Book Blog

Date	Title	Author	Review	✓
Dec 5th, 2019	An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power	Al Gore	I recommend getting the print version of this one instead of audio or kindle. Full of great visuals. This is a sequel of sorts to An Inconvenient Truth - it covers the whole thing - the science, th
Nov 27th, 2019	Stories of Your Life and Others	Ted Chiang	This is the second short story collection book I have read by Ted Chiang, and I loved them both. Each story is very thought provoking. A common theme involves the author taking some historical misc
Nov 15th, 2019	The Toll	Neal Shusterman	The last book in the "Arc of a Scythe" series. I really enjoyed the entire series. In this final book, Citra, Rowan and Greyson try to bring order to the world that is falling apart as Scythes star
Nov 8th, 2019	The Overstory	Richard Powers	I'm really undecided about what I think of this novel. Thinking back, sometimes I think I really liked it, sometimes I don't. Odd. The first third of the book is a bunch of different unconnected s
Oct 24th, 2019	Thunderhead	Neal Shusterman	I continue to really enjoy this series. Rowan (as Scythe Lucifer) and Citra (as Scythe Anastasia) continue their epic battles through the Scythedom, helping the good guys and fighting off the bad gu
Oct 9th, 2019	Exhalation	Ted Chiang	A collection of short stories all by the same author. I loved this book. Most of the stories were sort of sci-fi in nature, but each one of them were really interesting thought experiments. For e
Oct 9th, 2019	Infinite	Jeremy Robison	This was one of the few times in which a book got really solid review on amazon/audible, and yet I found it truly horrible. It was just so shallow, and dare I say... stupid. Time after time I was s
Oct 2nd, 2019	Scythe	Neal Shusterman	I just finished this one and really enjoyed it. The premise is that humans have conquered natural death, and now live in a world without fear of disease, car accidents, and other unknown deaths. B
Sep 30th, 2019	The Hod King	Josiah Bancroft	Book three in The Books of Babel series. I think I'm ready to put a pause on this series. A bit burnt out on it. In this book, two powers of the Tower, the Sphinx in her mirror like-costume, and t
Sep 28th, 2019	Kindred	Octavia E. Butler	Originally published 40 years ago, this novel has held up really well to the passage of time. I came across this book after reading a mediocre time-travel book, and found this one listed as one of th
Sep 21st, 2019	Extracted	RR Haywood	I wanted to like this book, I really did... but it dissapointed. I really enjoy the general story theme, but the writing was sub par. Very shallow (and often inconsistent in bad ways) characters.
Sep 12th, 2019	Changing Business From The Inside Out	Tim Mohin	A book documenting in detail what it means to work in Corporate Responsibility (CR) in a large company. It talks about the skills and responsibilities of a CR professional, and gives lots of tips o
Sep 4th, 2019	Arm of the Sphinx	Josiah Bancroft	Book 2 of The Books of Babel. Still enjoyable - Tom and his crew continue exploring the tower, and have lots of interactions with "The Sphinx", a person who has a large reputation in the tower, and
Aug 20th, 2019	Senlin Ascends	Josiah Bancroft	Book 1 of "The Books of Babel" series. I don't recall how I came across this series, but I am really enjoying it so far. The premise is a school teacher and his new wife life in a small town in an
Aug 11th, 2019	Global Warmin	John Houghton	A summary of a whole bunch of things re: climate change. I feel like my research is getting pretty repetitive at this point. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the basics - so now time to jus
Aug 9th, 2019	Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe	Benjamin Alire Sáenz	A beautiful book that had me tearing up every 20 minutes or so (I listened to the audiobook version). Two hispanic american kids in new mexico are both outcasts, but find each other at the start of
Aug 4th, 2019	Ready Player One	Ernest Cline	A re-read of one of my all-time favorite books. The audio book is read by Will Wheaton which is a fun addition.
Jul 29th, 2019	Snapshot	Brandon Sanderson	A short story by one of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson. In it, there are two cops who on a daily basis go into a virtual world that is an exact replica (snapshot) of a previous day. They o
Jul 28th, 2019	Only Human	Sylvain Neuvel	The final book of the Themis Files. I really enjoyed this series. Filled with fun action, but also good thoughts on society, and relationships between parents and children, and more. In this last b
Jul 28th, 2019	Metatropolis	John Scalzi et al	Five different novelas all contained in the same universe, specifically a sort of dystopian future where countries have fallen apart, and cities have taken their place as the central governing bodies
Jul 22nd, 2019	The Flight Attendant	Chris Bohjalian	Not my normal book at all. Just saw it available on my library app, so I grabbed it. A bit chick-lit, a bit action thriller. A flight attendant with a drinking problem, and strong libido finds her
Jul 12th, 2019	Superpower	Russell Gold	A book about one man's (Michael Skelly) journey to try to bring more renewable energy to America. At nearly every turn he faced massive hurtles - from political, to business, and beyond. It's a tou
Jul 9th, 2019	Waking Gods	Sylvain Neuvel	Book two of The Themis Files series. Our heroes learn to drive/maneuver the giant robot, but find themselves in a sticky situation as tensions rise across the planet, and more robots start appearing
Jun 29th, 2019	Sleeping Giants	Sylvain Neuvel	Book 1 ofThe Themis Files. A few folks at work had read and recommended it. I enjoyed it, and will likely continue the series. It takes place roughly present day, in present reality, where they fi
Jun 29th, 2019	Written in Fire	Marcus Sakey	The last book in The Brilliance Trilogy. Lots of action, fighting, etc. Fun, but I'm glad it is over - time to move on. A bit too much action / Mission Impossible for me.
Jun 20th, 2019	The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming	David Wallace-Wells	A really good, and really depressing book about climate change. Really depressing in that it talks in detail about all of the harm that will come to the planet, and civilization in the decades to co
Jun 15th, 2019	A Better World	Marcus Sakey	Book two of The Brilliance Trilogy. Tensions rise between the Brilliants/Abnorms (people with special powers), and the Norms. Extremists on both sides are looking to start a war, and centrists (incl
Jun 9th, 2019	Brilliance	Marcus Sakey	A fun action/thriller novel in which the world finds itself in a sort of evolution of the human species, where roughly 1 out of 100 people are born with a special ability. Perhaps similar to X-men,
Jun 4th, 2019	Smart Power	Peter Fox-Penner	Continuing my quest to understand climate change and renewable energy. This one got into the nitty gritty of how utilities work. It's clearly a complicated system.
May 10th, 2019	Clean Disruption	Tony Seba	Recommended by Wayne Lin, this book talks about disruption, but in the context of clean energy, electric cars and autonomous cars. I really enjoyed this one a lot. I'll probably re-read it at some
Apr 30th, 2019	Clean Break	Osha Gray Davidson	About German's energy transformation from dirty energy to clean. A topic I'm super interested in, but I wasn't a fan of this book. There just wasn't much good content in the book. It read almost mo
Apr 25th, 2019	Trillion Dollar Coach	ric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg	I'd heard much of the legend of Bill Campbell from my Google days, but not many details. It was nice to finally read a bit more about him in this book written by two of the sr Google execs who worke
Apr 7th, 2019	This Changes Everything	Naomi Klein	I didn't end up finishing this one. It kind of got on my nerves - a bit too preachy about the evils of Capitalism. I was wanting to read about climate change, and that felt secondary to the messag
Mar 21st, 2019	Drawdown	Paul Hawken	An incredible resource that covers a huge breadth (but not depth) of possible pieces of the answer to how to curb global warming. A great starting point to understand what is out there, and then be
Mar 19th, 2019	Circe	Madeline Miller	You may recall from Odysseus that Odysseus and his crew land on an island at some point and find a witch with many animals - pigs, wolves, lions. The witch turns the men into pigs, but they eventual
Mar 2nd, 2019	The Terror	Dan Simmons	A good, but perhaps slightly too long, historical novel taking place in the artic around 1850. The historically accurate aspect of it is that it accounts british explorers trying to find the north-w
Feb 21st, 2019	Black & White	Lewis Shiner	A historical novel set in 2004 and 1960s, taking place in Durham NC. It was a good book in itself, but was super cool to have it take place in Durham with so many places that I was very familiar wit
Feb 9th, 2019	His Majesty's Dragon	Naomi Novik	A fun historical fiction book, taking place during the napoleonic wars between England and France. The big twist - given away by the title - is that dragons exist (and have always existed). They ar
Feb 8th, 2019	Surface Detail	Ian M. Banks	I love Ian Banks' Culture series. They are fun for so many reasons, and also cool that you can read them in any order you want. They are more of a "universe" than just a sequential series. Most boo
Jan 31st, 2019	The Traitor Baru Cormorant	Seth Dickinson	A good book, but I didn't find it to be an amazing book - although I'm having a hard time deciding why that is. The plot entailed an empire (think British empire, something along those lines) takin
Jan 20th, 2019	Anathem	Neal Stephenson	This book may be my favorite book of all time, and yet, it shouldn't be. It is very slow to start, with not much of a story line for hundreds of pages. But somehow it is still engaging during that
Jan 20th, 2019	Rhythm	Patrick Thean	A book for work that talks through how to think strategically as a company, and then execute on that strategy. Solid book actually. Pulls in from lots of places - Good to Great, parts of the OKR sy
Dec 6th, 2018	Skyward	Brandon Sanderson	Enjoyable young adult novel, described by the author as "How to Train Your Dragon meets Top Gun and Enders Game". Strangely, I agree with that description. Very fun. A bold, intelligent young main	✓
Nov 28th, 2018	The Alloy of Law	Brandon Sanderson	An extension of the Mistborn series, taking place hundreds of years after the first set of books. In this book, Wax is a High Lord who has become a keeper of the law in an Old West style world. He
Nov 19th, 2018	Station Eleven	Emily St. John Mandel	Another post-apocalyptic novel... actually, this one is maybe just apocalyptic, as it takes place both before during, and after the apocalypse. It follows a few different characters who's stories al
Nov 9th, 2018	Allegiant	Veronica Roth	Book three of the Divergent series. Tris finds the outside world, and realizes it has many of the same issues as Chicago. This one I liked the least of the series, mostly because it was just a lot
Nov 2nd, 2018	Insurgent	Veronica Roth	Book 2 of the Divergent series. Still very enjoyable. I'm 1/2 way done book three as I'm writing this, so it's a bit of a blur re: what happened in books 1 vs 2 vs 3. Regardless, Tris continues t
Oct 27th, 2018	Divergent	Veronica Roth	Despite the fact that this book seems to have been written for 14 year old girls, I really enjoyed it, and plan to continue reading the series. In contrast to the previous book I read, which was sh
Oct 22nd, 2018	Queen of Sorcery	David Eddings	Book 2 of The Belgariad. Boy Garion continues his adventure with his aunt and grandfather, legendary and ancient sorcerers, through the various kingdoms of his world. The group is delayed at every
Oct 14th, 2018	Pawn of Prophecy	David Eddings	Pretty much exactly what I was looking for right now. Just a classic fantasy series to get lost in for my commutes. This is not at all original - rather a set of fantasy cliche tropes. A young bo	✓
Sep 30th, 2018	The Martian	Andy Weir	A re-read of this great fictional book about an astronaut who gets left behind on mars. What makes this book so amazing is the writing itself, rather than the story. Full of wit, science, engineeri
Sep 5th, 2018	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J.K. Rowling	And the grand finale. Dumbledore is dead, many more die, the gang finds and destroys more horcruxes, and harry goes head to head with Voldemort. It was a lot of fun to experience this series again.
Aug 19th, 2018	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	J.K. Rowling	Malfoy plots all book long but don't we find out until the end the goal of his plotting. Alas, poor Dumbledore. We also find out that Snape really is on team Voldemort (or is he????). We also lear
Aug 4th, 2018	Anansi Boys	Neil Gaiman	A similar theme in Neil Gaiman books: among us mortals, there are a sprinkling of gods living among us. This book focused on "Anansi", a spider deity - that coincidently is a main character in some
Jul 28th, 2018	Naomi Alderman	The Power	Women across the planet gain the ability to deliver high electric shocks from their body - similar to an electric eel. While a somewhat silly premise, the repercussions are really interesting. Most
Jul 15th, 2018	Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire	J.K. Rowling	Harry competes in the triwizard tournament as the 4th champion - along with Cedric Diggory, Viktor Krum, and Fleur Delacour. They battle dragons, search out merpeople, and face peril in a hedge maz
Jun 23rd, 2018	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	J.K. Rowling	Harry finds out his stepfather is Serious black, and he meets Lupin the professor of dark arts who turns into a werewolf during full moons.... and other events.
Jun 13th, 2018	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	J.K. Rowling	Continuing to plow through the Harry Potter books. Something at Hogwarts is turning people into statues, and Harry finds a diary from a boy named Tom Riddle, who turns out to be the original name fo
Jun 3rd, 2018	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	J.K Rowling	My son told me that they were reading this at daycare to the 4 and 5 year olds, so I re-read (listed) to it to remind myself if it was scary or not. It is :) . I had nightmares for weeks. The head o
May 26th, 2018	Ancillary Mercy	Ann Leckie	The last book in the series. I really enjoyed the whole series. Are AI’s deserving of the same rights as humans? Perhaps one day.
May 21st, 2018	Norse Mythology	Neil Gaiman	A fun re-telling of the classic Norse myths, as told by Neil Gaiman. Thor, Loki, Odin and others. As far as I'm aware, it did not stray from the originals (or at least not much). Just good storyte
May 11th, 2018	The Moon is a Harsh Mistress	Robert Heinlein	I did not finish this one - it just did not age well. Not sure why, but just really disliked it. Got maybe 10% in and threw in the towel.
May 8th, 2018	The Hate U Give	Angie Thomas	Way outside of my normal genre, and a really great read. Probably in the young adult fiction category, but very timely to current socio-political environment. The main character - Star - is in a c
Apr 28th, 2018	Ancillary Sword	Ann Leckie	Book two of the Imperial Radch series. Loving this series. Definitely sci-fi genre, but this book had a little sprinkle of Sherlock Holmes added - with the narrator clearly having figured out som
Apr 20th, 2018	The Darkness that Comes Before	R. Scott Bakker	This series (The Prince of Nothing) came highly recommended, but I just couldn't get into it. I gave up before getting half way through. It may have partially been because it was an audio book - t
Apr 7th, 2018	Ancillary Justice	Ann Leckie	The first of three books in the Imperial Radch series. This SciFi novel has gotten rave reviews. I think perhaps because of that I had really high expectations for it, that were perhaps too high
Mar 25th, 2018	The Dog Stars	Peter Heller	A really beautiful book about a man, and his dog, and his love of fishing, and his family. It all takes part in post-apocalyptic mid-west after a virus has wiped out 99.X% of the population. Odd to
Mar 13th, 2018	Alibaba's World	Porter Erisman	A look into the Chinese powerhouse company Alibaba. An interesting story of a teacher turned CEO who defied all odds to make one of the most valuable companies on the planet. They compete with Ebay
Mar 8th, 2018	The Emperor's Soul	Brandon Sanderson	An uncharacteristically short book by Brandon Sanderson, but fun read. The novel starts out with a forger in jail. We soon learn that the emperor has just barely survived an assassination attempt,
Mar 6th, 2018	Astrophysics for People in a Hurry	Neil deGrasse Tyson	Just a fun quick book covering various science related things. Talks about the very large, and the very small. A bit disjoint at time (I think it was a collection of essays maybe), but fun easy rea
Mar 2nd, 2018	The Tao of Pooh	Benjamin Hoff	I was not a fan of this audio book. 1) It probably needed more active listening, which didn't work well for me as it was during my commute and I couldn't give deep thought to it. 2) Nit, but it was s
Mar 1st, 2018	Oathbringer	Brandon Sanderson	The third book in The Stormlight Archive. We learn about Delinar's tormented history as The Black Thorn. Shallan is also a major character as she starts to have an identity crises - playing the par
Jan 22nd, 2018	Frontier Justice	E. Fuller Torrey	An out of print book about the Loomis Gang - a family of thieves in upstate NY in the mid 1800s. I knew about them growing up as their territory covered the house I grew up in, but it was really int
Jan 11th, 2018	Dream Land	Sam Quinones	A very interesting look into America's opioid epidemic - both Heroin, and Oxycontin. The two stories are mostly separate, but intertwine at points. Both had somewhat independent major spikes in usa
Dec 30th, 2017	Words of Radiance	Brandon Sanderson	Book two of The Stormlight Archive. Very enjoyable fantasy series. This one focuses mostly on Kaladin as he learns more about his power, and Shallan and her troubled childhood. On to book three!	✓
Dec 12th, 2017	The Way of Kings	Brandon Sanderson	This was a doozie of an audio book. 45 hours long. Longest one that I have consumed so far I'm pretty sure. Very fun read. Much of it was military related - multiple armies on the Broken Plains f
Nov 29th, 2017	The Chickenshit Club	Jesse Eisinger	A look into why white collar crime (specifically, for executives) is rarely prosecuted. It centers around Enron and Arthur Anderson, and how those events - which lead to the collapse of both compani
Nov 28th, 2017	Metamorphosis	Franz Kafka	A classic that many high schoolers read, but I had not read yet. A quick read - it starts out from the very beginning with the main character waking up to find out he has somehow turned into a giant
Nov 18th, 2017	Authority	Jeff VanderMeer	Book 2 of The Southern Reach trilogy, this follows a different set of characters from outside of Area X. A new head of The Southern Reach department is brought in to figure out what is going on, an	✓
Nov 11th, 2017	Dissolution	C.J Sansom	This historical fiction/mystery was recommended to me when I was looking for a change from the batch of fantasy books. It was a good read. Takes place in 1500s England, as an investigator tries to
Nov 1st, 2017	Warbreaker	Brandon Sanderson	Another fun Brandon Sanderson book. In this world, every person has a "breath", but some people have many breaths. These extra breaths give them additional powers, such as the ability to "awaken" i
Oct 16th, 2017	Annihilation	Jeff VanderMeer	This reminded me a bit of Solaris. Not a ton of plot other than just trying to come to grips with being in a foreign place where nothing quite makes sense. I really enjoyed it for that reason - fe
Oct 8th, 2017	Elantris	Brandon Sanderson	Brandon Sanderson is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. This fantasy novel takes place in a world where god-like people have fallen, and a city and country are trying to rebuild after that
Sep 24th, 2017	Falling Free	Lois McMaster Bujold	Straight up Sci-Fi. People are genetically modified to have 4 arms instead of 2 arms and 2 legs. They are perfectly made to be perfect manual laborers in space - but these people lack human rights,
Sep 16th, 2017	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks	Rebecca Skloot	Nonfiction book about HeLa cells, and their origin. HeLa cells are a line of cells used prolifically in labs to study medicine, radiation, cancer, and a whole lot more. They were the first successf
Sep 3rd, 2017	The Black Star	Edward W. Robertson	Book 3 from The Cycle of Arawn. Not the best series I have ever read, but it held my attention. It was quite the bang for the buck though from Audible. A single credit for all three books combined
Aug 19th, 2017	The Great Rift	Edward W. Robertson	Continuing the Cycle of Arawn. Still so-so, but going to keep going. In this one, Dante and Blaze battle the king's armies, and Dante's powers grow. He starts to be able to control rocks and dirt
Aug 11th, 2017	Dark Matter	Blake Crouch	A fun multi-verse novel. The main character gets attacked one night (spoiler) by another version of himself from an alternate universe - and thrown into his doppelganger's version of earth/his life
Aug 8th, 2017	Conscience of a Conservative	Jeff Flake	I've been asking republicans I know for good conservative books that are rational. This one was exceptional. In this book, sitting republican congressman flake bashes trump quite a bit, but also ba
Jul 21st, 2017	The White Tree	Edward W. Robertson	This is book one of a trilogy called The Cycle of Arawn. I'm so-so on it to be honest. Just feels very vanilla - not super interesting. It's not bad, just nothing noteworthy. The best part about
Jul 10th, 2017	The Golem and the Jinni	Helene Wecker	I just ran across this one at the library and it seemed interesting, so I went for it. It was enjoyable. Takes place in NYC probably 100 years ago or so. It takes place set in our reality, but a G
Jun 23rd, 2017	Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell	A movie (which I have not yet seen) is based on this - although the movie got pretty poor reviews if I remember correctly. Anyhow, I really enjoyed this book, both the unique style, and the actual s
Jun 10th, 2017	A Short History of Nearly Everything	Bill Bryson	Fantastic read about the history of nearly everything. The formation of the universe. The formation of our planet. Life on earth. Mankind. And more. I feel like I should read a book like this ev
May 30th, 2017	The Circle	Dave Eggers	I'm writing this review 6 months after reading the book. I read it in May, but didn't realize that I didn't have a review for it until December while discussing the book with coworkers. The book wa
May 29th, 2017	Skin Deep (Legion)	Brandon Sanderson	Another short - but not as short novella continuing the storyline from Legion. In this one, the main character and his alter egos try to solve a mystery around what happened to the corpse of a recent
May 27th, 2017	Legion	Brandon Sanderson	A very short Novella. Takes place in current day, in current world (no crazy fantasy stuff). The tweak is that the main character, Stephen has imaginary friends. There are roughly 50 of them. He
May 26th, 2017	The Hero of Ages	Brandon Sanderson	Book Three of the Mistborn series. Loved the series. In this last episode, our two main characters - Vin and her husband Eland are both mistborn (able to use ("burn") many different types of metals
May 10th, 2017	The Sparrow	Mary Doria Russell	Very enjoyable, if at some times dark, sci fi book with a heavy dose of philosophy/religion. Emilio Sandoz is a Jesuit priest who has a knack for languages. He is part of the first group of explorer
May 9th, 2017	The Well of Ascension	Brandon Sanderson	Book 2 in the Mistborn series. Still a very big fan of the series. Vin, the main character of this book, protects her king/partner, helps to protect a city from multiple invading armies, and tries t
Apr 26th, 2017	Shoe Dog	Phil Night	An autobiography by the co-founder of Nike. Really great story telling, with an interesting story. Heartfelt account of his life, and the life of the company. Definitely gives you warm fuzzies for
Apr 23rd, 2017	Wormhole	Richard Phillips	Last book in The Rho Agenda series. Glad it's over. The story line is fun, but writing is mediocre.
Apr 17th, 2017	Mistborn: The Final Empire	Brandon Sanderson	The first in a fantasy series. A classic tale of a repressive class system - where the ruling class is powerful, and many of them have use of magic that is used by consuming various different meta
Apr 11th, 2017	Radical Candor	Kim Scott	At Pendo we have a core value around "Brutal Honesty". This book was about this same topic, with a slight twist. It was about the candor part (brutal honesty), but emphasized that it needs to be co
Apr 10th, 2017	The Collapsing Empire	John Scalzi	A great first book in a series - but so far the only book in the series. In the far future, travel between solar systems is through natural intersolar shortcuts called "Flows". When the flows start	✓
Apr 7th, 2017	The Halo Effect	Phil Rosenzweig	This book's purpose / thesis is that a lot of popular business books and studies, including Good To Great are deeply flawed because of their flawed source material. Specifically, it convincingly ex
Apr 1st, 2017	The Blood Mirror	Brent Weeks	Book 4 (out of 5) of the Lightbringer "trilogy". Very enjoyable fantasy series. People get magic from different colors of light, each having it's own special characteristics. One more book to go (	✓
Mar 22nd, 2017	Catch-22	Joseph Heller	I read this in high school, but hadn't read it since. Definitely feels like the best audience is high school students - it shocks readers with its bizarre nonsensical but humorous style - but still
Mar 1st, 2017	Duty	Robert Gates	A memoir by Secretary of State, Robert Gates. He served under bush 43, and Obama. Very interesting to get some behind the scenes on how executive branch works. He is a republican and had great things
Feb 24th, 2017	Death's End	Cixin Liu	Third book in the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" series (Three Body Problem). This series is definitely sci fi to its core. Aliens, light speed travel, and so forth. A very fun read. All three boo
Feb 10th, 2017	Pandora's Star	Peter Hamilton	A pretty massive Sci Fi book - evidently the foundation for a lot of books by that author. Didn't do a ton for me. I think I may have read one of the other books long ago though, because they were
Jan 20th, 2017	The Wright Brothers	David McCullough	Fun to read about the Wright Brothers while living in North Carolina. Hard working, very clever men who were patient, studious in the ways of nature and man, and perfectionists. They were able to m
Jan 9th, 2017	Trump Revealed	Kranish and Fisher	A biography of Trump published right after we won the primaries. Looks into his early days, and even his parents history. Essentially, he is a megalomaniac and/or narcissist who loves the immediate
Jan 8th, 2017	The Dark Forest	Cixin Liu	The sequel to The Three Body Problem, this book is a bit further in the future, and therefor starts to feel a bit more Sci-Fi'ish than the first. Very enjoyable. Nerdy Science stuff throughout. The
Dec 23rd, 2016	The Three-Body Problem	Cixin Liu	Originally written in Chinese, translated and narrated in English, this is a fun sci-fi book that gets a bit physics-y (in a good way) towards the end. Scientists in china are staring to experience
Dec 9th, 2016	The Gone-Away World	Nick Harkaway	A long, enjoyable novel. I'm not sure the genre - post apocalypse I guess. The first chapter starts out in that post-apocalypse world - with a group of rough and tumble mercenary fire fighters, and
Nov 26th, 2016	The Victorian Internet	Tom Standage	A quick and interesting read about the history of the telegraph. Morse (of Morse Code), Edison (of the lightbulb) and others make appearances in this book. Very cool to read about how much this inv
Nov 21st, 2016	Conscience of a Conservative	Barry Goldwater	I have asked many people over the last few years for a "book that would help me understand republican beliefs that doesn't have things like 'Obama is an atheist muslim'" This book was the one that k
Nov 19th, 2016	Work Rules	Laszlo Bock	The head of People Operations (HR) at Google wrote a book about how Google thinks about hiring, promoting, culture, and much more. I loved this book. Much of it I knew already, but interesting to h
Nov 10th, 2016	Good To Great	Jim Collins	Todd has been talking about this book for a while now, and I finally got around to reading it. Definitely a whole lot of interesting material on how to make great companies. Definitely going to ha
Nov 6th, 2016	The Sun Also Rises	Ernest Hemingway	My first Hemingway book in a long time, or perhaps ever. I'm still trying to decide what I think of it. It didn't have strong plot - more of just a meandering narrative following the main character
Oct 31st, 2016	The Wise Man's Fear	Patrick Rothfuss	Book two of the kingkiller chronicle. Kvothe tells of more of his time at University, as well as his adventures learning martial arts in a far away land, his time spent wooing his crush, and his time
Oct 22nd, 2016	The Name of the Wind	Patrick Rothfuss	This was a re-read of the first book in a trilogy. I was about to read the third book, so I went to read the synopsis of the first book and could not remember a single thing from the synopsis, so I
Oct 14th, 2016	Losing the Signal	Jacquie McNish	The story of Blackberry and Research In Motion (the company that makes blackberry). It talks a lot about their co-founders / co-CEOs, and how they did a fantastic job working off each other's streng
Oct 3rd, 2016	Lean In	Sheryl Sandberg	I highly recommend this book for men and women alike. It helps you understand the biases that exist in all of us about women and their role in the workplace. They talk about an interesting study ca
Oct 1st, 2016	Greetings from Myanmar	David Bockino	A great little read about a place I knew almost nothing about: Myanmar/Burma. Just some insights and stories about one mans travels through Myanmar, with some background history sprinkled in. This
Sep 28th, 2016	Morning Star	Pierce Brown	The last book in the Red Rising trilogy. Very enjoyable Sci Fi trilogy. Had me hooked throughout the series.
Sep 19th, 2016	Golden Son	Pierce Brown	Book two in the Red Rising trilogy. Darrow continues his journey to disrupt civilization at its core. He is adopted by his most hated gold enemy, and rises to power through that adoption.
Sep 8th, 2016	Red Rising	Pierce Brown	A mix of Hunger Games, and Ender's Game. In the future (perhaps 1000-2000 years from now), humans have colonized most of the solar system. They have created a class system across the solar system w
Sep 1st, 2016	The Quantum Mystery	John Gribbin	A quick little Kindle Single that talks at a very high level about quantum physics. Pretty much all that it gets into is essentially: Some stuff behaves as if it were both a wave, and a particle. E
Aug 31st, 2016	The Passage	Justin Cronin	A Zombie book evidently. Not my normal genre. I didnt even know that that was what it was going into it. It was actually probably more of a post-apocalyptic genre rather than a zombie genre - wh
Aug 21st, 2016	Exxon: The Road Not Taken	Neela Banerjee et al	An Amazon Single (ie, shorter book) about this history of Exxon and climate change research. It turns out that in the early 1980's, they were on the forefront of excellent, unbiased climate change r
Aug 12th, 2016	The Color of Magic	Terry Pratchett	An interesting book, but not really mind-blowing for me. Perhaps it would have been earlier in my life as young adult fiction. But at this stage in my life, it didn't do a whole lot for me. In a wo
Aug 11th, 2016	Secondhand Souls	Christopher Moore	I had read two other books by Christopher Moore, including the A Dirty Job which is the predecessor of Secondhand Souls. I had loved both of those books. This one just didn't do much for me. Not en
Aug 1st, 2016	Kushiel's Dart	Jacqueline Carey	It took me a long while to make it through this beast. Fantasy (although almost nothing magical about it), the main character is a sadomasochist - by genetics - or perhaps more accurately stated, by
Jul 23rd, 2016	Big Trouble	Dave Barry	A very fun satirical fiction book about a bunch of crazy people in south florida and the shenanigans they get into. A briefcase with a mysterious object in it, some hitmen, an unhappy advertising man
Jul 18th, 2016	Voyage of the Basilisk	Marie Brennan	I accidentally read this - the third book in the series - before reading the second in the series. I didn't even realize the mistake until nearly the very end of the book. Anyhow, it continues to b	✓
Jul 6th, 2016	Hardcore Zen	Brad Warner	I really enjoyed this book about Zen. Most times I read about Zen, it calls to me - this is no exception. This was a funny one as it was a DIY version of an audiobook, so literally his cat would wa
Jul 3rd, 2016	The Witch of Lime Street	David Jaher	A fascinating factual account of Harry Houdini and his battle to unmask "mediums" in the 1920s, especially the one medium who seemed to be outwitting scientists and Harvard academics alike - Margery
Jun 29th, 2016	Code Talker	Chester Nez	A memoir of Chester Nez, born in the 1920's, living a traditional native american lifestyle in new mexico. When WWII kicked into full force, he (and 28 others) was brought in to develop a communicat
Jun 21st, 2016	What If?	Randall Munroe	Very enjoyable book by the author of XKCD comics. It is "Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions" - just my kind of book. I listened to audio version of this - so I may have mis
Jun 15th, 2016	The Mote in God's Eye	Larry Niven	A fun story from 1000 years in the future in which we inhabit many solar systems, and finally find the first intelligent life form. They are much older and more advanced than us, but because of circ
May 30th, 2016	The Doomsday Book	Connie Willis	Enjoyable time travel book. Time travel is an academic affair, run by history departments of colleges. The mid 1300's are off limits because of the black plague, until by a set of intentional and u
May 26th, 2016	Stardust	Neil Gaiman	Gaiman describes this as a "fairy tail for adults". Very fun (quick) read. I listened to the audio book - which was read by Gaiman himself, and he does a great job. He has a really nice relaxing
May 20th, 2016	Killing Patton	Bill O'Reilly, et al	I knew that Bill O'Reilly wrote some history books, so I wanted to check one out. The topic was definitely interesting - about General Patton in WWII, and his great achievements, and also his myste
May 11th, 2016	Team of Teams	General Stanley McChrystal, et al	A really good business book - talking about moving the US military from a command and control top down hierarchy, to a "team of teams" - autonomous groups with massive knowledge sharing and authority
May 5th, 2016	Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People	Nadia Bolz-Weber	Perhaps the first religious book that I have really enjoyed. The author is a minister in a very fringe church that seems to attract the outcasts of Detroit. She drops lots of swear words, and defin
Apr 24th, 2016	Emperor of Thorns	Mark Lawrence	The last book in The Broken Empire series. I really enjoyed this series - one of the best that I have ever read, but not sure who I would recommend it to - as I think lots of people would not enjoy
Apr 17th, 2016	Terra	Mitch Benn	An enjoyable little book about a human infant girl who gets abducted by a friendly alien scientist and brought back to his alien world. A bit of Douglas Adams perhaps - light hearted, silly, but som
Apr 13th, 2016	Delirium	Lauren Oliver	I happened upon this from my library's digital loans. It was some sort of Orwellian story - similar to Little Brother perhaps. Perhaps wi
Apr 9th, 2016	The Egyptian	Mika Waltari	This was a long slow read. Not sure why I stuck with it - usually I don't. It was good, but probably not worth the month and a half haul. This was originally written in Finnish I think in the mid
Apr 2nd, 2016	A Natural History of Dragons	Marie Brennan	A really enjoyable book. A female hero set in sort of an 1800's era where it's not acceptable for women to be adventurers or academics. She however wants both - to find dragons and read and learn
Mar 28th, 2016	King of Thorns	Mark Lawrence	Book two of The Broken Empire. I'm really enjoying this series. The first book was extremely dark - the main character was vile. In this second book he is much less vile - starting to see some li
Mar 18th, 2016	Prince of Thorns	Mark Lawrence	Not for everyone. The narrator/main character of this book is pretty vile. Rape, murder, and everything else. Somehow a very intriguing book if you are able to get past that aspect of it. At some
Mar 9th, 2016	Storm Front	Jim Butcher	This is book one of the Dresden Files. Looks like there are 15+ books in the series. It was entertaining, but not amazing. It looks like multiple people have recommended this series to me over the	✓
Mar 4th, 2016	End of Faith	Sam Harris	Pretty interesting book on a lot of fronts. He takes a very hardline approach on religion in general, and islam specifically. He believes that religious tolerance should not be tolerated - that eve
Feb 27th, 2016	The Far West	Patricia C. Wrede	Book three of the Frontier Magic series. A really fun young adult fiction series with a female lead character. In this last book of the series, an expedition is formed to explore the unexplored Ame
Feb 24th, 2016	The Amber Spyglass	Philip Pullman	The last book in His Dark Materials. So - there is one scene from a book a long time ago that I have vivid memories of - involving another world where animals had wheels. I had strangely vivid memo
Feb 17th, 2016	Across the Great Barrier	Patricia C. Wrede	Book two of the Frontier Magic series. Enjoyable young adult novel with magic. Still enjoying it - but the books are too quick to read.
Feb 14th, 2016	Thirteenth Child	Patricia C. Wrede	Young adult fiction - a world much like our own, with similar history (some of the founding fathers were the same, but some differ. Some countries the same, some differ) - but with a flair of mag
Feb 12th, 2016	Fear the Future	Stephen Moss	Last book in The Fear Saga. Enjoyable series. A hostile alien race comes to take over our planet. Some of the aliens attempt to sabotage the takeover though, and join up with humanity to stop the
Feb 5th, 2016	Fear the Survivors	Stephen Moss	Book two of The Fear Saga. Fending off a far superior alien race - or the robot advanced party of said race. Still enjoyable. On to the last book.
Feb 4th, 2016	The Subtle Knife	Philip Pullman	Book two of "His Dark Materials". I'm pretty sure I had read this before, but I didn't remember any of it, so it was a lot of fun.
Jan 26th, 2016	The Golden Compass	Philip Pullman	I've read this book at least once before, but I enjoyed it - and I heard the audio book was a very good audio book, so I went for the re-read. Great book, and very good audio book - it has a full ca
Jan 15th, 2016	Creativity, Inc.	Ed Catmull	Very good book by one of the founders of Pixar. A lot of it is about how to foster a creative environment, but it also tells the story of Pixar. Very fun to read - or listen to, as the case may be.
Jan 14th, 2016	Lost in a Good Book	Jasper Fforde	Book two of the Thursday Next series. Fun series. Not sure how far I will keep going with it though - sounds like there are a bunch in the series.
Jan 6th, 2016	47 Ronin	John Allyn	The story of the 47 Ronin is a true historical event taking place around 1700 in Japan. This book is true to the historical event, but all dialog and details are made up by the author. I don't kno
Dec 28th, 2015	A Time for Truth	Ted Cruz	My ongoing attempt to read views that differ from my own. I gained a lot of respect for Cruz in reading this book. I don't agree with a lot of his views - especially social views. But I do respect
Dec 27th, 2015	The Forest	Justin Groot	Evidently this book came out of a reddit writing prompt [WP] of "Instead of Oceans, they are all big forests, that gets taller and darker instead of deeper, with more dangerous animals living furthe	✓
Dec 25th, 2015	The Broken Eye	Brent Weeks	Book 3 of the Lightbringer series. Very enjoyable. The 4th and last book is not written yet, so I have to wait about a year for that one. I definitely need to read the 4th book though.
Dec 16th, 2015	The Blinding Knife	Brent Weeks	Book 2 of the Lightbringer series, still really enjoying this. So much, that I'm plowing right into book three without pause.
Dec 11th, 2015	Sapiens	Yuval Noah Harari	A tour de force coving the entire history of our species across multiple disciplines - from evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and more. It talks about so many different things that...
Dec 11th, 2015	The Black Prism	Brent Weeks	The first book in the Lightbringer series - classic fantasy series. Some people are able to make magic from certain colors around them. Some can use blue, some green, some yellow, etc. One - the
Nov 30th, 2015	The Stone Man	Luke Smitherd	I do not recommend this book. I hate to criticize books when I know that I couldn't do half as good of a job, but regardless - I'm just not a fan of this book. Both the writing, and the narration f
Nov 22nd, 2015	The Reluctant Jesus	Duncan Whitehead	A fun book about the second coming of Christ. Satire. God is a forgetful, absentee, imperfect father figure who kind of batches the second coming. A 30+ year old man finds out that he is the secon
Nov 13th, 2015	One Way Forward	Lawrence Lessig	A really good Kindle Single (short book) talking about how we need to get money out of politics - a topic I strongly support.
Nov 8th, 2015	The Dudes Abide	Alex Belth	A Kindle Single (ie, a short kindle book) that looks behind the scenes at the making of The Big Labowski. I love the notion of Kindle Shorts - that some books just don't need to be 200 pages long.
Nov 7th, 2015	The Player of Games	Iain M. Banks	Part of a series called "Culture" by Iain banks. The series isn't so much a continuation with the same characters, but rather just the same setting. The Culture being a mostly computer based commun
Nov 4th, 2015	Fear the Sky	Stephen Moss	A fun sci-fi book taking place present day - in which a hostile alien race decides to destroy humanity. The heroes of the story need to plan countermeasures without being detected by the much more	✓
Oct 22nd, 2015	Drift	M. K. Hutchins	A very fun Sci/Fi Fantasy book. The main characters live on an island on top of a turtle's back. The turtle island is surrounded by deadly beings that make life difficult to maintain. The main cha
Oct 21st, 2015	Being Mortal	Atul Gawande	Highly recommended. It's written by a surgeon who re-evaluates what end of life care should be like. The one take-away is that our medical system is built for extending life in the final years, not
Oct 18th, 2015	Build the Fort	Chris Heivly	A book about startups written by a local friend, Chris Heivly. A fun look into the mindset of entrepreneurism - it walks through a lot of the very early stages of moving from idea to starting the st
Oct 3rd, 2015	Dreams of Steel	Glen Cook	This is one of the books in the Black Company series. This book follows Croaker, and Lady as they fight off the dark forces of the land. I really enjoyed the first few books in the series, but I th
Sep 28th, 2015	The Magicians	Lev Grossman	Set essentially in a Narnia type world - an enjoyable book, but not mind blowing. Quentin learns that he is a magician, goes to magicians school for a bunch of years, and finds himself in another
Sep 15th, 2015	The Glass Castle	Jeannette Walls	A pretty amazing memoir about the author's difficult childhood and her neglectful parents. She had pretty intelligent parents, but their priorities were so messed up that they didn't prioritize get
Sep 3rd, 2015	Diamond Age	Neal Stephenson	One of my top 5 books of all time. This was a re-read since I had forgotten so much of it since last time around. I'll probably end up re-reading this every 5 or 10 years or so. Nell, the main
Aug 18th, 2015	Leaders Eat Last	Simon Sinek	Very enjoyable book about leadership, and especially around building an ecosystem of trust. Also talked about human biology - how brain chemicals affect our core behavior as a species - and how that
Aug 6th, 2015	Yes Please	Amy Poehler	Part of my "read outside of my target demographic" series. Definitely targeted at middle aged women, but interesting none the less. My take-away: Amy Poehler is a hard working individual who has go
Aug 4th, 2015	The Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy	Patton and Cannon	A nice intro to philosophy. Would be interested to hear from someone who actually knows about philosophy (dad?) as to their take on the book.
Jul 31st, 2015	Elon Musk	Ashlee Vance	A great in-depth biography of Elon Musk, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity. Pretty incredible what he has accomplished. He has audacious goals, and achieves them. Well written book, and well nar
Jul 31st, 2015	Shadow Games	Glen Cook	Fourth book in a series that I started a while ago. Still a fun read - although I was a bit lost at the beginning since I had forgotten so much.
Jul 18th, 2015	Holes	Louis Sachar	A short young adult novel about a kid who was sentenced to hard labor for a crime he didn't commit. He had to dig giant holes in a dried up lake day in and day out. The book covers some interesting
Jul 18th, 2015	StrengthsFinder 2.0	Tom Rath	A bunch of us at Pendo took the StrengthsFinder test to better understand each other. The premise being, in an org, to have a wide variety of strengths to counter-balance each other. Also, it's goo
Jul 15th, 2015	Zero to One	Peter Thiel	A good book talking about startups, and more so, talking about revolutionary changes, and somewhat bashing incremental changes. A good read - got some neurons firing.
Jul 9th, 2015	The Fold	Peter Clines	Wasn't a huge fan of this book for multiple reasons. I think mostly because I am comparing it to the previous audio book I read - The Martian. This one was not nearly as realistic from the science
Jul 4th, 2015	It Was Meant to Be	David Subin	A self published biography by my uncle. Very enjoyable to learn about his history, his parents, and his kids. Looks to have been written so that his grandkids know more about their dad and their gr
Jul 3rd, 2015	Unbroken	Laura Hillenbrand	An olympic athlete turned military man, turned castaway, turned prisoner of war. The story is incredible, but I actually found the writing to be so-so.
Jun 24th, 2015	The Martian	Andy Weir	Highly recommended - especially for the more geeky among us. Fantastic novel full of fun, adventure, science, and a bit of MacGyvering. The premise is an astronaut gets left on mars during a mars
Jun 15th, 2015	Good Strategy Bad Strategy	Richard Rumelt	So so. I liked the core ideas, but it just kept getting off topic. Talks about strategy - mostly corporate - somewhat military.
Jun 5th, 2015	In Real Life	Cory Doctorow	Very fast read - 30 minutes or so. A graphic novel about a girl gamer. It has a fun visual style in which when the girl is displayed in real life, there is one color palette, and then in-game she i
May 22nd, 2015	Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania	Erik Larson	Very enjoyable historical account of the sinking of the Lusitania. I knew essentially nothing about it other than that it was a ship that sank. The author was able to tell many interesting stories
May 19th, 2015	All You Need is Kill	Hiroshi Sakurazaka	Star Ship Troopers meets Groundhog Day. This was the book on which the movie Edge of Tomorrow was based. I enjoyed the movie, so immediately decided to read the book. They were both excellent - an
May 14th, 2015	The Outsorcerer's Apprentice	Tom Holt	Fun book - almost a little bit in the genre of Wicked perhaps? It takes place in a fairy tale land, but a couple of characters start to realize how unrealistic the land is - specifically, how the ec
May 4th, 2015	The Hard Thing About Hard Things	Ben Horowitz	I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Best "business" book I have ever read/heard. The narrator was amazing too. If I ever meet Ben Horowitz, I'm going to be so disappointed that he doesn't sound as awe
Apr 23rd, 2015	Hooked	Nir Eyal	I would NOT recommend the audio format of this book. It had at least one diagram (maybe more?), and it had written exercises, all of which weren't doable with audio version. Also, personal taste,
Apr 18th, 2015	Spin	Robert Charles Wilson	A re-read of a very good sci-fi novel. We were reading it for the Solterra Book club, but I didn't end up finishing it in time. Anyhow, if you haven't read this book before, I strongly recommend it.
Apr 16th, 2015	Einstein: His Life and Universe	Walter Isaacson	Very good book. This is my second Walter Isaacson book - the first about Steve Jobs, and this one about Einstein. Both great books. I learned so much about Einstein - the amazing work he contribut
Mar 19th, 2015	No Place to Hide	Glen Greenwald	This book is about Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the journalists who covered and continue to cover the leaked documents. It was really well written, but I would recommend reading it - not listening t
Mar 4th, 2015	In Cold Blood	Truman Capote	Very enjoyable audio book. Evidently it's a notable book for being one of the first non-fiction books to be written in more of a novel type style. The story examines a heinous quadruple murder in K
Feb 25th, 2015	Libriomancer	Jim C. Hines	This is book one in a series. It actually didn't do much for me. Not exactly sure what about it I didn't like. I'm going to pass on the rest of the series. The premise was the main character (and
Feb 10th, 2015	Big Little Lies	Liane Moriarty	This was 100% chicklit. I saw it on a best seller list, so I got it, not realizing the genre. Funny enough, Katie and I ended up both reading it at the same time. I found the middle to be annoying
Feb 6th, 2015	Airman	Eoin Colfer	A fun young adult novel that seemed to take some of its inspiration from the Count of Monte Cristo: A brilliant young boy is wrongly imprisoned - he spends years planning the perfect escape, and the
Jan 30th, 2015	The Kingdom of Gods	N. K. Jemisin	Book Three of The Inheritance Trilogy. Great book - long though at 600+ pages. Continuing the theme of God among Men, the storyline takes place a hundred or so years after the previous book, and fo
Jan 18th, 2015	The Broken Kingdoms	N. K. Jemisin	Book two of The Inheritance Trilogy. This takes place 10 years after the previous book, with mostly a different set of characters - but a few recognizable ones sprinkled in. Gods (and godlings, an
Jan 9th, 2015	Spell or High Water	Scott Meyer	Sequel to "Off to Be the Wizard", this follows Martin the wizard from his home in medieval Europe, to Atlantis thousands of years before that. The book continues the style of silly slapstick fun as	✓
Jan 2nd, 2015	How Google Works	Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg	The title pretty much explains it. One of the authors was head of Product Management at Google, so a lot of the people he talks about (Marissa, Salar, Susan, Georges) were all my direct managers at
Dec 31st, 2014	The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms	N. K. Jemisin	Recommended by cousin Elizabeth, this novel featured a female heroin, and a female author. I very much enjoyed the story and storytelling - of a girl named Yeine who finds herself thrust into an in
Dec 21st, 2014	Off to Be the Wizard	Scott Meyer	A cross between the Matrix, Monty Python, and something in the time travel genre. I very much enjoyed this book - and it looks like there are more in the series. Martin - the main character, re
Dec 11th, 2014	Conform	Glenn Beck	My never-ending quest to hear about views that differ from my own. I actually enjoyed a lot of the content of this book - it was centered entirely on education. He had a lot of negative things to s
Dec 5th, 2014	Boom	Tony Horwitz	A short book that documents the authors driving tour down Canada and United states as he traces the proposed route of the XL pipeline, and talks to farmers and others along the route. He definitely h
Nov 29th, 2014	Lock In	John Scalzi	I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by Will Wheaton - a geek hero. Anyhow, the book took place in the near future after a massive epidemic resulted in some percent of the wold population be
Nov 28th, 2014	The Fire Seekers	Richard Farr	A fun action-thriller - a bit young adult crossed with Indiana Jones and probably other items. The premise is a new religion is formed around "the architects" and the notion that if done right, each
Nov 24th, 2014	Dust	Hugh Howey	Book three of the silo series. Nice closure to the series. All in all, a solid series. Definitely recommended.
Nov 18th, 2014	The Boys in the Boat	Daniel James BrownA Great audiobook. I learned a lot about competitive rowing, and was very entertained by the story of a young man, and his 8 boat-mates as they learned to become a team, and take on the world. Also great side stories about the boat maker	A Great audiobook. I learned a lot about competitive rowing, and was very entertained by the story of a young man, and his 8 boat-mates as they learned to become a team, and take on the world. Also g
Nov 16th, 2014	Shift Omnibus	Hugh Howey	Book two of the silo series - still very enjoyable. This book goes back in time a bit and explains some of the backstory from the first book. This one also has some of the same events from the firs
Nov 8th, 2014	Wool Omnibus	Hugh Howey	Recommended by my brother, this is the first part of a post-apocalyptic series taking place in "silos". An entire community lives in a giant underground silo, with law custom and culture suggesting
Oct 31st, 2014	Drift	Rachel Maddow	Interesting note on how I found myself reading this book. I actually downloaded the audiobook by Newt Gingrich because I knew it was outside of my comfort zone politically, but I had to stop within
Oct 20th, 2014	A Higher Call	Adam Makos	A very entertaining non-fiction audiobook about a German WWII ace pilot and his many adventures during the war. The centerpieces of the story is his interaction with a crippled American bomber over
Oct 9th, 2014	Neptune's Brood	Charles Stross	Fun sci-fi read. Takes place on multiple words, as a cyborg(?) uncovers the truth of her maker, and mass conspiracy across multiple star systems.
Sep 29th, 2014	Gardens of the Moon	Steven Erikson	The first book of a series called "Malazan Book of the Fallen". Very much in the realm of fantasy. Enjoyable - I'll probably continue reading the series over the coming months.	✓
Sep 15th, 2014	Behind the Beautiful Forevers	Katherine Boo	Non-fiction, from the Solterra Book Club - this follows a bunch of Indian slum dwellers through the hardships of daily life in Mumbai - many in the book pick, sort, and sell garbage as their primary
Sep 12th, 2014	The Stranger	Albert Camus	I had no idea what this was when I got it from the library. Evidently it's a classic. Essentially a story about a man and his misfortunes, that illustrates existentialism. I wish I had read this in
Aug 30th, 2014	Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro	Hard to name the genre of this novel. Someplace it is listed as Sci-Fi, but I strongly dispute this. I also see it listed as psychological thriller (also seems far fetched), Romance, as well as "Br
Aug 26th, 2014	The Sociopath Next Door	Martha Stout	I was sad to see this book end - I was really enjoying it. Non-fiction, written by a Harvard psychologist, it talks about Sociopaths - their total lack of conscience - what motivates them, and so fo
Aug 15th, 2014	Use of Weapons	Ian M. Banks	A fun sci-fi novel about a General/mercenary who is sent by a higher civilization into lower civilizations to do their dirty work. The higher civilization has benign intentions - trying to bring eac
Aug 8th, 2014	Steve Jobs	Walter Isaacson	A fantastic telling of the life os Steve Jobs. The author had some pretty amazing access to everyone from Jobs and his family, Bill Gates, Al Gore, and many more. Jobs was a unique individual - nev
Aug 4th, 2014	Blindness	Jose Saramago	When a whole city (country? world?) goes blind, society collapses. All central infrastructure - from electric power to police - ceases. The story follows a doctor (ironically, an eye doctor actually)
Jul 25th, 2014	Ready Player One	Ernest Cline	Young adult Science Fiction. Wade, aka Parzival, spends most of his time on OASIS, a massive multiplayer world. For that matter, most of the population does the same. When the inventor of OASIS d
Jul 1st, 2014	Diaspora	Greg Egan	One of the most sciency sci-fi books I have ever read. Took place starting a few hundred years from present, but continued on for thousands of years into the future. The main characters are sentien
Jun 20th, 2014	The Lowlands	Jhumpa Lahir	Two brothers in India who grow up together, but then grow apart. One moves to the united states, while the other marries for love in India. The brother in India is killed, and the remaining broth
Jun 11th, 2014	1491	Charles C. Mann	I was both excited about, and disappointed in this book at the same time. I was hoping for a book that went much deeper into a day in the life of a native american before the days of Columbus. Inst
Jun 1st, 2014	The Ocean at the End of the Lane	Neil Gaiman	Katie's pick for the Solterra Book Club, this novel mixes up a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of horror, and a lot of just good fun. It was a quick read, but enjoyable. The main character is a
May 20th, 2014	Far From the Tree	Andrew Solomon	For our May meeting of the Solterra Book Club, we took on this beast of a book. I only made it about 1/3 of the way through, but my lovely wife tackled the whole thing. Each chapter of this 1000 pa
May 3rd, 2014	Lexicon	Max Barry	Fun action thriller, with a hint of paranormal type activity. The premise is that words can be used to sort of short circuit the brain, and override it. People known as Poets are experts at this, a
Apr 28th, 2014	The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury	Written in the 1940's, it's a typical sci-fi book of the era. One thing that I really liked about it was how first encounters with martians ended up being so disastrous time and time again. Feels a
Apr 17th, 2014	One Summer: America, 1927	Bill Bryson	I listened to this one as an audiobook, which was a great medium for me. I've found I like non-fiction as audio books, and fiction in written format. This book was about 1927, but really spanned th
Mar 28th, 2014	A Memory of Light	Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson	The last book in a 14 book / 12,000 page series called The Wheel of Time that I had started a few years ago. I hadn't been able to finish back then because the series was still being written, but o
Mar 7th, 2014	The River of Doubt	Candice Millard	This would probably not have landed on my reading list if not for our neighborhood book club. I'm glad it did though, as it was a lot of fun to read. It documents Teddy Roosevelt's adventures through
Feb 14th, 2014	Flowers for Algernon	Daniel Keyes	A man with a very low IQ is treated with an experimental procedure that results in his having a genius level IQ. The reader follows along in the man's journal as his writing quality increases, obser
Jan 12th, 2014	The Hangman's Daughter	Oliver Pötzsch	A fun novel taking place in the 1600's centering around some kids that are being murdered, a midwife who is suspected of witchcraft, and a hangman and doctor who are trying to uncover the truth behin
Jan 7th, 2014	Hatching Twitter	Nick Bilton	The story of the creation and growth of twitter, mostly focusing around the relationships with the founders. Like the Google book, this one was odd because I knew a lot of the cast of characters fro
Jan 2nd, 2014	Solaris	Stanislaw Lem	A scientist on a distant planet attempts to interact with a sentient life-form that covers the entire planet. The book doesn't contain a lot of "action" per se, it is mostly in the mind of the narr
Nov 3rd, 2013	Axis	Robert Charles Wilson	Sequel to Spin (a couple books down). Fun read. The ending was a bit anticlimactic I felt. In this book, a boy exists who is part human, and part Hypothetical (the entities mentioned in my Spin rev
Oct 31st, 2013	A/B Testing	Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen	Great overview of A/B testing. It sparks a lot of good ideas about tests that can be run, as well as ideas on how to set up an A/B testing culture in a company. Great book for people dealing with u
Oct 27th, 2013	Spin	Robert Charles Wilson	A great science fiction read. Couldn't put it down. The premise is that some entity has made it so that time on earth moves much slower than time in the rest of the universe. So for people on earth
Oct 19th, 2013	What's bred in the Bone	Robertson Davies	I read this for the first ever Solterra Book Club meeting. We only ended up chatting about the book for 15 minutes or so, and then on to other things, but fun anyhow. As for the book - it started o
Oct 14th, 2013	Dad is Fat	Jim Gaffigan	Another audio book, this one a silly book about parenting by comedian Jim Gaffigan. It was fine - not exceptional.
Oct 5th, 2013	Quiet	Susan Cain	This book talks all about introverts. Fantastic read for introverts, and those wanting to understand introverts better. Covers everything from raising kids who are introverts, to running businesses
Sep 21st, 2013	Maus II	Art Spiegelman	Book 2 of the Maus series.
Sep 20th, 2013	Maus	Art Spiegelman	Hard to describe, but essentially a non-fiction account of the holocaust told by a survivor's son in the format of a graphic novel. This would probably be a much better way to learn about the holocau
Sep 17th, 2013	Mossflower	Brian Jacques	One of the books from the series Redwall. I'm glad I read it, but I don't feel the need to read any more of the series. For those that haven't read the Redwall books, they are meant for middle-scho
Sep 5th, 2013	Growth Hacker Marketing	Ryan Holiday	A sort of overview of what Growth Hacking is, written by VP of marketing at American Apparel. It was a nice summary of things, but didn't offer much if you already knew what Growth Hacking was all a
Sep 4th, 2013	Going Clear	Lawrence Wright	One of the best books I have read in years. This is an in-depth look at scientology, especially of L. Ron Hubbard, and his successor, David Miscavige. It paints Hubbard as a schizophrenic who most
Aug 23rd, 2013	The Wonderful Future that Never Was	Gregory Benford	Scott pointed me towards this book - a fun recap of the future predictions from the Popular Mechanics magazine for the past 100 years. Some of the predictions were very accurate, like alternative c
Aug 18th, 2013	Nine Princes in Amber	Roger Zelazny	This is a 10 book series, of which I made it through the first 5 books, then called it quits. It was fun, but perhaps too much to take all at once. Maybe if I had read it one book at a time as they
Aug 18th, 2013	The Guns of Avalon	Roger Zelazny	Book two of the Chronicles of Amber series.
Aug 18th, 2013	Sign of the Unicorn	Roger Zelazny	Book three of the Chronicles of Amber series.
Aug 18th, 2013	The Hand of Oberon	Roger Zelazny	Book four of the Chronicles of Amber series.
Aug 18th, 2013	The Courts of Chaos	Roger Zelazny	Book five of the Chronicles of Amber series.
Aug 10th, 2013	Deadpool, Vol. 2: Dark Reign	Daniel Way	Reddit has been filled with mention of Deadpool of late, so I figured I should see what all of the fuss was about. Sadly, this book which is sort of in the middle of the story line, was the only one
Aug 9th, 2013	Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems	Richard Ferber	Trying to get a grasp on Callum's sleep situation. Katie and I went divide-and-conquer on this. The Ferber book gives a lot of background on sleep, and helps you understand how certain associations
Jul 22nd, 2013	The Black Company	Glen Cook	I joined an online book club over at goodreads, and this first book in the series was on tap for July. I enjoyed t
Jul 22nd, 2013	Shadows Linger	Glen Cook	Book two of Chronicles of the Black Company
Jul 22nd, 2013	The White Rose	Glen Cook	Book three of Chronicles of the Black Company
Jul 7th, 2013	Shadow & Claw	Gene Wolfe	The first half of "The book of the new sun". I'm undecided on this series. It had an interesting story line, but also had this strange misogynistic thread that carried throughout the novel. Sort of
Jul 7th, 2013	Sword & Citadel	Gene Wolfe	The second half of "The book of the new sun".
May 25th, 2013	A Canticle for Leibowitz	Walter Miller Jr	This is the second book in a row that was post-apocalyptic. That was not an intentional decision, just coincidence. This was clearly written in the 50's, as the major plot is about nuclear winter.
May 11th, 2013	World War Z	Max Brooks	After three and a half months of not reading, I have come back from the dead to read World War Z. I'm not a big Zombie movie/book fan, but since this one has gotten so much attention, I figured I'd
Jan 27th, 2013	The Convert	Oliver Broudy	I do not recommend this book. In reading the description and reviews, I had read something along the lines of "it will make even atheists question their beliefs". Such was not the case. The story
Jan 26th, 2013	Why School?: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere	Will Richardson	A Kindle Short about how education is failing our youth, and what must be changed. Specifically it talks about how in a world of abundance of information, we shouldn't be teaching facts, but rather
Jan 25th, 2013	How to Get Away with Murder in America	Evan Wright	An investigative reporting piece looking into big players in the Miami drug world of the 70's, and examining how they have so far gotten away with all sorts of crimes including murder.
Jan 20th, 2013	Agile Product Management with Scrum	Roman Pichler	Just brushing up on some Product Management stuff. Funny how many people saw the book on my desk and said "Scrum? That sounds gross."
Jan 11th, 2013	The Lightning Thief	Rick Riordan	Book one of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. A fun kids' series about Percy Jackson, a boy born of a human mother, and a god for a father (Poseidon). He goes on many adventures encountering the anc
Jan 11th, 2013	The Sea of Monsters	Rick Riordan	Book two of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Jan 11th, 2013	The Titan's Curse	Rick Riordan	Book three of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Jan 11th, 2013	The Battle of the Labyrinth	Rick Riordan	Book four of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Jan 11th, 2013	The Last Olympian	Rick Riordan	Book five of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Jan 7th, 2013	In Search of Zarathustra	Paul Kriwaczek	I was looking for a book that was an overview of Zoroaster the man, and Zoroasterism the religion. This book was not that. It talked about various people the religion has influenced, including the
Jan 2nd, 2013	Lying	Sam Harris	As the title suggests, this book is about lying. Or more specifically, it is about how lying is very detrimental to relationships of all kind, even little white lies. A great read. This was a "Kin
Dec 27th, 2012	Why Romney Lost	David Frum	Written by a moderate republican, this details how the party has lost its way, and what it needs to do to be taken seriously again. Very short read (2 hours max), but I found it very interesting. N
Dec 20th, 2012	Kill Decision	Daniel Suarez	I have read some of this author's other books and really enjoyed them. This one however didn't do much for me. It was too mass market Michael Crichton, as apposed to his earlier books which were mo
Dec 1st, 2012	Island in the Sea of Time	S. M. Stirling	Recommended by Chris F., this novel was right up my alley. Often I think about what would happen if I found myself in ancient Rome or Greece - what would I be able to contribute or do with the know	✓
Nov 24th, 2012	The New Dad's Survival Guide	Scott Mactavish	A gift from Doug Uno - this was a great read for a father-to-be. It was written in a very fun/funny lighthearted way, but still addressed a lot of different items from college savings plans, to what
Nov 15th, 2012	The Closing of the Western Mind	Charles Freeman	Continuing my quest to understand the driving force behind so much of this planet's history - religion. Took me a solid month to read, but I think it was worth it. This book touched on the rise of re
Nov 11th, 2012	A Child's First Bible	Kenneth Taylor	If you're having trouble reading the real one, then read the children's version instead. Or that's what I told myself anyhow. Wasn't a big fan of this version - just too light on details. For exam
Oct 13th, 2012	A Fire Upon The Deep	Vernor Vinge	One of the many books I have gotten from the NPR list. So far none of them have let me down - they are all great reads. In th
Sep 11th, 2012	Xenocide	Orson Scott Card	Book three of the Ender series - this one pretty much continues on directly from book two - same cast of characters, same setting, same time period roughly. Good read - but it feels like diminishing
Sep 3rd, 2012	Speaker for the Dead	Orson Scott Card	Book two of the Enders Game series - this one is less action packed, but has some interesting ethnographic insights of the alien kind. You learn that your view of the way society functions is not ne
Aug 28th, 2012	Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card	This is my favorite book of all time (so far in my life at least). This is the third time I have read the book I think. I'm not sure why I love the book so much, perhaps it's that a kid, against all
Aug 24th, 2012	The Stainless Steel Rat	Harry Harrison	I found out about this author when he passed away a couple weeks ago - so I figured I'd give him a read. This book took place far in the future, and was written first person by a con-man/thief who w
Aug 22nd, 2012	Fluke	Christopher Moore	The novel starts out following Nate Quinn, a scientist who is studying whale songs to see if he can understand why they sing. The story starts to twist very early when he sees the words "Bite me" wr
Aug 18th, 2012	Freedom™	Daniel Suarez	Sequel to Daemon - a great techie novel that brings together a whole lot of themes including corporations taking over the democratic process, computers becoming self aware, people rebelling again
Aug 15th, 2012	Fruit at Work	Chris Evans	Written by a local entrepreneur/investor/philanthropist, this book talks about how you can have a successful career (at the top of the ladder or the bottom), and still be faithful to Christian values
Jul 31st, 2012	Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell	Susanna Clarke	A long, but entertaining novel. Taking place in England in the early 1800s, the book is about two magicians who are sometimes friends, and sometimes enemies. Magic has been gone for 400 years, but
Jul 18th, 2012	The Call of Cthulhu	H.P. Lovecraft	I knew of Cthulhu from pop culture, but had never read the short story from which it came. It was a very quick and fun read - definitely written in a style that I am beginning to associate with lat
Jul 6th, 2012	The Eyre Affair	Jasper Fforde	I very much enjoyed this novel. It takes place in a slightly different reality where there are a bunch of specialized government agencies including ChronoGuards (investigate time based mishaps), a
Jun 30th, 2012	Harmonics: Rise of the Magician	Earl and Snelgrove	Book one of the Harmonics series. I Stumbled upon this series. The first book was free on Kindle, and I liked it enough to continue reading (next two books were just $5 on kindle - good value). Fir
Jun 30th, 2012	Harmonics: Revelations	Earl and Snelgrove	Book two of the Harmonics series.
Jun 30th, 2012	Harmonics: The Jadian Sun	Earl and Snelgrove	Book three of the Harmonics series.
Jun 16th, 2012	The Handmaid's Tail	Margaret Atwood	I'm undecided on this one. It's the story of dystopian future where women have become essentially slaves to the system. The main character was torn from her husband, and now must act as a handmaid
Jun 9th, 2012	America: The Story of Us	Kevin Baker	My brother's suggestion - a really great easy to read history of America. I wish our history text books had been this easy to read. Actually, it sounds like schools do use this now - although it so
Jun 1st, 2012	The Wise Man's Fear (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 2)	Patrick Rothfuss	Second book in the Kingkiller series. The story of Kvothe's youth continues. He is learning more (including how to fight), finding out more about his enemies, and racking up incredible numbers o	✓
May 24th, 2012	The Closers	Michael Connelly	My kindle died half way through the second Kingkiller book, so I had to switch over to paper. I found this book in a hotel book exchange - not something I would have normally read. Classic cop murd
May 15th, 2012	The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1)	Patrick Rothfuss	The first in a three part series about Kvothe, a red-headed man telling the story of his notorious youth. In the fantasy genre - Kvothe develops some magical abilities. He is also just a very hard
Apr 26th, 2012	The Little Prince	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	A downed pilot meets a little prince from another planet. Through the pilot's eyes we learn of the little prince's adventures as he hopped from one micro-planet to the next. At each planet, we lear
Apr 19th, 2012	Cat's Cradle	Kurt Vonnegut	Note to self - this is the one with ice nine. I read this a long time ago, and remembered really liking it, but couldn't remember much about it. The main character starts out as a writer/observer,
Mar 9th, 2012	Neverwhere	Neil Gaiman	Bizarre fun book, taking place below London. An alternate reality lives below the streets of London, with talking mice, angels, and all sorts of other goodness. A fun read. If I knew London well,
Jan 27th, 2012	Mysterious Island	Jules Verne	A strange little book. Not really that little actually. During the civil war, some union folk find themselves wrecked on a desert island. They build their own tools from scratch, and create a life
Jan 14th, 2012	Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy	Bill Clinton	As the title implies, this book is about how to create Jobs in America. He takes some shots at the Tea Party - saying that you can (and should) have both a strong government, and a strong private se
Jan 1st, 2012	Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom	Cory Doctorow	A short read, but entertaining. I really enjoy Cory Doctorow's books - not sure why he doesn't get a ton of love. This one takes place in the future when humans get around death by doing backups, a
Jan 1st, 2012	The Art of War	Sun Tzu (孫子)	Written 2500 years ago, some things are no longer relevant (chariots, spears, etc), but so much of the actual strategy still is very relevant. A lot of the strategy is around psychological warfare
Dec 24th, 2011	Know Your Bible: All 66 Books Explained	Paul Kent	This was actually a really good book. In just a few hours of reading, I now have a much better understanding of the bible than I have ever had before. It was really helpful for me to just read from
Dec 23rd, 2011	The Prince	Niccolo Machiavelli	Well - I now understand the term Machiavellian a lot better. This book describes how to be an effective prince in Machiavelli's time - and being effective does not necessarily mean being nice. It's
Dec 18th, 2011	What the World Eats	Faith D'Aluisio	I've been reading this off and on for the past week. Very cool look into a bunch of cultures around the world through the lens of their weekly grocery buying habits. A reminder how diverse the worl
Dec 17th, 2011	Inheritance	Christopher Paolini	The last book of the Inheritance Cycle series (started with Eregon). This book tied up all of the loose ends in the series, but it was a bit of a let down as I pretty much knew everything that was go
Dec 9th, 2011	Reamde	Neal Stephenson	Not your traditional Neal Stephenson book. As Anthony calls it, more of a Jason Bourne saga. Hackers, Terrorists, Russian Mafia, Bears, Mountain Lions, Guns, Helicopters and a whole lot more. It w
Nov 15th, 2011	The Diamond Age	Neal Stephenson	In the future, civilization and technology have progressed, but all is not perfect. A nano-engineer and a member of the elite class team up to build a book that will teach the wealthy individual's d
Oct 20th, 2011	American Gods	Neil Gaiman	Shadow, having recently been released from prison, gets pulled into the affairs of what turn out to be... you guessed it, gods. One of the underlying premises of the novel is that every god that any
Oct 8th, 2011	Epic Win for Anonymous	Cole Stryker	A very interesting look into 4chan, Reddit, Anonymous and Memes. As an avid Reddit user, it was intriguing to see where lots of the culture that is Reddit bubbled up from.
Sep 20th, 2011	In The Plex	Steven Levy	The story of Google, from the founding of, through late 2010 / early 2011. Very, very strange for me to read - reading about people I know, and sometimes finding out things I didn't know about these
Aug 18th, 2011	Lamb	Chritopher Moore	A novel about Jesus's "missing years" (Age 1 to 30) as told by his friend, Biff. Very fun and silly read.
Jul 24th, 2011	A Clash of Kings	George R. R. Martin	RE-READ. When I heard the 5th book in the series (A Dance with Dragons) was finally coming out, and with The Game of Thrones on TV, I decided to re-read the series. I skipped the first one as I was
Jul 24th, 2011	A Storm of Swords	George R. R. Martin	RE-READ: Book three in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Jul 24th, 2011	A Feast for Crows	George R. R. Martin	RE-READ: Book four in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Jul 24th, 2011	A Dance with Dragons	George R. R. Martin	RE-READ: Book five in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Jul 10th, 2011	Robopocalypse	Daniel H. Wilson	Man creates Artificial Intelligence, A.I. rebels and decides to exterminate Man. A fun read - written by a CMU Robotics Ph.D. which adds some realism to his accounts. Sounds like Dreamworks has lic
Jun 9th, 2011	Love Wins	Rob Bell	Non-fiction book written by a reverend who argues against the notions of heaven and hell, and talks about how more time should be spent making "heaven on earth" through our deeds. Great message.
May 22nd, 2011	Immune	Richard Phillips	Second book in the Rho Agenda series (see below). This one is better written than the first, and still an exciting read.
May 15th, 2011	The Second Ship	Richard Phillips	A really fun story line (Roswell related), but rather poorly written. The story line was good enough to make we want to keep reading the series actually. I just wish the author was a bit better on
May 10th, 2011	Old Man's War	John Scalzi	My first book on Kindle! How fun (thanks Katie for the Kindle, and Mom and Dad for the Kindle Credits). A very enjoyable read. Some small similarities to Ender's game in plot - but perhaps inverted	✓
May 7th, 2011	The Memoirs of Cleopatra	Margaret George	I made it through about a third of this novel, and then gave up. Wasn't holding my attention. Historical fiction from Cleopatra's point of view.
Apr 25th, 2011	The Isle of Stone	Nicholas Nicastro	I was not impressed. Historical fiction about Sparta Vs. Athenians. It was just scattered story telling - and not very interesting. It also had a random 30 second tidbit in there about finding the
Apr 17th, 2011	The Gift	James Patterson	Book two of the below series. So-so. Not a lot of new plot development after the first one. Hopefully the third one is more interesting, else this may be the end of the series for me. The third o
Apr 10th, 2011	Witch & Wizard	James Patterson	Young adult dystopian science fiction. Two young siblings are arrested for no known crime, and come to find out they are a witch and a wizard. There are prophecies about their great future. Looks
Apr 10th, 2011	Water For Elephants	Sue Gruen	Mom had been recommending this one for me for a long while, and I finally got around to reading it. A very enjoyable novel about a vet's experience caring for animals and humans alike at the circus
Apr 4th, 2011	Yellow Blue Tibia	Adam Roberts	Sometimes I email myself book titles that I want to read, and then when I'm looking for a book, I just search my inbox and find one that needs reading. I recently looked in my inbox and found a note
Mar 27th, 2011	Towers of Midnight	Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson	This is book 13 in the Wheel of time series. The author (Robert Jordan) passed away before this book came out, so Brandon Sanderson took the wheel on this one - and thank goodness. Things are star
Mar 16th, 2011	Mockingjay	Suzanne Collins	This was the third book in the Hunger Games series. The first I liked, the second I didn't, and the third I'm undecided on. It definitely does not have a "happily ever after" ending. It's a pretty
Mar 6th, 2011	Ringworld	Larry Niven	This was on some "Best Sci-Fi of all time" list. It was a very enjoyable read. A couple humans (one 200 years old, and the other bred for luck) join a three legged alien, and a cat like alien on a	✓
Mar 4th, 2011	Confession of a Buddhist Atheist	Stephen Batchelor	The first Buddhism book (a couple down) didn't do much for me. There was too much theism involved (yes, I know, it's a religion). This book was much, much more up my alley. It was a combination	✓
Feb 26th, 2011	Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut	A man is abducted by aliens, is taught how to live his life in non-sequential order, and then tells the story of his life in this non-sequential manor. His life is colored by World War II, as well
Feb 20th, 2011	Buddhism for Beginners	Thubten Chodron	I was a little disappointed by this book. I'm not sure what I was hoping for, but this wasn't it. I think part of it was that it was pretty dry reading, but also part of it was that I was a bit dis
Feb 13th, 2011	Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth	Hosler, Cannon and Cannon	I had read another book in this series - "The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA" by the same Illustrators, but a different writer. It's a really fun way to learn about a topic - in
Feb 6th, 2011	How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe	Charles Yu	A great novel. Written in a style all his own (well, perhaps a bit of HHGttG sprinkled in), this book is itself a guide to time travel, and also a story about the writing of the book itself. On the
Jan 30th, 2011	The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran	Robert Spencer	I have a whole lot of mixed feelings about this book. The author is unquestionably, and unapologetically against Muslims and the Islam religion. At the end, among his recommendations of how the west
Jan 22nd, 2011	Our Kind of Traitor	John le Carre	A young British chap and his girlfriend meet a mysterious Russian man during vacation. In time, he finds the Russian to be an international money launderer who wants to turn over crucial information
Jan 3rd, 2011	Stranger in a Strange Land	Robert Heinlein	Evidently the word "grok" comes from this book. I've been using the word for years, and never knew that this was the origin. The plot revolves around a human man who was raised by martians on mars,
Dec 26th, 2010	Pattern Recognition	William Gibson	I had high expectations for this novel, and it sadly didn't live up to those expectations. For some reason I thought it was going to be really thought provoking... but is just wasn't. The story is
Dec 19th, 2010	War of the Worlds	H. G. Wells	Another classic that I had never read. A surprisingly fun read. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking of the characters from Mars Attacks!, which made the reading experience even more enjo
Dec 9th, 2010	The Time Machine	H. G. Wells	One of those classics that I had never gotten around to reading. A somewhat bleak view of our distant future as told by an inventor who creates a time machine and comes back to tell his 19th century
Dec 7th, 2010	City of Thieves	David Benioff	A very good novel. Takes place during WWII in Russia, featuring a teenager named Lev and his new-found friend Kolya whom he is forced to go on an adventure with through war torn Saint Petersburg and
Dec 4th, 2010	Round the moon	Jules Verne	The continuation of From the Earth to the Moon. Still an enjoyable read. Our brave scientists explore space and the giant silver orb in the sky.
Nov 28th, 2010	From the Earth to the Moon	Jules Verne	When I borrowed the Jules Verne book from the library, it actually was a combination of 5 books - so I delved into another one in the collection. This was also a really fun read. One interesting as
Nov 20th, 2010	A Journey to the Center of the Earth	Jules Verne	This is a novel that is referenced a lot in modern entertainment, so I figured I should go to the source and give it a read. Lots of fun. A professor and his nephew travel to Iceland, and from ther
Nov 13th, 2010	The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest	Stieg Larsson	Final book in the series. Very enjoyable series. This last book is more of a legal thriller than an action thriller, but that made for an interesting twist as well.
Nov 5th, 2010	The Girl Who Played With Fire	Stieg Larsson	Continuation of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, this time Elizabeth Salamander (not quite her name) finds herself in the middle of the action.
Oct 24th, 2010	The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo	Stieg Larsson	For some reason I thought this was chick-lit, so I had avoided it. Definitely not chick-lit. It is an often gruesome murder mystery taking place in current era. The two main characters are a journ
Oct 11th, 2010	Life of Pi	Yann Martel	This has been on every "best fiction books" list I have ever seen, and yet I have always avoided reading it for some reason. I'm very glad I finally sat down and gave it a chance. It was a really f
Sep 18th, 2010	The Eye of the World	Robert Jordan	Book one of The Wheel of Time. 10,500 pages of classic fantasy. Evidently lots of current day fantasy novels were influenced from this series. The author recently passed away, but there are still t
Sep 18th, 2010	The Great Hunt	Robert Jordan	Book two of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	The Dragon Reborn	Robert Jordan	Book three of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	The Shadow Rising	Robert Jordan	Book four of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	The Fires of Heaven	Robert Jordan	Book five of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	Lord of Chaos	Robert Jordan	Book six of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	A Crown of Swords	Robert Jordan	Book seven of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	The Path of Daggers	Robert Jordan	Book eight of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	Winter's Heart	Robert Jordan	Book nine of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	Crossroads of Twilight	Robert Jordan	Book ten of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	Knife of Dreams	Robert Jordan	Book 11 of The Wheel of Time.
Sep 18th, 2010	The Gathering Storm	Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson	Book 12 of The Wheel of Time.
Aug 30th, 2010	Slide:ology	Nancy Duarte	A perfect quote from the back of the book "Slide:ology is a book that's as beautiful as it is educational". This book talks about how to make great slides for presentations. It is written by Nancy
Jun 4th, 2010	How To Start And Run Your Own Corporation	Peter I. Hupalo	Covers how to incorporate, as well as lots of issues such as financing, stock and stock options, directors, officers, tax issues, retirement plans, etc. Great resource, but also really intimidating
Apr 26th, 2010	Point of Impact	Stephen Hunter	A sniper is asked to help prevent a presidential assassination, but finds himself framed for that same event. Fun, not very mind expanding.
Apr 11th, 2010	Aztec	Gary Jennings	A very good fictional tale of an Aztec man circa 1500 who tells of life, love, disaster, and so much more before and after the Spaniards arrive and change their life forever. In reading up a bit abo
Mar 18th, 2010	Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air	David JC MacKay	I believe I heard about this from a TED talk given by Bill Gates actually. Anyhow, this is a phenomenal resource to understand our energy needs in the decades to come. For me the biggest take away
Feb 27th, 2010	Wizard's First Rule	Terry Goodkind	Book one of The Sword of Truth series. I've been reading this for the last few months, with other books sprinkled in. I figured I would make it all one post so as not to pollute the book blog with
Feb 27th, 2010	Stone of Tears	Terry Goodkind	Book two of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	Blood of the Fold	Terry Goodkind	Book three of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	Temple of the Winds	Terry Goodkind	Book four of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	Soul of the fire	Terry Goodkind	Book five of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	Faith of the Fallen	Terry Goodkind	Book six of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	The Pillars of Creation	Terry Goodkind	Book seven of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	Naked Empire	Terry Goodkind	Book eight of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	Chainfire	Terry Goodkind	Book nine of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	Phantom	Terry Goodkind	Book ten of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 27th, 2010	Confessor	Terry Goodkind	Book 11 of The Sword of Truth series.
Feb 24th, 2010	See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation	Thomas Geoghegan	This book was about a topic that interests me (the rise of litigation in the united states), and also lays blame on the Right, which is hard to resist. However, the book was not right for me. It ha
Feb 11th, 2010	Why pi?	Johnny Ball	Aimed at kids 9-12 years old, I found this to be a great read for all ages. I had this book as bathroom reading material, which I found to be the perfect way to read the book. In this way, you coul
Jan 31st, 2010	Perfect Rigor	Masha Gessen	The true account of a mathematical genius who solved one of the hardest problems of the last 100 years. Much of the book goes into talking about mathematics and antisemitism in cold-war Russia. It
Jan 13th, 2010	The Catcher in the Rye	J.D. Salinger	Unlike most of my generation, I somehow didn't read this during high school, so I made up for that omission. To be honest, the book didn't do much for me. I feel like it probably has a much greater
Jan 5th, 2010	Startups that Work	Joel Kurtzman	This turned out to be a bit different than what I expected. It ended up being a more quantitative and data oriented than I had expected, which was great. The book was written around a large longitu
Dec 24th, 2009	The Age of Ra	James Lovegrove	I randomly saw this at a bookstore, and decided to get it. I was pleasantly surprised (perhaps because I came in with pretty low expectations). I had been complaining recently that a lot of the mor
Dec 6th, 2009	The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing	Larimore, Lindauer & LeBoeuf	I found this to be a really good beginner's guide to investing. It explains all of the basics including inflation, ways to save, taxes, and then talks a lot about why it is foolish to try to beat th
Nov 30th, 2009	Lord of the Flies	William Golding	One of Katie's favorites, and a book that missed out on reading in high school, so I gave it a read. Highly recommended. A bit more violent/sad than I would have guessed, but a good read. I really
Nov 20th, 2009	A Dirty Job	Christopher Moore	Recommended by my brother - and what a good recommendation it was. Very funny, exciting, and just bizarre. Totally my cup of tea. A man becomes a Death Merchant - having to collect souls when pe
Nov 15th, 2009	Interview with the Vampire	Anne Rice	This read was inspired by Kristin H. She has been on a vampire reading binge evidently, so I asked her what one good Vampire book was, so I could at least see what everyone's fascination with vampir
Nov 5th, 2009	The Road	Cormac McCarthy	Why, oh why do some many people love this book? It's page after page of monotonous misery. What do people see in this book that I don't see? I don't get it. Anyhow, as a summary, it's about a kid
Nov 2nd, 2009	Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde	Robert Louis Stevenson	I have decided that Jekyll and Hyde is essentially an episode of Scooby Doo.
Oct 27th, 2009	Catching Fire	Suzanne Collins	This was the sequel to The Hunger Games (see below). This was an ok read, but I felt like way too much of it was just repackaging of the first book. The first book left off with lots of potential (t
Oct 12th, 2009	The Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins	Even though you'll need to find The Hunger Games in the "Teen" section of your local reading establishment, I still found the book to be highly enjoyable. It was one of those feel good, empowering t
Oct 11th, 2009	Daniel X: Watch the Skies	Patterson and Rust	I sat in a book store and just read this in two sittings. I guess I just didn't want to pay for a book that was only a few hours read. Anyhow, it was not good. I'm very glad I didn't buy it. This
Oct 9th, 2009	Anathem	Neal Stephenson	This novel is a strange mix of philosophy, action/adventure, and science fiction. The main characters are essentially agnostic monks. They spend all of their time in introspection and studying the
Sep 8th, 2009	The Guns of the South	Harry Turtledove	The general notion of this book is fun - people go back in time from present day to the Civil war to help the south win the war by giving them present day weapons. The book starts out really interes
Aug 17th, 2009	Under the Banner of Heaven	Jon Krakauer	Katie and I listened to the audio CD version of this book on a road trip to and from Baltimore. It centers on the Mormon faith - both the traditional Mormons, and the more extreme fundamental Mormon
Aug 7th, 2009	The Dangerous Days of Daniel X	Patterson and Ledwidge	This book can be found in the "Young Adult" section of your local bookarie. Daniel X is an alien hunter, who's job it is to... you guessed it, hunt aliens. Very much like Men In Black, but Daniel i
Aug 6th, 2009	The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat	Oliver Sacks	Oliver Sacks is one of the most famous neurologists of our times. In this book, he chronicles many different clinical anomalies that he has encountered in his long career. Each chapter documents a
Jul 18th, 2009	Dune	Frank Herbert	A re-read of a classic. For those that haven't read it, this is one of the best fiction novels ever - definitely gets into the sci-fi realm, but doesn't feel all sci-fi-ish. This time around I noti
Jul 10th, 2009	Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us	Rodney Brooks	The author of this book is the head of the robotics lab at MIT. It talks about his personal history with robotics, as well as the lab's history with robotics. In theory, it then talks about what he
Jun 4th, 2009	Neuromancer	William Gibson	Note to self: I need to re-read this someday. For some reason, I had a hard time following the what, who, where of the book for almost the entire time. I felt like I was in a drug induced haze, ju
May 31st, 2009	The Manga Guide to Databases	Mana Takahashi et al	I went to the bookstore to get a refresher Database book, and saw this gem. It just looked too awesome to pass up, so I ended up getting it (as well as a "real" database book). I read it on a fligh
May 28th, 2009	Indignation	Philip Roth	Set in the early 50's, a New Jersey Jewish boy escapes his overbearing father by going to school at a very white Ohio university. He has trouble dealing with others at school (students and administr
May 18th, 2009	A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius	Dave Eggers	I'm not sure if there is a name for the genre of this book. It is for the most part non-fiction, based on his life - his parents both dying, and him raising his little brother. The reason the genre
May 16th, 2009	I Saw You...	Julia Wertz (Editor)	This book is a collection of many comics that are each based off of "Missed Connections" from Craigslist. Some are sad, some are funny, some are romantic, etc. I believe that some of them are verba
May 5th, 2009	Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life	Neil Strauss	I very much enjoyed this non-fiction read. It is the author's first hand account of his preparation for the worst. Specifically, he fears that America may collapse economically and/or become a poli
Apr 28th, 2009	The Rise of Endymion	Dan Simmons	The last of the Hyperion series. I think I just got tired of it at this point. It just dragged on. There was a nice romance type storyline in there which was a bit of a nice change, but yeah, just
Apr 15th, 2009	Endymion	Dan Simmons	The third in the hyperion series. It takes place a few hundred years after the previous one leaves off, and the main character of the book is Raul, the boyfriend of "The One Who Teaches". We follow
Apr 7th, 2009	The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable	Nassim Nicholas Taleb	I made it about a third of the way through this book, and then I sort of stated "OK, I get his point" and decided not to finish the last two thirds. His point, at least from what I could tell, is th
Apr 1st, 2009	1984	George Orwell	Somehow, I had not yet read this book. It was a great read for the content and lessons of the book (totalitarian state, loss of freedom and rights), but also really interesting to finally see the or
Mar 18th, 2009	Farenheight 451	Ray Bradbury	This was a re-read, for old time's sake. I had forgotten most of it, so it was a nice refresher. The central themes are censorship, loss of freedoms, loss of free thinking, and lost touch with the
Mar 16th, 2009	The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin	Benjamin Franklin	Man oh man, that dude had some mad skills. This book is written somewhat sloppily - changing narrative styles throughout, carrying on from time to time, and not even finishing it - but the content i
Mar 5th, 2009	The Fall of Hyperion	Dan Simmons	The sequel to Hyperion (two entries down). In my opinion, this should have been combined with the first book, and should have been a single book. The first book didn't really conclude the storyline
Feb 28th, 2009	Reflex	Steven Gould	This is the sequel to Jumper (two entries down). In this episode, our favorite teleporter manages to get kidnapped by some bad people (it takes some ingenuity to figure out how to keep him kidnapped
Feb 24th, 2009	Hyperion	Dan Simmons	Very much a scifi book, this gets into topics of empire building across worlds, intelligent computers, and so forth. Actually, the reason I wanted to read it was I saw reference to it when I was rea
Feb 16th, 2009	Jumper	Steven Gould	A movie came out recently by the same name. This is a fun book, based on the premise that a kid learns how to teleport. The story line is a bit different from the movie, but much of it is the same.
Feb 16th, 2009	The Faithful Spy	Alex Berenson	Eh. Another spy book. A CIA agent infiltrates a terrorist cell in Afghanistan. The Cell sends him on a mission in the United States. The CIA wants to know if they can still trust him... The Cell wa
Feb 9th, 2009	The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA	Schultz, Cannon and Cannon	This is a graphic guide (comic basically) of how genetics and DNA works. It was incredibly well done, very informational, but really fun to read. I was astounded by how complex the basic elements o
Jan 31st, 2009	Cryptonomicon	Neal Stephenson	One of the best novels I have ever read. It has lots of Math / Computer stuff in it, which really made it even more enjoyable in my mind. The story takes place over two different time periods - one
Jan 12th, 2009	The Whiskey Rebels	David Liss	My bro and sister-in-law (such a strange term) gave me this one for the holidays. It is historical fiction taking place during President Washington's years in office, with part of the story taking p
Dec 15th, 2008	The Florians	Brian M. Stableford	A slow reading month for me. One book only? Yikes. Anyhow, this was a scifi book about some people who settled on this new world, but had become very large in size (height, weight, strength, etc)
Nov 25th, 2008	Watchmen	Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons	A graphic novel (aka, a comic book) about caped heroes from the 1920s until the 1980s. This was recommended to be by two different people in a span of 24 hours - so I had no choice but to immediatel
Nov 22nd, 2008	Foundation and Empire	Isaac Asimov	The second in the Foundation series. Also a great read. In this book, the blossoming civilization takes on The Mule - a man born with a genetic mutation that help him to conquer worlds. Two charac
Nov 18th, 2008	Foundation	Isaac Asimov	For the last few weeks I have had a lot of false starts - I starting reading a book, then lost interest in it - over and over again. So I decided to go back to an oldie but goodie after my SF roomma
Oct 24th, 2008	The Lathe of Heaven	Ursula K. Le Guin	A great read. The premise is: A man realizes that what he dreams actually comes to happen in real life. Not that he predicts the future, but rather his dreams actually alter the future. Some bad
Oct 20th, 2008	A Lion Among Men	Gregory Maguire	The last of the audio CD's - or at least, the last until next time I decide to drive across the country. This was in the same series as Wicked (of which there was a Broadway play made after), and so
Oct 16th, 2008	The Revolution: A Manifesto	Ron Paul	Another Audio CD on my trip. This book by Ron Paul (yes, that Ron Paul - presidential candidate) contains his views on how the US government should be run. He is free market to the extreme, as well
Oct 15th, 2008	Chindi	Jack McDevitt	A "real" book (as apposed to the audio CD's it is surrounded by). This was a sci fi novel that was a pretty decent read. It takes place a couple hundred years in the future, and revolves around the
Oct 15th, 2008	Truman	David McCullough	Yet another audio CD (although I linked to the book in this case). An excellent biography of Harry S. Truman (turns out "S" didn't stand for anything). I learned a lot from this one, about his humb
Oct 13th, 2008	Blood Work	Michael Connelly	Another Audio CD. A thriller - a retired FBI investigator does a pro-bono case to track down a killer, and finds that the killer has actually killed others before. The victim was a heart donor, and
Oct 13th, 2008	Audacity of Hope	Barack Obama	I listened to this audio book on a drive across the country. I found it to be very interesting; it had a bit of history of U.S. government, and specifically the Senate, as well as Barack's personal
Oct 5th, 2008	Stone Cold	David Baldacci	Bleh. FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Russian spies, American spies, good guy is on the run from the government because he was framed, etc etc. Not much to say about this book. Definitely a cookie cutte
Sep 30th, 2008	Brisingr	Christopher Paolini	This is the third book in a Trilogy, the first being "Eragon". It is very fantasy-ish, so if you aren't into that, then this is definitely not the right book for you. Anyhow, upon fishing this boo
Sep 11th, 2008	Runaways	Brian K Vaughan et al	A graphic novel / comic aimed at youth, written by the same author of Y: The last man (see Jan 25th 2008). The story revolves around a group of kids who revolt against their parents who they find to
Sep 8th, 2008	Little Brother	Cory Doctorow	Wow. That one sort of shook me up. I think I was able to relate to this one more than others might, as it took place in SF, citing many places I am very familiar with - and also because there is a
Sep 7th, 2008	The World Without Us	Alan Weisman	I am sort of cheating by putting this one on the list as I only read a few chapters of the book. The premise was really interesting though, so I figured I would post it. The book is what the author
Sep 6th, 2008	The Winner	David Baldacci	A mass market thriller. A very poor single mother is offered a once in a lifetime opportunity at being guaranteed to be a massive lotto winner - but at what cost? The book is packed with action, susp
Sep 1st, 2008	A Deepness in the Sky	Vernor Vinge	SciFi to the extreme. Long read (750 pages or so), but a good one. Human traders come into contact with an alien race of spiders who are starting civilization from scratch. The humans lurk from abo
Aug 25th, 2008	The Alchemist	Paulo Coelho	This novel was originally written in Portuguese in 1988, and according to wikipedia, has been translated into 56 languages since then. It is told in a style reminiscent of ancient verbal storytellin
Aug 17th, 2008	Double Take	Catherine Coulter	A murder attempt foiled, a missing wife apparently turning up across the country, and psychics butting into the lives of the FBI. This novel takes some classic book themes, and ties in a few twists
Aug 15th, 2008	Solar Revolution	Travis Bradford	Happy two year anniversary, book blog! Oh, yeah, the book. It summarizes the history and current state of energy in the US and worldwide, and builds the case for Solar. My take-away is that while
Aug 10th, 2008	Promise Me	Harlan Coben	A fast fun action/thriller/mystery book. This one was recommended by my brother - thanks bro, good book. In this novel, two different teens go missing in northern jersey, but it is unclear if they r
Aug 5th, 2008	Shadow Divers	Robert Kurson	This is a non-fiction book about... wait, did I just read a non-fiction book? Woh, I did! Amazing! Anyhow, this is about deep sea divers who discovered a German WWII U-Boat (submarine) off the coa
Jul 19th, 2008	Saturn's Children	Charles Stress	The premise of the novel is that all human, plant and animal life has died, and the galaxy is densely populated with Robots. The main character was originally created by the humans to be an escort -
Jul 12th, 2008	Replay	Ken Grimwood	Gripping. Couldn't put it down. Finished it in a day. The novel makes you think about your own life, and the choices you have made, and the choices you will make in life. The basic premises is - a
Jun 16th, 2008	Rubik	Philip K. Dick	Despite the fact that the author - in 1969 at the time of writing this book - gave mankind way too much credit for where civilization would be by the time of this book's setting (1992), it was a very
Jun 14th, 2008	Brave New World	Aldous Huxley	Written in the early 1930's, this novel takes place in a post Model T Ford era, where life is optimized to the T. Children are no longer born, but rather produced in assembly lines of test tubes. P
Jun 8th, 2008	Raising Atlantis	Thomas Greanias	This is the first of a three book series that I read after having first read the second book. It was about the discovery of the city of Atlantis in Antarctica, with Indiana Jones type characters cau
Jun 1st, 2008	The Atlantis Prophecy	Thomas Greanias	A quick fun read, but of the action thriller genre - not something that is going to expand your mind in any way shape or form. Very similar to the movies Nation Treasure (was that based off of this
May 20th, 2008	Daemon	Leinad Zeraus (Daniel Suarez)	A dark but splendid read for the more computer nerdy of you out there who like a good page turner. This book has some similarities with Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Deamon takes place in the near
Apr 12th, 2008	Plug-in Hybrids: The cars that will recharge America	Sherry Boschert	There is a lot of overlap between this book and the movie Who killed the electric car (which you should see by the way if you have not already). Anyhow, as for the book - it has tons of grea
Apr 6th, 2008	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	Philip K. Dick	The movie Blade Runner (which I have NOT seen) was based off of this book. It is about a bounty hunter who's job it is to hunt down and deactivate androids who have gone to the dark side. Very fun re
Mar 29th, 2008	Winkie	Clifford Chase	One of the more bizarre, but awesome books I have read. It can perhaps be best described by some of the press it has gotten... "If Animal Farm were to bump into Monty Python in the dark alley the re
Mar 16th, 2008	The Master and Margarita	Mikhail Bulgakov	Multiple friends from high school recommended I read this book. It took me a while to get through - did not grip me as many books do. It was rather interesting and thought provoking though. The st
Mar 1st, 2008	Alternative Energy Demystified	Stan Gibilsco	The title of the book pretty much tells all. This book covers everything from wind power to solar power, biofuels to fossil fuels, passive solar heating to heat pumps, fission, fusion, and a whole b
Jan 25th, 2008	Y: The Last Man	Brian K. Vaughan et al	Y (As in the chromosome): The Last Man is a graphic novel about the world when all men on the planet suddenly die, but the women survive. There is one man left - and the novel follows his journeys.
Jan 20th, 2008	Fragile Things	Neil Gaiman	This is a collection of short stories that seemed like it would be cool. It was not - not cool that is. The first story was very good, I highly recommend it - there is actually an audio version
Jan 15th, 2008	Blowback	Chalmers Johnson	I just skimmed this one. I have been curious for a while now of why terrorists would want to bomb us. The explanation of "because they envy our freedom" seemed like the most ridiculous statement
Jan 11th, 2008	An Inconvenient Truth	Al Gore	This is the "companion" book to the movie of the same name. The content is nearly identical, but with perhaps a bit more detail in the book. As far as graphical design and layout of the book, I fou
Dec 31st, 2007	The Once and Future King	T. H. White	This was required reading in High school english. I ran into it on my bookshelf when I was back home over Christmas, so I brought it back with me for another reading. The book is historical fiction
Dec 24th, 2007	Lost Horizon	James Hilton	Recommended by the Samantha Crow Reading Club, this book claims to be the "first novel published as a paperback". It was published (as well as takes place) in 1933... my copy is of course a bit newe
Dec 24th, 2007	Winning Our Energy Independence	David Freeman	I purchased this book on a whim - I saw it on the shelf at a bookstore. I am very happy that I purchased and read this one, as it had a pretty profound impact on my environmental thinking. Specific
Dec 17th, 2007	The Dark Tower	Stephen King	The seventh and final book in the Dark Tower series. This is the last leg of the journey for Roland and his band of travelers. In this book, tragedy comes to the Ka-tet of travelers, but also closu
Dec 2nd, 2007	Song of Susannah	Stephen King	The sixth of the Dark Tower series. This book in the series follows Susannah as she tries to deal with her pregnancy, and Mia - a woman who has somewhat taken over her body. The book also takes pla
Nov 25th, 2007	Wolves of the Calla	Stephen King	The fifth of the Dark Tower series. The posse of gunslingers find themselves in a town that is sort of a cross between a Mexican town and a mid western town. Here they are tasked with fighting off a
Nov 17th, 2007	The Underdogs	Mariano Azueka	Supposedly a classic, this novel takes place during the Mexican revolution. I had a hard time making it through the book - it just could not keep my attention. I guess not all stories are timeless.
Nov 7th, 2007	Wizard and Glass	Stephen King	The fourth of the Dark Tower series. Roland and his comrades step foot in Topeka Kansas (but perhaps from a slightly different universe). Here he tells the story of his childhood, his friends, his
Oct 28th, 2007	The Waste Lands	Stephen King	The third of the Dark Tower series. Roland (The gunslinger) journeys with others through rough patches of wilderness, and encounters trails against both men and machines.
Oct 21st, 2007	Zoom	Vaitheeswaran & Carson	Written by two staff members of the Economist, Zoom looks a bit into the history of the Car and Oil companies, and talks about what the future holds in regard to powering cars. It critically analyz
Oct 11th, 2007	The Drawing of the Three	Stephen King	The second in the Dark Tower series. This one follows the gunslinger through three different periods of time as he follows his destiny to get to the dark tower.
Oct 9th, 2007	The Gunslinger	Stephen King	This is the first in a somewhat long series called "The Dark Tower" by Stephen King. Even though it is Stephen King, the books are not horror books at all, they are closer to fantasy I guess. This
Oct 7th, 2007	Animal Farm	George Orwell	It turns out that George Orwell was just a pen name for Eric Blair. Anyhow, Animal Farm is a classic that hopefully you have already read. It is super fast and fun to read again and again. The sto
Sep 30th, 2007	The Messenger	Daniel Silva	Another airport reading book. A thriller about terrorism, espionage, religion, art, and who knows what else. A fun book, but not something I would highly recommend by any means - just a way to pass
Sep 16th, 2007	The Wheel of Darkness	Preston and Child	I picked up this book at the airport because of the cover art. As I was visually scanning books, I saw an image that looked very much Tibetan - so I checked out the book and ended up buying it. The
Sep 10th, 2007	On a Pale Horse	Piers Anthony	This is the first book in a series called "Incarnations of Immortality". I do not think I will be reading the rest of the series, at least not at the moment. The book was not bad, it just didn't kn
Sep 3rd, 2007	The Sirens of Titan	Kurt Vonnegut	The bookstore I purchased this at claimed it was Vonnegut's best scifi book ever. This seems a bit far fetched to me. It was a good book, but by no means knocked my socks off. The story revolves ar
Aug 23rd, 2007	Seven Years in Tibet	Heinrich Harrer	A fantastic non-fiction story - one of the best non-fiction stories I have ever read actually. Perhaps it helped that I have a fascination with the Dalai Lama, and am about to go to Tibet - but rega
Aug 10th, 2007	Good Omens	Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett	I silly/fun story that is somewhat of a mix between the story/characters from the movie Dogma, and humor ala Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The story is about the apocalypse, and an angel and a dem
Aug 5th, 2007	The Book of Illusions	Paul Auster	I am still trying to determine what I think of this book - at times I think it is one of the better books I have ever read, and sometimes I think it is just boring nonsense. I'm not sure how a book c
Aug 1st, 2007	The Brooklyn Follies	Paul Auster	A great book that takes place in Park Slope Brooklyn, which is where my brother lives. It is an endearing story about a retired man and his adventures, trials and tribulations mostly revolving arou
Jul 26th, 2007	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J.K. Rowling	This is a pretty obscure series, but one you may like. It may be hard to find in a traditional book store, you may have to look around for it. This is the 7th and (maybe?) last book in the series.
Jun 13th, 2007	Brothers	Da Chen	I believe they call this historical fiction (maybe?). It takes place in china from 1960 through 1998, including historical events such as the Tiananmen square protests. The tale tells of two brother
Jun 2nd, 2007	The Golden Compass	Philip Pullman	Book one of His Dark Materials trilogy. I took a long break from reading to enjoy the natural beauties of the world... or something like that. Anyhow, I saw a movie preview for a film called Golden

Dec 5th, 2019

Al Gore

I recommend getting the print version of this one instead of audio or kindle. Full of great visuals. This is a sequel of sorts to An Inconvenient Truth - it covers the whole thing - the science, th

Nov 27th, 2019

Ted Chiang

This is the second short story collection book I have read by Ted Chiang, and I loved them both. Each story is very thought provoking. A common theme involves the author taking some historical misc

Nov 15th, 2019

Neal Shusterman

The last book in the "Arc of a Scythe" series. I really enjoyed the entire series. In this final book, Citra, Rowan and Greyson try to bring order to the world that is falling apart as Scythes star

Nov 8th, 2019

Richard Powers

I'm really undecided about what I think of this novel. Thinking back, sometimes I think I really liked it, sometimes I don't. Odd. The first third of the book is a bunch of different unconnected s

Oct 24th, 2019

Neal Shusterman

I continue to really enjoy this series. Rowan (as Scythe Lucifer) and Citra (as Scythe Anastasia) continue their epic battles through the Scythedom, helping the good guys and fighting off the bad gu

Oct 9th, 2019

Ted Chiang

A collection of short stories all by the same author. I loved this book. Most of the stories were sort of sci-fi in nature, but each one of them were really interesting thought experiments. For e

Oct 9th, 2019

Jeremy Robison

This was one of the few times in which a book got really solid review on amazon/audible, and yet I found it truly horrible. It was just so shallow, and dare I say... stupid. Time after time I was s

Oct 2nd, 2019

Neal Shusterman

I just finished this one and really enjoyed it. The premise is that humans have conquered natural death, and now live in a world without fear of disease, car accidents, and other unknown deaths. B

Sep 30th, 2019

Josiah Bancroft

Book three in The Books of Babel series. I think I'm ready to put a pause on this series. A bit burnt out on it. In this book, two powers of the Tower, the Sphinx in her mirror like-costume, and t

Sep 28th, 2019

Octavia E. Butler

Originally published 40 years ago, this novel has held up really well to the passage of time. I came across this book after reading a mediocre time-travel book, and found this one listed as one of th

Sep 21st, 2019

RR Haywood

I wanted to like this book, I really did... but it dissapointed. I really enjoy the general story theme, but the writing was sub par. Very shallow (and often inconsistent in bad ways) characters.

Sep 12th, 2019

Tim Mohin

A book documenting in detail what it means to work in Corporate Responsibility (CR) in a large company. It talks about the skills and responsibilities of a CR professional, and gives lots of tips o

Sep 4th, 2019

Josiah Bancroft

Book 2 of The Books of Babel. Still enjoyable - Tom and his crew continue exploring the tower, and have lots of interactions with "The Sphinx", a person who has a large reputation in the tower, and

Aug 20th, 2019

Josiah Bancroft

Book 1 of "The Books of Babel" series. I don't recall how I came across this series, but I am really enjoying it so far. The premise is a school teacher and his new wife life in a small town in an

Aug 11th, 2019

John Houghton

A summary of a whole bunch of things re: climate change. I feel like my research is getting pretty repetitive at this point. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the basics - so now time to jus

Aug 9th, 2019

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

A beautiful book that had me tearing up every 20 minutes or so (I listened to the audiobook version). Two hispanic american kids in new mexico are both outcasts, but find each other at the start of

Aug 4th, 2019

Ernest Cline

A re-read of one of my all-time favorite books. The audio book is read by Will Wheaton which is a fun addition.

Jul 29th, 2019

Brandon Sanderson

A short story by one of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson. In it, there are two cops who on a daily basis go into a virtual world that is an exact replica (snapshot) of a previous day. They o

Jul 28th, 2019

Sylvain Neuvel

The final book of the Themis Files. I really enjoyed this series. Filled with fun action, but also good thoughts on society, and relationships between parents and children, and more. In this last b

Jul 28th, 2019

John Scalzi et al

Five different novelas all contained in the same universe, specifically a sort of dystopian future where countries have fallen apart, and cities have taken their place as the central governing bodies

Jul 22nd, 2019

Chris Bohjalian

Not my normal book at all. Just saw it available on my library app, so I grabbed it. A bit chick-lit, a bit action thriller. A flight attendant with a drinking problem, and strong libido finds her

Jul 12th, 2019

Russell Gold

A book about one man's (Michael Skelly) journey to try to bring more renewable energy to America. At nearly every turn he faced massive hurtles - from political, to business, and beyond. It's a tou

Jul 9th, 2019

Sylvain Neuvel

Book two of The Themis Files series. Our heroes learn to drive/maneuver the giant robot, but find themselves in a sticky situation as tensions rise across the planet, and more robots start appearing

Jun 29th, 2019

Sylvain Neuvel

Book 1 ofThe Themis Files. A few folks at work had read and recommended it. I enjoyed it, and will likely continue the series. It takes place roughly present day, in present reality, where they fi

Jun 29th, 2019

Marcus Sakey

The last book in The Brilliance Trilogy. Lots of action, fighting, etc. Fun, but I'm glad it is over - time to move on. A bit too much action / Mission Impossible for me.

Jun 20th, 2019

David Wallace-Wells

A really good, and really depressing book about climate change. Really depressing in that it talks in detail about all of the harm that will come to the planet, and civilization in the decades to co

Jun 15th, 2019

Marcus Sakey

Book two of The Brilliance Trilogy. Tensions rise between the Brilliants/Abnorms (people with special powers), and the Norms. Extremists on both sides are looking to start a war, and centrists (incl

Jun 9th, 2019

Marcus Sakey

A fun action/thriller novel in which the world finds itself in a sort of evolution of the human species, where roughly 1 out of 100 people are born with a special ability. Perhaps similar to X-men,

Jun 4th, 2019

Peter Fox-Penner

Continuing my quest to understand climate change and renewable energy. This one got into the nitty gritty of how utilities work. It's clearly a complicated system.

May 10th, 2019

Tony Seba

Recommended by Wayne Lin, this book talks about disruption, but in the context of clean energy, electric cars and autonomous cars. I really enjoyed this one a lot. I'll probably re-read it at some

Apr 30th, 2019

Osha Gray Davidson

About German's energy transformation from dirty energy to clean. A topic I'm super interested in, but I wasn't a fan of this book. There just wasn't much good content in the book. It read almost mo

Apr 25th, 2019

ric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

I'd heard much of the legend of Bill Campbell from my Google days, but not many details. It was nice to finally read a bit more about him in this book written by two of the sr Google execs who worke

Apr 7th, 2019

Naomi Klein

I didn't end up finishing this one. It kind of got on my nerves - a bit too preachy about the evils of Capitalism. I was wanting to read about climate change, and that felt secondary to the messag

Mar 21st, 2019

Paul Hawken

An incredible resource that covers a huge breadth (but not depth) of possible pieces of the answer to how to curb global warming. A great starting point to understand what is out there, and then be

Mar 19th, 2019

Madeline Miller

You may recall from Odysseus that Odysseus and his crew land on an island at some point and find a witch with many animals - pigs, wolves, lions. The witch turns the men into pigs, but they eventual

Mar 2nd, 2019

Dan Simmons

A good, but perhaps slightly too long, historical novel taking place in the artic around 1850. The historically accurate aspect of it is that it accounts british explorers trying to find the north-w

Feb 21st, 2019

Lewis Shiner

A historical novel set in 2004 and 1960s, taking place in Durham NC. It was a good book in itself, but was super cool to have it take place in Durham with so many places that I was very familiar wit

Feb 9th, 2019

Naomi Novik

A fun historical fiction book, taking place during the napoleonic wars between England and France. The big twist - given away by the title - is that dragons exist (and have always existed). They ar

Feb 8th, 2019

Ian M. Banks

I love Ian Banks' Culture series. They are fun for so many reasons, and also cool that you can read them in any order you want. They are more of a "universe" than just a sequential series. Most boo

Jan 31st, 2019

Seth Dickinson

A good book, but I didn't find it to be an amazing book - although I'm having a hard time deciding why that is. The plot entailed an empire (think British empire, something along those lines) takin

Jan 20th, 2019

Neal Stephenson

This book may be my favorite book of all time, and yet, it shouldn't be. It is very slow to start, with not much of a story line for hundreds of pages. But somehow it is still engaging during that

Jan 20th, 2019

Patrick Thean

A book for work that talks through how to think strategically as a company, and then execute on that strategy. Solid book actually. Pulls in from lots of places - Good to Great, parts of the OKR sy

Dec 6th, 2018

Brandon Sanderson

Enjoyable young adult novel, described by the author as "How to Train Your Dragon meets Top Gun and Enders Game". Strangely, I agree with that description. Very fun. A bold, intelligent young main

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Nov 28th, 2018

Brandon Sanderson

An extension of the Mistborn series, taking place hundreds of years after the first set of books. In this book, Wax is a High Lord who has become a keeper of the law in an Old West style world. He

Nov 19th, 2018

Emily St. John Mandel

Another post-apocalyptic novel... actually, this one is maybe just apocalyptic, as it takes place both before during, and after the apocalypse. It follows a few different characters who's stories al

Nov 9th, 2018

Veronica Roth

Book three of the Divergent series. Tris finds the outside world, and realizes it has many of the same issues as Chicago. This one I liked the least of the series, mostly because it was just a lot

Nov 2nd, 2018

Veronica Roth

Book 2 of the Divergent series. Still very enjoyable. I'm 1/2 way done book three as I'm writing this, so it's a bit of a blur re: what happened in books 1 vs 2 vs 3. Regardless, Tris continues t

Oct 27th, 2018

Veronica Roth

Despite the fact that this book seems to have been written for 14 year old girls, I really enjoyed it, and plan to continue reading the series. In contrast to the previous book I read, which was sh

Oct 22nd, 2018

David Eddings

Book 2 of The Belgariad. Boy Garion continues his adventure with his aunt and grandfather, legendary and ancient sorcerers, through the various kingdoms of his world. The group is delayed at every

Oct 14th, 2018

David Eddings

Pretty much exactly what I was looking for right now. Just a classic fantasy series to get lost in for my commutes. This is not at all original - rather a set of fantasy cliche tropes. A young bo

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Sep 30th, 2018

Andy Weir

A re-read of this great fictional book about an astronaut who gets left behind on mars. What makes this book so amazing is the writing itself, rather than the story. Full of wit, science, engineeri

Sep 5th, 2018

J.K. Rowling

And the grand finale. Dumbledore is dead, many more die, the gang finds and destroys more horcruxes, and harry goes head to head with Voldemort. It was a lot of fun to experience this series again.

Aug 19th, 2018

J.K. Rowling

Malfoy plots all book long but don't we find out until the end the goal of his plotting. Alas, poor Dumbledore. We also find out that Snape really is on team Voldemort (or is he????). We also lear

Aug 4th, 2018

Neil Gaiman

A similar theme in Neil Gaiman books: among us mortals, there are a sprinkling of gods living among us. This book focused on "Anansi", a spider deity - that coincidently is a main character in some

Jul 28th, 2018

The Power

Women across the planet gain the ability to deliver high electric shocks from their body - similar to an electric eel. While a somewhat silly premise, the repercussions are really interesting. Most

Jul 15th, 2018

J.K. Rowling

Harry competes in the triwizard tournament as the 4th champion - along with Cedric Diggory, Viktor Krum, and Fleur Delacour. They battle dragons, search out merpeople, and face peril in a hedge maz

Jun 23rd, 2018

J.K. Rowling

Harry finds out his stepfather is Serious black, and he meets Lupin the professor of dark arts who turns into a werewolf during full moons.... and other events.

Jun 13th, 2018

J.K. Rowling

Continuing to plow through the Harry Potter books. Something at Hogwarts is turning people into statues, and Harry finds a diary from a boy named Tom Riddle, who turns out to be the original name fo

Jun 3rd, 2018

J.K Rowling

My son told me that they were reading this at daycare to the 4 and 5 year olds, so I re-read (listed) to it to remind myself if it was scary or not. It is :) . I had nightmares for weeks. The head o

May 26th, 2018

Ann Leckie

The last book in the series. I really enjoyed the whole series. Are AI’s deserving of the same rights as humans? Perhaps one day.

May 21st, 2018

Neil Gaiman

A fun re-telling of the classic Norse myths, as told by Neil Gaiman. Thor, Loki, Odin and others. As far as I'm aware, it did not stray from the originals (or at least not much). Just good storyte

May 11th, 2018

Robert Heinlein

I did not finish this one - it just did not age well. Not sure why, but just really disliked it. Got maybe 10% in and threw in the towel.

May 8th, 2018

Angie Thomas

Way outside of my normal genre, and a really great read. Probably in the young adult fiction category, but very timely to current socio-political environment. The main character - Star - is in a c

Apr 28th, 2018

Ann Leckie

Book two of the Imperial Radch series. Loving this series. Definitely sci-fi genre, but this book had a little sprinkle of Sherlock Holmes added - with the narrator clearly having figured out som

Apr 20th, 2018

R. Scott Bakker

This series (The Prince of Nothing) came highly recommended, but I just couldn't get into it. I gave up before getting half way through. It may have partially been because it was an audio book - t

Apr 7th, 2018

Ann Leckie

The first of three books in the Imperial Radch series. This SciFi novel has gotten rave reviews. I think perhaps because of that I had really high expectations for it, that were perhaps too high

Mar 25th, 2018

Peter Heller

A really beautiful book about a man, and his dog, and his love of fishing, and his family. It all takes part in post-apocalyptic mid-west after a virus has wiped out 99.X% of the population. Odd to

Mar 13th, 2018

Porter Erisman

A look into the Chinese powerhouse company Alibaba. An interesting story of a teacher turned CEO who defied all odds to make one of the most valuable companies on the planet. They compete with Ebay

Mar 8th, 2018

Brandon Sanderson

An uncharacteristically short book by Brandon Sanderson, but fun read. The novel starts out with a forger in jail. We soon learn that the emperor has just barely survived an assassination attempt,

Mar 6th, 2018

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Just a fun quick book covering various science related things. Talks about the very large, and the very small. A bit disjoint at time (I think it was a collection of essays maybe), but fun easy rea

Mar 2nd, 2018

Benjamin Hoff

I was not a fan of this audio book. 1) It probably needed more active listening, which didn't work well for me as it was during my commute and I couldn't give deep thought to it. 2) Nit, but it was s

Mar 1st, 2018

Brandon Sanderson

The third book in The Stormlight Archive. We learn about Delinar's tormented history as The Black Thorn. Shallan is also a major character as she starts to have an identity crises - playing the par

Jan 22nd, 2018

E. Fuller Torrey

An out of print book about the Loomis Gang - a family of thieves in upstate NY in the mid 1800s. I knew about them growing up as their territory covered the house I grew up in, but it was really int

Jan 11th, 2018

Sam Quinones

A very interesting look into America's opioid epidemic - both Heroin, and Oxycontin. The two stories are mostly separate, but intertwine at points. Both had somewhat independent major spikes in usa

Dec 30th, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

Book two of The Stormlight Archive. Very enjoyable fantasy series. This one focuses mostly on Kaladin as he learns more about his power, and Shallan and her troubled childhood. On to book three!

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Dec 12th, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

This was a doozie of an audio book. 45 hours long. Longest one that I have consumed so far I'm pretty sure. Very fun read. Much of it was military related - multiple armies on the Broken Plains f

Nov 29th, 2017

Jesse Eisinger

A look into why white collar crime (specifically, for executives) is rarely prosecuted. It centers around Enron and Arthur Anderson, and how those events - which lead to the collapse of both compani

Nov 28th, 2017

Franz Kafka

A classic that many high schoolers read, but I had not read yet. A quick read - it starts out from the very beginning with the main character waking up to find out he has somehow turned into a giant

Nov 18th, 2017

Jeff VanderMeer

Book 2 of The Southern Reach trilogy, this follows a different set of characters from outside of Area X. A new head of The Southern Reach department is brought in to figure out what is going on, an

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Nov 11th, 2017

C.J Sansom

This historical fiction/mystery was recommended to me when I was looking for a change from the batch of fantasy books. It was a good read. Takes place in 1500s England, as an investigator tries to

Nov 1st, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

Another fun Brandon Sanderson book. In this world, every person has a "breath", but some people have many breaths. These extra breaths give them additional powers, such as the ability to "awaken" i

Oct 16th, 2017

Jeff VanderMeer

This reminded me a bit of Solaris. Not a ton of plot other than just trying to come to grips with being in a foreign place where nothing quite makes sense. I really enjoyed it for that reason - fe

Oct 8th, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. This fantasy novel takes place in a world where god-like people have fallen, and a city and country are trying to rebuild after that

Sep 24th, 2017

Lois McMaster Bujold

Straight up Sci-Fi. People are genetically modified to have 4 arms instead of 2 arms and 2 legs. They are perfectly made to be perfect manual laborers in space - but these people lack human rights,

Sep 16th, 2017

Rebecca Skloot

Nonfiction book about HeLa cells, and their origin. HeLa cells are a line of cells used prolifically in labs to study medicine, radiation, cancer, and a whole lot more. They were the first successf

Sep 3rd, 2017

Edward W. Robertson

Book 3 from The Cycle of Arawn. Not the best series I have ever read, but it held my attention. It was quite the bang for the buck though from Audible. A single credit for all three books combined

Aug 19th, 2017

Edward W. Robertson

Continuing the Cycle of Arawn. Still so-so, but going to keep going. In this one, Dante and Blaze battle the king's armies, and Dante's powers grow. He starts to be able to control rocks and dirt

Aug 11th, 2017

Blake Crouch

A fun multi-verse novel. The main character gets attacked one night (spoiler) by another version of himself from an alternate universe - and thrown into his doppelganger's version of earth/his life

Aug 8th, 2017

Jeff Flake

I've been asking republicans I know for good conservative books that are rational. This one was exceptional. In this book, sitting republican congressman flake bashes trump quite a bit, but also ba

Jul 21st, 2017

Edward W. Robertson

This is book one of a trilogy called The Cycle of Arawn. I'm so-so on it to be honest. Just feels very vanilla - not super interesting. It's not bad, just nothing noteworthy. The best part about

Jul 10th, 2017

Helene Wecker

I just ran across this one at the library and it seemed interesting, so I went for it. It was enjoyable. Takes place in NYC probably 100 years ago or so. It takes place set in our reality, but a G

Jun 23rd, 2017

David Mitchell

A movie (which I have not yet seen) is based on this - although the movie got pretty poor reviews if I remember correctly. Anyhow, I really enjoyed this book, both the unique style, and the actual s

Jun 10th, 2017

Bill Bryson

Fantastic read about the history of nearly everything. The formation of the universe. The formation of our planet. Life on earth. Mankind. And more. I feel like I should read a book like this ev

May 30th, 2017

Dave Eggers

I'm writing this review 6 months after reading the book. I read it in May, but didn't realize that I didn't have a review for it until December while discussing the book with coworkers. The book wa

May 29th, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

Another short - but not as short novella continuing the storyline from Legion. In this one, the main character and his alter egos try to solve a mystery around what happened to the corpse of a recent

May 27th, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

A very short Novella. Takes place in current day, in current world (no crazy fantasy stuff). The tweak is that the main character, Stephen has imaginary friends. There are roughly 50 of them. He

May 26th, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

Book Three of the Mistborn series. Loved the series. In this last episode, our two main characters - Vin and her husband Eland are both mistborn (able to use ("burn") many different types of metals

May 10th, 2017

Mary Doria Russell

Very enjoyable, if at some times dark, sci fi book with a heavy dose of philosophy/religion. Emilio Sandoz is a Jesuit priest who has a knack for languages. He is part of the first group of explorer

May 9th, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

Book 2 in the Mistborn series. Still a very big fan of the series. Vin, the main character of this book, protects her king/partner, helps to protect a city from multiple invading armies, and tries t

Apr 26th, 2017

Phil Night

An autobiography by the co-founder of Nike. Really great story telling, with an interesting story. Heartfelt account of his life, and the life of the company. Definitely gives you warm fuzzies for

Apr 23rd, 2017

Richard Phillips

Last book in The Rho Agenda series. Glad it's over. The story line is fun, but writing is mediocre.

Apr 17th, 2017

Brandon Sanderson

The first in a fantasy series. A classic tale of a repressive class system - where the ruling class is powerful, and many of them have use of magic that is used by consuming various different meta

Apr 11th, 2017

Kim Scott

At Pendo we have a core value around "Brutal Honesty". This book was about this same topic, with a slight twist. It was about the candor part (brutal honesty), but emphasized that it needs to be co

Apr 10th, 2017

John Scalzi

A great first book in a series - but so far the only book in the series. In the far future, travel between solar systems is through natural intersolar shortcuts called "Flows". When the flows start

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Apr 7th, 2017

Phil Rosenzweig

This book's purpose / thesis is that a lot of popular business books and studies, including Good To Great are deeply flawed because of their flawed source material. Specifically, it convincingly ex

Apr 1st, 2017

Brent Weeks

Book 4 (out of 5) of the Lightbringer "trilogy". Very enjoyable fantasy series. People get magic from different colors of light, each having it's own special characteristics. One more book to go (

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Mar 22nd, 2017

Joseph Heller

I read this in high school, but hadn't read it since. Definitely feels like the best audience is high school students - it shocks readers with its bizarre nonsensical but humorous style - but still

Mar 1st, 2017

Robert Gates

A memoir by Secretary of State, Robert Gates. He served under bush 43, and Obama. Very interesting to get some behind the scenes on how executive branch works. He is a republican and had great things

Feb 24th, 2017

Cixin Liu

Third book in the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" series (Three Body Problem). This series is definitely sci fi to its core. Aliens, light speed travel, and so forth. A very fun read. All three boo

Feb 10th, 2017

Peter Hamilton

A pretty massive Sci Fi book - evidently the foundation for a lot of books by that author. Didn't do a ton for me. I think I may have read one of the other books long ago though, because they were

Jan 20th, 2017

David McCullough

Fun to read about the Wright Brothers while living in North Carolina. Hard working, very clever men who were patient, studious in the ways of nature and man, and perfectionists. They were able to m

Jan 9th, 2017

Kranish and Fisher

A biography of Trump published right after we won the primaries. Looks into his early days, and even his parents history. Essentially, he is a megalomaniac and/or narcissist who loves the immediate

Jan 8th, 2017

Cixin Liu

The sequel to The Three Body Problem, this book is a bit further in the future, and therefor starts to feel a bit more Sci-Fi'ish than the first. Very enjoyable. Nerdy Science stuff throughout. The

Dec 23rd, 2016

Cixin Liu

Originally written in Chinese, translated and narrated in English, this is a fun sci-fi book that gets a bit physics-y (in a good way) towards the end. Scientists in china are staring to experience

Dec 9th, 2016

Nick Harkaway

A long, enjoyable novel. I'm not sure the genre - post apocalypse I guess. The first chapter starts out in that post-apocalypse world - with a group of rough and tumble mercenary fire fighters, and

Nov 26th, 2016

Tom Standage

A quick and interesting read about the history of the telegraph. Morse (of Morse Code), Edison (of the lightbulb) and others make appearances in this book. Very cool to read about how much this inv

Nov 21st, 2016

Barry Goldwater

I have asked many people over the last few years for a "book that would help me understand republican beliefs that doesn't have things like 'Obama is an atheist muslim'" This book was the one that k

Nov 19th, 2016

Laszlo Bock

The head of People Operations (HR) at Google wrote a book about how Google thinks about hiring, promoting, culture, and much more. I loved this book. Much of it I knew already, but interesting to h

Nov 10th, 2016

Jim Collins

Todd has been talking about this book for a while now, and I finally got around to reading it. Definitely a whole lot of interesting material on how to make great companies. Definitely going to ha

Nov 6th, 2016

Ernest Hemingway

My first Hemingway book in a long time, or perhaps ever. I'm still trying to decide what I think of it. It didn't have strong plot - more of just a meandering narrative following the main character

Oct 31st, 2016

Patrick Rothfuss

Book two of the kingkiller chronicle. Kvothe tells of more of his time at University, as well as his adventures learning martial arts in a far away land, his time spent wooing his crush, and his time

Oct 22nd, 2016

Patrick Rothfuss

This was a re-read of the first book in a trilogy. I was about to read the third book, so I went to read the synopsis of the first book and could not remember a single thing from the synopsis, so I

Oct 14th, 2016

Jacquie McNish

The story of Blackberry and Research In Motion (the company that makes blackberry). It talks a lot about their co-founders / co-CEOs, and how they did a fantastic job working off each other's streng

Oct 3rd, 2016

Sheryl Sandberg

I highly recommend this book for men and women alike. It helps you understand the biases that exist in all of us about women and their role in the workplace. They talk about an interesting study ca

Oct 1st, 2016

David Bockino

A great little read about a place I knew almost nothing about: Myanmar/Burma. Just some insights and stories about one mans travels through Myanmar, with some background history sprinkled in. This

Sep 28th, 2016

Pierce Brown

The last book in the Red Rising trilogy. Very enjoyable Sci Fi trilogy. Had me hooked throughout the series.

Sep 19th, 2016

Pierce Brown

Book two in the Red Rising trilogy. Darrow continues his journey to disrupt civilization at its core. He is adopted by his most hated gold enemy, and rises to power through that adoption.

Sep 8th, 2016

Pierce Brown

A mix of Hunger Games, and Ender's Game. In the future (perhaps 1000-2000 years from now), humans have colonized most of the solar system. They have created a class system across the solar system w

Sep 1st, 2016

John Gribbin

A quick little Kindle Single that talks at a very high level about quantum physics. Pretty much all that it gets into is essentially: Some stuff behaves as if it were both a wave, and a particle. E

Aug 31st, 2016

Justin Cronin

A Zombie book evidently. Not my normal genre. I didnt even know that that was what it was going into it. It was actually probably more of a post-apocalyptic genre rather than a zombie genre - wh

Aug 21st, 2016

Neela Banerjee et al

An Amazon Single (ie, shorter book) about this history of Exxon and climate change research. It turns out that in the early 1980's, they were on the forefront of excellent, unbiased climate change r

Aug 12th, 2016

Terry Pratchett

An interesting book, but not really mind-blowing for me. Perhaps it would have been earlier in my life as young adult fiction. But at this stage in my life, it didn't do a whole lot for me. In a wo

Aug 11th, 2016

Christopher Moore

I had read two other books by Christopher Moore, including the A Dirty Job which is the predecessor of Secondhand Souls. I had loved both of those books. This one just didn't do much for me. Not en

Aug 1st, 2016

Jacqueline Carey

It took me a long while to make it through this beast. Fantasy (although almost nothing magical about it), the main character is a sadomasochist - by genetics - or perhaps more accurately stated, by

Jul 23rd, 2016

Dave Barry

A very fun satirical fiction book about a bunch of crazy people in south florida and the shenanigans they get into. A briefcase with a mysterious object in it, some hitmen, an unhappy advertising man

Jul 18th, 2016

Marie Brennan

I accidentally read this - the third book in the series - before reading the second in the series. I didn't even realize the mistake until nearly the very end of the book. Anyhow, it continues to b

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Jul 6th, 2016

Brad Warner

I really enjoyed this book about Zen. Most times I read about Zen, it calls to me - this is no exception. This was a funny one as it was a DIY version of an audiobook, so literally his cat would wa

Jul 3rd, 2016

David Jaher

A fascinating factual account of Harry Houdini and his battle to unmask "mediums" in the 1920s, especially the one medium who seemed to be outwitting scientists and Harvard academics alike - Margery

Jun 29th, 2016

Chester Nez

A memoir of Chester Nez, born in the 1920's, living a traditional native american lifestyle in new mexico. When WWII kicked into full force, he (and 28 others) was brought in to develop a communicat

Jun 21st, 2016

Randall Munroe

Very enjoyable book by the author of XKCD comics. It is "Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions" - just my kind of book. I listened to audio version of this - so I may have mis

Jun 15th, 2016

Larry Niven

A fun story from 1000 years in the future in which we inhabit many solar systems, and finally find the first intelligent life form. They are much older and more advanced than us, but because of circ

May 30th, 2016

Connie Willis

Enjoyable time travel book. Time travel is an academic affair, run by history departments of colleges. The mid 1300's are off limits because of the black plague, until by a set of intentional and u

May 26th, 2016

Neil Gaiman

Gaiman describes this as a "fairy tail for adults". Very fun (quick) read. I listened to the audio book - which was read by Gaiman himself, and he does a great job. He has a really nice relaxing

May 20th, 2016

Bill O'Reilly, et al

I knew that Bill O'Reilly wrote some history books, so I wanted to check one out. The topic was definitely interesting - about General Patton in WWII, and his great achievements, and also his myste

May 11th, 2016

General Stanley McChrystal, et al

A really good business book - talking about moving the US military from a command and control top down hierarchy, to a "team of teams" - autonomous groups with massive knowledge sharing and authority

May 5th, 2016

Nadia Bolz-Weber

Perhaps the first religious book that I have really enjoyed. The author is a minister in a very fringe church that seems to attract the outcasts of Detroit. She drops lots of swear words, and defin

Apr 24th, 2016

Mark Lawrence

The last book in The Broken Empire series. I really enjoyed this series - one of the best that I have ever read, but not sure who I would recommend it to - as I think lots of people would not enjoy

Apr 17th, 2016

Mitch Benn

An enjoyable little book about a human infant girl who gets abducted by a friendly alien scientist and brought back to his alien world. A bit of Douglas Adams perhaps - light hearted, silly, but som

Apr 13th, 2016

Lauren Oliver

I happened upon this from my library's digital loans. It was some sort of Orwellian story - similar to Little Brother perhaps. Perhaps wi

Apr 9th, 2016

Mika Waltari

This was a long slow read. Not sure why I stuck with it - usually I don't. It was good, but probably not worth the month and a half haul. This was originally written in Finnish I think in the mid

Apr 2nd, 2016

Marie Brennan

A really enjoyable book. A female hero set in sort of an 1800's era where it's not acceptable for women to be adventurers or academics. She however wants both - to find dragons and read and learn

Mar 28th, 2016

Mark Lawrence

Book two of The Broken Empire. I'm really enjoying this series. The first book was extremely dark - the main character was vile. In this second book he is much less vile - starting to see some li

Mar 18th, 2016

Mark Lawrence

Not for everyone. The narrator/main character of this book is pretty vile. Rape, murder, and everything else. Somehow a very intriguing book if you are able to get past that aspect of it. At some

Mar 9th, 2016

Jim Butcher

This is book one of the Dresden Files. Looks like there are 15+ books in the series. It was entertaining, but not amazing. It looks like multiple people have recommended this series to me over the

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Mar 4th, 2016

Sam Harris

Pretty interesting book on a lot of fronts. He takes a very hardline approach on religion in general, and islam specifically. He believes that religious tolerance should not be tolerated - that eve

Feb 27th, 2016

Patricia C. Wrede

Book three of the Frontier Magic series. A really fun young adult fiction series with a female lead character. In this last book of the series, an expedition is formed to explore the unexplored Ame

Feb 24th, 2016

Philip Pullman

The last book in His Dark Materials. So - there is one scene from a book a long time ago that I have vivid memories of - involving another world where animals had wheels. I had strangely vivid memo

Feb 17th, 2016

Patricia C. Wrede

Book two of the Frontier Magic series. Enjoyable young adult novel with magic. Still enjoying it - but the books are too quick to read.

Feb 14th, 2016

Patricia C. Wrede

Young adult fiction - a world much like our own, with similar history (some of the founding fathers were the same, but some differ. Some countries the same, some differ) - but with a flair of mag

Feb 12th, 2016

Stephen Moss

Last book in The Fear Saga. Enjoyable series. A hostile alien race comes to take over our planet. Some of the aliens attempt to sabotage the takeover though, and join up with humanity to stop the

Feb 5th, 2016

Stephen Moss

Book two of The Fear Saga. Fending off a far superior alien race - or the robot advanced party of said race. Still enjoyable. On to the last book.

Feb 4th, 2016

Philip Pullman

Book two of "His Dark Materials". I'm pretty sure I had read this before, but I didn't remember any of it, so it was a lot of fun.

Jan 26th, 2016

Philip Pullman

I've read this book at least once before, but I enjoyed it - and I heard the audio book was a very good audio book, so I went for the re-read. Great book, and very good audio book - it has a full ca

Jan 15th, 2016

Ed Catmull

Very good book by one of the founders of Pixar. A lot of it is about how to foster a creative environment, but it also tells the story of Pixar. Very fun to read - or listen to, as the case may be.

Jan 14th, 2016

Jasper Fforde

Book two of the Thursday Next series. Fun series. Not sure how far I will keep going with it though - sounds like there are a bunch in the series.

Jan 6th, 2016

John Allyn

The story of the 47 Ronin is a true historical event taking place around 1700 in Japan. This book is true to the historical event, but all dialog and details are made up by the author. I don't kno

Dec 28th, 2015

Ted Cruz

My ongoing attempt to read views that differ from my own. I gained a lot of respect for Cruz in reading this book. I don't agree with a lot of his views - especially social views. But I do respect

Dec 27th, 2015

Justin Groot

Evidently this book came out of a reddit writing prompt [WP] of "Instead of Oceans, they are all big forests, that gets taller and darker instead of deeper, with more dangerous animals living furthe

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Dec 25th, 2015

Brent Weeks

Book 3 of the Lightbringer series. Very enjoyable. The 4th and last book is not written yet, so I have to wait about a year for that one. I definitely need to read the 4th book though.

Dec 16th, 2015

Brent Weeks

Book 2 of the Lightbringer series, still really enjoying this. So much, that I'm plowing right into book three without pause.

Dec 11th, 2015

Yuval Noah Harari

A tour de force coving the entire history of our species across multiple disciplines - from evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and more. It talks about so many different things that...

Dec 11th, 2015

Brent Weeks

The first book in the Lightbringer series - classic fantasy series. Some people are able to make magic from certain colors around them. Some can use blue, some green, some yellow, etc. One - the

Nov 30th, 2015

Luke Smitherd

I do not recommend this book. I hate to criticize books when I know that I couldn't do half as good of a job, but regardless - I'm just not a fan of this book. Both the writing, and the narration f

Nov 22nd, 2015

Duncan Whitehead

A fun book about the second coming of Christ. Satire. God is a forgetful, absentee, imperfect father figure who kind of batches the second coming. A 30+ year old man finds out that he is the secon

Nov 13th, 2015

Lawrence Lessig

A really good Kindle Single (short book) talking about how we need to get money out of politics - a topic I strongly support.

Nov 8th, 2015

Alex Belth

A Kindle Single (ie, a short kindle book) that looks behind the scenes at the making of The Big Labowski. I love the notion of Kindle Shorts - that some books just don't need to be 200 pages long.

Nov 7th, 2015

Iain M. Banks

Part of a series called "Culture" by Iain banks. The series isn't so much a continuation with the same characters, but rather just the same setting. The Culture being a mostly computer based commun

Nov 4th, 2015

Stephen Moss

A fun sci-fi book taking place present day - in which a hostile alien race decides to destroy humanity. The heroes of the story need to plan countermeasures without being detected by the much more

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Oct 22nd, 2015

M. K. Hutchins

A very fun Sci/Fi Fantasy book. The main characters live on an island on top of a turtle's back. The turtle island is surrounded by deadly beings that make life difficult to maintain. The main cha

Oct 21st, 2015

Atul Gawande

Highly recommended. It's written by a surgeon who re-evaluates what end of life care should be like. The one take-away is that our medical system is built for extending life in the final years, not

Oct 18th, 2015

Chris Heivly

A book about startups written by a local friend, Chris Heivly. A fun look into the mindset of entrepreneurism - it walks through a lot of the very early stages of moving from idea to starting the st

Oct 3rd, 2015

Glen Cook

This is one of the books in the Black Company series. This book follows Croaker, and Lady as they fight off the dark forces of the land. I really enjoyed the first few books in the series, but I th

Sep 28th, 2015

Lev Grossman

Set essentially in a Narnia type world - an enjoyable book, but not mind blowing. Quentin learns that he is a magician, goes to magicians school for a bunch of years, and finds himself in another

Sep 15th, 2015

Jeannette Walls

A pretty amazing memoir about the author's difficult childhood and her neglectful parents. She had pretty intelligent parents, but their priorities were so messed up that they didn't prioritize get

Sep 3rd, 2015

Neal Stephenson

One of my top 5 books of all time. This was a re-read since I had forgotten so much of it since last time around. I'll probably end up re-reading this every 5 or 10 years or so. Nell, the main

Aug 18th, 2015

Simon Sinek

Very enjoyable book about leadership, and especially around building an ecosystem of trust. Also talked about human biology - how brain chemicals affect our core behavior as a species - and how that

Aug 6th, 2015

Amy Poehler

Part of my "read outside of my target demographic" series. Definitely targeted at middle aged women, but interesting none the less. My take-away: Amy Poehler is a hard working individual who has go

Aug 4th, 2015

Patton and Cannon

A nice intro to philosophy. Would be interested to hear from someone who actually knows about philosophy (dad?) as to their take on the book.

Jul 31st, 2015

Ashlee Vance

A great in-depth biography of Elon Musk, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity. Pretty incredible what he has accomplished. He has audacious goals, and achieves them. Well written book, and well nar

Jul 31st, 2015

Glen Cook

Fourth book in a series that I started a while ago. Still a fun read - although I was a bit lost at the beginning since I had forgotten so much.

Jul 18th, 2015

Louis Sachar

A short young adult novel about a kid who was sentenced to hard labor for a crime he didn't commit. He had to dig giant holes in a dried up lake day in and day out. The book covers some interesting

Jul 18th, 2015

Tom Rath

A bunch of us at Pendo took the StrengthsFinder test to better understand each other. The premise being, in an org, to have a wide variety of strengths to counter-balance each other. Also, it's goo

Jul 15th, 2015

Peter Thiel

A good book talking about startups, and more so, talking about revolutionary changes, and somewhat bashing incremental changes. A good read - got some neurons firing.

Jul 9th, 2015

Peter Clines

Wasn't a huge fan of this book for multiple reasons. I think mostly because I am comparing it to the previous audio book I read - The Martian. This one was not nearly as realistic from the science

Jul 4th, 2015

David Subin

A self published biography by my uncle. Very enjoyable to learn about his history, his parents, and his kids. Looks to have been written so that his grandkids know more about their dad and their gr

Jul 3rd, 2015

Laura Hillenbrand

An olympic athlete turned military man, turned castaway, turned prisoner of war. The story is incredible, but I actually found the writing to be so-so.

Jun 24th, 2015

Andy Weir

Highly recommended - especially for the more geeky among us. Fantastic novel full of fun, adventure, science, and a bit of MacGyvering. The premise is an astronaut gets left on mars during a mars

Jun 15th, 2015

Richard Rumelt

So so. I liked the core ideas, but it just kept getting off topic. Talks about strategy - mostly corporate - somewhat military.

Jun 5th, 2015

Cory Doctorow

Very fast read - 30 minutes or so. A graphic novel about a girl gamer. It has a fun visual style in which when the girl is displayed in real life, there is one color palette, and then in-game she i

May 22nd, 2015

Erik Larson

Very enjoyable historical account of the sinking of the Lusitania. I knew essentially nothing about it other than that it was a ship that sank. The author was able to tell many interesting stories

May 19th, 2015

Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Star Ship Troopers meets Groundhog Day. This was the book on which the movie Edge of Tomorrow was based. I enjoyed the movie, so immediately decided to read the book. They were both excellent - an

May 14th, 2015

Tom Holt

Fun book - almost a little bit in the genre of Wicked perhaps? It takes place in a fairy tale land, but a couple of characters start to realize how unrealistic the land is - specifically, how the ec

May 4th, 2015

Ben Horowitz

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Best "business" book I have ever read/heard. The narrator was amazing too. If I ever meet Ben Horowitz, I'm going to be so disappointed that he doesn't sound as awe

Apr 23rd, 2015

Nir Eyal

I would NOT recommend the audio format of this book. It had at least one diagram (maybe more?), and it had written exercises, all of which weren't doable with audio version. Also, personal taste,

Apr 18th, 2015

Robert Charles Wilson

A re-read of a very good sci-fi novel. We were reading it for the Solterra Book club, but I didn't end up finishing it in time. Anyhow, if you haven't read this book before, I strongly recommend it.

Apr 16th, 2015

Walter Isaacson

Very good book. This is my second Walter Isaacson book - the first about Steve Jobs, and this one about Einstein. Both great books. I learned so much about Einstein - the amazing work he contribut

Mar 19th, 2015

Glen Greenwald

This book is about Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the journalists who covered and continue to cover the leaked documents. It was really well written, but I would recommend reading it - not listening t

Mar 4th, 2015

Truman Capote

Very enjoyable audio book. Evidently it's a notable book for being one of the first non-fiction books to be written in more of a novel type style. The story examines a heinous quadruple murder in K

Feb 25th, 2015

Jim C. Hines

This is book one in a series. It actually didn't do much for me. Not exactly sure what about it I didn't like. I'm going to pass on the rest of the series. The premise was the main character (and

Feb 10th, 2015

Liane Moriarty

This was 100% chicklit. I saw it on a best seller list, so I got it, not realizing the genre. Funny enough, Katie and I ended up both reading it at the same time. I found the middle to be annoying

Feb 6th, 2015

Eoin Colfer

A fun young adult novel that seemed to take some of its inspiration from the Count of Monte Cristo: A brilliant young boy is wrongly imprisoned - he spends years planning the perfect escape, and the

Jan 30th, 2015

N. K. Jemisin

Book Three of The Inheritance Trilogy. Great book - long though at 600+ pages. Continuing the theme of God among Men, the storyline takes place a hundred or so years after the previous book, and fo

Jan 18th, 2015

N. K. Jemisin

Book two of The Inheritance Trilogy. This takes place 10 years after the previous book, with mostly a different set of characters - but a few recognizable ones sprinkled in. Gods (and godlings, an

Jan 9th, 2015

Scott Meyer

Sequel to "Off to Be the Wizard", this follows Martin the wizard from his home in medieval Europe, to Atlantis thousands of years before that. The book continues the style of silly slapstick fun as

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Jan 2nd, 2015

Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg

The title pretty much explains it. One of the authors was head of Product Management at Google, so a lot of the people he talks about (Marissa, Salar, Susan, Georges) were all my direct managers at

Dec 31st, 2014

N. K. Jemisin

Recommended by cousin Elizabeth, this novel featured a female heroin, and a female author. I very much enjoyed the story and storytelling - of a girl named Yeine who finds herself thrust into an in

Dec 21st, 2014

Scott Meyer

A cross between the Matrix, Monty Python, and something in the time travel genre. I very much enjoyed this book - and it looks like there are more in the series. Martin - the main character, re

Dec 11th, 2014

Glenn Beck

My never-ending quest to hear about views that differ from my own. I actually enjoyed a lot of the content of this book - it was centered entirely on education. He had a lot of negative things to s

Dec 5th, 2014

Tony Horwitz

A short book that documents the authors driving tour down Canada and United states as he traces the proposed route of the XL pipeline, and talks to farmers and others along the route. He definitely h

Nov 29th, 2014

John Scalzi

I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by Will Wheaton - a geek hero. Anyhow, the book took place in the near future after a massive epidemic resulted in some percent of the wold population be

Nov 28th, 2014

Richard Farr

A fun action-thriller - a bit young adult crossed with Indiana Jones and probably other items. The premise is a new religion is formed around "the architects" and the notion that if done right, each

Nov 24th, 2014

Hugh Howey

Book three of the silo series. Nice closure to the series. All in all, a solid series. Definitely recommended.

Nov 18th, 2014

Daniel James BrownA Great audiobook. I learned a lot about competitive rowing, and was very entertained by the story of a young man, and his 8 boat-mates as they learned to become a team, and take on the world. Also great side stories about the boat maker

A Great audiobook. I learned a lot about competitive rowing, and was very entertained by the story of a young man, and his 8 boat-mates as they learned to become a team, and take on the world. Also g

Nov 16th, 2014

Hugh Howey

Book two of the silo series - still very enjoyable. This book goes back in time a bit and explains some of the backstory from the first book. This one also has some of the same events from the firs

Nov 8th, 2014

Hugh Howey

Recommended by my brother, this is the first part of a post-apocalyptic series taking place in "silos". An entire community lives in a giant underground silo, with law custom and culture suggesting

Oct 31st, 2014

Rachel Maddow

Interesting note on how I found myself reading this book. I actually downloaded the audiobook by Newt Gingrich because I knew it was outside of my comfort zone politically, but I had to stop within

Oct 20th, 2014

Adam Makos

A very entertaining non-fiction audiobook about a German WWII ace pilot and his many adventures during the war. The centerpieces of the story is his interaction with a crippled American bomber over

Oct 9th, 2014

Charles Stross

Fun sci-fi read. Takes place on multiple words, as a cyborg(?) uncovers the truth of her maker, and mass conspiracy across multiple star systems.

Sep 29th, 2014

Steven Erikson

The first book of a series called "Malazan Book of the Fallen". Very much in the realm of fantasy. Enjoyable - I'll probably continue reading the series over the coming months.

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Sep 15th, 2014

Katherine Boo

Non-fiction, from the Solterra Book Club - this follows a bunch of Indian slum dwellers through the hardships of daily life in Mumbai - many in the book pick, sort, and sell garbage as their primary

Sep 12th, 2014

Albert Camus

I had no idea what this was when I got it from the library. Evidently it's a classic. Essentially a story about a man and his misfortunes, that illustrates existentialism. I wish I had read this in

Aug 30th, 2014

Kazuo Ishiguro

Hard to name the genre of this novel. Someplace it is listed as Sci-Fi, but I strongly dispute this. I also see it listed as psychological thriller (also seems far fetched), Romance, as well as "Br

Aug 26th, 2014

Martha Stout

I was sad to see this book end - I was really enjoying it. Non-fiction, written by a Harvard psychologist, it talks about Sociopaths - their total lack of conscience - what motivates them, and so fo

Aug 15th, 2014

Ian M. Banks

A fun sci-fi novel about a General/mercenary who is sent by a higher civilization into lower civilizations to do their dirty work. The higher civilization has benign intentions - trying to bring eac

Aug 8th, 2014

Walter Isaacson

A fantastic telling of the life os Steve Jobs. The author had some pretty amazing access to everyone from Jobs and his family, Bill Gates, Al Gore, and many more. Jobs was a unique individual - nev

Aug 4th, 2014

Jose Saramago

When a whole city (country? world?) goes blind, society collapses. All central infrastructure - from electric power to police - ceases. The story follows a doctor (ironically, an eye doctor actually)

Jul 25th, 2014

Ernest Cline

Young adult Science Fiction. Wade, aka Parzival, spends most of his time on OASIS, a massive multiplayer world. For that matter, most of the population does the same. When the inventor of OASIS d

Jul 1st, 2014

Greg Egan

One of the most sciency sci-fi books I have ever read. Took place starting a few hundred years from present, but continued on for thousands of years into the future. The main characters are sentien

Jun 20th, 2014

Jhumpa Lahir

Two brothers in India who grow up together, but then grow apart. One moves to the united states, while the other marries for love in India. The brother in India is killed, and the remaining broth

Jun 11th, 2014

Charles C. Mann

I was both excited about, and disappointed in this book at the same time. I was hoping for a book that went much deeper into a day in the life of a native american before the days of Columbus. Inst

Jun 1st, 2014

Neil Gaiman

Katie's pick for the Solterra Book Club, this novel mixes up a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of horror, and a lot of just good fun. It was a quick read, but enjoyable. The main character is a

May 20th, 2014

Andrew Solomon

For our May meeting of the Solterra Book Club, we took on this beast of a book. I only made it about 1/3 of the way through, but my lovely wife tackled the whole thing. Each chapter of this 1000 pa

May 3rd, 2014

Max Barry

Fun action thriller, with a hint of paranormal type activity. The premise is that words can be used to sort of short circuit the brain, and override it. People known as Poets are experts at this, a

Apr 28th, 2014

Ray Bradbury

Written in the 1940's, it's a typical sci-fi book of the era. One thing that I really liked about it was how first encounters with martians ended up being so disastrous time and time again. Feels a

Apr 17th, 2014

Bill Bryson

I listened to this one as an audiobook, which was a great medium for me. I've found I like non-fiction as audio books, and fiction in written format. This book was about 1927, but really spanned th

Mar 28th, 2014

Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson

The last book in a 14 book / 12,000 page series called The Wheel of Time that I had started a few years ago. I hadn't been able to finish back then because the series was still being written, but o

Mar 7th, 2014

Candice Millard

This would probably not have landed on my reading list if not for our neighborhood book club. I'm glad it did though, as it was a lot of fun to read. It documents Teddy Roosevelt's adventures through

Feb 14th, 2014

Daniel Keyes

A man with a very low IQ is treated with an experimental procedure that results in his having a genius level IQ. The reader follows along in the man's journal as his writing quality increases, obser

Jan 12th, 2014

Oliver Pötzsch

A fun novel taking place in the 1600's centering around some kids that are being murdered, a midwife who is suspected of witchcraft, and a hangman and doctor who are trying to uncover the truth behin

Jan 7th, 2014

Nick Bilton

The story of the creation and growth of twitter, mostly focusing around the relationships with the founders. Like the Google book, this one was odd because I knew a lot of the cast of characters fro

Jan 2nd, 2014

Stanislaw Lem

A scientist on a distant planet attempts to interact with a sentient life-form that covers the entire planet. The book doesn't contain a lot of "action" per se, it is mostly in the mind of the narr

Nov 3rd, 2013

Robert Charles Wilson

Sequel to Spin (a couple books down). Fun read. The ending was a bit anticlimactic I felt. In this book, a boy exists who is part human, and part Hypothetical (the entities mentioned in my Spin rev

Oct 31st, 2013

Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen

Great overview of A/B testing. It sparks a lot of good ideas about tests that can be run, as well as ideas on how to set up an A/B testing culture in a company. Great book for people dealing with u

Oct 27th, 2013

Robert Charles Wilson

A great science fiction read. Couldn't put it down. The premise is that some entity has made it so that time on earth moves much slower than time in the rest of the universe. So for people on earth

Oct 19th, 2013

Robertson Davies

I read this for the first ever Solterra Book Club meeting. We only ended up chatting about the book for 15 minutes or so, and then on to other things, but fun anyhow. As for the book - it started o

Oct 14th, 2013

Jim Gaffigan

Another audio book, this one a silly book about parenting by comedian Jim Gaffigan. It was fine - not exceptional.

Oct 5th, 2013

Susan Cain

This book talks all about introverts. Fantastic read for introverts, and those wanting to understand introverts better. Covers everything from raising kids who are introverts, to running businesses

Sep 21st, 2013

Art Spiegelman

Book 2 of the Maus series.

Sep 20th, 2013

Art Spiegelman

Hard to describe, but essentially a non-fiction account of the holocaust told by a survivor's son in the format of a graphic novel. This would probably be a much better way to learn about the holocau

Sep 17th, 2013

Brian Jacques

One of the books from the series Redwall. I'm glad I read it, but I don't feel the need to read any more of the series. For those that haven't read the Redwall books, they are meant for middle-scho

Sep 5th, 2013

Ryan Holiday

A sort of overview of what Growth Hacking is, written by VP of marketing at American Apparel. It was a nice summary of things, but didn't offer much if you already knew what Growth Hacking was all a

Sep 4th, 2013

Lawrence Wright

One of the best books I have read in years. This is an in-depth look at scientology, especially of L. Ron Hubbard, and his successor, David Miscavige. It paints Hubbard as a schizophrenic who most

Aug 23rd, 2013

Gregory Benford

Scott pointed me towards this book - a fun recap of the future predictions from the Popular Mechanics magazine for the past 100 years. Some of the predictions were very accurate, like alternative c

Aug 18th, 2013

Roger Zelazny

This is a 10 book series, of which I made it through the first 5 books, then called it quits. It was fun, but perhaps too much to take all at once. Maybe if I had read it one book at a time as they

Aug 18th, 2013

Roger Zelazny

Book two of the Chronicles of Amber series.

Aug 18th, 2013

Roger Zelazny

Book three of the Chronicles of Amber series.

Aug 18th, 2013

Roger Zelazny

Book four of the Chronicles of Amber series.

Aug 18th, 2013

Roger Zelazny

Book five of the Chronicles of Amber series.

Aug 10th, 2013

Daniel Way

Reddit has been filled with mention of Deadpool of late, so I figured I should see what all of the fuss was about. Sadly, this book which is sort of in the middle of the story line, was the only one

Aug 9th, 2013

Richard Ferber

Trying to get a grasp on Callum's sleep situation. Katie and I went divide-and-conquer on this. The Ferber book gives a lot of background on sleep, and helps you understand how certain associations

Jul 22nd, 2013

Glen Cook

I joined an online book club over at goodreads, and this first book in the series was on tap for July. I enjoyed t

Jul 22nd, 2013

Glen Cook

Book two of Chronicles of the Black Company

Jul 22nd, 2013

Glen Cook

Book three of Chronicles of the Black Company

Jul 7th, 2013

Gene Wolfe

The first half of "The book of the new sun". I'm undecided on this series. It had an interesting story line, but also had this strange misogynistic thread that carried throughout the novel. Sort of

Jul 7th, 2013

Gene Wolfe

The second half of "The book of the new sun".

May 25th, 2013

Walter Miller Jr

This is the second book in a row that was post-apocalyptic. That was not an intentional decision, just coincidence. This was clearly written in the 50's, as the major plot is about nuclear winter.

May 11th, 2013

Max Brooks

After three and a half months of not reading, I have come back from the dead to read World War Z. I'm not a big Zombie movie/book fan, but since this one has gotten so much attention, I figured I'd

Jan 27th, 2013

Oliver Broudy

I do not recommend this book. In reading the description and reviews, I had read something along the lines of "it will make even atheists question their beliefs". Such was not the case. The story

Jan 26th, 2013

Will Richardson

A Kindle Short about how education is failing our youth, and what must be changed. Specifically it talks about how in a world of abundance of information, we shouldn't be teaching facts, but rather

Jan 25th, 2013

Evan Wright

An investigative reporting piece looking into big players in the Miami drug world of the 70's, and examining how they have so far gotten away with all sorts of crimes including murder.

Jan 20th, 2013

Roman Pichler

Just brushing up on some Product Management stuff. Funny how many people saw the book on my desk and said "Scrum? That sounds gross."

Jan 11th, 2013

Rick Riordan

Book one of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. A fun kids' series about Percy Jackson, a boy born of a human mother, and a god for a father (Poseidon). He goes on many adventures encountering the anc

Jan 11th, 2013

Rick Riordan

Book two of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Jan 11th, 2013

Rick Riordan

Book three of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Jan 11th, 2013

Rick Riordan

Book four of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Jan 11th, 2013

Rick Riordan

Book five of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Jan 7th, 2013

Paul Kriwaczek

I was looking for a book that was an overview of Zoroaster the man, and Zoroasterism the religion. This book was not that. It talked about various people the religion has influenced, including the

Jan 2nd, 2013

Sam Harris

As the title suggests, this book is about lying. Or more specifically, it is about how lying is very detrimental to relationships of all kind, even little white lies. A great read. This was a "Kin

Dec 27th, 2012

David Frum

Written by a moderate republican, this details how the party has lost its way, and what it needs to do to be taken seriously again. Very short read (2 hours max), but I found it very interesting. N

Dec 20th, 2012

Daniel Suarez

I have read some of this author's other books and really enjoyed them. This one however didn't do much for me. It was too mass market Michael Crichton, as apposed to his earlier books which were mo

Dec 1st, 2012

S. M. Stirling

Recommended by Chris F., this novel was right up my alley. Often I think about what would happen if I found myself in ancient Rome or Greece - what would I be able to contribute or do with the know

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Nov 24th, 2012

Scott Mactavish

A gift from Doug Uno - this was a great read for a father-to-be. It was written in a very fun/funny lighthearted way, but still addressed a lot of different items from college savings plans, to what

Nov 15th, 2012

Charles Freeman

Continuing my quest to understand the driving force behind so much of this planet's history - religion. Took me a solid month to read, but I think it was worth it. This book touched on the rise of re

Nov 11th, 2012

Kenneth Taylor

If you're having trouble reading the real one, then read the children's version instead. Or that's what I told myself anyhow. Wasn't a big fan of this version - just too light on details. For exam

Oct 13th, 2012

Vernor Vinge

One of the many books I have gotten from the NPR list. So far none of them have let me down - they are all great reads. In th

Sep 11th, 2012

Orson Scott Card

Book three of the Ender series - this one pretty much continues on directly from book two - same cast of characters, same setting, same time period roughly. Good read - but it feels like diminishing

Sep 3rd, 2012

Orson Scott Card

Book two of the Enders Game series - this one is less action packed, but has some interesting ethnographic insights of the alien kind. You learn that your view of the way society functions is not ne

Aug 28th, 2012

Orson Scott Card

This is my favorite book of all time (so far in my life at least). This is the third time I have read the book I think. I'm not sure why I love the book so much, perhaps it's that a kid, against all

Aug 24th, 2012

Harry Harrison

I found out about this author when he passed away a couple weeks ago - so I figured I'd give him a read. This book took place far in the future, and was written first person by a con-man/thief who w

Aug 22nd, 2012

Christopher Moore

The novel starts out following Nate Quinn, a scientist who is studying whale songs to see if he can understand why they sing. The story starts to twist very early when he sees the words "Bite me" wr

Aug 18th, 2012

Daniel Suarez

Sequel to Daemon - a great techie novel that brings together a whole lot of themes including corporations taking over the democratic process, computers becoming self aware, people rebelling again

Aug 15th, 2012

Chris Evans

Written by a local entrepreneur/investor/philanthropist, this book talks about how you can have a successful career (at the top of the ladder or the bottom), and still be faithful to Christian values

Jul 31st, 2012

Susanna Clarke

A long, but entertaining novel. Taking place in England in the early 1800s, the book is about two magicians who are sometimes friends, and sometimes enemies. Magic has been gone for 400 years, but

Jul 18th, 2012

H.P. Lovecraft

I knew of Cthulhu from pop culture, but had never read the short story from which it came. It was a very quick and fun read - definitely written in a style that I am beginning to associate with lat

Jul 6th, 2012

Jasper Fforde

I very much enjoyed this novel. It takes place in a slightly different reality where there are a bunch of specialized government agencies including ChronoGuards (investigate time based mishaps), a

Jun 30th, 2012

Earl and Snelgrove

Book one of the Harmonics series. I Stumbled upon this series. The first book was free on Kindle, and I liked it enough to continue reading (next two books were just $5 on kindle - good value). Fir

Jun 30th, 2012

Earl and Snelgrove

Book two of the Harmonics series.

Jun 30th, 2012

Earl and Snelgrove

Book three of the Harmonics series.

Jun 16th, 2012

Margaret Atwood

I'm undecided on this one. It's the story of dystopian future where women have become essentially slaves to the system. The main character was torn from her husband, and now must act as a handmaid

Jun 9th, 2012

Kevin Baker

My brother's suggestion - a really great easy to read history of America. I wish our history text books had been this easy to read. Actually, it sounds like schools do use this now - although it so

Jun 1st, 2012

Patrick Rothfuss

Second book in the Kingkiller series. The story of Kvothe's youth continues. He is learning more (including how to fight), finding out more about his enemies, and racking up incredible numbers o

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May 24th, 2012

Michael Connelly

My kindle died half way through the second Kingkiller book, so I had to switch over to paper. I found this book in a hotel book exchange - not something I would have normally read. Classic cop murd

May 15th, 2012

Patrick Rothfuss

The first in a three part series about Kvothe, a red-headed man telling the story of his notorious youth. In the fantasy genre - Kvothe develops some magical abilities. He is also just a very hard

Apr 26th, 2012

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A downed pilot meets a little prince from another planet. Through the pilot's eyes we learn of the little prince's adventures as he hopped from one micro-planet to the next. At each planet, we lear

Apr 19th, 2012

Kurt Vonnegut

Note to self - this is the one with ice nine. I read this a long time ago, and remembered really liking it, but couldn't remember much about it. The main character starts out as a writer/observer,

Mar 9th, 2012

Neil Gaiman

Bizarre fun book, taking place below London. An alternate reality lives below the streets of London, with talking mice, angels, and all sorts of other goodness. A fun read. If I knew London well,

Jan 27th, 2012

Jules Verne

A strange little book. Not really that little actually. During the civil war, some union folk find themselves wrecked on a desert island. They build their own tools from scratch, and create a life

Jan 14th, 2012

Bill Clinton

As the title implies, this book is about how to create Jobs in America. He takes some shots at the Tea Party - saying that you can (and should) have both a strong government, and a strong private se

Jan 1st, 2012

Cory Doctorow

A short read, but entertaining. I really enjoy Cory Doctorow's books - not sure why he doesn't get a ton of love. This one takes place in the future when humans get around death by doing backups, a

Jan 1st, 2012

Sun Tzu (孫子)

Written 2500 years ago, some things are no longer relevant (chariots, spears, etc), but so much of the actual strategy still is very relevant. A lot of the strategy is around psychological warfare

Dec 24th, 2011

Paul Kent

This was actually a really good book. In just a few hours of reading, I now have a much better understanding of the bible than I have ever had before. It was really helpful for me to just read from

Dec 23rd, 2011

Niccolo Machiavelli

Well - I now understand the term Machiavellian a lot better. This book describes how to be an effective prince in Machiavelli's time - and being effective does not necessarily mean being nice. It's

Dec 18th, 2011

Faith D'Aluisio

I've been reading this off and on for the past week. Very cool look into a bunch of cultures around the world through the lens of their weekly grocery buying habits. A reminder how diverse the worl

Dec 17th, 2011

Christopher Paolini

The last book of the Inheritance Cycle series (started with Eregon). This book tied up all of the loose ends in the series, but it was a bit of a let down as I pretty much knew everything that was go

Dec 9th, 2011

Neal Stephenson

Not your traditional Neal Stephenson book. As Anthony calls it, more of a Jason Bourne saga. Hackers, Terrorists, Russian Mafia, Bears, Mountain Lions, Guns, Helicopters and a whole lot more. It w

Nov 15th, 2011

Neal Stephenson

In the future, civilization and technology have progressed, but all is not perfect. A nano-engineer and a member of the elite class team up to build a book that will teach the wealthy individual's d

Oct 20th, 2011

Neil Gaiman

Shadow, having recently been released from prison, gets pulled into the affairs of what turn out to be... you guessed it, gods. One of the underlying premises of the novel is that every god that any

Oct 8th, 2011

Cole Stryker

A very interesting look into 4chan, Reddit, Anonymous and Memes. As an avid Reddit user, it was intriguing to see where lots of the culture that is Reddit bubbled up from.

Sep 20th, 2011

Steven Levy

The story of Google, from the founding of, through late 2010 / early 2011. Very, very strange for me to read - reading about people I know, and sometimes finding out things I didn't know about these

Aug 18th, 2011

Chritopher Moore

A novel about Jesus's "missing years" (Age 1 to 30) as told by his friend, Biff. Very fun and silly read.

Jul 24th, 2011

George R. R. Martin

RE-READ. When I heard the 5th book in the series (A Dance with Dragons) was finally coming out, and with The Game of Thrones on TV, I decided to re-read the series. I skipped the first one as I was

Jul 24th, 2011

George R. R. Martin

RE-READ: Book three in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Jul 24th, 2011

George R. R. Martin

RE-READ: Book four in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Jul 24th, 2011

George R. R. Martin

RE-READ: Book five in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Jul 10th, 2011

Daniel H. Wilson

Man creates Artificial Intelligence, A.I. rebels and decides to exterminate Man. A fun read - written by a CMU Robotics Ph.D. which adds some realism to his accounts. Sounds like Dreamworks has lic

Jun 9th, 2011

Rob Bell

Non-fiction book written by a reverend who argues against the notions of heaven and hell, and talks about how more time should be spent making "heaven on earth" through our deeds. Great message.

May 22nd, 2011

Richard Phillips

Second book in the Rho Agenda series (see below). This one is better written than the first, and still an exciting read.

May 15th, 2011

Richard Phillips

A really fun story line (Roswell related), but rather poorly written. The story line was good enough to make we want to keep reading the series actually. I just wish the author was a bit better on

May 10th, 2011

John Scalzi

My first book on Kindle! How fun (thanks Katie for the Kindle, and Mom and Dad for the Kindle Credits). A very enjoyable read. Some small similarities to Ender's game in plot - but perhaps inverted

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May 7th, 2011

Margaret George

I made it through about a third of this novel, and then gave up. Wasn't holding my attention. Historical fiction from Cleopatra's point of view.

Apr 25th, 2011

Nicholas Nicastro

I was not impressed. Historical fiction about Sparta Vs. Athenians. It was just scattered story telling - and not very interesting. It also had a random 30 second tidbit in there about finding the

Apr 17th, 2011

James Patterson

Book two of the below series. So-so. Not a lot of new plot development after the first one. Hopefully the third one is more interesting, else this may be the end of the series for me. The third o

Apr 10th, 2011

James Patterson

Young adult dystopian science fiction. Two young siblings are arrested for no known crime, and come to find out they are a witch and a wizard. There are prophecies about their great future. Looks

Apr 10th, 2011

Sue Gruen

Mom had been recommending this one for me for a long while, and I finally got around to reading it. A very enjoyable novel about a vet's experience caring for animals and humans alike at the circus

Apr 4th, 2011

Adam Roberts

Sometimes I email myself book titles that I want to read, and then when I'm looking for a book, I just search my inbox and find one that needs reading. I recently looked in my inbox and found a note

Mar 27th, 2011

Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson

This is book 13 in the Wheel of time series. The author (Robert Jordan) passed away before this book came out, so Brandon Sanderson took the wheel on this one - and thank goodness. Things are star

Mar 16th, 2011

Suzanne Collins

This was the third book in the Hunger Games series. The first I liked, the second I didn't, and the third I'm undecided on. It definitely does not have a "happily ever after" ending. It's a pretty

Mar 6th, 2011

Larry Niven

This was on some "Best Sci-Fi of all time" list. It was a very enjoyable read. A couple humans (one 200 years old, and the other bred for luck) join a three legged alien, and a cat like alien on a

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Mar 4th, 2011

Stephen Batchelor

The first Buddhism book (a couple down) didn't do much for me. There was too much theism involved (yes, I know, it's a religion). This book was much, much more up my alley. It was a combination

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Feb 26th, 2011

Kurt Vonnegut

A man is abducted by aliens, is taught how to live his life in non-sequential order, and then tells the story of his life in this non-sequential manor. His life is colored by World War II, as well

Feb 20th, 2011

Thubten Chodron

I was a little disappointed by this book. I'm not sure what I was hoping for, but this wasn't it. I think part of it was that it was pretty dry reading, but also part of it was that I was a bit dis

Feb 13th, 2011

Hosler, Cannon and Cannon

I had read another book in this series - "The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA" by the same Illustrators, but a different writer. It's a really fun way to learn about a topic - in

Feb 6th, 2011

Charles Yu

A great novel. Written in a style all his own (well, perhaps a bit of HHGttG sprinkled in), this book is itself a guide to time travel, and also a story about the writing of the book itself. On the

Jan 30th, 2011

Robert Spencer

I have a whole lot of mixed feelings about this book. The author is unquestionably, and unapologetically against Muslims and the Islam religion. At the end, among his recommendations of how the west

Jan 22nd, 2011

John le Carre

A young British chap and his girlfriend meet a mysterious Russian man during vacation. In time, he finds the Russian to be an international money launderer who wants to turn over crucial information

Jan 3rd, 2011

Robert Heinlein

Evidently the word "grok" comes from this book. I've been using the word for years, and never knew that this was the origin. The plot revolves around a human man who was raised by martians on mars,

Dec 26th, 2010

William Gibson

I had high expectations for this novel, and it sadly didn't live up to those expectations. For some reason I thought it was going to be really thought provoking... but is just wasn't. The story is

Dec 19th, 2010

H. G. Wells

Another classic that I had never read. A surprisingly fun read. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking of the characters from Mars Attacks!, which made the reading experience even more enjo

Dec 9th, 2010

H. G. Wells

One of those classics that I had never gotten around to reading. A somewhat bleak view of our distant future as told by an inventor who creates a time machine and comes back to tell his 19th century

Dec 7th, 2010

David Benioff

A very good novel. Takes place during WWII in Russia, featuring a teenager named Lev and his new-found friend Kolya whom he is forced to go on an adventure with through war torn Saint Petersburg and

Dec 4th, 2010

Jules Verne

The continuation of From the Earth to the Moon. Still an enjoyable read. Our brave scientists explore space and the giant silver orb in the sky.

Nov 28th, 2010

Jules Verne

When I borrowed the Jules Verne book from the library, it actually was a combination of 5 books - so I delved into another one in the collection. This was also a really fun read. One interesting as

Nov 20th, 2010

Jules Verne

This is a novel that is referenced a lot in modern entertainment, so I figured I should go to the source and give it a read. Lots of fun. A professor and his nephew travel to Iceland, and from ther

Nov 13th, 2010

Stieg Larsson

Final book in the series. Very enjoyable series. This last book is more of a legal thriller than an action thriller, but that made for an interesting twist as well.

Nov 5th, 2010

Stieg Larsson

Continuation of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, this time Elizabeth Salamander (not quite her name) finds herself in the middle of the action.

Oct 24th, 2010

Stieg Larsson

For some reason I thought this was chick-lit, so I had avoided it. Definitely not chick-lit. It is an often gruesome murder mystery taking place in current era. The two main characters are a journ

Oct 11th, 2010

Yann Martel

This has been on every "best fiction books" list I have ever seen, and yet I have always avoided reading it for some reason. I'm very glad I finally sat down and gave it a chance. It was a really f

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book one of The Wheel of Time. 10,500 pages of classic fantasy. Evidently lots of current day fantasy novels were influenced from this series. The author recently passed away, but there are still t

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book two of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book three of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book four of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book five of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book six of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book seven of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book eight of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book nine of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book ten of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan

Book 11 of The Wheel of Time.

Sep 18th, 2010

Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson

Book 12 of The Wheel of Time.

Aug 30th, 2010

Nancy Duarte

A perfect quote from the back of the book "Slide:ology is a book that's as beautiful as it is educational". This book talks about how to make great slides for presentations. It is written by Nancy

Jun 4th, 2010

Peter I. Hupalo

Covers how to incorporate, as well as lots of issues such as financing, stock and stock options, directors, officers, tax issues, retirement plans, etc. Great resource, but also really intimidating

Apr 26th, 2010

Stephen Hunter

A sniper is asked to help prevent a presidential assassination, but finds himself framed for that same event. Fun, not very mind expanding.

Apr 11th, 2010

Gary Jennings

A very good fictional tale of an Aztec man circa 1500 who tells of life, love, disaster, and so much more before and after the Spaniards arrive and change their life forever. In reading up a bit abo

Mar 18th, 2010

David JC MacKay

I believe I heard about this from a TED talk given by Bill Gates actually. Anyhow, this is a phenomenal resource to understand our energy needs in the decades to come. For me the biggest take away

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book one of The Sword of Truth series. I've been reading this for the last few months, with other books sprinkled in. I figured I would make it all one post so as not to pollute the book blog with

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book two of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book three of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book four of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book five of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book six of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book seven of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book eight of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book nine of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book ten of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 27th, 2010

Terry Goodkind

Book 11 of The Sword of Truth series.

Feb 24th, 2010

Thomas Geoghegan

This book was about a topic that interests me (the rise of litigation in the united states), and also lays blame on the Right, which is hard to resist. However, the book was not right for me. It ha

Feb 11th, 2010

Johnny Ball

Aimed at kids 9-12 years old, I found this to be a great read for all ages. I had this book as bathroom reading material, which I found to be the perfect way to read the book. In this way, you coul

Jan 31st, 2010

Masha Gessen

The true account of a mathematical genius who solved one of the hardest problems of the last 100 years. Much of the book goes into talking about mathematics and antisemitism in cold-war Russia. It

Jan 13th, 2010

J.D. Salinger

Unlike most of my generation, I somehow didn't read this during high school, so I made up for that omission. To be honest, the book didn't do much for me. I feel like it probably has a much greater

Jan 5th, 2010

Joel Kurtzman

This turned out to be a bit different than what I expected. It ended up being a more quantitative and data oriented than I had expected, which was great. The book was written around a large longitu

Dec 24th, 2009

James Lovegrove

I randomly saw this at a bookstore, and decided to get it. I was pleasantly surprised (perhaps because I came in with pretty low expectations). I had been complaining recently that a lot of the mor

Dec 6th, 2009

Larimore, Lindauer & LeBoeuf

I found this to be a really good beginner's guide to investing. It explains all of the basics including inflation, ways to save, taxes, and then talks a lot about why it is foolish to try to beat th

Nov 30th, 2009

William Golding

One of Katie's favorites, and a book that missed out on reading in high school, so I gave it a read. Highly recommended. A bit more violent/sad than I would have guessed, but a good read. I really

Nov 20th, 2009

Christopher Moore

Recommended by my brother - and what a good recommendation it was. Very funny, exciting, and just bizarre. Totally my cup of tea. A man becomes a Death Merchant - having to collect souls when pe

Nov 15th, 2009

Anne Rice

This read was inspired by Kristin H. She has been on a vampire reading binge evidently, so I asked her what one good Vampire book was, so I could at least see what everyone's fascination with vampir

Nov 5th, 2009

Cormac McCarthy

Why, oh why do some many people love this book? It's page after page of monotonous misery. What do people see in this book that I don't see? I don't get it. Anyhow, as a summary, it's about a kid

Nov 2nd, 2009

Robert Louis Stevenson

I have decided that Jekyll and Hyde is essentially an episode of Scooby Doo.

Oct 27th, 2009

Suzanne Collins

This was the sequel to The Hunger Games (see below). This was an ok read, but I felt like way too much of it was just repackaging of the first book. The first book left off with lots of potential (t

Oct 12th, 2009

Suzanne Collins

Even though you'll need to find The Hunger Games in the "Teen" section of your local reading establishment, I still found the book to be highly enjoyable. It was one of those feel good, empowering t

Oct 11th, 2009

Patterson and Rust

I sat in a book store and just read this in two sittings. I guess I just didn't want to pay for a book that was only a few hours read. Anyhow, it was not good. I'm very glad I didn't buy it. This

Oct 9th, 2009

Neal Stephenson

This novel is a strange mix of philosophy, action/adventure, and science fiction. The main characters are essentially agnostic monks. They spend all of their time in introspection and studying the

Sep 8th, 2009

Harry Turtledove

The general notion of this book is fun - people go back in time from present day to the Civil war to help the south win the war by giving them present day weapons. The book starts out really interes

Aug 17th, 2009

Jon Krakauer

Katie and I listened to the audio CD version of this book on a road trip to and from Baltimore. It centers on the Mormon faith - both the traditional Mormons, and the more extreme fundamental Mormon

Aug 7th, 2009

Patterson and Ledwidge

This book can be found in the "Young Adult" section of your local bookarie. Daniel X is an alien hunter, who's job it is to... you guessed it, hunt aliens. Very much like Men In Black, but Daniel i

Aug 6th, 2009

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks is one of the most famous neurologists of our times. In this book, he chronicles many different clinical anomalies that he has encountered in his long career. Each chapter documents a

Jul 18th, 2009

Frank Herbert

A re-read of a classic. For those that haven't read it, this is one of the best fiction novels ever - definitely gets into the sci-fi realm, but doesn't feel all sci-fi-ish. This time around I noti

Jul 10th, 2009

Rodney Brooks

The author of this book is the head of the robotics lab at MIT. It talks about his personal history with robotics, as well as the lab's history with robotics. In theory, it then talks about what he

Jun 4th, 2009

William Gibson

Note to self: I need to re-read this someday. For some reason, I had a hard time following the what, who, where of the book for almost the entire time. I felt like I was in a drug induced haze, ju

May 31st, 2009

Mana Takahashi et al

I went to the bookstore to get a refresher Database book, and saw this gem. It just looked too awesome to pass up, so I ended up getting it (as well as a "real" database book). I read it on a fligh

May 28th, 2009

Philip Roth

Set in the early 50's, a New Jersey Jewish boy escapes his overbearing father by going to school at a very white Ohio university. He has trouble dealing with others at school (students and administr

May 18th, 2009

Dave Eggers

I'm not sure if there is a name for the genre of this book. It is for the most part non-fiction, based on his life - his parents both dying, and him raising his little brother. The reason the genre

May 16th, 2009

Julia Wertz (Editor)

This book is a collection of many comics that are each based off of "Missed Connections" from Craigslist. Some are sad, some are funny, some are romantic, etc. I believe that some of them are verba

May 5th, 2009

Neil Strauss

I very much enjoyed this non-fiction read. It is the author's first hand account of his preparation for the worst. Specifically, he fears that America may collapse economically and/or become a poli

Apr 28th, 2009

Dan Simmons

The last of the Hyperion series. I think I just got tired of it at this point. It just dragged on. There was a nice romance type storyline in there which was a bit of a nice change, but yeah, just

Apr 15th, 2009

Dan Simmons

The third in the hyperion series. It takes place a few hundred years after the previous one leaves off, and the main character of the book is Raul, the boyfriend of "The One Who Teaches". We follow

Apr 7th, 2009

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I made it about a third of the way through this book, and then I sort of stated "OK, I get his point" and decided not to finish the last two thirds. His point, at least from what I could tell, is th

Apr 1st, 2009

George Orwell

Somehow, I had not yet read this book. It was a great read for the content and lessons of the book (totalitarian state, loss of freedom and rights), but also really interesting to finally see the or

Mar 18th, 2009

Ray Bradbury

This was a re-read, for old time's sake. I had forgotten most of it, so it was a nice refresher. The central themes are censorship, loss of freedoms, loss of free thinking, and lost touch with the

Mar 16th, 2009

Benjamin Franklin

Man oh man, that dude had some mad skills. This book is written somewhat sloppily - changing narrative styles throughout, carrying on from time to time, and not even finishing it - but the content i

Mar 5th, 2009

Dan Simmons

The sequel to Hyperion (two entries down). In my opinion, this should have been combined with the first book, and should have been a single book. The first book didn't really conclude the storyline

Feb 28th, 2009

Steven Gould

This is the sequel to Jumper (two entries down). In this episode, our favorite teleporter manages to get kidnapped by some bad people (it takes some ingenuity to figure out how to keep him kidnapped

Feb 24th, 2009

Dan Simmons

Very much a scifi book, this gets into topics of empire building across worlds, intelligent computers, and so forth. Actually, the reason I wanted to read it was I saw reference to it when I was rea

Feb 16th, 2009

Steven Gould

A movie came out recently by the same name. This is a fun book, based on the premise that a kid learns how to teleport. The story line is a bit different from the movie, but much of it is the same.

Feb 16th, 2009

Alex Berenson

Eh. Another spy book. A CIA agent infiltrates a terrorist cell in Afghanistan. The Cell sends him on a mission in the United States. The CIA wants to know if they can still trust him... The Cell wa

Feb 9th, 2009

Schultz, Cannon and Cannon

This is a graphic guide (comic basically) of how genetics and DNA works. It was incredibly well done, very informational, but really fun to read. I was astounded by how complex the basic elements o

Jan 31st, 2009

Neal Stephenson

One of the best novels I have ever read. It has lots of Math / Computer stuff in it, which really made it even more enjoyable in my mind. The story takes place over two different time periods - one

Jan 12th, 2009

David Liss

My bro and sister-in-law (such a strange term) gave me this one for the holidays. It is historical fiction taking place during President Washington's years in office, with part of the story taking p

Dec 15th, 2008

Brian M. Stableford

A slow reading month for me. One book only? Yikes. Anyhow, this was a scifi book about some people who settled on this new world, but had become very large in size (height, weight, strength, etc)

Nov 25th, 2008

Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

A graphic novel (aka, a comic book) about caped heroes from the 1920s until the 1980s. This was recommended to be by two different people in a span of 24 hours - so I had no choice but to immediatel

Nov 22nd, 2008

Isaac Asimov

The second in the Foundation series. Also a great read. In this book, the blossoming civilization takes on The Mule - a man born with a genetic mutation that help him to conquer worlds. Two charac

Nov 18th, 2008

Isaac Asimov

For the last few weeks I have had a lot of false starts - I starting reading a book, then lost interest in it - over and over again. So I decided to go back to an oldie but goodie after my SF roomma

Oct 24th, 2008

Ursula K. Le Guin

A great read. The premise is: A man realizes that what he dreams actually comes to happen in real life. Not that he predicts the future, but rather his dreams actually alter the future. Some bad

Oct 20th, 2008

Gregory Maguire

The last of the audio CD's - or at least, the last until next time I decide to drive across the country. This was in the same series as Wicked (of which there was a Broadway play made after), and so

Oct 16th, 2008

Ron Paul

Another Audio CD on my trip. This book by Ron Paul (yes, that Ron Paul - presidential candidate) contains his views on how the US government should be run. He is free market to the extreme, as well

Oct 15th, 2008

Jack McDevitt

A "real" book (as apposed to the audio CD's it is surrounded by). This was a sci fi novel that was a pretty decent read. It takes place a couple hundred years in the future, and revolves around the

Oct 15th, 2008

David McCullough

Yet another audio CD (although I linked to the book in this case). An excellent biography of Harry S. Truman (turns out "S" didn't stand for anything). I learned a lot from this one, about his humb

Oct 13th, 2008

Michael Connelly

Another Audio CD. A thriller - a retired FBI investigator does a pro-bono case to track down a killer, and finds that the killer has actually killed others before. The victim was a heart donor, and

Oct 13th, 2008

Barack Obama

I listened to this audio book on a drive across the country. I found it to be very interesting; it had a bit of history of U.S. government, and specifically the Senate, as well as Barack's personal

Oct 5th, 2008

David Baldacci

Bleh. FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Russian spies, American spies, good guy is on the run from the government because he was framed, etc etc. Not much to say about this book. Definitely a cookie cutte

Sep 30th, 2008

Christopher Paolini

This is the third book in a Trilogy, the first being "Eragon". It is very fantasy-ish, so if you aren't into that, then this is definitely not the right book for you. Anyhow, upon fishing this boo

Sep 11th, 2008

Brian K Vaughan et al

A graphic novel / comic aimed at youth, written by the same author of Y: The last man (see Jan 25th 2008). The story revolves around a group of kids who revolt against their parents who they find to

Sep 8th, 2008

Cory Doctorow

Wow. That one sort of shook me up. I think I was able to relate to this one more than others might, as it took place in SF, citing many places I am very familiar with - and also because there is a

Sep 7th, 2008

Alan Weisman

I am sort of cheating by putting this one on the list as I only read a few chapters of the book. The premise was really interesting though, so I figured I would post it. The book is what the author

Sep 6th, 2008

David Baldacci

A mass market thriller. A very poor single mother is offered a once in a lifetime opportunity at being guaranteed to be a massive lotto winner - but at what cost? The book is packed with action, susp

Sep 1st, 2008

Vernor Vinge

SciFi to the extreme. Long read (750 pages or so), but a good one. Human traders come into contact with an alien race of spiders who are starting civilization from scratch. The humans lurk from abo

Aug 25th, 2008

Paulo Coelho

This novel was originally written in Portuguese in 1988, and according to wikipedia, has been translated into 56 languages since then. It is told in a style reminiscent of ancient verbal storytellin

Aug 17th, 2008

Catherine Coulter

A murder attempt foiled, a missing wife apparently turning up across the country, and psychics butting into the lives of the FBI. This novel takes some classic book themes, and ties in a few twists

Aug 15th, 2008

Travis Bradford

Happy two year anniversary, book blog! Oh, yeah, the book. It summarizes the history and current state of energy in the US and worldwide, and builds the case for Solar. My take-away is that while

Aug 10th, 2008

Harlan Coben

A fast fun action/thriller/mystery book. This one was recommended by my brother - thanks bro, good book. In this novel, two different teens go missing in northern jersey, but it is unclear if they r

Aug 5th, 2008

Robert Kurson

This is a non-fiction book about... wait, did I just read a non-fiction book? Woh, I did! Amazing! Anyhow, this is about deep sea divers who discovered a German WWII U-Boat (submarine) off the coa

Jul 19th, 2008

Charles Stress

The premise of the novel is that all human, plant and animal life has died, and the galaxy is densely populated with Robots. The main character was originally created by the humans to be an escort -

Jul 12th, 2008

Ken Grimwood

Gripping. Couldn't put it down. Finished it in a day. The novel makes you think about your own life, and the choices you have made, and the choices you will make in life. The basic premises is - a

Jun 16th, 2008

Philip K. Dick

Despite the fact that the author - in 1969 at the time of writing this book - gave mankind way too much credit for where civilization would be by the time of this book's setting (1992), it was a very

Jun 14th, 2008

Aldous Huxley

Written in the early 1930's, this novel takes place in a post Model T Ford era, where life is optimized to the T. Children are no longer born, but rather produced in assembly lines of test tubes. P

Jun 8th, 2008

Thomas Greanias

This is the first of a three book series that I read after having first read the second book. It was about the discovery of the city of Atlantis in Antarctica, with Indiana Jones type characters cau

Jun 1st, 2008

Thomas Greanias

A quick fun read, but of the action thriller genre - not something that is going to expand your mind in any way shape or form. Very similar to the movies Nation Treasure (was that based off of this

May 20th, 2008

Leinad Zeraus (Daniel Suarez)

A dark but splendid read for the more computer nerdy of you out there who like a good page turner. This book has some similarities with Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Deamon takes place in the near

Apr 12th, 2008

Sherry Boschert

There is a lot of overlap between this book and the movie Who killed the electric car (which you should see by the way if you have not already). Anyhow, as for the book - it has tons of grea

Apr 6th, 2008

Philip K. Dick

The movie Blade Runner (which I have NOT seen) was based off of this book. It is about a bounty hunter who's job it is to hunt down and deactivate androids who have gone to the dark side. Very fun re

Mar 29th, 2008

Clifford Chase

One of the more bizarre, but awesome books I have read. It can perhaps be best described by some of the press it has gotten... "If Animal Farm were to bump into Monty Python in the dark alley the re

Mar 16th, 2008

Mikhail Bulgakov

Multiple friends from high school recommended I read this book. It took me a while to get through - did not grip me as many books do. It was rather interesting and thought provoking though. The st

Mar 1st, 2008

Stan Gibilsco

The title of the book pretty much tells all. This book covers everything from wind power to solar power, biofuels to fossil fuels, passive solar heating to heat pumps, fission, fusion, and a whole b

Jan 25th, 2008

Brian K. Vaughan et al

Y (As in the chromosome): The Last Man is a graphic novel about the world when all men on the planet suddenly die, but the women survive. There is one man left - and the novel follows his journeys.

Jan 20th, 2008

Neil Gaiman

This is a collection of short stories that seemed like it would be cool. It was not - not cool that is. The first story was very good, I highly recommend it - there is actually an audio version

Jan 15th, 2008

Chalmers Johnson

I just skimmed this one. I have been curious for a while now of *why* terrorists would want to bomb us. The explanation of "because they envy our freedom" seemed like the most ridiculous statement

Jan 11th, 2008

Al Gore

This is the "companion" book to the movie of the same name. The content is nearly identical, but with perhaps a bit more detail in the book. As far as graphical design and layout of the book, I fou

Dec 31st, 2007

T. H. White

This was required reading in High school english. I ran into it on my bookshelf when I was back home over Christmas, so I brought it back with me for another reading. The book is historical fiction

Dec 24th, 2007

James Hilton

Recommended by the Samantha Crow Reading Club, this book claims to be the "first novel published as a paperback". It was published (as well as takes place) in 1933... my copy is of course a bit newe

Dec 24th, 2007

David Freeman

I purchased this book on a whim - I saw it on the shelf at a bookstore. I am very happy that I purchased and read this one, as it had a pretty profound impact on my environmental thinking. Specific

Dec 17th, 2007

Stephen King

The seventh and final book in the Dark Tower series. This is the last leg of the journey for Roland and his band of travelers. In this book, tragedy comes to the Ka-tet of travelers, but also closu

Dec 2nd, 2007

Stephen King

The sixth of the Dark Tower series. This book in the series follows Susannah as she tries to deal with her pregnancy, and Mia - a woman who has somewhat taken over her body. The book also takes pla

Nov 25th, 2007

Stephen King

The fifth of the Dark Tower series. The posse of gunslingers find themselves in a town that is sort of a cross between a Mexican town and a mid western town. Here they are tasked with fighting off a

Nov 17th, 2007

Mariano Azueka

Supposedly a classic, this novel takes place during the Mexican revolution. I had a hard time making it through the book - it just could not keep my attention. I guess not all stories are timeless.

Nov 7th, 2007

Stephen King

The fourth of the Dark Tower series. Roland and his comrades step foot in Topeka Kansas (but perhaps from a slightly different universe). Here he tells the story of his childhood, his friends, his

Oct 28th, 2007

Stephen King

The third of the Dark Tower series. Roland (The gunslinger) journeys with others through rough patches of wilderness, and encounters trails against both men and machines.

Oct 21st, 2007

Vaitheeswaran & Carson

Written by two staff members of the Economist, Zoom looks a bit into the history of the Car and Oil companies, and talks about what the future holds in regard to powering cars. It critically analyz

Oct 11th, 2007

Stephen King

The second in the Dark Tower series. This one follows the gunslinger through three different periods of time as he follows his destiny to get to the dark tower.

Oct 9th, 2007

Stephen King

This is the first in a somewhat long series called "The Dark Tower" by Stephen King. Even though it is Stephen King, the books are not horror books at all, they are closer to fantasy I guess. This

Oct 7th, 2007

George Orwell

It turns out that George Orwell was just a pen name for Eric Blair. Anyhow, Animal Farm is a classic that hopefully you have already read. It is super fast and fun to read again and again. The sto

Sep 30th, 2007

Daniel Silva

Another airport reading book. A thriller about terrorism, espionage, religion, art, and who knows what else. A fun book, but not something I would highly recommend by any means - just a way to pass

Sep 16th, 2007

Preston and Child

I picked up this book at the airport because of the cover art. As I was visually scanning books, I saw an image that looked very much Tibetan - so I checked out the book and ended up buying it. The

Sep 10th, 2007

Piers Anthony

This is the first book in a series called "Incarnations of Immortality". I do not think I will be reading the rest of the series, at least not at the moment. The book was not bad, it just didn't kn

Sep 3rd, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut

The bookstore I purchased this at claimed it was Vonnegut's best scifi book ever. This seems a bit far fetched to me. It was a good book, but by no means knocked my socks off. The story revolves ar

Aug 23rd, 2007

Heinrich Harrer

A fantastic non-fiction story - one of the best non-fiction stories I have ever read actually. Perhaps it helped that I have a fascination with the Dalai Lama, and am about to go to Tibet - but rega

Aug 10th, 2007

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

I silly/fun story that is somewhat of a mix between the story/characters from the movie Dogma, and humor ala Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The story is about the apocalypse, and an angel and a dem

Aug 5th, 2007

Paul Auster

I am still trying to determine what I think of this book - at times I think it is one of the better books I have ever read, and sometimes I think it is just boring nonsense. I'm not sure how a book c

Aug 1st, 2007

Paul Auster

A great book that takes place in Park Slope Brooklyn, which is where my brother lives. It is an endearing story about a retired man and his adventures, trials and tribulations mostly revolving arou

Jul 26th, 2007

J.K. Rowling

This is a pretty obscure series, but one you may like. It may be hard to find in a traditional book store, you may have to look around for it. This is the 7th and (maybe?) last book in the series.

Jun 13th, 2007

Da Chen

I believe they call this historical fiction (maybe?). It takes place in china from 1960 through 1998, including historical events such as the Tiananmen square protests. The tale tells of two brother

Jun 2nd, 2007

Philip Pullman

Book one of His Dark Materials trilogy. I took a long break from reading to enjoy the natural beauties of the world... or something like that. Anyhow, I saw a movie preview for a film called Golden

Jun 2nd, 2007

Philip Pullman

Book two of His Dark Materials trilogy.

Jun 2nd, 2007

Philip Pullman

Book three of His Dark Materials trilogy.

May 6th, 2007

Robert Baer

A fictional tale about how the events that led up to the September 11th, 2001 occurred. The author of this book is a former CIA agent who is able to bring really great details to the story. It defi

Apr 30th, 2007

Mark Haddon

The third recommendation from the Samantha Crow Reading Club was another hit. That was a very unique and different book. It is a fictitious account written first person by an autistic teenager. T

Apr 28th, 2007

Ann Patchett

This novel is the second to come recommended by the Samantha Crow Reading Club. It was a gem of a story - incredibly written and really interesting story line. I must say, I would have preferred to

Apr 25th, 2007

Lois Lowry

I believe this is required reading for some middle schoolers these days - but I guess I must have missed it. It is a super fast read, but really interesting and touching. It takes place in some time

Apr 24th, 2007

Jim Miotke

I used this as my introduction to photography, and I was extremely satisfied with the experience. The book went over all of the basics of photography, helped me understand my new camera that I just

Apr 15th, 2007

Paul Hine

This is a fantastic resource for all you HTML haxors out there. Goes into some great detail about various peculiarities with html. The author is definitely opinionated about what is and is not corre

Mar 20th, 2007

Jonathan Stroud

The last in "The Bartimaeus Trilogy" - still fun, and still a quick read.

Mar 10th, 2007

Jonathan Stroud

Second book in the series in "The Bartimaeus Trilogy" - with The Amulaet of Samrkand being the first. Again a good fun quick read.

Feb 16th, 2007

Matthew Polly

A surprisingly good read. The book follows Polly on his quest from Princeton to rural china in his attempt to learn martial arts. The topic of martial arts is something that would not normally inte

Feb 10th, 2007

Jonathan Stroud

I saw someone on the train reading this book, so I figured I would give it a try - turns out it is a fun read. As I was nearing the end of the book I went to the book store to try to find the second

Jan 21st, 2007

Robert Ludlum

Not a very good read. It was an interesting and exciting story line, but it was just poorly written. The book is about a government agent who is locked away in a psych word unjustly, his escape, and

Jan 1st, 2007

Gregory Maguire

This is by the same author who wrote Wicked. It is about Snow white and the 7 (+1) dwarves from a very different view point. A lot of fun to read.

Dec 28th, 2006

Christopher Priest

I'm told there was a movie based off of this book recently. It is about two stage magicians in the early 1900s who are at odds with each other - to the point of trying to mess up each other's present

Dec 23rd, 2006

Christopher Paolini

I went on a bit of a reading haitus as I couldn't find a book that would hold my attention. Eragon was a book that I had read a year or two ago, and had really enjoyed, so I re-read this one in celeb

Nov 25th, 2006

Neal Stephenson

This was recommended by a couple different people. I would give it two thumbs up. It was written in 1992, at the dawn of the internet age, and it is really amazing how insightful the author is on h

Nov 24th, 2006

Alexandre Dumas

1,400 pages of fun. About half way through, I realized there is an abridged version as well. Oh well. Anyhow, this was a very fun read that captured my attention for the duration of the book. I de

Nov 8th, 2006

Tom Wolfe

I didn't finish this one. It came highly recommended, but I was just struggling to keep my interest in this one, so eventually gave up. The story takes place in ATL (and a bit in Cali), and talks a

Oct 16th, 2006

Anne Rice

I was half way through this before I found out that it was the third book in a series. woops. Anyhow, it was a fun read. I'm told that Anne Rice is into vampires and such. This was somewhat in th

Oct 8th, 2006

E. L. Doctorow

his was a pretty interesting read, entirely fiction, about a young boy who gets pulled in (or rather who chooses to jump into) a mafia gang, and it describes the mentality of the mafia in the 20s, wi

Oct 4th, 2006

Michael Crichton

So so. I had read most of Michael Crichton's books as a kid and loved them, but I guess as an adult it just isn't quite the same. At the beginning of the book though it starts out in Mountain View

Oct 1st, 2006

Audrey Niffenegger

This was a really great book. Somewhat of a chick book so to speak, but really a great read. The story is of a man who time travels often without having any control over when he travels, or where h

Sep 15th, 2006

Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Book one of The Obsidian Trilogy. These are a bit more fantasy'ish than what I am used to, but they were a fun entertaining read. They go really quickly as well.

Sep 15th, 2006

Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Book two of The Obsidian Trilogy.

Sep 15th, 2006

Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Book three of The Obsidian Trilogy.

Aug 15th, 2006

George R. R. Martin

Book one of A Song of Ice and Fire. If you have a few months to set aside, this is a good read. There are tons of characters involved, and sometimes you wish that they would just stick with a few

Aug 15th, 2006

George R. R. Martin

Book two of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Aug 15th, 2006

George R. R. Martin

Book three of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Aug 15th, 2006

George R. R. Martin

Book three of A Song of Ice and Fire.