­ven­tion, Ter­je Ogden
• Ancil­lary Sword, Ann Leckie
• Kan­ban and Scrum — Mak­ing the Most of Both, Hen­rik Kniberg
• Per­son­al Kan­ban: Map­ping Work — Nav­i­gat­ing Life, Jim Ben­son ❤️
• Sug­ar Skull, Charles Burns
• X’Ed Out, Charles Burns
• Agile Game Devel­op­ment with Scrum, Clin­ton Keith
• Blood Merid­i­an: Or the Evening Red­ness in the West, Cor­mac McCarthy ❤️
• A Fire Upon the Deep, Ver­nor Vinge
• Mor­gen zijn we in Pam­plona, Jan van Mersbergen
• A Vis­it from the Goon Squad, Jen­nifer Egan ❤️
• The Invin­ci­ble Iron Man: Extrem­is, War­ren Ellis
• Design for the Real World: Human Ecol­o­gy and Social Change, Vic­tor Papanek
• Ocean Sea, Alessan­dro Baricco
• Ancil­lary Mer­cy, Ann Leckie
• Thrown, Ker­ry Howley
• PACE: A Small Busi­ness Owner’s Guide to Com­plete Cash Flow Clar­i­ty, Jesse Mecham
• Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial: Adven­tures in the Culi­nary Under­bel­ly, Antho­ny Bourdain

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.