Library
This is a list of all the books I've reviewed since 2001. Enjoy!
2025
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Great Robots of History by Tim Major
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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
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Fabulosa! - The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language by Paul Baker
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The Wicked of the Earth by A D Bergin
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The Little Book of Ikigai - The secret Japanese way to live a happy and long life by Ken Mogi
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The Man In The Wall by KJ Lyttleton
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Machine Readable Me by Zara Rahman
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Hive - Madders of Time Book One by D. L. Orton
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Medieval Cats - Claws, Paws, and Kitties of Yore by Catherine Nappington
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Web Accessibility Cookbook by Manuel Matuzović
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In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
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The Rituals of Dinner by Margaret Visser
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Queen B by Juno Dawson
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We Need New Stories - Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent by Nesrine Malik
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The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett
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The Great White Bard by Farah Karim-Cooper
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Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
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What If? 10th Anniversary Edition - Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
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Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
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Rules for Radicals - A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky
2024
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The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
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A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway
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Git Commit Murder by Michael Warren Lucas
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Platformland : An Anatomy of Next-Generation Public Services by Richard Pope
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When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
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How Spies Think: 10 Lessons in Intelligence by David Omand
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The Appeal by Janice Hallett
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4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
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Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang
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How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication by Tom Mustill
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The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson
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Berserker! by Adrian Edmondson
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Myself When Young by Margot Asquith
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The Intergalactic Omniglot by Jenni Fleetwood
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Somewhere To Be by Laurie Mather
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Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire by Adam Greenfield
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The Pursuit of Purpose Part memoir, part study – A book about finding your way in the world by Ken Banks
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Dystopia X by A.E. Currie
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The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
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Relic by Alan Dean Foster
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Understanding Privacy by Heather Burns
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Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde
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Fallen Idols by Alex von Tunzelmann
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The Doors of Opportunity by Rosalind Messenger
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The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
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Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy by Pablo Hidalgo
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Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World by Georgina Voss
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The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
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How Big Things Get Done : The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration by Bent Flyvbjerg & Dan Gardner
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The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
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We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News by Eliot Higgins
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Julia by Sandra Newman
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How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History by Samantha Cole
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The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde
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Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography by Rob Wilkins
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
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Babel by R.F. Kuang
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Refuse to Choose! A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love by Barbara Sher
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You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane
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The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
2023
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Hokey Pokey by Kate Mascarenhas
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Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 4 by Emily Brill-Holland
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Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants - Britain's First Female Crime Syndicate by Brian McDonald
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Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser
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Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
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Hamlet, Prince of Robots by M. Darusha Wehm
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The Man From the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya
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The Modern Bestiary: A Curated Collection of Wondrous Creatures by Joanna Bagniewska
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A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
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Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction From Ukraine & The Diaspora by Valya Dudycz Lupescu
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How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand
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Bournville by Jonathan Coe
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The Twilight of the British Empire: British Intelligence and Counter-Subversion in the Middle East, 1948–63 by Chikara Hashimoto
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Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick
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The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll
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Time Squared by Lesley Krueger
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The Variable Man and other stories by Philip K. Dick
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Hacking Capitalism: Modeling, Humans, Computers, and Money by Kris Nóva
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The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow
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Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
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Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
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Kill It With Fire - Manage Ageing Computer Systems by Marianne Bellotti
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The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Eight by Jonathan Strahan
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Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock
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Pleased! A short story anthology in celebration of The Beatles' Please Please Me album's 60th anniversary by Gayle Ramage
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Plain Text - The Poetics of Computation by Dennis Tenen
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Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed
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The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy: Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow
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Starter Villain by John Scalzi
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Invisible Planets by Ken Liu
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Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress by Hasok Chang
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It's Not About the Burqa by Mariam Khan
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Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey
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The Constant Sinner by Mae West
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A History of Boll*cks Theories, and How Not to Fall for Them by Tom Phillips & Jonn Elledge
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The Reincarnated Giant by Mingwei Song
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Radicalized by Cory Doctorow
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"You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World by Torie Bosch
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Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton
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Shakespeare in Jest by Indira Ghose
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Leviathan Wakes: Book One of The Expanse by James S. A. Corey
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The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy
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Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by Qntm
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The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold by Sam Knight
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Denizen 43 by A. E. Currie
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Portraits of Childfree Wealth by Jay Zigmont
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Consider the Platypus by Maggie Ryan Sandford
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Adventures in Space - New Short Stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers by Patrick Parrinder
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The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane Loudon
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Pod by Laline Paull
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12 Bytes - How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the Way We Live and Love by Jeanette Winterson
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If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable by Mikko Hyppönen
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Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman
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Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Mirrorshades by Bruce Sterling
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Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson
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Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera
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More Zeros and Ones Digital Technology, Maintenance and Equity in Aotearoa New Zealand by Anna Pendergrast and Kelly Pendergrast
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There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill
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The Really Good Idea Test by Julia Shalet
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Pink Floyd and The Dark Side of the Moon by Martin Popoff
2022
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Rising Tide by Jennifer Palgrave
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Reality Is Broken - Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
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A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided by Dr Amanda Foreman
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The Bees by Laline Paull
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Gnomon by Nick Harkaway
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Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
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The Language Hoax by John H. McWhorter
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So, You Have to Write a Literature Review: A Guided Workbook for Engineers by Catherine G.P. Berdanier & Joshua B. Lenart
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The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
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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
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Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
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Animal Vegetable Criminal: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
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The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
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Me++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City by William J. Mitchell
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Sex: Lessons From History by Fern Riddell
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Illegal Alien by Robert Sawyer
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Shakespeare and Immigration by Espinosa & Ruiter
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When HARLIE Was One, Release 2.0 by David Gerrold
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An Unnatural Life by Erin K Wagner
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
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Rhetoric of InSecurity; The Language of Danger, Fear and Safety in National and International Contexts by Victoria Baines
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The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
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There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
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The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar
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Conundra by A.E. Currie
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The Programmer's Brain - What every programmer needs to know about cognition by Felienne Hermans
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Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy by Martin Paul Eve
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The Uplift War by David Brin
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Information Warfare and Security by Dorothy E. Denning
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Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons
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Ira Aldridge The African Roscius by Bernth Lindfors
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The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
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Startide Rising by David Brin
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Die With Zero by Bill Perkins
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Doctor Who: The Vault by Marcus Hearn
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Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Dr Shashi Tharoor
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The Empyrean by Katherine Franklin
2021
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Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal
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The Medusa Chronicles by Alastair Reynolds & Stephen Baxter
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Future law : emerging technology, regulation and ethics by Lilian Edwards
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The Idiot Gods by David Zindell
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IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation by Edwin Black
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The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz
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Disability and the Tudors All the King's Fools - by Phillipa Vincent Connolly
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Glass Coffin by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
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Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott
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Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
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After Meat The Case for an Amazing, Meat-Free World by Karthik Sekar
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Professional Practice in Engineering and Computing: Preparing for Future Careers by Riadh Habash
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Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland
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Sexual Revolution - Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback by Laurie Penny
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Such Big Teeth by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
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A Teaspoon and an Open Mind - The Science of Doctor Who by Michael White
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New Moons For Sam Becoming Kiwi – Life of a New Zealand Diplomat by Peter Hamilton
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All That Remains: A Life in Death by Sue Black
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The Atlas of Unusual Languages by Zoran Nikolić
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The Transgender Issue An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye
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The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
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Darkwood by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
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Bias Interrupted Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good by Joan C. Williams
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The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race by Ayanna Thompson
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To Be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers
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The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth and Power by Deirdre Mask
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Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
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Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang
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How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
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The Power of Privilege How White People can Challenge Racism by June Sarpong
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Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by Pat Cadigan; William Gibson
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Clockwork River by J.S. Emery
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The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
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The Cabinet by Un-su Kim
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The Art of Statistics - Learning from Data by David Spiegelhalter
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The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes by Zoë Playdon
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No Bath But Plenty Of Bubbles: An Oral History of the Gay Liberation Front 1970-73 by Lisa Power
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The End of Bias How We Change Our Minds by Jessica Nordell
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DALEK by Robert Shearman
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Sinopticon 2021 : A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction by Xueting Christine Ni
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How to Make the World Add Up by Tim Harford
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The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
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Sundiver by David Brin
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The Happiness Revolution: A Manifesto for Living Your Best Life by Andy Pope and Paul McGee
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Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan
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Difficult Women by Helen Lewis
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Assassin's Orbit by John Appel
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The Computer’s Voice - From Star Trek to Siri by Liz W. Faber
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The 22 Murders Of Madison May by Max Barry
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Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North
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Quarantine Comix by Rachael Smith
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A Brief History of Motion From the Wheel to the Car to What Comes Next by Tom Standage
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Record of a Spaceborn Few : Wayfarers 3 by Becky Chambers
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A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
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Our Biggest Experiment by Alice Bell
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Handmade A Scientist’s Search for Meaning through Making by Dr Anna Ploszajski
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Agency by William Gibson
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A History of Women in Men's Clothes by Norena Shopland
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The Gameshouse by Claire North
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What White People Can Do Next From Allyship to Coalition by Emma Dabiri
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Always On by Rory Cellan-Jones
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Good Data by Sam Gilbert
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Monstrous Design by Kat Dunn
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The Wrens of World War II: Bletchley's Secret Source by Peter Hore
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Star Wars from a Certain Point of View by Various
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Feminist City Claiming Space in a Man-Made World by Leslie Kern
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Doctor Who - The Witchfinders by Joy Wilkinson
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Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth
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Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen
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Kindred - Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
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Black Sci-Fi Short Stories by Temi Oh
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Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
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Dangerous Remedy by Kat Dunn
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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
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How To Invent Everything by Ryan North
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The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis
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The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
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Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
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I'm a joke and so are you by Robin Ince
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BitCoin Hurricane by Kate Baucherel
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Radical Help by Hillary Cottam
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Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
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Humble Pi by Matt Parker
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Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy
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The Problem with Men: When is it International Men’s Day? (and why it matters) by Richard Herring
2020
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The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
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Sweet Harmony by Claire North
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Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole
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Doctor Who: Scratchman by Tom Baker & James Goss
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Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble
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Shouting Zeros and Ones by Andrew Chen
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The Thief on the Winged Horse by Kate Mascarenhas
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Circe by Madeline Miller
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Privacy is Power by Carissa Véliz
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Utopia Five by A.E. Currie
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Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain by Nadine Akkerman
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Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
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Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch
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The One That Got Away by Jennifer Palgrave
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A Short Philosophy of Birds by Elise Rousseau
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The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
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Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin
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The Relentless Moon: A Lady Astronaut Novel by Mary Robinette Kowal
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Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig
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A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor
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Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufmann
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Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini
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Philosophy of Race: An Introduction by Naomi Zack
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ood Services - How to Design Services that Work by Lou Downe
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The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
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The House Without Windows by Barbara Newhall Follett
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Teaching Medicine and Medical Ethics Using Popular Culture by Dr Evie Kendal
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Beyond the Labyrinth by Gillian Rubinstein
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This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith
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Touch by Claire North
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The Future of Feeling by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
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Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu The Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions by Lois H Gresh
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Something Beginning With by Sarah Salway
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A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong
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The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North
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The Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw
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Sapience by Alexis Lantgen
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Alone Together by Sherry Turkle
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The Guilty Feminist by Deborah Frances-White
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Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
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The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
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Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor
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The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato
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Terry Pratchett's Discworld Imaginarium by Paul Kidby
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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
2019
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Mismatch by Kat Holmes
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This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
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The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon
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Zero Sum Game by S. L. Huang
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Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch
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Chemical Detective by Fiona Erskine
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The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
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The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) by Philip Pullman
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Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
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Helpful Hackers by Chris van 't Hof
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A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier
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Queer Privacy by Sarah Jamie Lewis
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The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal
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Jennifer Government by Max Berry
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Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
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Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet
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Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson
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Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Lee Israel
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The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
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Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) by Scott Rieckens
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Do No Harm by Henry Marsh
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The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Vs. Dracula by Loren D. Estleman
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Deep Medicine by Eric Topol
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The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross
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Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalee Newitz
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84K by Claire North
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The Secret Barrister by Anonymous
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The City & The City by China Miéville
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The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla
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The End of the Day by Claire North
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Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman
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How Long 'til Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin
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Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
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Inferior by Angela Saini
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Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
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Hello World by Hannah Fry
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Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
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Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
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I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
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Longitude by Dava Sobel
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Death's End by Cixin Liu
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This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
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Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Benson
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Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
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Letters from Alcatraz by Michael Esslinger
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Fukushima Dreams by Zelda Rhiando
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The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross
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Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
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Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates
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The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
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Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright & Bradley Hope
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Was This in the Plan? by Stephanie Nimmo
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Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
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Nina is Not OK by Shappi Khorsandi
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Factfulness by Hans Rosling
| Reply to original comment on muenster.im
| Reply to original comment on bsky.app
Thank you for this - you’ve given me plenty of ideas for books to check out over the Christmas break. We share some 5-star reviews, but you were wrong about Klara and the Sun, so everything else you’ve written is void.
| Reply to original comment on bsky.app