I wish I had read more this month! I think the COVID-19 pandemic has changed my reading habits. I've been way too much news articles and updates about. Ugh!
Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, 288p – A fun book about productivity techniques. It has lots of nice ideas on how to focus and achieve goals. One of the main messages is to choose the highlight of the day. It is valuable advice because the highlight can be something as ambitious as “finish that final report” or as simple as “enjoy a cup of tea after work”. It has lots of ideas to experiment with our habits and routines, not all of them will work for everybody. It is a lighthearted book about productivity with no pressure on being highly productive all the time. It's more about doing what we enjoy :)
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz, 352p – Time travel, feminism, 90's riot grrl punk rock scene, murder, abortion rights, geology, wormholes. Yes, all this together to form an exciting story of people wanting to make the world a better place. Lots of imagination and interesting historic facts that creates various alternate histories realities. A great read with lots of historical references related to the 1800's social movements! I had to stop and do some Wikipedia research here and there. Fascinating!
The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley, 369p: A different flavor of time travel in a military sci-fi setting. I liked the way the author doesn't emphasize gender differences, the characters are people and you can tell their gender when there is mention of a pronoun.
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher, 419p: A fantasy of a fantasy. A man that lives in a sword and protects the wielder of the sword. So it's kinda like the talking sword fantasy meeting the genie in the bottle. As I said, lots of fantasy! Oh, and romance.
Echo Volume 2: The Taste of Ashes by Kent Wayne, 298p: The continuation to Echo Volume 1. This one is like 200 pages of an action sequence non-stop. Very military and action packed.
This month was all about The Witcher books. I will definitely go through all the books in the series because: 1) I love the characters; 2) I like the writing style and 3) It's classic D&D with a twist.
The Time of Contempt (The Witcher, #2) by Andrzej Sapkowski, 337p: It's an action-packed book with cool worldbuilding lore. Fun at times but also violent and dramatic. It left me wanting to jump into the next one right away.
Baptism of Fire (The Witcher, #3) by Andrzej Sapkowski, 378p: This book has that vibe of a good old Dungeons and Dragons adventure. It has the best group of characters travelling together: Milva (a hunter and bad-ass archer), Dandelion (the curious and talented bard), Regis (a weird druid), Zoltan Chivay and his group (a resourceful dwarf who is leading other dwarves and gnome) and Cahir from Nilfgaard (although he says he isn't). It was exciting, it had some gore, violence, but also friendship and happy moments.
Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life by David Allen, 192p: Short chapters: each one exploring one aspect of the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology. It's a collection of David Allen's newsletters throughout the years. It contains various of his famous quotes and some of his A-HA moments working with the methodology.
Letters From An Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson : Such a delight! I listened to Audio book which is narrated by the author and it's excellent. Clever answers to people's questions about science and religion, aliens, life and the universe.
The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less by Christine Carter: A productivity blogger recommended this book and it was okay. It's basically a compilation of best practices that work for the author. It was a relaxing read that reminded me of how important it is to pause and rest. And to simplify things.
Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1) by Andrzej Sapkowski: This the first full length novel of the Witcher series (the previous 2 books are basically a collection of short stories). The story follows the aftermath of the attack on the Kingdom of Cintra by the Nilfgaardian empire. Ciri starts her training as a Witcher but she starts to demonstrate weird powers so Geralt asks for the help of Triss Merigold. They decide that Ciri needs a normal education as well as some magic training, so Yennefer starts training her too. The story and the world building are extremely well done. I couldn't put it down until the end and then I had to continue reading the next book...
Sword of Destiny (The Witcher, #2) by Andrzej Sapkowski: This one is a darker book where the characters are temporarily separated from each other, and some serious confrontation between the mages/sorceress take place. Everyone is looking for Ciri and she is on the run. And there are donuts in the Witcher's world! Another read I couldn't put down that lead me to Book 3 straight away.
Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson: A continuation of the “Second Machine Age” with focus on crowd-sourced technologies. Cloud computing, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, network platform businesses. An up-to-date book about the decentralized technologies that are out there and how will they impact our future.
I set up an ambitious goal last year: to read 52 books. It's about a book per week. I made it in the end but I gotta say that reading the Saga graphic novel series helped a lot in terms of numbers!
I ended up reading 57 books in 2019, which was awesome!
Anyway, for 2020 I'm repeating the same goal: 52 books. I don't want to be too ambitious because I know the amount of time available I have to read and I know it's not getting any better in 2020.
I will work with the time I have available and I already have 33 books loaded into my Kindle. That means, I already own these books. It's a virtual pile of books.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: I finally read the book behind the System 1 / System 2 thinking idea. The research on this book was cited so many times in other books I read before this one so it was good to go to the source. Fascinating with lots of examples.
Cibola Burn (Expanse, #4) by James S.A. Corey: A very enjoyable read with a more focused plot. The action is basically in one place, surrounding a group of people and three ships orbiting everything.
Hogfather (Discworld, #20; Death, #4) by Terry Pratchett: This was a fun read for the Holidays! Terry Pratchett is a genius about criticizing without being offensive or mean about anything. He just slaps the ridiculousness of things in our faces and laughs about it.
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen: I first read this book in 2012 and it changed my life. GTD is a method that helps me organize myself and reflect on my goals, values and purpose. This the 4th time I read this book. Every time I feel like I lost perspective and/or overwhelm dominates me, I go back to this book to make sense of it all. And it helps!
Storm Front (The Dresden Files #1): A nice urban fantasy. It's got magic and gory murder scenes with a sense of humour. I want to know more about the wizard Harry Dresden.
Trail of Lightning(The Sixth World, #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse: Native American mythology meets urban fantasy with climate sci-fi. It gives a new twist to urban fantasy, where usually the fantastical beings are fairies, vampires or werewolves. This book brings monsters slayers and Navajo people clan powers in a post-climate change world.
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter: Good analysis of how some new technologies are addictive. It discusses the concepts of addition and how cues that are used in gambling environments (like casinos) are used in various technologies today to keep us hooked. That goes from cliffhangers at the end of a TV show episode to little rewards in a video game to notifications on our mobile devices.
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke: Classic sci-fi, so it's full of ideas that can be dated back to the 50's. What if an alien superpower reaches Earth? Will we fight them? Will they destroy us? I thought the humans were too complacent accepting the Overlords power. There were riots going on and opposing groups but they seemed irrevelant. This is basically a tale of how humans will disappear, eventually, lead by an alien super power.
Medusa Uploaded (The Medusa Cycle, #1) by EmilyDevenport , 317p: I loved the premise: a generation ship in a 100 years voyage to a new place, augmented humans, classical music references, lots of visits to airlocks, a rebellion, deep sleep units and awesome semi organic-semi synthetic artificial intelligent units, called Medusas.
An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1) by by Sabaa Tahir, 446p : I felt there was a disproportionate level of violence on this one. And people being subdued by superior power structures. Impossibly dangerous trials that often result in death. But in the end it is a story about rebelling and destroying power structures, which gives a hint of hope when you get to the last chapters.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker, 368p: It's an excellent reference about the science of sleep: our biological needs, what sleep does to our brain and, most importantly, what are the negative consequences caused by sleep deprivation.
Vessel by Lisa A. Nichols: A woman astronaut temporarily lost in space during a mission comes back to Earth 10 years later and weird things happen. It's loose on sci-fi, NASA makes unlikely decisions and I'm not sure I bought into the reason why the astronaut was having these mysterious experiences.
Saga, Vol. 4 by Brian K. Vaughan (Writer), Fiona Staples (Artist): I'm hooked! Will read the entire series.
Saga, Vol. 5 by Brian K. Vaughan (Writer), Fiona Staples (Artist): Best quote from this one: “Together, my parents had learned to be much more than “the sum of their parts”, whatever that means. Separately, they were kind of just a mess.” I already got Vols. 6 and 7 lined up!
Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries #4) by Martha Wells: The bot that hacked it's governor module becomes more independent and becomes more human-like, without even wanting to, I'd say. It's so familiar to know that all that Murderbot wants in life is to watch more media. But at the same time, Murderbot can't stay away from its ex-owner problems and goes into a complicated rescue mission.
BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world by Theo Compernolle: It's full of scientific research reference and it can get repetitive. It talks a lot about the disadvantages of using e-mail, stress, multitasking, texting while driving and the importance of rest. Good message but I think the book could be shorter.
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari: Made me wonder about tomorrow but question if I really want to be transformed into a stream of data to live forever.
