Changelog community book recommendations
Here’s me, writing in Changelog News last October:
I’m getting back in to reading. Not Audible. Not e-ink. I’m talking physical books held in my physical hands scanned by my physical eye balls.
I need recommends! Please reply with the best book you’ve read in the last 10 years. Fiction. Non-fiction. Whatever!
I was overwhelmed by the response! There were too many thoughtful recommendations to keep them all to myself, so I jotted down each one, grabbed the synopses, and linked them up for everyone to peruse.
(Here they are, roughly in the order I received them.) đ
Lilith by George MacDonald
Lilith is a story concerning the nature of life, death, and salvation.After he followed the old man through the mirror, nothing in his life was ever right again. It was a special mirror and the man he followed was a special man – a man who led hi…
James by Percial Everett
A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jimâs point of view.When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, sep…
The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig
Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig’s final achievement, which was completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only a matter of days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only stor…
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize- winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of Americ…
Endurance by Alfred Lansing.
This fabulous account of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s epic adventure recreates one of the most astonishing feats of exploration and human courage ever recorded. In August 1914, the Endurance set sail for the South Atlantic. The object of the expedition…
Also: you should listen to the Books in the Box episodes from Oxide and Friends, if you havenât. Lots of great ones there.
Idoru by William Gibson
Now in trade paperback from the author of Neuromancer comes a story that takes readers to 21st century Tokyo after the millennial quake, where something violently new is about to erupt.
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard P. Rumelt
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world. Developing and implementing a strategy is the central…
Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant
In this illuminating and thoughtful book, Will and Ariel Durant have succeeded in distilling for the reader the accumulated store of knowledge and experience from their five decades of work on the eleven monumental volumes of The Story of Civiliza…
Diaspora by Greg Egan
In the twenty-first century, humanity drastically reconfigured itself. Many became polis citizens, joining vast computer networks to live as conscious software. Some of the citizens moved into gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies acting…
The Will of the Many by James Islington
AUDI. VIDE. TACE.The Catenan Republicâthe Hierarchyâmay rule the world now, but they do not know everything.I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led…
Ready Player One (book was way better than the movie)
IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital conf…
Ender’s Game (book better than movie as well)
From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy’s recruitment into the midst of an interstellar war. In order to develop a secure defense agai…
Also: Dan Brown novels
The Last Traverse by Ty Gagne
On a mountain somewhere above treeline, in some of the coldest and worst winter conditions imaginable, two men lie unconscious in the snow as explosive winds batter the nearby summits. In The Last Traverse: Tragedy and Resilience in the Winter Whi…
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
An explosive insider account charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, an…
Address Unknown by Kathrine Taylor
A rediscovered classic, originally published in 1938 and now an international bestseller.When it first appeared in Story magazine in 1938, Address Unknown became an immediate social phenomenon and literary sensation. Published in book form a year …
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Akata Witch weaves together a heart-pounding tale of magic, mystery, and finding one’s place in the world.Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she’s albino. She’s a terrific athlete, but …
Also: Anything by Octavia Butler
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
Revised and ExpandedWith the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he show…
When Among Crows by Veronica Roth
When Among Crows is swift and striking, drawing from the deep well of Slavic folklore and asking if redemption and atonement can be found in embracing what we most fear.We bear the sword, and we bear the pain of the sword.Pain is Dymitrâs calling….
The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
This is that rarity, a useful book."–Warren Buffett Howard Marks, the chairman and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management, is renowned for his insightful assessments of market opportunity and risk. After four decades spent ascending to the top …
Clear Thinking from Shane Parrish
A roadmap for thinking clearly in any situation.We all aspire to see the world clearly. And yet all too often, when the pressure is on, we give in to our most irrational impulses - making intuitive decisions that take us ever-further from our goal…
Writing to Learn by William Zinsser
From the author of On Writing Well comes a book on how to write clearly about any subject–and how to use writing as a means of learning.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance missionâand if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.Except that right now, he doesnât know that. He canât even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignme…
The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, others
Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It’s Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO. The company’s new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the proj…
Accelerate by Jez Humble, others
Accelerate your organization to win in the marketplace. How can we apply technology to drive business value? For years, we’ve been told that the performance of software delivery teams doesn’t matterâthat it can’t provide a competitive advantage to…
What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives b…
The Dip by Seth Godin
A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller In this iconic bestseller, popular business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin proves that winners are really just the best quitters. Godin shows that winners quit fast, quit…
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think.System 1…
Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling
In the near future sci-fi world of Qualityland, algorithms help create an idyllic life for its citizens, but what if the perfect world wasn’t built for you?Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determi…
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
Elantris was the capital of Arelon: gigantic, beautiful, literally radiant, filled with benevolent beings who used their powerful magical abilities for the benefit of all. Yet each of these demigods was once an ordinary person until touched by the…
Lucky 666Â by Bob Drury
From the authors of the New York Times bestselling The Heart of Everything That Is and Halsey s Typhoon comes the dramatic, untold story of a daredevil bomber pilot and his misfit crew who fly their lone B-17 into the teeth of the Japanese Empire …
Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling
S. M. Stirling presents his first Novel of the Change, the start of the New York Times bestselling postapocalyptic saga set in a world where all technology has been rendered useless.The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the is…
The Master and his Emissary by Ian Gilchrist
Why is the brain divided? The difference between right & left hemispheres has been puzzled over for centuries. In a book of unprecedented scope, McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent brain research, illustrated with case histories, to rev…
The Plight of Man and the Power of God by Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ preaching always had an emphasis on the desperate plight of man and the power of God to save. His preaching was crystal clear on the sovereignty of God in the salvation of sinners, a concept that does not sit comfortably in our…
Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest…
I surely won’t get around to reading all these, but there’s a few that I’m definitely planning to check out. I already bought and am half way through Project Hail Mary. I was swayed by the upcoming major motion picture. It’s been too long since I’ve been able to say, “the book was so much better!” đ¤Ł