I’ve fallen back in love with reading.
When I was in grade school, we had reading programs (clubs? I have no idea what they’re called) that I would join. They involved reading from a selected list of books appropriate for the grade level, and if you read a majority, you got to vote in (and attend) an awards ceremony for youth literature. I also remember reading a ton of the Animorphs series, the Goosebumps books, and of course, the marquee book series of my generation: Harry Potter.
Sometime during high-school, I fell out of love with reading for pleasure. During university, academia took over my reading list, and further pushed me away from reading for pleasure. Which is a damn shame, because there are a lot of great books out there.
Thankfully, I’ve caught the bug again in recent years. At time of writing, I’ve read 26 books this year, and intend to finish book 27 before the New Year. This is probably a record for me, so I wanted to take some time to reflect on what those books were, and how they ended up on my backlog. I won’t be writing about what I read in chronological order, but will instead try to group them under logical headings, and make some observations about those categorizations.
In 2020 Jim Butcher broke a bit of a dry spell and released two more books in the Dresden Files series. If you’re unfamiliar, the series is about a wizard with a gun, living in modern-day Chicago. It’s probably my favourite book series right now, and these two books are the first to come out since I got in to the series ~4 years ago. I read Peace Talks almost right away, but after finishing it, I realized I had forgotten a lot of minor plot-points from the preceding fifteen (!) books.
So, like any sensible person, I decided to re-read all the Dresden Files books before tackling Battle Ground. And I’m glad I did. I find the books to be pretty light reads in general; the pacing is quick, the diction is often simple enough that you don’t get caught on it, and (having read the books already, sometimes multiple times) the plot is generally pretty easy to follow.
It was off the back of that binge that I came into 2021. And, I gotta say, I 100% do not regret it. The series slows down for me around books nine through eleven, but otherwise it’s an outstanding read the whole way through. Special mention to my top three: Changes, Skin Game, and Battle Ground (yeah, if you haven’t gotten around to reading the new one yet, it’s super fun. Unless you’re Detective Rudolph).
The Mongol conquests have become a bit of a fascination of mine. I got around to watching Netflix’s Marco Polo series this year, which re-ignited my interest in this corner of history. I was discussing the TV series with my best friend and he brought up the Conqueror and Emperor series, thinking they would be right up my alley.
I gotta say, he was right. The books are an engaging ride alongside Ghengis and his successors (Ogedai, Guyuk, Mongke, and Kublai), with the first book solely devoted to the transformation of Temujin into the Great Khan. I think part of my love of the Mongol conquests comes from the notion that they are never seen as “the good guys”. I think there are rarely “good guys” in history anyway, but often the histories passed down to us have a bias towards the author(s) (and with good reason; if the Emperor Justinian is asking for a record of his time ruling the Empire, the history we get is going to paint him in the best light possible to ensure the book and the author continue their existence).
Lots of the accounts we have of the Mongol horde paint them as barbarous herdsmen, charging in mindlessly from the steppe to destroy civilization. I think Iggulden does a great job of balancing this view of the Mongols with a more realistic one. The author portrays Orlok Tsubodai as a master tactician, and Ghengis and his family are often shown bringing in “outsiders” to consult with them on matters of war and state. “My word is iron” is an oft-repeated line in the book, referencing the Mongols’ sense of honour and the importance of oath-keeping. The Mongols are not “mindless”; they conquered (and kept!) a large chunk of the known world under their nominal control for generations.
And of course, there’s the great “what if” of the Mongol conquests. The Mongols made it to the outer gates of Western Europe when they invaded Hungary, and it’s an interesting thought experiment to consider what the world would look like today if the descendants of the Roman Empire instead became the descendants of the Mongol Empire (and a fringe wing of the Empire at that). I think Dan Carlin was the person that brought that historical possibility to my attention during his Wrath of the Khans series.
All in all, a great series about a fun corner of history, and I can’t wait to dive into his Emperor series next year.
As much as I can, I try to leave room in my reading schedule for some classics. I don’t have a great definition for what I consider a classic, aside from it having a high-profile and being written before I was born. I like reading books that are widely considered “great” to try and broaden my perspective. I think we’re in an interesting media climate, where most media is either super broad (and thus super bland) or super niche (and thus interesting, but to a narrow slice of the population). I don’t know if either of those categories lend themselves well to longevity.
Reading classic literature helps me submerse myself in a culture other than my own, which can help me step back from the chaos of the always-on mode of being most of us find ourselves in. Take The Man in the High Castle - an alternate history where the Axis powers won WWII and divided up America between Japan and Germany. I’ve lived almost entirely during the American Empire phase of world history, so it’s hard for me to even fathom that, for a while, this reality was not a foregone conclusion. Reading that book helped me empathize with someone who saw Nazi Germany expand to almost the whole of Europe, and probably didn’t need much help imagining what it would take for the German war machine to cross the Atlantic (hint: not much).
These great works help tell the broader story of humanity (at least, in the English-speaking world). When someone catches the zeitgeist and has something to say, it gains an aura. These are the kinds of books I’m talking about when I think about the classics. They spoke to a large chunk of our ancestors in a profound way. Why? Was it a hopeful vision of the future, or a terrifying warning? Did it pose an interesting question? Did it make people sit back and reflect on some recent event in a new light? I think all great books do these things, but it often takes time to sieve the really great ones from merely the good ones.
Oh, and I read Dune again, because the movie Dune (2021) was coming out. I saw it. Was great, thoroughly enjoyable.
As someone who is rather public about his affection for books, sometimes, people have the audacity to recommend me books. Sometimes, I even read them.
I often find recommendations (from humans) hard to deal with, as they seem to be largely informed by recency bias and the personal tastes of the referrer, not the referee. This year I happily bucked that trend, and was able to enjoy (most) of the book recommendations I had accrued - from friends, internet personalities I follow, and the Amazon algorithm.
I have a review up for Tribe and a forth-coming review of Between the World and Me, so I’ll say go read those if you want to know what I thought. I also don’t have much to say on The War of Art; it felt less like a proper book and more like a collection of tweets, albeit pretty high-quality ones at that. I will call out one helpful anecdote, where he talks about putting on his lucky pants and sitting down in his lucky office chair and pointing this toy cannon at himself to “fire creativity into his brain” or some such nonsense. He uses all that fluff as a way to criticize the idea that you can only write when “inspiration strikes”. Since reading that story, I’ve tried to be more intentional about picking a spot in the house and then forcing myself to sit there with nothing to do but write for 60-90 minutes. It works sometimes.
I wish I could remember who recommended me The Order of Time because it broke my brain. I am in no way cut out for the level of understanding of physics one needs to have to grasp that book. And I’m pretty sure he dumbed a lot of it down for us mortals. It’s an entertaining read, and made me think about time in an…uncomfortable way. From what I remember, time basically doesn’t exist at a fundamental level. Which is bananas.
On the other end of the spectrum, There is no Anti-memetics division was this fun, light, pulpy dive into a universe where a memory monster destroyed the world and gets defeated by the power of forgetting. It’s directly inspired by the SCP foundation, which is an internet rabbit-hole I’ve fallen down a couple times (and, if this is the first time you’re hearing about SCP, you may want to clear your schedule before clicking that link). It’s pretty light on the horror elements which is perfect for me, and it had some cute scenes around how to fight monsters that attacked memory. There’s this one scene near the beginning where an SCP is chasing a character while eating their memories, and the SCP keeps asking about the character’s family. They devolve right in front of our eyes from “raised by mom and dad with sibling” -> “raised by just mom” -> “I was an orphan and never knew my parents”. At the end of the scene we discover this has happened multiple times, and agents of the anti-memetics division focus on training their reflexes and subconscious, as they can’t rely on anyone recalling their training.
And then there’s Wings of Fury. I wanted to like this book. It’s an interesting spin on the classic Greek Gods mythology, where the Titans ruled the lands as powerful overlords and the Gods were like - minor super heroes? Superhuman but not overwhelmingly so. The main characters we follow in this book don’t even know they are Goddesses until the final confrontation with the Titan and main villain of the story, Cronus. Which is a fun reveal. My major gripe is every so often there’s this randomly inserted hyper-feminist remark that takes me out of the experience. Maybe it’s supposed to be a more overt feminist story and I missed the cues? Who knows. I finished it, but won’t be following up on the series. Which is too bad, the reimagining of Greek mythology can be great if done well (see the recently-ish released game Hades as an example).
If you know who Jordan B. Peterson is, you probably have an opinion about his work.
I’ll admit I generally enjoy a lot of his content, if I don’t always agree with it. He can be a controversial figure, so I’ll admit to some hesitancy to even write this section. That being said, I don’t want to come across as someone who is trying to have his cake and eat it too: I am a fan, so this is a fan’s reading of both of these books.
They’re okay.
I think his speaking style doesn’t translate super well to the written format - I’ve found his lecture series on YouTube much more engaging and coherent than the books. If I’m remembering correctly, he does the audio book version of Beyond Order himself, and probably does the audio version of the original 12 Rules for Life, too. I also believe he recommends the audio version of Beyond Order over the text version as he can put breaks and emphasis on different parts of the work more easily.
As someone who has followed his work for a while and is familiar with a lot of the ground he likes to cover (the Big 5 personality traits, Jean Piaget, Solzhenitsyn, Egyptian mythology), the books felt a little redundant to me. He covers a lot of the same messages and ideas, but in a written format instead of a video one. Which is fine. I think producing the same content across different mediums is a great way to engage different audiences. For me, though, it’s a little disappointing to not get any new material. Which is a lot to ask from a guy who had a hell of a time writing the latter half of this series (I’ll spare you the details).
The material is so familiar to me it feels hard to evaluate them as books to recommend. He’s also such a polarizing figure that I doubt anything I say would sway you for or against them, unless you had never heard of Dr. Peterson up until this post. Assuming I’m writing for that audience, I’ll say this: if you feel like you don’t have a solid idea of what your life is and where you want it to go, read these books. If you’re someone who wants to do some introspection, but don’t know where to start, read these books. If you feel like the world is insanity and you don’t fit in anywhere amongst all the yelling, read these books. They might help.
In brief: I have a review up for The Orion Mystery that I’m actually pretty proud of, so go read that if you want to know about a whacky Great Pyramid conspiracy from the 90s. The Planets was a book I found in my father-in-law’s library that had this cool format where each chapter was about one of the planets in our solar system (plus the moon plus Pluto). It broke chapters up into two parts: a scientific discussion about the planet, and a short sci-fi story about the planet. It was neat. Nothing ground-breaking; just a nice little snack of a book. Last, Harry Potter and Philosophy is a book I’ve had for ages and never read. Part of the “and Philosophy” series, of which I also own The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy. The books attempt to introduce philosophical concepts (like the mind-body problem or the Ship of Theseus) through the lens of pop culture, with varying degrees of success. Wanted it off my backlog.
Which leaves The Righteous Mind.
I plan to write a full review for this book, because it’s probably in my top five books of all time, and I have a lot to say about it. When I first read it four (?) years ago, it shattered my way of thinking about interpersonal relationships. I still think about the Elephant and the Rider when people are behaving “irrationally” (he has this analogy about our emotions being an elephant and our logical mind being a rider that can sort of influence it, but not by a lot). I think about being WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rational and Democratic), and how all my friends are WEIRD, too. I think about his example that takes both left-leaning and right-leaning politics to their logical conclusions, and both fail.
This book helped me come to terms with a simple truth that feels like it doesn’t get said enough: we need each other. Badly. Even the people who think differently. Especially the people who think differently.
During this pandemic I’ve been exposed to both sides attacking a caricature of the other: those who lean left attack the “backwards, brain-dead, anti-science anti-vaxxers” and those who lean right attack “boot-licking, snowflake, herd-mentality medical-fascists”. Neither of these views are accurate, or helpful. It was after reading The Righteous Mind that helped me frame a lot of these “discussions” as fundamental personality clashes. Haidt’s breakdown of Moral Foundations Theory and showing how it correlates to political stances has helped me not get caught up in these disagreements; either as a participant or an observer.
Neither side is thinking. Neither side is “following the science” or the data or the facts or whatever they claim. For the majority of us, one mode of being “felt right”, and we’re following that. What is that feeling? Where did it come from? Have you considered that the person across the aisle had the exact same feeling, but with a different outcome?
That’s the power of this book. It helped me reconcile the notion that people can have diametrically opposed ideas on a subject and both be right(ish). Moreover, it helps me see the person behind the argument. Which, once we get there, I think leads to healthier, more productive discussions. Until we can start humanizing “the other side” again, we’ve already lost. All of us.
There you have it! A year in books - and one hell of a year at that.
I intend for this to be a companion piece to a more general “Year in Review” I plan on writing Soon^TM. I wanted to take a step back and see how much reading I got done in 2021, and write a bit of a time capsule to my future self. I knew when I first committed to writing “reviews” that I wouldn’t write one for every book, so it’s also nice to give myself some space to jot down a few notes on the less notable parts of my literary adventure.
26 books in 12 months. Not bad.