library

Bold indicates a book I really enjoyed or that changed how I see something.
Italics means a book I’d probably not recommend.

2025

• The Essence of Software by Daniel Jackson
  Not too far through this, but enjoying it so far. Getting slight vibes that it might be going to overexplain something basic by constructing a grand theory around it, but we’ll see!

• Mileships by Ian McQue
  Need to go back through this in more depth, but it’s a stunner. Gorgeous art of rickety ships and lonely landscapes, with a light touch narrative that ties it all together.

• Release It! by Michael Nygard
  Superb book. Extremely clear sighted and well structured. A few overly specific or weird examples, but never prescriptive without evidence. Will inevitably become less relevant as time passes, but even in 2025 it’s a great overview of how to make computers do things at scale.

• The Rose Field by Philip Pullman
  Definitely my favourite of the new trilogy, but still underwhelming. I was hoping for it to expand on or dig deeper into what we saw in His Dark Materials, but it still hadn’t done so by the time it petered out with a rushed conclusion and some heavy-handed exposition.

• Burnout by Dr Claire Plumbly
  A trove of tried and true practices to help with stress and burnout, with careful and compassionate explanations of why we might struggle with the things we do. My one misgiving is that it draws on polyvagal theory which is, to be polite, not well evidenced, but I don’t think it undermines the rest of the book.

• The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

• The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett\ Adored this. Feels rude to say “Sherlock Holmes meets Attack on Titan” because it was so much more and didn’t feel derivative at all, but also…

• The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
  Somehow went in expecting a family drama novel but NOPE philosophical spy thriller. Good times.

• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
  Can’t say no to a fun mystery, but too contrived in places and not infrequent moments where I was like “Oh yeah I played that videogame”.

• Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken
  A welcome reminder that the industrial food industry does not, in fact, have our best interests at heart, but gave me a bit too much of the pop-science ick.

• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
  I have a very well-thumbed copy of Fellowship from ~2002 but somehow never made through the series until now. Something refreshing about its unapologetic exaltation of kindness and wisdom and humility. A classic for a reason.

• The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies
  An unexpected but welcome crash course in cybernetics (which, unrelated fun fact, shares an etymology with our beloved Kubernetes)