For the last couple of years, I have been keeping track of books that were potentially written by AI that my Kindle saw fit to advertise to me on the lock-screen page. As I wrote at the top of each installment of Kindle Books Written by AIs,

“[…] This is a view into what people are reading or what Amazon would like people to be reading or … whatever. I simply observe and catalog.”

Until recently, it was kind of interesting because the provenance of the content could have gone either way:... [More]

This is the latest roundup of book titles that my Kindle shows me when I’m not reading it. Long ago, I considered paying to turn off this advertising, but it’s proven to be so entertaining that I’m happy I never gave in and did it. This is a view into what people are reading or what Amazon would like people to be reading or … whatever. I simply observe and catalog. I also sometimes have to hide my Kindle in public places so that no-one calls the police for what they think I’m reading.

Access... [More]

This is the latest roundup of book titles that my Kindle shows me when I’m not reading it. Long ago, I considered paying to turn off this advertising, but it’s proven to be so entertaining that I’m happy I never gave in and did it. This is a view into what people are reading or what Amazon would like people to be reading or … whatever. I simply observe and catalog. I also sometimes have to hide my Kindle in public places so that no-one calls the police for what they think I’m reading.

I’ve... [More]

As I started doing in the previous year, I’ve included a partial, “teaser” review of each book in this article as well as linked a separate article which includes a full review with all notes, as well as citations and rough notes.

I only hit 20 titles this year, but some of them were pretty hefty tomes, though none in German and only one in French. A couple of public-policy books this year, with the accompanying analysis.

Project Hail Mary (2021)

by Andy Weir

Andy Weir manages to comes up... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the third Witcher book, but the first book in what is called the Witcher Saga. Geralt is still the same. The world is worse.

The kingdom of Cintra has fallen to Nilfgard. Queen Calanthe is dead, Ciri is on the run. Nilfgard seeks her with all of its power, bending its will to finding the heiress who could try to take back the throne... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is a play about prison and prisoners. Chris Hedges worked on this play with his friend Boris Franklin. They met when Boris was one of Chris’s students in a writing course in prison in New Jersey. They are still friends today. There were 28 students in all, all of whom contributed to the story. Chris and Boris hammered a play out of their over two dozen stories, with the assistance of Chris’s wife, actress Eunice Wong.

This is a story about prison, and prisoners, but... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

I read this seven-volume, ~500-page treatise on spinning and yarn-production for work. The first four volumes were published in 2008, while the fifth and sixth—rotor-spinning and alternative spinning (primarily air-jet spinning)—were written in 2009, and the seventh volume—on man-made fibers—arrived five years later, in 2014.

• Volume 1 – Technology of Short-Staple Spinning
• Volume 2 – Blowroom & Carding
• Volume 3 – Spinning Preparation
• Volume 4 – Ring Spinning
• Volume... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the first book featuring the Witcher, a magically gifted, preternaturally physically gifted, and potion-enhanced monster-hunter. He wields a silver sword, pulled quickly from a sheath on his back. His hair is long and silver, his eyes jet black. His eyes match his head-to-toe leather armor, studded with spikes along the shoulders. The ladies love him; his enemies fear him. He knows lore; he is good with animals. He is wise and bides his time. He is a bad-ass, an... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is an excellent book. Everyone should read it, but especially every American should read it. It’s not an easy read, but neither is it easy to confront the fact that you’re part of a monstrous machine that chews up poor people and spits out yachts.

This machine runs on war. It runs on conquest, pillage, and piracy and all that war entails. It not only doesn’t care about the overwhelming number of victims of all kinds—those directly killed, those grievously injured,... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is a kind of a meta-plot-twist book: it’s a book with multiple pretty inventive plot twists about an author who becomes famous for having written a book with a nearly shockingly inventive and unique plot twist.

Jacob Finch Bonner is an author who stormed out of the gate, more or less, with a highly critically acclaimed first novel that never landed on the NYT best-seller list, but garnered a few industry awards that left everyone waiting for his next book. He takes a... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is a sequel to The Peripheral that, because of the wormhole technology involved, actually takes place before that book. The story takes place in an alternate future that had suffered through something called the “Jackpot”, which was a climate apocalypse that eliminated pretty much everything we’re being told it will actually eliminate, but from which a tiny portion of humanity managed to escape with technology wildly beyond ours. They have flying cars, cloaking... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

As usual in a Neal Stephenson book, there’s a lot going on. As usual in a Stephenson book of late, every single last character is possessed of a unique and ostensibly fascinating background, is confident, self-sufficient and self-reliant, interesting, eloquent, funny, smart, skilled, and almost invariably independently wealthy. Does that take a wee bit of the tension out of the book? You betcha.

There is the constant undertone that people who are not like the characters... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is a wonderfully written and incredibly honest and sobering look at how America treats what it clearly considers to be detritus—the dead and the wounded from its wars. On the one hand, there is an incredible respect and attention to detail for the dead and wounded. The wounded are offered incredible levels of care—right up until they are no longer in danger of dying, but can no longer be of any conceivable use to the military, at which point they are dropped like... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the story of the press in Great Britain in the 1930s. It paints a decidedly unflattering picture of the entire industry, one that, however hard we would try to claim to the contrary, fits extremely well in describing the media and journalistic culture in this, nearly the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. It is beautifully written, biting satire.

Suffice it to say that absolutely no-one is in any way interested in what actually happened or what the truth... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is a short lecture delivered by Albert Camus at Columbia University. He spoke of humanity’s moral decline—or more the obvious fact that it was less declining and more failing to rise to any occasion—and how we should continue to strive for peace, despite the hopelessness of the endeavor. He takes particular issue with the intrinsic hypocrisy that underlies every society we’ve known.[2]

It is our hypocrisy that prevents us from truly moving forward because we are... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the ninth and final volume of The Expanse. Whereas the first books were set very firmly in hard sci-fi, with plenty of orbital mechanics, the second half of the series got much more into the quasi-religious, quasi-magical nature of truly advanced technology. The protomolecule technology and its inventors were so advanced that anything we have looks positively Newtonian in comparison. The other-dimensional, multiverse-hopping demons that destroyed them are even more... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the story of a young man named Joe Bonham who wakes up in darkness and silence. The last thing he remembers is that he was in Europe, serving in the army during WWI. He slowly learns that it is dark and silent because he is deaf and blind. He learns that he can’t speak because he no longer has a mouth to speak of: no tongue, no teeth, just a weird emptiness that he can sense, but not feel. He can’t feel because he can’t move his arms and legs. He can’t move any of... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the eighth book of the The Expanse series. It’s four years after Laconia came in and took over everything in Persepolis Rising. Chrisjen Avasarala has finally died and been interred in the capitol city on Laconia. Holden, who is still being held prisoner there, attends the funeral. He attends a lot of state functions, keeping his ear to the ground. Duarte tolerates him because of his first-hand knowledge of the civilization that destroyed the protomolecule engineers... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

I am often amazed by the holisticity[2] of my research, of how often I happen, by what seems like pure coincidence, to read about several interrelated things. This book starts off in a direction vaguely similar to Amusing Ourselves to Death, but becomes much more. It addresses some of the same topics as No One is Talking About This, but goes much further, investigates the phenomenon of the Internet much more deeply, places it more firmly in the flow of history.

I’ve been a... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

Lockwood has a great feel for using a modern, hip vernacular to describe this world of ours. Her styles feels a bit like Gibson, with his similar penchant for emphasizing cultural relevance with product placement.

The first half of the book is about the “portal”, a kind of stream-of-consciousness brain-dump about what it’s like to live on the Internet and simultaneously in the modern world as a privileged first-worlder. She’s not even shy about comparing herself to a... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This book explores the thesis that printed material is the sweet spot for delivering information to human beings. The move in the mid-twentieth century to audiovisual presentation is a step in the wrong direction. The medium of television transforms everything it touches into entertainment. The book was written in 1985 and deals with the hole punched in culture by television.

Thirty-seven years later, the direness of the situation has been turned up several notches, with... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the last of three novels in the MaddAddam trilogy. It picks up where the first two books left off: the rescue of Jimmy and Amanda from the clutches of the two Painballers. Ren and Toby lead everyone home, back to the compound where they’ve set up camp with the Crakers. Soon, they are joined by Zeb, who takes up with Toby, despite her misgivings that he will take up with the slutty Swift Fox.

Despite the high level of education for most of the members of this last... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

The Boys is a story about a world with super-powered beings (“supes”). This is not unusual for comic books, or graphic novels. The distinction is that this story doesn’t make a distinction between superheroes and supervillains. It doesn’t believe that superheroes exist. Or it grudgingly concedes that some super-powered beings seem not to take advantage of their powers for personal gain. The only example of a high-level super-powered being who does so is Annie.

The story... [More]

Since the list of books and reviews and notes for the last couple of years got a little bit out of hand, I’ve only included partial notes and review of each book in this article. This year, the separate article for each book generally includes many more notes and review material, as well as citations and rough notes.

Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur (1907)

by Maurice Leblanc

This is a collection of stories about Arsène Lupin, a gentleman thief.

• L’Arrestation d’Arsène Lupin: Lupin... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

Eva Grjdic works at Cosmos, a grocery-store chain à la Migros.

The art style reminds me very much of my well-worn and beloved Mad magazines that I spent my youth reading. It is, perhaps, closest to Mort Drucker, with a bit of Sergio Aragones mixed in. The text is brilliant. It’s subversive, it’s so very Swiss. The context is so very Swiss. You won’t be able to really get this comic unless you live here or lived her at that time.

Eva is dirt poor and barely makes ends... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the second of three novels in the MaddAddam trilogy. The events in this book cover the same time frame as the first novel, but from the points of view of different characters. In that novel, we read about a girl named Bernice that Jimmy knew at the Martha-Graham Academy they both attended. She was a God’s Gardener. In this book, we learn more about her and much more about the Gardeners.

The mythology of the Gardeners is quite scientific. They are highly... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the first of three novels in the MaddAddam trilogy. This one tells the story of Snowman, a lone, somewhat mad, man living on his own in a post-apocalyptic world, nearly bereft of other human life. The only other “people” around are a tribe of pleasant, but simple humanoids that Snowman calls Crakers.

Snowman remembers a time when there were more people than just the Crakers. He remembers a time when the planet was controlled by supra-national corporations that ran... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the sixth book of the The Expanse series. It starts with Marco Inaros and his Free Navy in charge of the Slow Zone and Medina Station in it. Michio Pa is at the heart of the small group of higher-ups in the Free Navy who are beginning to seriously doubt Marco’s qualifications and goals. Those goals always seem to change whenever Marco would have had to admit that he’d failed. He managed to destroy billions on Earth, but the blow strikes simultaneously at Belters... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the fifth book of the The Expanse series. The book starts with a Belter raid on a Martian base on Callisto. A 15-year-old named Filip leads the raid. He is forced to leave a man behind, but the mission is otherwise a success. They’d managed to capture the stealth shielding from the Martians and made it look like a botched raid on a different warehouse.

The Rocinante is back at Tycho Station, this time for a half-year of repairs and upgrades. Amos heads to Earth to... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This story takes place after Abaddon’s Gate. It tells the story of Paulo Cortázar, who started life as a somewhat gifted, but lazy student. He gets hooked on amphetamines during his latter years at university and manages to get his degree. He has some money set aside, but he also now has a pretty big monkey on his back. He seems to be chronically incapable of landing a job, so he sets up his apartment for a cleansing—he’s going to kick the drug habit that he, in a... [More]