A Quarter of Reading: From Cyberwar to Karate
Between January and March, the reading list spanned geopolitics, neuroscience, history, and fiction. It opened with Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society, a 2009 collection of essays critiquing left-leaning intellectuals. The book is engaging yet openly biased, and although it focuses on the early-to-mid 20th century, its themes still resonate.
Ben Buchanan's The Hacker and the State offers a solid overview of major state-sponsored cyberattacks from the past 15 years. Because the book relies on information leaked to the press, its coverage is necessarily partial and lacks technical depth, but it remains a well-researched and interesting read. Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoir describes his years studying baboons in Kenya, though only about a quarter of the book is strictly about the primates. The bulk is devoted to the author's adventures and interactions with locals—some of which feel dangerously inspired. It is engaging, educational, and witty.
James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State examines why well-intentioned state plans often produce tragic results, looking at scientific forestry, planned cities, and monoculture agriculture. Some chapters are compelling, but the thesis is muddled by a puzzling mix of state and private enterprise examples. Gichin Funakoshi's Karate-Do: My Way of Life is a brief autobiography from the founder of modern Shotokan Karate. It highlights how recent the art's prominence is—pre-WWII, it was a niche practice outside Okinawa. The prose is fluid and concise, making it a particularly enjoyable book.
Ilan Sheinfeld's A Tale of a Ring, read in Hebrew, is a multi-generational saga of two families moving from Danzig to Buenos Aires in the late 19th century, with a touch of magic. It did not resonate strongly. Hampton Sides's The Wide Wide Sea recounts Captain Cook's final voyage to find a northwest passage around Canada, with particular focus on his encounters with Polynesian peoples, especially in Hawaii. Sergei Dovlatov's The Suitcase, read in Russian, is a collection of short stories in his signature humorous style—a nice, very short book. Kim Ho-Yeon's The Second Chance Convenience Store offers connected stories around a Seoul convenience store and its unusual new night-shift employee; it is short, sweet, and enjoyable.
John Barton's A History of the Bible is a very detailed examination of both testaments, covering many angles. Parts are tedious and it is not an easy read. Though the author attempts scientific objectivity, it is clear—at least to an atheist reader—that he dances close to outright dismissal despite being a priest. For technical reading, Mara Bos's Rust Atomics and Locks covers low-level concurrency in Rust. It is decent for those new to the subject, but failed to captivate this reader. The accompanying code repository lacks test harnesses and benchmarks, which makes many claims feel unverified and makes experimenting with the behavior more difficult.
Michiko Aoyama's Hot Chocolate on Thursday sits just below her earlier What You Are Looking For Is in the Library. Both consist of connected short stories about ordinary people in Japan (with a detour to Australia); the newer work is still good, albeit slightly weaker. The standout of the quarter was finally tackling J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, a book avoided for 25 years due to its difficult reputation. What finally pushed this read was the author's kids, who devoured it after loving Lord of the Rings.
The Silmarillion is both epic and borderline unreadable, largely due to Tolkien's unbridled naming—three to four new names per page for characters, forests, rivers, and magical items. Many names change over time or vary by which people use them. The edition read featured a helpful 42-page index, which only marginally eased the task. Despite the naming burden, the language is outstanding, and the book stands as a monumental mythology—Bible-like in scope and internally consistent, provided the reader tracks who is who. It is unjust to view it as merely a prelude to The Lord of the Rings. Compared to the Silmarillion's breadth, LOTR is a tiny quest told in elaborate detail, while the earlier book includes brief narratives of at least a dozen comparable sagas. In the era of modern media building their own universes, The Silmarillion remains the original of that form.
Re-reads and Reruns
This period also included some familiar favorites, revisited either for pleasure or reflection:
- Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- The Philadelphia Chromosome by Jessica Wapner
- The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine
