2015 Reading Log
I started listening to audiobooks this year, which meant that I could read in the most uncomfortable situations! Walking around the city! Commuting on the BART! Going on a run! I’ve also been sewing a lot this year, and came home almost every night to sew and read with a giant mug of tea. While I didn’t read significantly more books this year than last (33 v. 27), the length of the books I read increased, and I started reading more nonfiction.
I also read a ton of space operas this year. :D
For a prettier view, Goodreads has a great year in review.
Favorites (in approximate order)
- ✨Emperor of All Maladies✨, Siddhartha Mukherjee
- A very well-written book that explains the intricate mechanics of cancer in a really approachable way. I can’t recommend this enough.
- ✨Sisters of the Revolution✨
- An anthology of feminist science fiction. It was disturbing and heart-warming and provocative in all the right ways. This was way too intense to read continuously.
- ✨The Dispossessed✨, Ursula Le Guin
- I loved this book. It’s currently my go-to explanation for why I love science fiction – it enables you to set up a universe where you can explore fun concepts for the length of the novel. Working at a mostly structureless startup transitioning to a proper organization, the pitfalls of structurelessness are eerily familiar.
- ✨The Death and Life of Great American Cities✨, Jane Jacobs
- So delightful! This resonates really well, and many of Jacobs' complaints still hold true. She rails against large “superblocks” and praises mixed-use neighborhoods.
- ✨Embassytown✨, China Miéville
- Like most of China Miéville’s books, the ideas he explores stick with me for a very long time. Unlike most of China Miéville’s books, I really enjoyed the characters and the plot in this book. Where City and the City is a good metaphor for the world we live in, Embassytown is a good metaphor for languages. This is kind of the “Darmok & Jalad” idea, but at novel-lengths.
- ✨House of Suns✨, Alastair Reynolds
- This was a fantastic space opera, with really fun characters and a great world! The basic conceit is a deep-space chase scene that takes place over millenia, by a society of clones enmeshed in a conspiracy involving conscious robots. FUN.
And everything else! These were really good, too.
Winter 2015
- The City and The City, China Miéville
- I wasn’t really sold on it while I was reading it, but the world has really stuck with me since. It’s a great metaphor to use when describing split worlds. This hits my biggest pet peeve with detective stories, though – I hate that I didn’t understand the mechanics of the world enough to follow along with the mystery; my favorite parts of mysteries are picking up on the clues and solving the problems alongside the main character.
- Season of the Witch, David Talbot
- Breathless prose, but amazing stories. Don’t read it for the writing. There are some less-than-tasteful chapter titles, but this is a really great history of San Francisco, and all of the tumult it’s seen – the Summer of Love, the Zebra Killings, Harvey Milk, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Patty Hearst, the People’s Temple, and more.
- Hild, Nicola Griffith
- This is a novel set in fifth century England, where all the main characters are women with agency. They control much of the politics, all of the economy, and (mostly) their own lives. I want to use this book as a counterpoint whenever someone waves away lazy depictions of women in fantasy/medieval stories by explaining that “oh, women just didn’t have much of a role back then.” I’m so glad I bought the audiobook for this. This is near incomprehensible as a written novel, because the prose feels like it’s more meant to be listened to than read.
Spring 2015
- Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu
- I enjoyed this book a lot – the premise is great. This has 3 distinct tones – starts as psychological horror, transitions to hard science fiction, and ends a little action thriller. The nihilism was a really interesting touch, and got me into a lot of discussions with Harold. If you do read this, take care to not read synopses/blurbs for the book!
- Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi
- Interesting read. Couldn’t get a hang of what tone this was trying to set. This is also super packed with cyberbabble, which doesn’t usually bother me, but was a little dense here. That said, the world was great – there’s a spinoff on the “brain in the cloud” trope, a society that has access control lists for your life, and time as a literal currency. A little Miéville.
Summer 2015
- Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker
- Really lovely. I know the book’s flawed in a number of ways, but I still really enjoyed reading it.
- Player of Games, Iain Banks
- Kind of trite. A dude is good at games! There’s a society based on a giant game! The games are a metaphor! I see why people love this, but it’s a fairly weak Culture novel, though a good intro to the universe.
- Use of Weapons, Iain Banks
- I liked this a lot better than Player of Games – the ethics are a bit more grey. The characters are interesting and multidimensional, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw is a fantastic drone. The middle dragged a bit, but the ending is pretty masterful.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
- A classic. Goes into more detail than the movie does – they were written at the same time, with the book as the more fleshed-out story, and the movie with more fleshed-out visuals.
- The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon
- POV of an autistic character. It’s told with a lot of compassion, but the characters are kind of cartoonish.
- Six Months, Three Days, Charlie Jane Anders
- Pragmatic Programmer, Andrew Hunt, David Thomas
- A decent overview of a bunch of best practices. For example – Don’t keep separate copies of config/data, automate as much as possible, build out the simplest end-to-end implementation of a system asap.
- Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick
- Fun popular science, but doesn’t get much deeper, either as a biography or as a study of the science.
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks
- A set of existential horror stories, if you read them that way. Even scarier for being true!
- Nimona, Noelle Stevenson
- An adorable comic about an irreverent, shapeshifting little girl. The graphics are gorgeous, and the characters lovable. I read this webcomic religiously in high school, and I’m glad to have the hardcover now. :)
- The Little Schemer
- A delightful introduction to Scheme/Lisp, focusing on recursion. Written in a question/response style.
Fall/Winter 2015
- Dark Forest, Cixin Liu
- I have such a love/hate relationship with this book. The premise is great – if you had 4 centuries to prepare for an alien invasion, but the aliens have magically stopped the progress of basic science, what would you do? The characters are awful, though, and the women are almost entirely infuriating, childish caricatures, and the protagonist wandered in from a Murakami novel. The ideas, though!
- Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
- The return of my favorite agender spaceship! And the last in the series. Premise: what if your emperor’s consciousness were a distributed system, and a partition happened? 🍵🐓🐟🎶🚀
- Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
- A great character study, where the protagonist is kind and compassionate, and things work out for him! That said, everything working out was a little too pat – it fell into the “if I’m a great guy, things will be just fine!” There wasn’t a unifying story to root for, which made the book a little unsatisfying.
- Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan
- Adorable, but super cringey. Unabashedly enthusiastic.
- Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
- Moody and atmospheric, but it drags a little, and ends a little abruptly. Not sure what I think of it.
- Shards of Honour, Lois McMaster Bujold
- a measured space opera romance. Cheesy, but comforting. I hear this is the weakest in the series; if so, I’m very excited to read the rest.
- Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge
- Fairly disappointing. It has promise, but doesn’t really go anywhere with it. Doesn’t help that none of the characters are particularly likeable.
- Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey
- Characterization is kind of flat, but the story and world make up for that. The pace really kicks off about halfway through, and it’s a really fun read.