Not in a particular order (or almost):

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

You know what I told about the books not being in a particular order? Forget that for this one, as this is for sure my top 1, without any doubts. This one struck a deep chord with me and I cannot help but recommend it to every single person that I can :p

From the title, you might feel like really associating it with Wait But Why’s Your Life in Weeks and from tag line, Time Management for Mortals, it’s very easy to reach the conclusion that this book is about personal productivity. And it is, but maybe in a way you would not expect before reading it.

This book is essentially about our relationship with time, how we struggle with it and how we can do better. But not better in a way of finding a secret mechanism, life-hack or productivity tricks that can change this very limited thing to fit everything we would like to do. It’s about embracing its limitedness.

This is at the same time a very scary (for me) and relaxing (also for me) thought: It’s not possible to fit everything we want to do into the time we have available for ourselves; there is no point in trying to super optimise all the things in a exhaustive attempt to try to change it.

Personally I found this whole idea very life changing, not only because I have a knack for trying to optimise things/systems in in order to make them more efficient¹ but my brain is very prone to really powerful bursts of interest on many random topics². And because of this, I honestly love the idea of just embracing the limits and working with it.

The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato

The reason I really liked this book is because I do find that question it presents is really important for us if we want to think the kind of society we want to live and leave for future generations; and that question is: What we should value as a society?

A very clear example is the fact that nowadays, with the metrics we use to measure the economies of countries, we give more value to a company (let’s say A) that destroys the environment for a bigger profit and then hire another company (B) to clean-up the mess or compensate for it, than if in the first place A just had a lower profit but with less impact in the environment. The fact that we are accounting more on the first (the high profits of A but also that B now exists and operate to cover-up the impact) case than the second, shows off that we might have some things to think about.

Another great discussion in the book is about how the finance industry stopped serving the economy and the people to actually wrap the economy around itself, barely producing anything of value but mostly extracting value or just shuffling it around (while retaining a % for itself).

The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll

As someone that has been forever interested in Computer Security I have seen this book mentioned a lot of times, but had never read it until last year. And what a great decision it was :)

I really couldn’t put the book down since I started it and ended it so fast that I wanted more in the end! For me, honestly, I felt like the book had even refuelled/re-sparked my interest in security topics.

I don’t think it’s a book that will entice anyone that pick it up, but for those with a knack for security and/or curiosity on how computers ran awhile back (well, 35 years ago… quite a while now :) it is a great read.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Another very well known book (almost 50 years from its publication), that I have not read yet. Actually, I think this was my first book by Le Guin! And it was not disappointing!

I really loved reading about the contrast between the anarchist(/communist?) and the capitalist planets/societies and also about the internal contradictions inside each of them, especially the anarchist one (since the capitalist one we’re quite used by now, right? :p).

I found it a great example of negation of Capitalist Realism and also found out that I really enjoy books that challenges it.³

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

I found the fact that I picked this up as one of my top 5 quite funny. I don’t remember exactly why I picked this up to read but after I started I couldn’t put it down. Also at the beginning I was really thinking What the crap is this?! How is everyone mostly pretty nice/decent with everyone else!? Where is the backstabbing fest I should expect from you know, living beings?!? but then at some point it switched to Ok, I actually like this. This is comforting….

So yes, if you can fight with your Suspension of disbelief a bit and get into the mood of the book, it is a very soothing read, while you still care about the characters. On top of all (or maybe supporting all of that) is an overall really nice Sci-Fi book :)

And 5 more picks as honorable mentions

• Who Rules the World? by Noam Chomsky

  My first Chomsky book and I really enjoyed it⁴. Not very easy to start with, but feels great after you get the pace going.

• Don’t Be Evil by Rana Foroohar

  Well structured criticism on the subject of BigTech companies and the monopoly of tech power. Goes very well together with The Value of Everything.

• Hands-on Rust by Herbert Wolverson

  Very fun book on learning Rust. I have a GH repo with the code as it was by when I finished the bug plus a few bug fixes on my own and some TODO’s I created but had not come back to them yet.

  It is much better if you already have a background on programming and/or concepts of GameDev, since it will smash both very fast and doesn’t really have time to explain everything.

• How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

  Gates is still Gates, but I liked the informative approach of the book on a multi-faceted solution to fix climate change.

• 1984: The Graphic Novel by Matyáš Namai

  I really enjoyed this adaptation into a graphic novel. I have not read the original 1984 though, so I’m trusting what Namai did here :)