Best Books (I Read) In 2015

On the Move and Gratitude Oliver Sacks
A while ago on reddit, there was a massage therapist who said that 1) everyone's body sags and has other imperfections, and 2) when people relax, they become luminous, lit from within. Oliver Sacks is the patron saint of this dual nature of humanity. He wrote about it, he saw it in his patients, and he lived it. In his writing, he became luminous. In the process, he inspired thousands of future scientists with stories of human beings afflicted in some horrible ways, but also able to connect as humans. Gratitude, which consists of four late essays written after his terminal cancer diagnosis, is really a coda to On the Move, Sacks' record of a remarkable life.
Taken together, these two are the book of the year.

Natural Born Heroes Christopher McDougall and Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Artemis Cooper
As Oliver Sacks is my favorite science writer, Paddy Leigh Fermor is my favorite travel writer. He is most well known for his pre-World War II walk across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, and his actions during the Battle of Crete, during which he kidnapped one of the two German generals in charge of the forces occupying the island. Natural Born Heroes tells this story and the story of the other remarkable people in the Cretan Resistance and the British "Firm", coupled with advice on how to run and climb like a Greek shepherd and fight like the Heavenly Twins. Artemis Cooper's Fermor biography fills in a lot of detail before and after Fermor's travelogues, and makes an excellent companion to his works.

Syllabus and What It Is Lynda Barry
Two classes, ostensibly about how to draw, but also about how to think, how drawing helps you think, and the value of sketching daily. These will do interesting things to the inside of your head.

Galileo's Middle Finger Alice Domurat Dreger
Scandals and controversies involving scientists and activists for whom discretion is not the better part of valor. Alice's own work on human sexuality and anatomy has been at the center of two or three controversies since the book came out earlier this year. I liked this book so much that I invited Alice to be a guest on the podcast.

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane S Frederick Starr
I knew next to nothing about Central Asia during this period (600-1200 CE), other than that the Silk Road ran though it, and that Marco Polo traveled there on his way to China. The area between Persia and China of a thousand years ago remained a blank space until I read Lost Enlightenment and learned about the scientists, conquerors, poets and citizens of this region.

Werner Herzog's Guide for the Perplexed Werner Herzog and Paul Cronin
I have a rule that I have to read any book recommended to me by three or more people. This was the most recommended book of the last year. A series of interviews between Herzog and Cronin covers all of Herzog's movies and much of his biography.
Key lessons learned: The truth is not very good at dispelling a rumor: only a juicier rumor works. Always carry a set of bolt cutters with you. When scouting the top of Cerro Torre, where the winds can blow up to 100 mph, always carry chocolate, always tie in to your fellow climbers, and if you get blown off, remember to enjoy the spectacular view as you glide to your death a mile below. It is possible to haul a steamboat up a mountain if you are sure you have a large enough tree trunk for a linchpin. People are endlessly fascinating. It may take twenty years for you to realize that John Waters is gay.

The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue and The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
If, like me, you remember reading Susan Cooper and Madeleine L'Engle's books as a key childhood experience, you will want to pick up some of Maggie Stievater's books. If, on the other hand, you get your media recommendations from Tumblr and fanfiction sites, you'll also want to pick up these books. Books where place is a character. Books where even the villains are three dimensional characters, or perhaps just enjoy exotic cheeses and magical artifact collecting. Books where the heroes are cross with each other, or insecure, or just difficult to get along with. Books with dead Welsh kings, forests that speak Latin, and bloodthirsty horses from the sea.
Stiefvater is also an accomplished artist, musician and race car driver, which is a distressing amount of talent to find concentrated in one person.

Golden Son Pierce Brown
Pair Stiefvater's YA fantasy books above with Pierce Brown's Golden Son, follow up to Red Rising, about a highly stratified society spanning the Solar system, and Harrow, the man from the lowest caste, the Reds, hidden among the society's elite, the Golds. Good old-fashioned, over the top space opera paired with bildungsroman. I can't wait for the third volume to come out in a few weeks.

Best Books of 2014*

The Peripheral William Gibson
Multidimensional shennanigans, in which a possible future outsources work to a possible past, culminating in a series of capers.

 

Nothing is True, Everything is Possible Peter Pomerantsev Nonfiction that reads like fiction. A postmodern horror story about the changes in Russian society in the 21st century, featuring the PR flacks who run the media and opposition parties for the Kremlin, filmmaking gangsters, architectural historians, entrepreneurs hounded out of their own companies and country, and Vladimir Putin. America is exactly half as crazy as the Russia of this book, in many of the same ways.

Deathless Catherynne M Valente
Fiction that reads like the true history of 20th century Russia. Koschei the Deathless, Tsar of Life, marries Marya Morevna. This is the story of their marriage and their war with the Tsar of Death, set against the rise of communism and two world wars. Luxurious, funny and sad. Any book recommended to me by three people is a must read; this book was recommended by many, many more than three.

Redeployment Phil Klay

Short stories about soldiers in or returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are no protocols or etiquette to govern much of the modern experience of war, resulting in a lot of anxiety, restlessness and improvisation. If these stories are collectively about anything, they're about that.

Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism Jennifer Percy

One day, while driving though rural Indiana, I heard a Pentecostal call-in show in which a listener called to ask for an exorcist, because demons were attacking her house right that minute. The hosts of the show promised to send someone over shortly. Apparently, this sort of thing went on a lot around there. Demon Camp describes that same sort of high-intensity, near hallucinatory religious experience among a group of people for whom PTSD, alcohol or sex addiction are caused by demons and healed by ritual.

 

Afghan Post Adrian Bonenberger
Bonenburger joined the military after graduating from Yale. This memoir in epistolary form describes an education before, during and after his wars. Like Jarhead in the previous generation of war memoirs, it's a search for meaning in experience, and for the meaning of one's experiences that drives the book.

 
The Goldfinch Donna Tartt
This was on everyone's Best List when it came out at the end of last year, and deservedly so. Starts with an art heist and kicks into high gear when Boris shows up. One perfect Tartt novel a decade is about right, but I don't know how she can hold herself back from writing faster.

The Bone Clocks David Mitchell
There's always one of the linked novellas in any Mitchell book that make me want to throw the book across the room. Here, its the fourth section, which focuses on the intrigues of a writer who unknowingly writes books about the supernatural conspiracy underlying the other sections of the book. Holly Sykes and Marinus, however, the two main characters throughout, are full people, and worth the read. It's rare to find characters who change over the course of their life as believably as Holly does, or across their multiple lives, as Marinus does. Also on a lot of Best lists this year.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

Excellent advice on thinking big and building things that matter. Occasionally slips into Randian sermons, but otherwise one of the better books on entrepreneurship that's out there.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty
The most important book on economics in the past year, even if you don't agree with it. The concentration of wealth in the OECD economies will present a huge challenge over the coming decades, and understanding the history of the issue is a good first step to working our way out.

Derek Jarman's Sketchbooks Derek Jarman
Gay punk filmmaker Derek Jarman made movies of astonishing beauty and invention on a microscopic budget, and in the process turned his entire life into art. Here's what the inside of his head looked like.

What Makes This Book So Great Jo Walton
Literary criticism at its best. This book will remind you why you liked all of those science fiction and fantasy books you read as a kid, and how those informed your life & writing. At least, it did this for me.

The Magician's Land Lev Grossman
Brilliant conclusion to the trilogy. Quentin Coldwater grows up at last, and all of the women wronged in the course of the books end up getting justice. Worlds end, worlds are born, and we find out who's the greatest magician alive today, this side of the Neitherlands.

*Read, not necessarily published, in 2014. This post was originally sent out to my mailing list. To subscribe, enter your email in the form located to the right of this page.

List of Best of Lists 2011

A non-exhaustive, highly idiosyncratic list that will be expanded as new lists are encountered:

1. Best of The Morning News
2. Top 10 Longreads
3. Marginal Revolution's most popular posts
4. Kirkus Review's best books
5. Tom Eisenmann's favorite posts on running startups
6. Mark Morford's favorite albums
7. lesswrong's rationality quotes
8. The Jon Swift Memorial Roundup of best blog posts
9. Everything is Miscellaneous' Top Ten Top Ten Top Ten Lists

The Year in Reading 2011

Since 2006, I've been keeping a list of all the books I've read. I don't know whether I want to keep doing this, as it makes me feel like I'm reading less rather than more, trying to finish books that might just as well be left aside, and leaving aside critical books that really ought to be read immediately. The quality of reading takes a backseat to the quantity. Meh.

On the other hand, it's great to look back on the list itself for surprises and reminders. Can it really be that I hadn't read Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear or Helen DeWitt's amazing book The Last Samurai until this year? (If you haven't read these yet, go get them.) Other highly recommended fiction includes Lev Grossman's The Magician King, Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints, and Neal Stephenson's Reamde.

This was also the year when I read Tim Ferriss's two books, and tried a lot of the self-help methods described in The Four Hour Body. Most of his recommendations still sound like hucksterism but actually work, as opposed to most books on similar topics, which sound reasonable but turn out to be bushwah. Also, Ferriss makes you want to get up and do something about your life. Other excellent books that made me want to get up and move were The Chairs are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti, a book about a man who teaches people how to play charades and how to get your neighbor's bar to be quiet, or something like that; and Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, on how to stop procrastinating (become a professional) and start writing.

Speaking of procrastination and other low-level personality issues, and also speaking of writing, check out Alice Flaherty (The Midnight Disease), Kay Redfield Jamison (Touched by Fire, Exuberance), and John Gartner (The Hypomanic Edge) on how hypomania, temporal lobe epilepsy, and other disorders made writers, scientists and entrepreneurs a bit more of what they are, and will make you wish you were a tiny bit mad. For the film version of this, go see Limitless. Grant Morrison's Supergods is a hypomanic book as well.

Other notable books on economics, psychology and entrepreneurship: James Gleick The Information, Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow, which may well be the most important book of the year, Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants, Steven Johnson's The Innovator's Cookbook.

Four tremendous books on people: Edmund DeWaal The Hare with Amber Eyes, Alexander Theroux The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, which I haven't seen in anyone else's Best Of list, but which quite frankly belongs on everyone's, and Derek Jarman's diaries from the end of his life: Smiling in Slow Motion. If you want to read someone's thoughts on living and loving while dying, all in lapidary prose and great good humor, this one is the book for you.