Library
This is a list of all the books I've reviewed since 2001. Enjoy!
2024
- The Appeal by Janice Hallett★★★★★
- 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman★★★★★
- Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang★★★★★
- How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication by Tom Mustill★★★★☆
- The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson★★★★⯪
- Berserker! by Adrian Edmondson★★★★☆
- Myself When Young by Margot Asquith★★★★⯪
- The Intergalactic Omniglot by Jenni Fleetwood★★★★★
- Somewhere To Be by Laurie Mather★★★★⯪
- Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire by Adam Greenfield★★★⯪☆
- The Pursuit of Purpose Part memoir, part study – A book about finding your way in the world by Ken Banks★★★★☆
- Dystopia X by A.E. Currie★★★⯪☆
- The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder★⯪☆☆☆
- Relic by Alan Dean Foster★★★⯪☆
- Understanding Privacy by Heather Burns★★★★★
- Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde★★★★⯪
- Fallen Idols by Alex von Tunzelmann★★★★★
- The Doors of Opportunity by Rosalind Messenger★★★★★
- The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel★★★☆☆
- Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy by Pablo Hidalgo★⯪☆☆☆
- Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World by Georgina Voss★★★⯪☆
- The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas★★★★⯪
- How Big Things Get Done : The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration by Bent Flyvbjerg & Dan Gardner★★★★⯪
- The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz★★★⯪☆
- We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News by Eliot Higgins★★★⯪☆
- Julia by Sandra Newman★★★★★
- How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History by Samantha Cole★★★⯪☆
- The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde★★★★☆
- Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography by Rob Wilkins★★★★★
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin★★★★★
- Babel by R.F. Kuang★★★★★
- Refuse to Choose! A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love by Barbara Sher★★☆☆☆
- You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane★★★⯪☆
- The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal★★★☆☆
2023
- Hokey Pokey by Kate Mascarenhas★★★★★
- Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 4 by Emily Brill-Holland★★⯪☆☆
- Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants - Britain's First Female Crime Syndicate by Brian McDonald★★★★☆
- Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser★★★★⯪
- Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel★★★⯪☆
- Hamlet, Prince of Robots by M. Darusha Wehm★★★★⯪
- The Man From the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya★★★★☆
- The Modern Bestiary: A Curated Collection of Wondrous Creatures by Joanna Bagniewska★★★★★
- A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell★★★★★
- Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction From Ukraine & The Diaspora by Valya Dudycz Lupescu★★★★★
- How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand★★★★★
- Bournville by Jonathan Coe★⯪☆☆☆
- The Twilight of the British Empire: British Intelligence and Counter-Subversion in the Middle East, 1948–63 by Chikara Hashimoto★★⯪☆☆
- Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick★★★★☆
- The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll★★★★★
- Time Squared by Lesley Krueger★★★☆☆
- The Variable Man and other stories by Philip K. Dick★★★★☆
- Hacking Capitalism: Modeling, Humans, Computers, and Money by Kris Nóva★★★★☆
- The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow★★★★⯪
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie★★★★⯪
- The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp★★★★★
- Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus★★★★☆
- Kill It With Fire - Manage Ageing Computer Systems by Marianne Bellotti★★★★★
- The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Eight by Jonathan Strahan★★★★☆
- Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock★★★⯪☆
- Pleased! A short story anthology in celebration of The Beatles' Please Please Me album's 60th anniversary by Gayle Ramage★★⯪☆☆
- Plain Text - The Poetics of Computation by Dennis Tenen★★★★☆
- Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed★★★★☆
- The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy: Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow★★★☆☆
- Starter Villain by John Scalzi★★★★⯪
- Invisible Planets by Ken Liu★★★★☆
- Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress by Hasok Chang★★☆☆☆
- It's Not About the Burqa by Mariam Khan★★★⯪☆
- Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey★★☆☆☆
- The Constant Sinner by Mae West★★★★★
- A History of Boll*cks Theories, and How Not to Fall for Them by Tom Phillips & Jonn Elledge★★★★★
- The Reincarnated Giant by Mingwei Song★★★☆☆
- Radicalized by Cory Doctorow★★★★☆
- "You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World by Torie Bosch★★★★⯪
- Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton★★★★★
- Shakespeare in Jest by Indira Ghose★★⯪☆☆
- Leviathan Wakes: Book One of The Expanse by James S. A. Corey★★★☆☆
- The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy★★★★★
- Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by Qntm★★★★☆
- The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold by Sam Knight★★★★★
- Denizen 43 by A. E. Currie★★★★☆
- Portraits of Childfree Wealth by Jay Zigmont★★★★☆
- Consider the Platypus by Maggie Ryan Sandford★★★⯪☆
- Adventures in Space - New Short Stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers by Patrick Parrinder ★★★☆☆
- The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane Loudon★★★☆☆
- Pod by Laline Paull★★★★☆
- 12 Bytes - How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the Way We Live and Love by Jeanette Winterson★★⯪☆☆
- If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable by Mikko Hyppönen★★★☆☆
- Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman★★★★★
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro★★☆☆☆
- Mirrorshades by Bruce Sterling★★★⯪☆
- Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson★★★★☆
- Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera★★★★⯪
- More Zeros and Ones Digital Technology, Maintenance and Equity in Aotearoa New Zealand by Anna Pendergrast and Kelly Pendergrast★★★★☆
- There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill★★★★☆
- The Really Good Idea Test by Julia Shalet★★★★★
- Pink Floyd and The Dark Side of the Moon by Martin Popoff★★★⯪☆
2022
- Rising Tide by Jennifer Palgrave★★★★☆
- Reality Is Broken - Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal★★★⯪☆
- A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided by Dr Amanda Foreman★★★★⯪
- The Bees by Laline Paull★★★★★
- Gnomon by Nick Harkaway★★☆☆☆
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir★★★★⯪
- The Language Hoax by John H. McWhorter★★★☆☆
- So, You Have to Write a Literature Review: A Guided Workbook for Engineers by Catherine G.P. Berdanier & Joshua B. Lenart★★★★★
- The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers★★★★⯪
- Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in a World Built for Men: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men by Katrine Marçal★★★★⯪
- Binti by Nnedi Okorafor★★★★⯪
- Animal Vegetable Criminal: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach★★★☆☆
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova★★★★★
- Me++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City by William J. Mitchell★★★★⯪
- Sex: Lessons From History by Fern Riddell★★★⯪☆
- Illegal Alien by Robert Sawyer★★★★⯪
- Shakespeare and Immigration by Espinosa & Ruiter★★★☆☆
- When HARLIE Was One, Release 2.0 by David Gerrold★★★★☆
- An Unnatural Life by Erin K Wagner★★☆☆☆
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers★★★★☆
- Rhetoric of InSecurity; The Language of Danger, Fear and Safety in National and International Contexts by Victoria Baines★★★★⯪
- The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson★★★⯪☆
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke★★★★★
- There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm★★★★★
- The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar★★★★⯪
- Conundra by A.E. Currie★★★★☆
- The Programmer's Brain - What every programmer needs to know about cognition by Felienne Hermans★★★★★
- Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy by Martin Paul Eve★★★⯪☆
- The Uplift War by David Brin★★★★⯪
- Information Warfare and Security by Dorothy E. Denning★★★★⯪
- Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons★★★★★
- Ira Aldridge The African Roscius by Bernth Lindfors★★★⯪☆
- The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi★★★★★
- Startide Rising by David Brin★★★★⯪
- Die With Zero by Bill Perkins★★★★☆
- Doctor Who: The Vault by Marcus Hearn★★★★⯪
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Dr Shashi Tharoor★★★★⯪
- The Empyrean by Katherine Franklin★★★★☆
2021
- Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal★★★★⯪
- The Medusa Chronicles by Alastair Reynolds & Stephen Baxter★★★★★
- Future law : emerging technology, regulation and ethics by Lilian Edwards ★★★★☆
- The Idiot Gods by David Zindell★★★★☆
- IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation by Edwin Black★★★★★
- The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz★★★★★
- Disability and the Tudors All the King's Fools - by Phillipa Vincent Connolly★★★⯪☆
- Glass Coffin by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch★★★★⯪
- Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott★★★★⯪
- Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo★★★★★
- After Meat The Case for an Amazing, Meat-Free World by Karthik Sekar★★★☆☆
- Professional Practice in Engineering and Computing: Preparing for Future Careers by Riadh Habash☆☆☆☆☆
- Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland★★★★☆
- Sexual Revolution - Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback by Laurie Penny★★★★⯪
- Such Big Teeth by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch★★★★☆
- A Teaspoon and an Open Mind - The Science of Doctor Who by Michael White★★⯪☆☆
- New Moons For Sam Becoming Kiwi – Life of a New Zealand Diplomat by Peter Hamilton★★⯪☆☆
- All That Remains: A Life in Death by Sue Black★★★★☆
- The Atlas of Unusual Languages by Zoran Nikolić★☆☆☆☆
- The Transgender Issue An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye★★★★⯪
- The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson★⯪☆☆☆
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong★★☆☆☆
- Darkwood by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch★★★★⯪
- Bias Interrupted Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good by Joan C. Williams★★★⯪☆
- The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race by Ayanna Thompson★★★★☆
- To Be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers★★★★⯪
- The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth and Power by Deirdre Mask★★★★★
- Amatka by Karin Tidbeck★★★★★
- Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang★★★⯪☆
- How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu★★★★★
- The Power of Privilege How White People can Challenge Racism by June Sarpong★★★★⯪
- Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by Pat Cadigan; William Gibson★★★★☆
- Clockwork River by J.S. Emery★⯪☆☆☆
- The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman★★★★☆
- The Cabinet by Un-su Kim★★☆☆☆
- The Art of Statistics - Learning from Data by David Spiegelhalter★★★★⯪
- The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes by Zoë Playdon★★★★★
- No Bath But Plenty Of Bubbles: An Oral History of the Gay Liberation Front 1970-73 by Lisa Power★★★★☆
- The End of Bias How We Change Our Minds by Jessica Nordell★★★★☆
- DALEK by Robert Shearman★★★★★
- Sinopticon 2021 : A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction by Xueting Christine Ni★★★★★
- How to Make the World Add Up by Tim Harford ★★★★★
- The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin ★★★★☆
- Sundiver by David Brin★★★★★
- The Happiness Revolution: A Manifesto for Living Your Best Life by Andy Pope and Paul McGee★★☆☆☆
- Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan★★★★★
- Difficult Women by Helen Lewis★★★★☆
- Assassin's Orbit by John Appel ★★★⯪☆
- The Computer’s Voice - From Star Trek to Siri by Liz W. Faber★★☆☆☆
- The 22 Murders Of Madison May by Max Barry★★★★☆
- Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North★★★★★
- Quarantine Comix by Rachael Smith★★★☆☆
- A Brief History of Motion From the Wheel to the Car to What Comes Next by Tom Standage★★★⯪☆
- Record of a Spaceborn Few : Wayfarers 3 by Becky Chambers★★★★☆
- A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers★★★★☆
- Our Biggest Experiment by Alice Bell★★★★★
- Handmade A Scientist’s Search for Meaning through Making by Dr Anna Ploszajski★★★★★
- Agency by William Gibson★★★☆☆
- A History of Women in Men's Clothes by Norena Shopland★★★★⯪
- The Gameshouse by Claire North★★★★⯪
- What White People Can Do Next From Allyship to Coalition by Emma Dabiri★★★★☆
- Always On by Rory Cellan-Jones★★★★★
- Good Data by Sam Gilbert★☆☆☆☆
- Monstrous Design by Kat Dunn★★★★⯪
- The Wrens of World War II: Bletchley's Secret Source by Peter Hore★★★★☆
- Star Wars from a Certain Point of View by Various★★★☆☆
- Feminist City Claiming Space in a Man-Made World by Leslie Kern★★★★☆
- Doctor Who - The Witchfinders by Joy Wilkinson★★★★★
- Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth★★★★☆
- Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen★★★☆☆
- Kindred - Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes★★★★☆
- Black Sci-Fi Short Stories by Temi Oh★★★★☆
- Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal★★⯪☆☆
- Dangerous Remedy by Kat Dunn★★★★★
- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers★★★★★
- How To Invent Everything by Ryan North★★★★☆
- The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis★★★★☆
- The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton★★★★★
- Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller★★★★★
- I'm a joke and so are you by Robin Ince★★★☆☆
- BitCoin Hurricane by Kate Baucherel ★★★★☆
- Radical Help by Hillary Cottam★★★★★
- Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia★★★★☆
- Humble Pi by Matt Parker★★★★⯪
- Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy★⯪☆☆☆
- The Problem with Men: When is it International Men’s Day? (and why it matters) by Richard Herring★★★★★
2020
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman★★★★☆
- Sweet Harmony by Claire North★★★★★
- Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole★★★★★
- Doctor Who: Scratchman by Tom Baker & James Goss ★★⯪☆☆
- Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble★★★★☆
- Shouting Zeros and Ones by Andrew Chen★★★★★
- The Thief on the Winged Horse by Kate Mascarenhas★★★★★
- Circe by Madeline Miller★★★★★
- Privacy is Power by Carissa Véliz★★★★★
- Utopia Five by A.E. Currie★★★⯪☆
- Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain by Nadine Akkerman★★☆☆☆
- Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees★★★★★
- Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch★★★★★
- The One That Got Away by Jennifer Palgrave★★★★☆
- A Short Philosophy of Birds by Elise Rousseau⯪☆☆☆☆
- The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett★★★★⯪
- Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin★★★⯪☆
- The Relentless Moon: A Lady Astronaut Novel by Mary Robinette Kowal★★★★★
- Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig★★★⯪☆
- A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor★★★⯪☆
- Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufmann★★★★⯪
- Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini★★★★★
- Philosophy of Race: An Introduction by Naomi Zack★★★⯪☆
- ood Services - How to Design Services that Work by Lou Downe★★★★★
- The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard★★⯪☆☆
- The House Without Windows by Barbara Newhall Follett★★⯪☆☆
- Teaching Medicine and Medical Ethics Using Popular Culture by Dr Evie Kendal★★★★★
- Beyond the Labyrinth by Gillian Rubinstein★★★★★
- This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith★★★★★
- Touch by Claire North★★★★⯪
- The Future of Feeling by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips★★⯪☆☆
- Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu The Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions by Lois H Gresh★★⯪☆☆
- Something Beginning With by Sarah Salway★☆☆☆☆
- A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong★★⯪☆☆
- The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North★★★★⯪
- The Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw★★★★★
- Sapience by Alexis Lantgen★★★★⯪
- Alone Together by Sherry Turkle★★★★★
- The Guilty Feminist by Deborah Frances-White★★★★⯪
- Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho★★★★☆
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff★⯪☆☆☆
- Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor★★★★⯪
- The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato★★★★☆
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld Imaginarium by Paul Kidby★★⯪☆☆
- Kindred by Octavia E. Butler★★★★★
2019
- Mismatch by Kat Holmes★★★★⯪
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar★★★★★
- The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon★★★★☆
- Zero Sum Game by S. L. Huang★★★⯪☆
- Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch★★★★⯪
- Chemical Detective by Fiona Erskine★★☆☆☆
- The Five by Hallie Rubenhold★★★★★
- The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) by Philip Pullman★★⯪☆☆
- Permanent Record by Edward Snowden★★⯪☆☆
- Helpful Hackers by Chris van 't Hof★★★★⯪
- A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier★★☆☆☆
- Queer Privacy by Sarah Jamie Lewis★★★⯪☆
- The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal★★★★⯪
- Jennifer Government by Max Berry★★★★☆
- Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez★★★★★
- Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet★★★★☆
- Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson★★★★⯪
- Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Lee Israel★★★⯪☆
- The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal★★★★★
- Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) by Scott Rieckens★★★☆☆
- Do No Harm by Henry Marsh★★☆☆☆
- The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Vs. Dracula by Loren D. Estleman★★★★☆
- Deep Medicine by Eric Topol★★★★☆
- The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross★★☆☆☆
- Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalee Newitz★★★⯪☆
- 84K by Claire North★★★★⯪
- The Secret Barrister by Anonymous★★★☆☆
- The City & The City by China Miéville★★★★★
- The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla★★★★☆
- The End of the Day by Claire North★★★★★
- Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman★★★★☆
- How Long 'til Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin★★★★★
- Bad Blood by John Carreyrou★★★★⯪
- Inferior by Angela Saini★★★★★
- Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood★★★★⯪
- Hello World by Hannah Fry★★★⯪☆
- Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel★★★★☆
- Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker★★★⯪☆
- I, Robot by Isaac Asimov★★★★★
- Longitude by Dava Sobel★★★★⯪
- Death's End by Cixin Liu★★★⯪☆
- This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay★★★☆☆
- Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Benson★★★★☆
- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge★★★★⯪
- Letters from Alcatraz by Michael Esslinger★★☆☆☆
- Fukushima Dreams by Zelda Rhiando★★★★☆
- The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross★★⯪☆☆
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari★★★★☆
- Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates★★⯪☆☆
- The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas★★★★☆
- Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright & Bradley Hope★★★★☆
- Was This in the Plan? by Stephanie Nimmo★★★★★
- Autonomous by Annalee Newitz★★★★⯪
- Nina is Not OK by Shappi Khorsandi★★★★★
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling★★★★★
lilo said on muenster.im:
@Edent Works perfectly for people who can't pass a book shelf without reading all the titles, finding common friends and discovering new ones...
Ruth Nineke said on bsky.app:
🙌🏽