Scanning miles of sentences remains enormously effective.
Books I've read and enjoyed—and some I didn't—in various ways, this year:
Favorites
A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander et al
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Zero to One: On Startups Or How to Build the Future - Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
Iron Council - China Miéville
Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies - Geoffrey West
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk - Peter Bernstein
Testament - G. C. Waldrep
> "Consciousness has a breakeven aesthetic."
The Sublime Object of Ideology - Slavoj Zizek
Black Elk Speaks - John G Neihardt
How to Write a Sentence - Stanley Fish
Permanent Record - Edward Snowden
On Growth and Form - D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (published in 1917, recommended by Geoffrey West in Scale)
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World - Tim Marshall
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words - David Whyte
Des Choses Cachées depuis la Fondation du Monde - Réne Girard
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World - Réne Girard
At the Mountains of Madness - Howard Philiips Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft: Contre le monde, contre la vie - Michel Houellebecq
The Origins of the World, Volume 1: Before Sarajevo - Sidney Bradshaw Fay
Safe Area Goražde - Joe Sacco
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values - Robert M. Pirsig
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell ... Coming of age story of a young poet in a small town; meets Madame Crommelynk from Cloud Atlas, who teaches him about beauty and truth
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Common Sense: The Origin and Design of Government - Thomas Paine
Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained - Milton
De Anima (On the Soul) - Aristotle
Spinoza: Complete Works - Spinoza
Modern Principles of Economics - Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok
Lords of Finance: The Bankers that Broke the World - Liaquat Ahamed
The Twenty Years' Crisis - E. H. Carr
Politics Among Nations - Hans Morgenthau (multipolar more stable than bipolar & innate desire for power) 1948
Theory of International Politics - Kenneth N. Waltz (structural realism--survival; challenges Morgenthau's multipolar) 1979
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics - John J. Mearsheimer (offensive realism) 2001
Serotonin - Michel Houellebecq
Serotonine - Michel Houellebecq
The Big Sea - Langston Hughes
What Doesn't Kill Us - Scott Carney (unlocking/activating deep physiological capabilities)
The Ascent of Money - Niall Ferguson
Big Debt Crises - Ray Dalio
Aquinas: A Summary of Philosophy - Richard J. Regan (translated & edited)
Beyond Good and Evil - Freidrich Nietzsche
The White Goddess - Robert Graves
The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Submission - Michel Houellebecq
Soumission - Michel Houellebecq
An Introduction to English Poetry - James Fenton
Metamorphoses - Ovid
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Pale King - David Foster Wallace
Ordinary Unhappiness - Jon Baskin
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture - Johan Huizinga
Collected Poems - Mark Strand
Hey, what's up everybody. This is Erik. Glad you're here. Go ahead and check out everything we're doing, from my fiction, book reviews, book clubs, and of course, some writing courses as well for some of my friends, maybe we'll see—anyway, join the conversation and look out for upcoming events. I'll talk to you soon. Invite your friends (if you want to), because it makes it better when there's more of us like-minded folks around. Okay. Talk to you soon. Take care. Welcome to Esoterik. Let's do this.