Library

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“I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.”

- Gilead

I spent a large portion of my childhood reading genre fiction, but looking back I can’t say that it was a good thing. Developing a vocabulary that when not kept on a short leash tends towards the archaic has been harmless and funny, but the model of social dynamics I built from those books has been actively harmful. What kept me reading? The books filled the niche now occupied by short-form social media, offering comfort through predictable beats and status fantasies, essentially escapist in nature.

The cure to my fiction addiction was the discovery of something even more appealing - unique, high-octane, high-fidelity depictions of real experiences. This is why my first recommendation is to read the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story and From Third World to First, and my second, for a real fiction dependent, the autofiction section. Happy hunting!

Biographies and auto-biographies

  • The Singapore Story and From Third World to First, by Lee Kuan Yew
    • The “Zero to One” of building a first world nation.
  • Personal History by Katharine Graham (1917-2001), former leader of the Washington Post.
  • Steve Jobs and Einstein, both by Walter Isaacson
  • Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
  • Just Kids, by Patti Smith
  • Inside the Aquarium, by Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun)
    • A tank company commander, then a GRU intelligence officer. 1970s.
  • Korzybski, by Bruce Kodish. From 1879.
  • A Higher Loyalty, by James Comey
  • Hillybilly Elegy, by JD Vance
  • Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume VI. 1955-1966.

Tech/pop-sci

“This same truth is a naked and open daylight, which doesn’t show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world in half as stately and dainty a way as do the candle-lights of truth mixed with error. Truth may come to the price of a pearl, which shows best by day, but it won’t rise to the price of a diamond or other gemstone that shows best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie always adds pleasure.”

Meditation and the social mind

  • Eastern Body, Western Mind, Anodea Judith
  • The Elephant in the Brain, Robin Hanson
  • Impro, Keith Johnstone
  • The Science of Enlightenment, Shinzen Young
  • Be Here Now, Ram Dass
  • The Dance of Anger, Harriet Lerner
    • In addition to being practical and insightful, this makes an appearance in her son’s autofictional The Topeka School.

Non-fiction

Great manuals

A Guide to Modern Cookery

  • Released in 1903 by elite chef Auguste Escoffier, this manual covers a style of French cooking more elaborate and uncompromising than anything I found in Paris. It’s interesting to compare his recipe for a simple blond roux with the bastardized version now taught by the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts.

You Don’t Know JS by Kyle Simpson

  • Programming books are probably defunct due to LLMs, but I have fond memories of using this series to go from “can read React documentation” to “no one has a more thorough understanding of the event loop than I” in a couple of days. Great resources for intermediate practitioners are so underrated.

Literary fiction

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
  • Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin
  • Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
  • Infinite Jest, DFW
  • East of Eden, Steinbeck
  • The Illiad
  • The Odyssey
  • Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
  • Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

“I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again.”

Autofiction

  • Trip, Taipei, and Leave Society, all by Tao Lin
  • My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgård
  • Early Work, Andrew Martin
  • Real Life, Brandon Taylor
  • 10:04, The Topeka School, and other works by Ben Lerner
  • Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion

Social fiction

  • Normal People and other works by Sally Rooney
  • Houllebecq’s Submission
  • Call Me By Your Name, André Aciman
  • Vox, Nicholson Baker
    • The book Monica Lewinsky gifted Bill Clinton.
  • Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
  • The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton

Sci-fi and historical fiction*

  • The Culture novels by Ian Banks
  • The Nexus Trilogy by Ramez Naam
  • Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Liu Cixin (i.e. The Three Body Problem)
  • Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
  • Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

Kids’ books and fantasy fiction

  • The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, both by Lois McMaster Bujold
  • Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
  • Tomorrow When the War Began, by John Marsden
  • ASOIAF, GRRM
  • Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling

Fanfiction & AO3 Core

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