Alban's Blog

Books

These books I'm reading, or have read recently. If you want to chat about books or recommend something you think I'd enjoy, tweet @albanbrooke

Reading

Recently finished

2025 09 13: Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Interesting exploration of the theory of mind, epistemology, and communication. Shares themes with "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge, Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?", and Embassytown by China Miéville. It has a bit of the engineering puzzles you get in Andy Weir's books, like "The Martian."

2025 05-07: Dungeon Crawler Carl (series) by Matt Dinniman

  1. Dungeon Crawler Carl
  2. Carl's Doomsday Scenario
  3. The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook
  4. The Gate of the Feral Gods
  5. The Butcher's Masquerade
  6. The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
  7. This Inevitable Ruin

2025 05 12: Transition by Iain M. Banks

2025 03 13: Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey

2025 02 05: Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

2024

2024 12 12: Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford

2024 12 10: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2024 11 xx: The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

2024 xx xx: Echopraxia by Peter Watts

2024 08 xx: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver

2024 08 14: Excession by Iain M. Banks

2024 07 xx: Dracula by Bram Stoker

2024 05 28: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

2024 05 25: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

2024 05 01: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

2024 04 24: State of the Art by Iain M. Banks

2024 04 16: Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick

4/5: Exceptional introduction to working with AI tool, specifically LLMs like ChatGPT. Combines practical advice, like how to improve prompts, with philosophical questions about the purpose of work.

2024 04 13: Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

One of the best books in The Culture series.

2024 04 03: Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

5/5: Absolutely ambitious novel with a complicated structure. It would prob be considered literary fiction if it wasn't science fiction. I'd love to write an in-depth review with a graphic depicting the structure of the novel.

2024 03 20: Down the Great Unknown by Edward Dolnick

2/5: I read this account of Powell’s expedition down the Colorado River while on vacation in Sedona and the Grand Canyon. It was pretty rough, I only finished because it was an audiobook and we had a lot of driving around Arizona.

2024 03 10: Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

2024 02 17: Blindsight by Peter Watts

2024 02 07: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

2024 01 31: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

2023

2023 07 05: Matter by Iain M. Banks

2023 05 22: The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

2023 02 21: Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks

2023 02 01: The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman

2023 01 17: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

2023 01 08: The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge

2022

2022 12 04: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

2022 11 23: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

2022 10 01: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

2022 10 01: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

2022 10 01: A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

2022 06 12: Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

2022 05 22: The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks

2022 02 09: Tribe by Sebastian Junger

2022 01 28: Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

2021

2021 11 16: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

2021 06 20: Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

2021 06 09: Atmosphæra Incognita by Neal Stephenson

2021 03 10: The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

2021 03 10: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

2021 02 13: Ten Drugs by Thomas Hager

2021 02 07: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

2021 02 01: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

2020

2020 09 08: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi

2020 09 02: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

2020 08 15: Exhalation by Ted Chiang

2020 06 21: The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W.E. Bowman

2020 06 20: Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

2020 06 12: Positioning by Al Ries

2020 06 01: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

2020 04 20: On Having No Head by Douglas E. Harding

2020 01 26: Seven Years a Sailor by Bob Settles

2020 01 12: Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2020 01 07: Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

2020 01 01: The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

2019

2019 12 27: Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

2019 12 27: Andre the Giant: Life and Legend by Box Brown

2019 12 24: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt

2019 12 19: Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Sue Johnson

2019 12 14: The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity by Matthew Van Natta

2019 12 08: Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston

2019 12 07: Atomic Habits by James Clear

2019 12 01: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

2019 11 30: Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson

2019 11 29: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

2019 11 19: The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni

2019 11 16: The River by Peter Heller

2019 11 08: The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

2019 10 19: A Concise History of the Russian Revolution by Jeremy D. Popkin

2019 09 21: The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll’s House by Neil Gaiman

2019 09 20: Is This Guy For Real?: The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman by Box Brown

2019 09 18: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

2019 09 14: Lightly by Francine Jay

2019 09 12: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

2019 08 26: Mort by Terry Pratchett

2019 08 09: Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

2019 07 31: Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler

2019 07 31: Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold

2019 07 15: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

2019 07 01: Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson*

2019 06 19: The Dip by Seth Godin

2019 06 08: Reamde by Neal Stephenson

2019 06 05: Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris

2019 05 27: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

2019 05 26: I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi

2019 05 11: Getting Things Done by David Allen

2019 05 10: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries

2019 05 05: The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti

2019 05 01: The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron

2019 04 23: The Art of Invisibility by Kevin D. Mitnick

2019 04 15: A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine

2019 04 01: Contact by Carl Sagan

2019 03 19: Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

2019 03 01: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

2019 02 21: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

2019 02 14: Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

2019 02 10: Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

2019 01 23: Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

2019 01 21: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

2019 01 16: A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith

2028

2018 12 31: The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud

2018 12 27: How Not to Die by Michael Greger

2018 12 21: The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis

2018 12 17: The City & the City by China Miéville

2018 11 30: Making Websites Win by Karl Blanks

2018 11 09: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

2018 10 26: The Art of War by Sun Tzu

2018 10 16: Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana

2018 10 12: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

2018 10 07: It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried

2018 10 07: The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

2018 09 23: Essentialism by Greg McKeown

2018 09 01: Factfulness by Hans Rosling*

2018 08 28: Peak by K. Anders Ericsson

2018 08 18: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

2018 08 12: Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

2018 08 11: But What If We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman

2018 08 05: How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) by Lee Alan Dugatkin

2018 07 16: Ethics in the Real World by Peter Singer

2018 07 15: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman

2018 07 03: The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

2018 06 26: Ubik by Philip K. Dick

2018 06 07: The Manticore by Robertson Davies

2018 05 22: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

2018 04 28: The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien

2018 04 13: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

2018 04 07: Lying by Sam Harris

2018 04 05: Deep Work by Cal Newport

2018 04 03: The Man’s Guide to Women by John M. Gottman

2018 04 02: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

2018 03 24: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

2018 03 22: Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance

2018 03 16: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

2018 03 11: What’s So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey

2018 03 01: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker*

2018 02 13: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

2018 01 31: Life in Code by Ellen Ullman

2018 01 26: Cryptoassets by Chris Burniske

2018 01 21: Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki

2018 01 18: So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

2018 01 15: number9dream by David Mitchell

2018 01 06: Archangel by William Gibson

2018 01 03: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

2017

2017 12 31: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

2017 11 29: The Internet of Money by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

2016

2016 11 27: The Enchiridion by Epictetus

2016 09 07: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

2016 08 17: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

2015

2015 08 05: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell