Sir Isaac Newton Biography - E. N. da G. Andrade; it was a good old book about Newton's life that caught my eye in an old airport library. It's cool learning about how Newton's big revelations came to him while he was forced to stay home from Cambridge during an epidemic. Much of what is in the book is resonated in Edward Dolnick's The Clockwork Universe.
Seven Years in Tibet- Heinrich Harrer; this is the type of book we are privileged to have recorded for the history of humanity. This is the real account from an Austrian who kept notes of his experiences during World War 2, where he escaped multiple internment camps, ending up taking refuge in Tibet and becoming close friends with the young, upcoming and current Dalai Lama, Lobsang Tenzin Gyatso, just before the ways of old Tibet were ravaged by the modern realities of war.
Diary of an Oxygen Thief - Anonymous; I honestly didn't really like the book. It just happens to be that the author is a good writer, so the book is written well and digestible. It gives a glimpse into the mind of a traumatized sociopathic pervert, who reflects on how he had a rough childhood of abuse, which he then projected into his dating life, turning into an alcoholic who used and abused women himself. So, there's an audience for that sort of stuff, I guess. 'But just wait, I got mine, for it all, in the end,' he assures us.
Letters to a Young Scientist - E.O. Wilson; I joked to myself that 'I guess I'm not a young scientist anymore,' after reading it, because a lot of the lessons felt obvious to me. I've already graduated college, so I have a lot of the more in-practice meta-knowledge. Learning about his career and his studies of ants, tied into the discussion, was interesting though.
Hope in the Dark - Rebecca Solnit; great little book. I originally read excerpts for my Philosophy 494 class, Environmental Justice, and wanted to go back and read the whole thing. It gave context to some of the events, and social justice movements related to them, that have unfolded in the latter half of the 1900s and early 2000s in various nations. The effects of modernization and regime shifts on local culture, Zapatistas, feminism, and other grassroots movements that highlight the strength of people in the face of change. For books like this, I often forget the specific without looking back at it, but the lessons stick with my mind.
The End of History and the Last Man - Francis Fukuyama; reading this around the turn of 2025 felt very apt. It's a dense and important book. We originally read excerpts for my Political Philosophy class. Like Hope in the Dark, it provides context for important historical events that many people, especially those who don't study history or this stuff in academia, might understand much about, however this book does so much more. It essentially explains the relational dynamics of all the different overarching types of societal/governing organization (authoritarian, totalitarian, socialism, democratic liberalism, republican democracy, etc.) and how the different countries of the world have tended to become more democratic as the world has modernized. The book postulates on if liberal democracy is the highest form of government, or if its pitfalls will necessitate some greater form to arise in future paradigms of civilization. If I recall, the two main critiques of liberal democracy come from that trying to equalize opportunity risks infringing on freedom and numbing ourselves to the nuances of reality and struggle, while by seeking to maximize freedom we risk falling back into imperialistic paradigm of imposing our views of 'right order' on others. The struggle of the last man versus Thymos. I remember towards the end of the book feeling like the book accidentally made a good argument for a form of liberal democracy that incorporates feminism being the highest form of government, when one considers the tenants of nurturing, openness, etc., which are discussed in Solnit's book to a greater specificity.
The Giver - Lowis Lowry; I needed to read something easy for a change after all the thick reading content, and this was a nice segue out of Fukuyama's book in many ways. It portrays an idealist utopia who have regulated their society so much that they attempt to cut out many forms of difference and struggle from the lives of society members. Life is good, but the citizens live in ignorance of much of the reality of the world outside their society, showing how the pursuit of utopia risks becoming its own form of totalitarianism.
Ghostwritten - David Mitchell; this is Mitchell's first book, and like Cat's Cradle, my expectations for this book were affected by me having read The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas in my younger years. It was still a good book, but comparatively, it was just okay. It reminded me that it is okay if my first book is just 'an impressive start' as well. Building the same universe as his later books, Ghostwritten (1999) follows a noncorporeal entity as it experiences jumping from host to host and interferes in the creation A.I. warfare.
Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus - Ludwig Wittgenstein; a dense little book I used while writing my honors thesis in college, Wittgenstein explores the relational foundations between logic and reality itself. He shows how logic and the process of identifying objects exists with a certain structure which must allow us to capture reality because of that esoteric meaning which the whole process of defining itself encompasses. He works his way from the foundations of logic to the limits of our ability to express and experience truth itself, in a way that is another of the great feats of humanity.
Avatar: The Reckoning of Roku - Randy Ribay; I needed another easy book after all the thick reading, and I knew very quickly that I was going to like this book more than I originally expected, just because it is kind of a kiddie book in ways. The book follows Avatar Roku as he leaves home to start his Avatar training. It provided great back story, and had some good action, although the action left me wanting a bit more in ways, because of how early in Roku's story it is. There just wasn't much avatar state or spirit world action, as this is largely what he was learning to connect to throughout the book, but it was still a great read, and makes me hope they will do another, like they did two books Kyoshi and Yangchen.