There are books that you can’t put down.
Then there are books that linger with you
after you’ve finished them.
This book is both.
It’s made up from a collection of journal entries from someone called Piranesi.
The world Piranesi lives in is a house filled with statues.
It’s surrounded by the sea and has three levels:
The lower halls are the domain of the tides; that’s where Piranesi gets nutrition.
The upper halls are the domain of the clouds; he collects rainwater there.
The middle halls are where he lives.
There is only one other person alive in the house: The Other. Piranesi and the
Other meet every Tuesday and every Friday, and Piranesi helps the Other find
the hidden knowledge in the house.
One day, Piranesi finds out that there is someone new in the house: 16 is
writing him messages in chalk.
Slowly, but surely, Piranesi unravels the mysteries of the house and himself.
The Beautify of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.
We read this book in our book club at work, and it was always difficult to not
keep reading past the point we agreed upon.
Every time I picked it up, I felt immersed in the world of the house and how
Piranesi sees it.
I wanted to solve the mysteries, and sporadically, I wanted to shake him
(especially when he was erasing potentially crucial messages).
Ryland Grace, a teacher and former molecular biologist, wakes up alone in a
spaceship with amnesia.
He’s supposed to save the world by figuring out why this star, Tau Ceti, is not
dying from alien microbes like the Sun and all other stars in the galaxy.
Will he be able to save Earth? And what about this weird-looking spaceship next
to his?
This book has it all: Thrilling close calls from improvising in outer space,
friends who help each other out and plausible technical explanations1.
And because it’s set in the near future and this mission is only possible
because of the very alien microbes that threaten Earth, everything just feels
more realistic2.
I loved this book.
E.g., the decision to build a spaceship that can rotate to generate
1G of gravity, so the lab devices work reliably. ↩
Show me one Sci-Fi book that speaks of Microsoft Excel. ↩
Like the seven before, this book follows a construct—a bot with organic
parts—called Murderbot protecting its humans.
The Barish-Estranza corporation wants to take over a planet and force the colony
of humans living there to work for them.
ART, a deep space research vessel, and its crew aim to protect the humans, but
something’s wrong with Murderbot.
This is the eight book in the Murderbot series, but the first one I’m writing
a review for.
All of them would’ve gotten 5/5 and this one is no exception; I love these books.
They’re written from the perspective of Murderbot and Martha Wells does a
phenomenal job both making the bot super relatable and showing the mushy humans
from a bot’s perspective.
If you like sci-fi but haven’t read these, you’re missing out.
Yuval Noah Harari starts by explaining how humanity has solved
famine, plague and war and will therefore focus on advancing humans
themselves (even if you ignore COVID-19 and the Ukraine invasion,
what about the climate crisis?).
God is dead and the new religion, Humanism, has the goal to create super-humans,
therefore creating the next evolutionary stage after Homo Sapiens: Homo Deus.
It’s a collection of numbered statements from human and humanoid employees on a
space ship after the crew took on some “objects” from the planet
New Discovery.
The statements are not ordered so you only get pieces to the puzzle and nothing
makes sense in the beginning.
When I first heard of this book I immediately dismissed it, mostly due to the
title sounding weird to me.
But this book popped up again on reading lists and recommendation threads all
over the internet and people were praising it.
When I finally decided to check it out, I was pleasantly surprised.
If you struggle with managing money or making smart investments, this book is your lifeline.
And if you reckon you know what you’re doing, you will still find immense value in this.
Morgen Housel takes a complex topic and distills it into 20 parts, each talking about a specific angle of looking at or working with money.
Do you feel naked without your phone with you?
Are you spending too much time on social media?
It’s not your fault, but you can do something against it.
Humans have evolved over millions of years to read social cues in face-to-face
conversations and we’re having a hard time figuring out the digital “replacements” that came up in the last decades.
American democracy has worked by relying on two norms: Mutual tolerance and
institutional forbearance.
Donald Trump openly violated these norms, but he wasn’t the first—in fact the
GOP has been on a shift away from democracy’s guard rails since 2008.
This book sat on my shelf for the better part of last year.
After reading a few non-fiction books I longed for a novel and decided to pick
up Dune.
It took me the first 100 pages to really get into it, but then I was immerged
into the fascinating world of the desert planet Arrakis (or “Dune”) with its
sand worms, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood with superhuman powers, the native
Freemen who learned to live in the harsh environment, the intrigues, the
politics and the religion.
Did you ever push on a door that’s pull only or the other way around?
How did that make you feel?
Probably not great, but I have good news: It’s not your fault!
They’re designed badly.
This book opened my eyes to the systematic exclusion of women in areas I didn’t see before.
Did you know, for example, that crash tests are in most cases done with male dummies only, which results in cars being way more dangerous to drive for women?
I’ve read a few management books and this one stands out for being so hands-on.
Sarah Drasner provides systems for your everyday work as an engineering manager
and guides you through your different areas of responsibility in four parts:
Chris Voss makes this non-fiction book exciting by telling stories from real
hostage negotiations from his time at the FBI.
Each chapter is about a specific tactic and filled with psychological
information as well as real-world experience and has a nice summary at the end
(remind me to collate those into my notes).