A friend of mine asked on Facebook, what books should he read, that others found great from last year.
And so here are mine. This isn’t in any particular order.
The Expanse by James S. A. Corey
This is a great series on great power politics written in a Game of Thrones style. The first set of books feel too much like a dungeon and dragons adventure, the latter set of books really hit their stride.
Imperial by Thomas Vollman
Bought it 10 years ago, finally started to read it this year. OMFG. This is the best book I have read since Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. The French version, because the one in English is unreadable.
Barbarian Days: A surfing life by William Finnegan.
This book made me regret not learning to surf 15 years ago when I first went to Hawaii. A co-worker of mine and I have agreed to go get a lesson in Santa Cruz because we both had the same regrets.
Master Switch and the Attention Merchants by Tim Wu.
Advertising and communication lines are tied at the hip. The original advertisers pandered to poor taste to make money. The original owner of the network, ATT and the radio companies, controlled what could and could not be done, delaying television for almost a decade.
Circe by Madeleine Miller
She wrote Achilles Heel. And this is an incredible book. She is able to capture the magic and faith and belief system of the Ancient Greeks from a unique perspective, a powerless nymph. The powerless nymph, however, acquires power through science (aka medicine) and becomes powerful.
Great book. My favorite part is the Goddess Athena.
The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World by Herman Hedwig.
Hedwig’s book has excruciating details about every twist and turn of every unit. But if you step back, you see that this was the defining moment of the 20th century. The Germany Army was the 19th-century army. It was cabal of kings and queens of Germany with very poor co-ordination. The French Army was the first 20th-century army under the firm grip of a single general. At the Marne, the feudal nature of the 19th century ends, and the totalitarian era begins. After the defeat, the German army gets re-organized under Ludendorf, and everything we recall happens. The horrors of the 20th began with the French victory at the Marne.
The other thing the book makes clear, even if it does it in a backhanded way, is that even if Paris had been conquered, the French were not done, and the Germans were exhausted. There was no path to victory.
Leave a Reply