Library


Selected books that I’ve read for enjoyment or learning. I also wrote a post about how I read.

To see things I haven’t yet read browse the /anti-library. All my (crappy) book reviews are at /reviews.

The Bacchae

Euripides

Orbital

Samantha Harvey
★★★★

How to Watch TV News

Neil Postman
★★★

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

Christopher Lasch
★★★★

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien
★★★★★

Shakespearean Tragedy

A.C. Bradley
★★★★★

A Man's Place

Annie Ernaux
★★★

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy
★★★★★

Transit

Rachel Cusk
★★★★

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell
★★★★★

High Output Management

Andrew S. Grove
★★

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up

Liao Yiwu
★★★

The Great Divide: Australia's Housing Mess and How to Fix It (Quarterly Essay #92)

Alan Kohler

Flames

Robbie Arnott

The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

Christopher Lasch
★★★★★

The Years

Annie Ernaux
★★★★★

The Plot Against America

Philip Roth
★★★★★

Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)

Octavia E. Butler

Circe

Madeline Miller
★★★★

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke
★★★★★

The Burnout Society

Byung-Chul Han

The Netanyahus

Joshua Cohen
★★★★★

The Guest

Emma Cline
★★★

Uncanny Valley

Anna Wiener
★★★

Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents

Ellen Ullman
★★★★

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (George Smiley, #5; Karla Trilogy, #1)

John Le Carré
★★★★

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley, #3)

John Le Carré
★★★★

The Road to Serfdom

Friedrich A. Hayek
★★

Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer
★★★★

The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)

Elena Ferrante
★★★★★

Flowers for Algernon

Daniel Keyes
★★★★☆

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain
★★★

Bewilderment

Richard Powers
★★★

My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)

Elena Ferrante
★★★★

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Marshall McLuhan
★★★★★

Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

David Graeber
★★★★

The Illustrated Man

Ray Bradbury
★★

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America

Nancy MacLean
★★★★

God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning

Meghan O'Gieblyn
★★★★

Trust

Hernan Diaz
★★★★★

This Side of Paradise

F. Scott Fitzgerald
★★★★

Player Piano

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
★★

The Secret History

Donna Tartt
★★★★★

The Sellout

Paul Beatty
★★★★★

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov
★★★★

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr
★★★

The Rules of Attraction

Bret Easton Ellis
★★★

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard P. Feynman
★★★★

On Photography

Susan Sontag
★★★★★

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Dale Carnegie
★★★★

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

Paul Fussell
★★★★

God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4)

Frank Herbert
★★★

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich
★★★★★

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel
★★★★

Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know

E.D. Hirsch Jr.
★★★★

The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School

Neil Postman
★★★★

The Martian

Andy Weir

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
★★★

Mother Night

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
★★★★★

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson
★★

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Mark Fisher
★★★★

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
★★★★

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

Nadia Eghbal
★★★

Ways of Seeing

John Berger
★★★★

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
★★★★★

Stories of Your Life and Others

Ted Chiang
★★★★

China in Ten Words

Yu Hua
★★★★★

Priestdaddy

Patricia Lockwood
★★★★

The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick
★★★

Foundation and Empire (Foundation, #2)

Isaac Asimov
★★★

The Gun Seller

Hugh Laurie
★★★

A Children's Bible

Lydia Millet
★★★★

East of Eden

John Steinbeck
★★★★

No One Is Talking About This

Patricia Lockwood
★★★★★

When We Cease to Understand the World

Benjamín Labatut
★★★★★

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

Eliyahu M. Goldratt
★★★★

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau
★★★★★

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective

Randal E. Bryant
★★★★★

The Rust Programming Language

Steve Klabnik
★★★★

The Design of Everyday Things

Donald A. Norman
★★★★

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Andreas Malm
★★★★

The Candy House

Jennifer Egan
★★★★

Crafting Interpreters

Robert Nystrom
★★★★★

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott
★★★★

Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming

Peter Seibel
★★★★

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

Geoffrey A. Moore
★★★

API Design Patterns

JJ Geewax
★★★★

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway
★★★★

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

Gene Kim
★★★

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick
★★★★

The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
★★★★

Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (Anchor Library of Science)

Eric Drexler
★★★

Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)

William Gibson
★★★★★

Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir
★★★

Steppenwolf

Hermann Hesse
★★★★

The Sciences of the Artificial

Herbert A. Simon
★★★★

Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

Ray Bradbury
★★★

The Call of the Wild

Jack London
★★★★

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

Ursula K. Le Guin
★★★★★

The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin
★★★★★

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson
★★★★★

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)

Christian Rudder
★★★★

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

Will Larson
★★★

The Psychology of Computer Programming

Gerald M. Weinberg
★★

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

David Graeber
★★★★★

Beautiful World, Where Are You

Sally Rooney
★★★

The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan
★★★★

Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

G. Pascal Zachary
★★★

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Jane Mayer
★★★★★

The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

Eric S. Raymond
★★★★★

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

Paul Graham
★★★

Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Kim Stanley Robinson
★★★★

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck
★★★★★

The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead
★★★★★

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan
★★★★

Jazz (Beloved Trilogy, #2)

Toni Morrison
★★★

The quiet revolution

Jim Cairns
★★

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

Ray Kurzweil
★★★★

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
★★★★★

The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Neal Stephenson
★★★★