Even as I whined about losing my reading habit, I managed to read a surprising (to me) number of books through 2022. One reason I think I didn’t notice is because very few of them started out being books I actually wanted to read. Looking back, there’s a clear fiction-nonfiction divide and a marked preference for monographs. The full list follows; each recommender’s name is in square brackets and a thumbs-up denotes how much I personally enjoyed it.
- The Dark Side of the Hive (NF), Robin Moritz and Robin Crewe [Raghavendra Gadagkar] 👍🏾
- Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (NF), John Drury Clark 👍🏾
- The Technological Society (NF), Jacques Ellul
- The Complete Cosmicomics (F), Italo Calvino [Jahnavi Sen] 👍🏾
- Reread: Coup de Grace (F), Marguerite Yourcenar 👍🏾
- Straw Man Arguments: A Study in Fallacy Theory (NF), Scott Aikin and John Casey 👍🏾👍🏾
- Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling (F), Bruce Sterling [Shruti Muralidhar]
- The Vortex: A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation (NF), Scott Carney and Jason Miclian
- From Space to Sea: My ISRO Journey and Beyond (NF), Albert Muthunayagam 👍🏾 (largely because the Nambi Narayanan biopic had just come out and the book contradicted many claims in the film)
- Real-World Cryptography (NF), David Wong
- Spillover (NF), David Quammen 👍🏾👍🏾
- Modi’s India (NF), Christophe Jaffrelot
- Letters to a Young Poet (NF), Rainer Maria Rilke 👍🏾
- Ninefox Gambit (F), Yoon Ha Lee
- The Dawn of Analysis (NF), Scott Soames
- At the Feet of Living Things (NF), Aparajita Datta, Rohan Arthur and T.R. Shankar Raman 👍🏾
- The Collected Stories (F), Arthur C. Clarke
- Parallel Lives (NF), Phyllis Rose [Jahnavi Sen] 👍🏾
Now reading: Viriconium (F), M. John Harrison [Thomas Manuel] so far 👍🏾👍🏾
Up next: The God Is Not Willing (F), Steven Erikson