Read the Tea Leaves Software and other dark arts, by Nolan Lawson

Compared to previous years, my reading velocity has taken a bit of a nosedive. Blame videogames, maybe: I’ve put more hours into Civilization 6 than I care to admit, and I’m currently battling Moblins and Bokoblins in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

I’ve also been trying to re-learn the guitar. I basically stopped playing for nearly a decade, but this year I was surprised to learn that it’s a lot like riding a bike: my fingers seem to know things that my brain thought I had forgotten. I’ve caught up on most of the songs I used to know, and I’m looking forward to learning more in 2024.

(The wonderful gametabs.net used to be my go-to source for great finger-picking-style videogame songs, but like a lot of relics of the old internet, its future seems to be in doubt. I may have to find something else.)

In any case! Here are the books:

Quick links

Fiction

• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
• Dare to Know by James Kennedy
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Non-fiction

• The Intelligence Illusion by Baldur Bjarnason
• Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World by Matt Alt
• Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda
• Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History by Bill Laws

Fiction

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

One of those classics of fantasy literature that I had never gotten around to reading. I really enjoyed this one, especially as it gave me a new appreciation for Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, which seems to draw heavily from the themes of Earthsea – in particular, the idea that knowing the “true name” of something gives you power over it. I gave the second Earthsea book a shot, but haven’t gotten deep enough to get drawn in yet.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

I’ve always enjoyed Murakami’s dreamy, David Lynch-like magic realism. This one runs a little bit too long for my taste – it starts off strong and starts to drag near the end – but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dare to Know by James Kennedy

This one was a bit of a sleeper hit which I was surprised to find wasn’t more popular. It’s a high-concept sci-fi / dystopian novel with a lot of fun mysteries and twists. I would be completely unsurprised if it gets turned into a Christopher Nolan movie in a few years.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

This book has a big reputation, which I think is thoroughly earned. It’s best to read it without knowing anything about what it’s about, so that you can really experience the whole voyage the author is trying to take you on here.

All I’ll say is that if you like sci-fi and aren’t intimidated by weird or archaic language, then this book is for you.

Non-fiction

The Intelligence Illusion by Baldur Bjarnason

Like Out of the Software Crisis last year, this book had a big impact on me. This book deepened my skepticism about the current wave of GenAI hype, although I do admit (like the author) that it still has some reasonable use cases.

Unfortunately I think a lot of people are jumping into the GenAI frenzy without reading sober analyses like these, so we’ll probably have to learn the hard way what the technology is good at and what it’s terrible at.

Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World by Matt Alt

As a certified Japanophile nerd (I did admit I play videogame music, right?), this book was a fun read for me. It’s especially interesting to see Japan’s cultural exports (videogames, manga, etc.) from the perspective of their own home country. I admit I hadn’t thought much about how things like Gundam or Pokémon were perceived by fans back home, so this book gave me a better context for the artifacts that shaped my childhood.

Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

Yes, there is some hero-worship of Steve Jobs here, but there is also just a really engrossing story of great engineers doing great work at the right place in the right time. I especially loved the bits about how the original iPhone soft keyboard was designed, and how WebKit was initially chosen as the browser engine for Safari.

Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History by Bill Laws

I’ve always been one of those pedants who loves to point out that most staples of European cuisine (pizza in Italy, fish and chips in Britain) are really foreign imports, since things like tomatoes and potatoes are New World plants. So this book was perfect for me. It’s also a fun read since it’s full of great illustrations, and gives just the right amount of detail – only the barest overview of how the plants were discovered, how they were popularized, and how they’re used today.