Table of Contents

“Anathem”, Neal Stephenson

I come back to this book frequently, I find its vision really inspiring. The premise: imagine if Plato’s academy managed to persist itself through thousands of years of history by cloistering itself into walled abbeys full of monks that do nothing but study all day, every day.

For me this book always gets me dreaming about focusing purely on intellectual pursuits, and actually committing my time to more long term projects. The book was birthed as a result of Stephenson’s work with The Long Now society, which is also worth looking into.

An overall must-read.

“Wind and Truth”, Brandon Sanderson

I feel like I’m just reading further Stormlight books out of obligation. I loved the first three so much, but I find all books after that to be way too long and not very interesting, and this latest one was so bloated, I may just finally abandon the series. I suspect the series is suffering from Second Star Wars Trilogy syndrome: Brandon Sanderson is now too successful for anyone to be able to say No to him anymore.

“The First Law” series, Joe Abercrombie

Awesome fantasy series. Excellent world and lorebuilding balanced against a very tight focus on a small subset of characters in a single time period. Fun cast. Well worth my time and yours. A fantasy must-read.

“Anarchist Communism”, Peter Kropotkin

Picked up a paper copy at Shakespeare Books in Paris, carried it around in my back pocket as a sort of experiment in making it as easy to read as it is to pull out my phone. Annotated the hell out of it and made it my own. Great read. A very condensed and efficient description of the political philosophy I most identify with.

“The Traffic Power Structure”, by Planka.nu

Picked up in an anarchist bookstore in Amsterdam, along with way too many other books. Very full backpack on that trip. I was hoping it’d get more into the strategies and history of this specific group, but instead it focused more on philosophical and political analysis of the issues surrounding cars. Still very interesting, gave it to my friends in Sweden after reading it.

“A Brief History of Anarchism in Romania”, Vlad Brătuleanu

Also from the Amsterdam anarchist bookstore, I mostly bought and read it so as to give it to my Romanian friend. A bit dry, but probably the most precise history of anarchism in Romania!

“The Mongoliad Book Three”, Neal Stephenson and Friends

I’m hoping to read all of Neal Stephenson’s catalog, so starting two years ago I began working my way through The Mongoliad. As I understand it, a lot of other authors were involved with this, but Stephenson’s unique brand of obsessive documentation of events combined with just a hint of magic show through beyond everything else. Long, long, long, but great to read the whole way through.

We Are Legion, We Are Bob (entire series), Dennis E. Taylor

I pulled this off some Scifi recommendation list. For me, it touched upon a lot of classic Scifi tropes I like to think about, such as the nature of consciousness and identity in a world where people can upload, but it would take those concepts in directions I’d find to be as naive as if it was written for television. Like the Matrix plot positing that humans are used as a massive neural network for the dominant AI to run on, but being changed to the far more technically nonsensical, but allegedly more palatable to normies, idea of humans as “batteries.” The humor often was too corny for me as well. Finally, in classic Scifi fashion, the books would introduce something interesting beyond all other things, such as aliens, and then hyperfocus on something deeply uninteresting, like a human drama.

I believe the series is unfinished, but I probably won’t read future books.

“Where the Axe is Buried”, Ray Nayler

Read on recommendation by Cory Doctorow. Definitely one of those situations where a trailer will mislead you - if you read taglines about this, you’ll probably go in with the wrong expectation. The scifi aspects were minor fodder to drive what I found to be a pretty interesting political drama, but the story glosses entirely over what I figured would be the most interesting bit (and the bit that the taglines all focus on) and rushes to end. Still interesting, just too abrupt.

“Aurora”, Kim Stanley Robinson

A unique angle for a Sci Fi, and a niche I’m starting to like a lot. Apparently the thesis was that most sci fi writers focus too much on the engineering problems of sci fi - how would you design a matrioshka brain, a torus world, a ringworld, but ignore the far messier and more difficult (impossible?) to solve problem of environment and biology. It reminded me of “A Half-Built Garden” by Ruthanna Emrys for that reason.

I really liked the narrative perspective here, it was singular and added to the spice of the book. A fairly strong recommendation.

“Roadside Picnic”, Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky

The book that inspired a lot of great videogames, most notably the Stalker series. I just wish there were more of it! After I finished I started searching for any other books, shows, or movies of a similar vein. A really fun read.

“Liveship Traders” series, Robin Hobb

I finally picked up this massive Assassin’s saga that I first started I think in 2023. It’s a huge shift away from the first three books in the series. It reads like a proper seaborne pirate adventure and got me deeply emotionally involved. Strongly recommend.

“Fitz and the Fool” series, Robin Hobb

I finished off the series and devoured the remaining three books in like a month. Once again, a huge shift away from the Ship of Magic books, and once again, just as entertaining and involved. Incredibly, I recently learned I missed three entire books in this series, so I’ll have to go back for those in 2026. Anyway, this whole series goes on my “must read” list.

“Voyage from Yesteryear”, James P. Hogan

A classic Scifi “what if anarchism.” The characters are forgettable, insomuch as I’ve completely forgotten all of them, but each of the societies are memorable, as are the anarchist methods of dealing with an encroaching fascist society. Honestly, a bit masturbatory for an anarchist to read, since the ending is fairly obvious, but still fun for that reason. It’s interesting that it was written in the early ’80s.

“Delivered from Distraction”, Edward M. Hallowell

Probably a life changing book for someone with ADHD. Recently my goal has become to learn as much as I can about how to live a good life, how to learn, and how to live with my quirks and flaws. This book covered everything I could hope for in learning about ADHD science. It was heartening to be seen so clearly and recognize myself in the stories Hallowell told of his patients or the people he talked to in researching the book, and it was nice to be thrown a bone in all the success stories he told about ADHD people.

Most useful was the direct advice he gave for living with the condition. From simple stuff like taking fish oil and exercising daily, to more complex like a cyclical process to finding happiness and meaning (which I turned into questions in my current daily review system)

“Earthsea Series”, Ursula K. Le Guin

This has also been on my list for ages. It’s very quotable, with little philosophical tidbits or insights represented efficiently through poetic dialogue. Each book in the series tackles interesting issues, and the feminist takes from Le Guin are always good and insightful for me, angles I don’t often get to hear. I’m glad I finally read these.

“How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning, and Thinking”, Sönke Ahrens

I really wish I’d read this in college. A powerful argument for maintaining a very simple notetaking system, and aligns with my overall move back into handwritten notes. The zettelkasten bits were overcomplicated in my opinion, but it made a good argument in general for maintaining at least some kind of external scaffolding through writing, and it kicked off a whole new writing habit for me that has made me feel much more thoughtful.

“The Boys”, Garth Ennis

On a trip to Japan at the end of the year I went into a dopamine detox: no reddit, hacker news, youtube, etc. For some reason this made me briefly super into comics and graphic novels, so I tore through like four different series while floating in a tub for a week. First was The Boys, which was a good laugh, aged a lot better than the show.

“The Metabarons”, Alejandro Jodorowsky

Then was a gorgeous series that I really want to write a long blog post on at some point. I’m convinced that The Metabaron is deeply satirical, possibly even communist propaganda, and is being misread by everyone. It’s just so absurdly campy. The alternative is the author really is that unironically hypermasculine and campy, which is also funny. Either way, it’s probably the most gorgeously drawn comics I’ve ever read.

“Daytripper”, Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

Bizarre slightly morbid comic, but I liked the theme of exploring all the paths one’s life could take, and how any path could end abruptly, so live life to its fullest etc etc.