My Year in Books 2023

By: Mark Drummond On: Fri 29 December 2023
In: README
Tags: #books

The Stack

[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 favourtie 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.


For any feedback or corrections, please write in to: blog [at] markdrummond [dot] ca