My Year in Books 2023

[DNF] means did not finish. Usually a bad sign. [R] means a re-read.

The Best Books I Read This Year

• Brooks, David. How to Know a Person. For those of us at the introverted end of the spectrum. Also for those of you at the extroverted end of the spectrum.
• Burkeman, Oliver. Four Thousand Weeks. "Time? What time do you think we have?" Inbox Zero is a lie.
• Dreyer, Benjamin. Dreyer's English. My second favourite book on writing well.
• Exurb1a. Poems for the Lost Because I'm Lost Too. I don't do poetry much, but sometimes you find something that speaks to you. Do yourself a favour and check out exurb1a's video on absurdism.
• Singh, Simon. The Code Book. Read this if you aren't willing to commit to the 984 pages of Kahn's The Codebreakers. Or read them both.
• Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. My favourite book on writing non-fiction well.

Not Recommended

• [DNF] Carpenter, Perry. Transformational Security Awareness. Not enough meat.
• [DNF] Espinosa, Christian. The Smartest Person in the Room. Too much woo.
• [DNF] Gandhi, Mahamta. Gandhi: An Autobiography. Some people should not write their own biographies.
• Harding, Douglas E. On Having No Head. Curse you Sam Harris.
• Moffatt, Simon. Consumer Identity & Access Management. Not enough depth for my purposes.

Recommended

• Birch, David. The Currency Cold War. Birch is always good.
• Brackett, Marc. Permission to Feel.
• [R] Bukowski, Charles. What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire. At least half a dozen poems in here that caught my attention. Made me feel things. Ugh.
• Cowen, Tyler. GOAT: Greatest Economist of All Time. More than meets the eye, the book reinvented with AI (goatgreatesteconomistofalltime.ai).
• Everett, Greg. Tough. Too wordy.
• Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet.
• Hanley, Ryan Patrick. Our Great Purpose. A great way to tackle Smith without tackling Smith.
• Hossenfelder, Sabine. Existential Physics.
• Johnson, Sue. Hold Me Tight. This book might save you.
• [R] le Carre, John. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
• [R] le Carre, John. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
• Lyons, Dan. Disrupted. An argument for weapons of mass destruction.
• Mansbridge, Peter. How Canada Works.
• McEwan, Ian. Atonement.
• Montas, Roosevelt. Rescuing Socrates. An argument for classical education.
• Nichtern, Ethan. The Dharma of the Princess Bride.
• O'Connor, Patricia T. Woe Is I.
• Renieris, Elizabeth. Beyond Data.
• Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis.
• Schneier, Bruce. We Have Root.
• Schneier, Bruce. Click Here to Kill Everybody.
• Sowell, Thomas. Quest for Cosmic Justice.
• Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus.
• Stephenson, Neal. Termination Shock.
• Wittkop, Jeremy. The Cybersecurity Playbook for Modern Enterprises. A good survey of the landscape.
• Wachter-Boettcher, Sara. Technically Wrong.

In Progress

• Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Sarah Ruden. Not quite my cup of tea but Montas inspired me.
• [R] Gaines, Helen Fouche. Cryptanalysis. As with The Codebreakers below, Singh's The Code Book inspired me to get back into this.
• [R] Kahn, David. The Codebreakers. The canonical history of cryptology. Having read Singh's The Code Book I was inspired to re-read Kahn's authoritative text.
• le Carre, John. The Honourable Schoolboy.
• Petzold, Charles. The Annotated Turing.
• Pinker, Steven. Sense of Style.
• Richo, David. How to be an Adult in a Relationshiop.
• Skelton, Matthew and Pais, Manuel. Team Topologies. I've started and stopped this book many times. It's time to just get it done.
• Watkins, Michael D. The First 90 Days.
• Way, L. Randall. Why Minsky Matters.

For my Winter term course at Queen's, WRIT 290 Writing Creative Non-Fiction:

• Gutkind, Lee. You Can't Make This Stuff Up.
• Armstrong, Luanne and Landale Zoe. Slice Me Some Truth.

Also, the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, but that doesn't quite count.