Books

I keep track of books I read on goodreads.

Summary notes

Notes on writing about books

See also Books that changed my life.

Categorization is very rough, as some books can fit multiple categories.

Favorites

In general, I like…

• Stories that feel true (anything Murakami; The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
• Stories that are beautiful (Inheritance trilogy, N.K. Jemisin)
• Stories that show a way of thinking (Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang)

General fiction

• Richard Adams, Watership Down
• Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
• Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler
• Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City
• Stephen Chbosky, The perks of being a wallflower
• Emma Donoghue, Room
• Lawrence Durrell, Justine
• Jordan Ellenberg, The Grasshopper King
• Brian Hall, The Saskiad: one of my favorite books
• Mark Haddon, The curious incident of the dog in the night-time: this book and the previous one feel very “true.”
• Brett Helquist: educational YA mysteries
• Hermann Hesse, Glass Bead Game
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera: philosophical
• Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Remains of the Day
  • The Unconsoled
• Yiyun Li, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl (short stories)
• Lois Lowry, The Giver
• Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
• David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
• Haruki Murakami: portrays unassuming characters trying to reason things out (he really gets inside their thought processes, one thought to the next), his wisdom, and for his deep conversations. He puts down so many everyday details but makes them interesting, and he seems to makes it clear to the reader what he’s doing. He thinks through the history of all his characters, and shows how they have an indelible effect on who they are.
  • Kafka on the Shore: my favorite.
  • Norwegian Wood
  • 1Q84 (I love Tengo – someone who likes math and writing!)
  • Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: despite this being one of his earlier works, I find that this is the one that left the strongest impression on me.
• Trina Paulus, Hope for the flowers
• Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead: See my thoughts on Ayn Rand
• Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
• Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events (see In praise of readers, and those who listen rather than shout)
• Gary Shteyngart
  • Super Sad True Love Story
  • Absurdistan
• Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Speculative fiction

Science fiction

• Isaac Asimov
  • I, Robot
  • Foundation
• Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake: dystopia
• Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife: a future where water is scarce
• Iain Banks, Culture series: Notable for having one of the most comprehensive future utopic worlds.
• Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
• Ted Chiang: my favorite science fiction author. He has an anthology of short stories (Stories of Your Life and Others).
  • Story of Your Life: follows a linguist trying to decipher an alien language; it changes her way of thinking; emotional; interesting analogy to physics
  • Liking what you see: Written in documentary format, explores (all sides of) the impact of calliagnosia (removing the part of the brain that judges people by their faces)
  • The lifecycle of software objects: Novella about virtual pets, good portrayal of the software development process.
• John Christopher, The Tripods Trilogy: mind control by aliens
• Ernest Cline, Ready Player One: a love story to video games
• James S.A. Corey, Expanse series: space opera, biological weapons
• Michael Crichton, Sphere: really chilling account of a malevolent alien intelligence who uses psychological manipulation
• Justin Cronin, The Passage: post-apocalyptic, vampires.
• Greg Egan
  • Permutation City: life in cellular automata
  • Diaspora: (1) life & society in cyberspace (including a wonderful metaphor about learning math as exploration), (2) exploration in the universe ad infinitum/nauseum
• Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
• Max Harms, Crystal Society: most realistic description of AI I’ve seen. From AI’s point of view.
• Robert Heinlin, Stranger in a Strange Land
• Aldous Huxley, Brave New World: dystopia, warnings of easy pleasure
• Stanisław Lem
  • The Cyberiad: ridiculous-humorous science-inspired stories
  • Solaris: sentient planet
• Ken Liu
  • Mono no Aware: a beautiful short story. Sacrificing oneself for humanity.
• Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem: alien contact, Chinese history.
• China Miéville, Perdido Street Station: really good exploration of how different (alien) races get along in a city
• Ramez Naam, Nexus: convincing depiction of a future of neural enhancement
• Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars trilogy (review): terraforming, hard sci-fi, scientists doing problem-solving, interesting psychology.
• Dan Simmons, Hyperion: great storytelling.
• Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker: the fate of the universe. Anthropomorphizing the stars.
• Neal Stephenson
  • Anathem: draws a nice parallel between mathematics and religion, takes a mathematician/scientist’s life and makes it adventurable, nice philosophy
  • The Diamond Age: very relevant speculation on technology and education
• The World of Null-A, A.E. van Vogt
• Blindsight, Peter Watts: What if intelligence does not correlate with consciousness?
• Vernor Vinge, Zones of Thought
• Eliezer Yudkowsky, Three worlds collide

Fantasy

• Suzanne Collins, Underland chronicles: She is more famous for the Hunger Games, but I like this previous series better!
• Roald Dahl
• Robin Hobb
  • Farseer trilogy
• Ursula Le Guin: great anthropological fiction
  • The Left Hand of Darkness
  • The Tombs of Atuan
• Scott Lynch, Gentlemen Bastards: My favorite heist series. Lots of twists, in an extravagantly built world.
• Anne McCaffrey, Dragonriders of Pern
• Brandon Sanderson: amazing worldbuilding, epic stories.
  • novels/series
    • Mistborn
    • Stormlight Archive
  • novellas (see Arcanum Unbounded for a collection)
    • Legion: having a multiplicity of personalities
    • The Emperor’s Soul
    • Edgedancer
    • Sixth of the Dusk
    • Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
• Johanna Sinisalo, Troll: A Love Story
• Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, The Edge Chronicles – love the world. Gritty, intricate, and adventurous. Detailed illustrations.
• Brian Jacques, Redwall series
• N.K. Jemisin: my favorite fantasy author. Great worldbuilding, “gods in chains” theme, head-on addressing oppression (rare in fantasy)
  • Inheritance trilogy
  • Broken Earth trilogy
  • Dreamblood (2 books)
• Diana Wynne Jones: playful fantasy & magic
  • Crestomanci series
  • Howl’s Moving Castle
  • Dogsbody
• Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway
• Larry Niven, Ringworld
• Naomi Novik, Temeraire: Dragons in Napoleonic wars
• Terry Pratchett, Discworld series: satire
  • Nation, The role of stories and belief
• Patrick Rothfuss, Kingkiller Chronicles – (1) system of magic is very reasoned out (2) exemplifies a person who wants to learn everything
• Jonathan Stroud, The Bartimaeus Trilogy
• Jane Yolen, Sister Emily’s Lightship and Other Stories: folk tales retold. My favorite is the feminist take on Peter Pan.
• Welcome to Bordertown (shared world, many authors): the prototypical urban fantasy

Horror

• Ruthanna Emrys, The Litany of Earth
• Stephen King, The Gunslinger

Historical fiction

• Stephen Lawhead, Byzantium

Nonfiction

• Quantum computing since democritus, Scott Aaronson
• Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely
• Karen Armstrong: books on religion
• Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
• Roald Dahl
  • Boy: Tales of Childhood
  • Going Solo
• Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything
• Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
• James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
• Robin Hanson, The Age of Em: detailed predictions of a future dominated by emulated minds
• Helen Keller, The Story of My Life
• Douglas Hofstadter,
  • Gödel Escher Bach
  • I am a strange loop
• Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking
• Stephen Levy
  • Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
  • Crypto: How the code rebels beat the government
• Laszlo Mero, Moral Calculations
• Marvin Minsky, The society of mind
• Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan lovers, and the mad dreamers who tried to build a perfect language
• Osho, Being in Love: How to Love with Awareness and Relate Without Fear
• Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
• Claude M. Steele, Whistling Vivaldi: And other clues to how stereotypes affect us
• Nassim Taleb, Antifragile
• Trefethen’s Index Cards
• Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, Soonish: Ten emerging technologies that’ll improve and/or ruin everything