books i read in 2020

*means i especially liked it



1. Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer*

2. Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer

3. The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer (so excited for Perhaps the Stars)

4. Sontag: Her Life and Work (partial)

5. Submission by Houellebecq*

6. Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

7. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Maslow*

8. The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei

9. Foundation by Isaac Asimov*

10. The Overstory by Richard Powers*

11. Tète-a-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley

12. You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld

13. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

14. Foundation by Isaac Asimov

15. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

16. The Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

17. Circe by Madeline Miller

18. Free Will by Sam Harris

19. The Logogryph by Thomas Wharton - very differently sleeved, for a book, and quite surprising

20. Instantiation by Greg Egan

21. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

22. Severance by Ling Ma

23. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

24. Revenge Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

25. Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan

26. Island by Aldous Huxley

27. The Genius and the Goddess by Aldous Huxley

28. Us Conductors by Sean Michaels

29. The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

30. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

31. Unsong by Scott Alexander* (kabbalism is very interesting)

32. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin

33. A Very Short Introduction: Existentialism

34. Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion by Michelle Dean

35. What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub

36. Blockchain Chicken Farm by Xiaowei R. Wang

37. Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham Maslow (repeat)

38. A Briefing for a Descent into Hell by Doris Lessing

39. Games People Play by Berne.

Pastimes and games are substitutes for the real living of intimacy. Game-free intimacy is the most perfect form of human living. A Third-Degree Game is one that is played for keeps, and which ends in the surgery, the courtroom or the morgue. The stroke as a unit of exchange, and stroke-expectation in game-theoretic analyses of conversations. “Beautiful friendships” are often based on the fact that the players complement each other with great economy and satisfaction, so that there is a maximum yield with minimum effort from the games they play with each other.

40. Meanings of Life by Roy Baumeister



Books I'd like to read/re-read with other people:

1. What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub

2. Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham Maslow

3. Meanings of Life by Roy Baumeister

4. Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit