I was between two and three stars, but bumped it up to three because J loved it so much. I didn’t connect with it, maybe because the characters felt cartoonish or maybe because the “gaming” concept felt childish and lame.

A sort of “no reservations” for the 1930s, combined with a hobo travelogue. Orwell’s classism comes through strongest in the passages in which he attempts to break away from it the most. A fun read.

One of the “weird” books I’ve read, about a Romantic Swedish starving artist. I liked it a lot, and really identified with the main character (maybe I shouldn’t say that?).

An interesting topic (Alexander Graham Bell and his lifelong interest in helping deaf people speak), but the inclusion of too much detail and not enough of a focused story made it drag.

A four-star cultural history of global warming that unfortunately dragged on too long (particularly in the third section). Fun and depressing to read.

A fun and inspiring quick read arguing for, essentially, cycling infrastructure buildouts around Europe and North America.

A magical-realist take on American slavery. An interesting idea, but I found it annoyingly inconsistent in its writing and it never really clicked with me.

Fun and quick to read, this book is full of very deeply weird stories (in a good way!). Horror-adjacent.

A great, inspiring little book that applies permaculture principles and techniques to life, well, not on a farm.

A cute package of design inspiration relating to bunk beds and shared rooms. The writing is pretty insipid, but the pictures are great.

A wonderful book; my favorite sections were about the animals and the explorers. It’s old enough (1981?) that it doesn’t mention global warming!

Hard to follow the magical realism plot but the notes on community and music are heartfelt and evocative.

A fun read, and also a good momentum-builder for the next book. Grown up children reckon with their trauma from their father’s kidnapping from their Jewish community on Long Island. Very funny.

I think I’ve read too many Ezra Klein Times op-eds for this book to be new and interesting. My biggest takeaway was how degraded America’s environment was in the 50s and 60s, and how I don’t want to return to that.

Mike Davis does it again - another great book on the history of LA, in this case exploring the fears that have shaped Los Angeles’s geography and culture.

Fun to read, and I learned a bit about Spanish history (which is more interesting to me than the Basques).

Starts off great, ends up as a sort of failed Bulworth except that he stands for British Conservatism (tradition, decency, our place in the world, &c). Interesting notes on British governance!

A Thoreauvian experience: the world reduced down to what really matters; in this case, keeping her sister alive. Thoughtful and powerful.

A beautiful, powerful book that was interesting, easy to read, and compelling, despite not being written super well. Achilles’s story, told through his lover Patroclus.

The epic of a north German family’s decline, but a book about family, money, music, and prestige. Funny and sad, in parts, and long, but quite easy to read.

A fun-to-read piece of historical fiction about the early 20th century labor struggles in Spokane. Fast-paced, it endears you at least a little to the workingman’s plight.

A memoir-ish novel about being a drug addict Tampa kid that somehow ends as a redemption story. Man Booker-ish, almost.

A really wonderful book, almost four stars, about the Nantucket whaling ship The Essex that was sunk by a sperm whale and the travails of its crew. Has great detail about whaling and life on Nantucket at the time.

Another memoir-ish novel (1st person, non-omniscient) about a girl growing up in Sunderland and moving to her grandfather’s house on the west coast of Ireland. This book would have really hit when I was 21.

A compelling (if sometimes hard to read) account of Kesey & co’s trips (;)) and travels promoting LSD. Funnily anticlimactic.

Like reading Harry potter for the first time; set in WWII Hungary with Nazis instead of Voldemort.

Most of the book was irrelevant to me since we have our own rules about how to live and spend money, but the chapter on giving was interesting (it suggested involving kids in charitable donation decisions).

I personally did not think the book was particularly well-written or persuasive, but I already (wholeheartedly) agree with the thesis and am living my own version of it. It did have a few nice tips in it, but they were buried by all of the fluffy writing. For someone else, three stars.

A fun exploration of the world through different animal senses. Had a perspective of wonder that I appreciated.

Well-written, and casual in its depictions. This works well for the supposed depredations of the Angels and not so well for the misogyny and racism endemic in society.

A very fun history of early flight, focusing on Zeppelins and their competition with Pan Am to create a worldwide airline.

I thought this would be a history of the American Revolution, but it really is just a history of the American Revolution in the year 1776. Easy to read, and pretty interesting.

Definitely a masterpiece, though the second epilogue really dragged for me. I learned some about Napoleon’s campaign into Russia, and a bunch about Russian high society pre-Revolution.

It’s the book for the JLaw movie; a taut, plot-driven holler thriller. Very evocative; it makes sense that they’d make a movie out of it.

Just like the movie: heartfelt, exciting, funny, filled with a lot of funny inside baseball from the publishing and film worlds.

Interesting, with some phrases and snippets that lodged in my mind, but overall not a too-interesting or well-written tale of an IRA hotel bombing in Brighton.

Two or three stars for non-SF residents or people uninterested in anarchistic or social movements or infrastructure development. With with a decidedly pro-labor perspective, the book explores a lot of, well, hidden SF history.

Everyone has big boobs and lots of sex in this satiric (?) thriller (?) about the Everglades.

Long, but clarifying and not too dense to get through on successively nightly reads.

Another one of these not well written (or particularly well-thought-out) and yet compelling books… essentially YOLO, the book. I will make J read it and report back.

A re-revisionist history of the conquistadores, emphasizing “obedezco pero no cumplo” but also explaining a lot of the context and the events.

Three stars because I’m into that kind of stuff (energy transition planning, Australia); two stars for a general audience.

Four stars for the chapters on imperialism, two stars for the middle chapters about the development of the warring states’ capacities.

A supreme BEACH READ that I blazed through, ignoring the funny Spanish and improbable tennis play-by-play.

A coming-of-age story for both a young man and a country (Nigeria).

A sort of reverse “miracle of castel di sangro” aimed at rebutting a lot of the late-2000s American discourse on Mexico. Two-star book at times.

Engaging and quick-moving, if a little anglocentric, this history of European slaves in Morocco was okay, not great.

A wonderful book; an exploration of flying and movement and travelers whose lessons apply at least somewhat to me. A little too untidy to be four stars, but very close.

Short, simple, businesslike. Some apt metaphors and imagery. Zen-inspired.

A very 90s classic, replete with swears, homophobic language, and stories of sexual exploits.

A survey of public transit systems in selected American and European (and Japanese) cities, written by an enthusiast. Not as rigorous or thesis-driven as, say, paved paradise, but a fun whirl nonetheless.

A great history of Robespierre and the French Revolution more broadly. Explains the mix of idealism and pragmatism that led to the Terror.

A man’s “romance” novel, set in New Zealand during the Great Depression. Contains a great “lost in the woods hiking” section and a peculiar rough-and-ready hobo populism.

A fun, easy-to-read, well-reported, compelling journey along the path taken through Colombia by cocaine. Points the finger, correctly in my reading, at the tiny Colombian elite.

Andre Agassi’s autobiography - a quick, punchy read that has a lot about tennis and a lot about being a prodigy, and then a post-prodigy.

Paul Wheaton’s “permaculture solutions” book. I blazed through this, reading it on my phone. It’s actually pretty good - short chapters and quick to read, so long as his voice isn’t to grating for you.

A breezy, inspiring manifesto for “local energy,” focusing on solar and batteries, from a software-turned-cleantech guy.

A revisionist history of the Luddites, emphasizing not the breaking of the machines but the social pressures brought to bear on the entrepreneurs. Tries (too hard) to connect that history to today’s tech companies, but has a nice section on the present and recent history at the end.

A delightful romp through ancient history with an eccentric autodidact. Did you know a huge comet appeared in 1486 BC that induced people all over the world to abandon their pacifistic lifestyle and instead turn to murder and pillage?

A good premise (technology obfuscating surveillance, lonely, bored, and broken people trying to connect across the world) that gets a little maudlin in practice (kind of like the human-slaughterhouse book).

I was hoping that this would provide some narrative insight into the Irish potato famine, but it’s much more of an economist-type analysis.

Quick to read; funny, surprising, and frustrating in equal measure. A prostitute in Casablanca tours us through Moroccan society.

A great, very interesting revisionist (Marxist) history of the initial development of steam power in 19th century Britain. Closed by two chapters of boring, unconvincing Marxist “math.”

A short, strange book; a literary sci-fi kids story for grownups. A lot of British lingo that I think went over my heads. Quick to read.

Breezily written and mostly accurate, this book tells the story of how a proposed power line from OK to TN wasn’t built without digging deeper intowhyit wasn’t.

Short, with simple words combining into complicated ideas. An exploration of the late 70s baby bust in Germany (among many other things).

(did not finish)A walking-speed tour through indigenous European history.

Reminiscent of “Tenacious Beasts” in that it’s a collection of chapters about things that exist but have no real common thread otherwise. I’m glad these ideas exist, and that he worked on collecting them, but this book was not compelling.

A punchy survey of some of the world’s important materials, written by a journalist. Easy to read and interesting.

Island life in a novel; the island in question is Welsh and the plot captivates less than the characters and the setting.

A tale of small-town commercial warfare and sibling rivalry set in 18th(?) century Newfoundland. Three stars for normal readers that might struggle with the antique vocabularies.

A story about the passage of time and how it affected Gen X bad boys and girls. Some moments in it are indelible, but overall I didn’t connect with it.

As novels go, not the best: too serialized, to formulaic , very Victorian. Provides a great (British) sense of the French Revolution, however.

An exemplary popular science book, covering the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous extinctions.

A YA book about how the world will beat you down and how children are either simple or predators. Not super well written, but an interesting perspective.

Too long! It must be an updating of Dickens’ David Copperfield, because it’s overstuffed with characters and plot.

A businessman get entrapped in Russian corruption and narrowly escapes - and it’s all true! Somewhat formulaic, but if you like the formula…

A feminist “The Stranger,” written sparely and conveying much more than what it says. About a young woman in rural Argentina in the early 20th century.

Self-help-y, but at least they only said things that I think are correct. Helped me realize that I am already living my best life.

It’s very cool to see my own family in a book! And the idea that children are transmuted into boys and young women by a patriarchal culture is an interesting one. Despite that, there’s a lot of extra stuff in this and only some of it was interesting.

A Jonathan Franzen-esque, American Pastoral-esque book about a Brookline family. Fun and easy to read; thoughful and interesting.

As funny as it is to say about a book on Stalin’s purges, I looked forward to reading this every day. Very dense, and comprehensive, with a welcome perspective on the innocence or lack thereof of the system as a whole.

I quite liked this book, and if somebody was interested in transportation and urban planning and hadn’t read this yet, I would strongly recommend it.

A spare, tense, Danish “thriller” about a pay-to-stay-alive resort after a nuclear holocaust. Observes (and by observing, satirizes) wealthy consumer culture’s lack of response to the issue at hand (and is therefore relevant to COVID, global warming, &c.).

A Pattern Language on creating a permaculture farm in the suburbs

A long, dense description of the Cultural Revolution (I made it to chapter 18)

The first book that I’ve lost myself in in a while. Sad and painful to read but also wholesome and calming.

A book about kindness, friendship, and loyalty, where the heroes are good and the villains are bad. I’m excited to read it with E :)

An interesting topic, but a confused, muddled, and misleading take on the issues.

Really a great book, formative for me in several dimensions. Looking forward to E reading it.

Intense to read, complicated, very Israeli.

Not as good as The golden compass - the side characters aren’t as developed and the settings not as enthralling

A beginner’s survey of “common knowledge” re: world energy production and consumption. Not written well, and constrained by the status quo.

A clever, smart condensation of the terror a modern liberal cosmopolitan feels. The ending was a little pat, however.

Less sprawling, and, ultimately, less interesting than Dawn of Everything, but with the same lens and theses. Sadly, not a fun pirate book.

Lots of fun - back to fun after The Subtle Knife - and touching, if lightly ideological.

An interesting-at-times account of the banking behind the Great Depression; overall too many details and thus reads too long.

Better than Redwall - more adventures, a better plot, less choppily written - but with the same moral base.

A deeply researched excavation of right-wing political funding’s history and sources. Accurate and influential, though with a few cheap shots thrown in.

Better than I expected it to be; a light, quick, simple and simplistic beach read.

Repetitive and self-aggrandizing, it makes a good point (sleep is important!) that seems aimed at a markedly resistant audience.

I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot. The author has a good sense of humor, appreciates the absurd, and contextualizes the stories well.

Not as good as Tell Them of Battles, Kings, & Elephants or The Leopard; an interesting, evocative, and historically true account of the Ottoman Empire.

I have been thinking about this book for days; a dogged take on “what really matters” despite not being particularly well written.

Historical fiction about the pilgrims; insightful about the social and religious divides in Plymouth.

Thought-provoking and easy to read, it’s still a muddled story with too many characters (doesn’t count towards the list because it’s a manga)

Sci-fi: an okay story in a fantastic, thought-provoking setting (AI, octopuses, humanity). Unsettling but ultimately optimistic.

These stories bring me “back” to college, with its rampant insecurity, hormonal excitement, and sense of self-discovery.

A great overview of the Bay Area’s housing problems; a little “inside baseball” with the SF YIMBY world.

Compelling. A humanizing, realist piece of “science fiction.” Is it about factory farming?

A slow build, this story hurt like A Little Life but with young Irish boys.

An edifying story of Uyghur oppression, exile, and political activism presented in a calm style by a professional journalist. This book connected with me.

Prescient and interesting; a great picture of life in industrial England in 1937. I just don’t care enough about socialism for this to be four stars.

Parts of this book are nearly perfect, Middlemarch-esque; other parts are harder for me to connect to.

An exquisitely timed (walking pace) interrogation of the author’s uncle’s history in the Spanish Civil War.

I flew through this book - it was fun, another fun nostalgic book about experiences I never had (this time, girls’ high school sports).

A long, dense description of melancholia, set in turn-of-the-century Lisbon ( I only made it to page 82 of ~300)

An easy, inspiring read about the (partial) recoveries of (certain) wild animals. Accurate and interesting, with some good perspective.

I didn’t really connect with this book; it’s a cool idea (post-wilderness world) but a little too mother-daughter for me.

A fun, readable history book on a subject I knew nothing about (Oliver Cromwell) that gets sidetracked with irrelevant stories.

A crazy, irreverent book from the 1930s (from a real American crank) that is essentially “the sneetches” if Dr. Seuss was a jaded pessimist. I read it in one day.

DFW-esque, but sprawling and international instead of solipsistic and internal. About reading, writing, violence, Mexico.

I considered giving this book one star. I agree with it (in that poverty is a problem in America and that there are some obvious ways to solve it), but found it badly argued and badly written.

A fun “rich people problems” book from the 1920s ( I only made it about halfway through this one)

Easy to read, quick and fun and timely (Messi joining Inter Miami) but a little repetitive and ultimately not all that insightful.

A very fun historical travelogue through the Balkans at an intense historical moment for the region. I learned a lot and had fun reading it.

An interesting, wacky book about science and mathematics and death and insanity and the people who make the world much worse through their work.

An engaging, easy-to-read account of Chris Hani’s murder and the leadership it took to move SA away from the brink. Despite the dozens of characters, easy to follow.

Not as easy to read or a fun as Moneyland, it nonetheless tells a compelling story about money laundering. Suffers from too many characters and a convoluted timeline.

Engaging and fun to read; relatively bleak on the prospects of humanity and civilization and there various ecosystems, but not overwhelmingly so.

A very apropos book about wealth, WASPs, marriage, family, and kids. Quick to read, I connected with the characters.

Philosophicallysimpler and less compelling than YMoYL (while being much more jargon-heavy), it does make the point that by paying yourself first, you can save and invest painlessly. I found it in our Santa Barbara Airbnb.

Very interesting, emotionally heavy, and understated book about Hiroshima during and after the atomic bombing.

This book offered a solid overview of parking in the US and had lots of fun facts and amusing anecdotes but didn’t feel super “tight” - jumping around in time and focusing for too long on fun stories.

Dry and scattered, this book describes the world at 1000 sticking close to what evidence can support without adding a ton of narrative or color.

Good but not great (to me). Persuasively demonstrates that Indian culture is not dead and that Indians are integral to American history, but I knew that already.

A relentless accounting of the poverty a warming climate will engender. Particularly interesting are its reference to seeing the ruins of a richer, more peaceful world, and the short timeline during which much of the carbon in the was put there.

fun local story about embedding with the shark researchers on the Farallones. for San Franciscans.

made it to chapter 5, the section on radar.

Long, but very readable and superlatively infuriating. A homeless family of eight tries to live in New York, and doesn’t quite make it.

A pop business book, with 8-page-long chapters, that actually does a great job explaining the history of the semiconductor industry.

A great memoir - a girl’s mom pays a rebel soldier to ferry her and her father and siblings out of Liberia - that didn’t land at some points for me.

Like uninhabitable earth, a reckoning with human impacts, this time on animal life. Gets weaker at the end, but compelling and easy to read throughout.

A history of the creation of national citizenship in the USA during reconstruction, and its slow strangling by a business-focused Supreme Court and racist state governments.

A somewhat gritty, somewhat wholesome story about black New York

Wonderful and inspiring

A patchy, uneven view on high-tech modern policing

very Norwegian short stories

interesting setting, interesting characters and ideas

great Steinbeck novella

slog; visceral depiction of French rural poverty and agricultural brutality

quick, fun read

long, winding narrative history of EIC conquest in India

very interesting perspective; written conversationally

very Michael Pollen-y book about psychedelics

not super well-written; some very cool perspective on forests

slog; lots of fun scene-setting from the early days of the American Revolution

another Sally Rooney book, less good than the other two; a little navel-gaze-y

slog; lots of good facts; felt like a long defense of the status quo

didn’t connect with the characters

interesting

pretty much “A man called Ove” but with different characters

fun to read

i would like to share this book with E when he’s a teenager

not super interesting or well-written but easy to read; very apropos

some good ideas, but overall a slog

fun to read, interesting, makes some predictions that haven’t panned out

slog, interesting at times, Mom might like it

quite long; has lots of very interesting ideas

quick, easy read; like The Old Ways: erudite, evocative, interesting but understated

interesting, passionate, true, correct; mix of anecdote and analysis

short, easy, aggressively non-emotional (fictional) read about a tough subject: a young man’s life as a neo-nazi

read like four different books all strung one after another

similar to Zeihan’s books; not as good but a decent survey of the world

cogent analysis of the current US-China rivalry; easy to read and provides some okay context

full of infuriating tales; ultimately unpersuasive; the first two chapters are better than the later ones

compelling, persuasive, scary, accurate; characters and prose are somewhat clunky

okay overview of Turkey, Greece, &c.; the last chapter is woefully naive and inaccurate in my view

builds a medieval world; twisting, plot-driven, interesting, and fun to read

a view into Italian unification and the minor European nobility (was written by one of them)

very powerful; not very well written. Mbolela has seen a lot and his book brought a lot home for me

interesting, compelling, a bit hit-or-miss. too short to count as a “real” book (~50pages)

inspiring stories of people going their own way farming in America; ends a bit flat

quick read; unsettling; a bit Hemingwayesque but without the fun

makes good points; should have been more tightly edited (feels a bit loose as it goes on; cliches)