Book List

Everything Else
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Clearly Anathem by Neal Stephenson is our first entry.

What else?

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Hah, I hadn’t been in on that conversation, had to follow the link to see what was up. Good on you for actually moving off-topic to a new thread (I should do that…)

I have Anathem on my short list for near future listening. Snow Crash and Seveneves were great. I just got my wife started on Seveneves. Not sure if she would like Snow Crash though.

I think I found Stephenson after I had listened to Ready Player One, and looked for similar works to keep my ears busy during summer house repairs.

(and yes, I do audiobooks almost exclusively. Sit down and read time is almost always invested in forums ><. But I love to listen to audiobooks, especially since it helps me practice doing voices when I read to my kids at night)

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I am almost finished with “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin.

I would highly recommend “Thing Explainer” by Randall Munroe

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Love Stephenson!
I found him when I picked up a copy of Cryptonomicon in a second hand book shop. I’ve done most of his stuff now, with the exception of the Baroque Cycle ( saving that for my summer holiday.

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I just finished Ready Player One and I highly recommend it if you love the 1980’s and arcade games.

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If you liked Ready Player One read Daemon and Freedom ™ by Daniel Suarez. They have a lot of similarities to RPO, but less of a throw back to the 80s and more of a Techno-thriller.

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Ready Player One was fun. We got an audio book and listened to it during holiday travel.
I havent read Anathem yet, but have a copy coming in.

Here are some of my favorites:

  • Terrene: A good friend of mine recommended this book. I really wish it would be made into a movie. Really cool concept. Highly recommended. Fantasy/tech
  • Speaker for the Dead: Follow up to enders game. Not action packed, but a really good read. I liked this book a lot more than enders game, and thats saying a good bit. Its deep. OSC said he wrote enders game, so that he could write this book.
  • Godel, Escher, Bach: This one is quite a bit more academic, but an amazing book. If you like math and pattern recognition, this is a great book to get into. Gotta be strong for this one.
  • Infinity and the Mind: The title is true to the book, it looks into those trying to understand infinity, and the effects it has had on them. Why do the brightest mathematicians studying the infinite end up in mental institutes… Are they reaching the limit of human understanding or reaching another plane that we are not aware of?
  • I am a Strange Loop: A treatise on consciousness by Hofstadter. If you have any interest in understanding human consciousness and potentially expanding your contextual understanding of free will this is a good book to check out.
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Hofstadter is amazing. Hard to pick a favorite among his but Le Ton beau de Marot was so moving. I have read all of Steven Pinker, Jared Daimond, William Gibson, Diane Ackerman. Love John LeCarre. Windup Girl was a great romp by Paul Baciagalupi. Cryptonomicon sent me to lots of reading about so many things. There is a beautiful passage describing organ music that I used for years in my writing classes that I taught. William Gibson allows me to understand things about modern life that puzzle me, like fashion trends. Oh, I’ll go on forever.

And by the way. Glowforge has seriously curtailed my reading. I have the Three Body problem and Seveneves sitting there since October.

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Daemon was phenomenal. I actually have some students trying to see if the “sound from midair” ultrasonic speaker idea is feasible.

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Im about half way through daemon right now. Enjoying it!

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