Reading List

Some books I’ve read, are reading, and plan to read. Certain entries are annotated with a bullet point summary.

Last updated 2025-02-27. Incomplete, though not woefully

reading

U.K. Le Guin, The Disposessed
J. Heller, Catch-22
J. Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
C. Mann, 1493
P. Veyne et al, A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium

C. McCarthy, Blood Meridian
- I can see now why they call this place the wild west the kid said. The judge smiled. Glanton spat. They rode on.

N.N. Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
- Dark Souls philosophy: you will die over and over again, then you will git gud
N.N. Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
- If someone who stands to gain isn’t set up to take the L, stay away
B. Mandelbrot and R.L. Hudson, The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
- Staring at charts: sometimes you can learn things from it
S. Lem, The Cyberiad
- Making a new invention probably won’t make you any happier
M.S. Sorenson, I Hear You
- People want their feelings validated

K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (nth read)
- Motto for life: so it goes
N.N. Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
- Success is more down to luck than we want to believe
N.N. Taleb, Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
- Don’t be the turkey
T. Chiang, Exhalation: Stories
- There is repentance, there is atonement, and then there is forgiveness
T. Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
- Searching for meaning where there isn’t any still leads to fun outcomes
T. Hodgkinson, An Idler’s Manual
- Doing nothing is a virtue

C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- We’re always learning we don’t know anything
J.C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
- Be wary of non-local intervention based on legible information

M. Davis, City of Quartz, some fascinating local history, but delivered with an unbearably smug voice. thoughtlessly anti-densification