Not a great year for reading – 21 books, but one of those was a short story by the great Edith Wharton, sold as a little book. Again, the reduction in my daily commute is a big reason for the change. Links to earlier year-in-reviews here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017.
Narratives
- Pride and Prejudice: Beloved for good reason.
- The Mirror and the Light: Perhaps overlong, but a fantastic conclusion to the trilogy
- Solaris: Much scarier and unsettling than I had expected
- Vaxxers: Absolutely engrossing in the first half, less so in the second
- The Flatshare: A delightful romance with depth
- Jane, Unlimited: A one-of-a-kind rocketship that takes you into the narrative stratosphere.
- Rainbows End: Excellent portrait of a near-future world on the verge of singularity. Better on a second read because my expectations were properly calibrated.
- The Farthest Shore: The dragon is the star of the show
- Carrie: One big anxiety-sadness trip
- The Exorcist: Excellently done, but too close to the movie to give you much in the way of novelty if you’ve seen it.
- The Tombs of Atuan: A proto-feminist fantasy story!
- A Wizard of Earthsea: A bit episodic, but a creative new fantasy setting.
- Calvin and Hobbes: Ten Year Anniversary: Bill Waterson is such an idealistic, willful nut.
- The innovators: It takes an army to make a revolution.
- Liftoff: Musk’s gifts – a prophet’s power to lead, an eye for talent, and sociopathic ruthlessness.
- Amazon Unbound: Amazon’s growing bloat.
- Power Play: See Liftoff.
- Mr. Jones: A spooky trifle
Conceptual Non-Fiction
- The Precipice: In some ways it’s not as bad as you think, in others its worse.
- Four Thousand Weeks: Accept there is no lifehack to solve your problems.
- The Case for Space: Starts strongest, but eventually you have a sense we don’t actually know what economic case there is for space. I suspect we’ll get to orbit a lot more, but Mars will need to wait for us to become richest enough to pay for the